Yazidi PMU Fighters Face Uncertainty in the KRG
Iraq’s Yazidi community remains deeply traumatized by the genocide carried out against it by the Islamic State beginning in August 2014. As if the mass murder, enslavement of thousands of women, and destruction of their ancestral homeland were not enough, Yazidis also face suspicion and unchecked abuse at the hands of Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) […]Iraq’s Yazidi community remains deeply traumatized by the genocide carried out against it by the Islamic State beginning in August 2014. As if the mass murder, enslavement of thousands of women, and destruction of their ancestral homeland were not enough, Yazidis also face suspicion and unchecked abuse at the hands of Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) authorities; their self-proclaimed protectors.
After the liberation of the district’s north in late 2014, Sinjar was effectively divided into two spheres of influence; the KDP and the Sinjar Resistance Units (YBS), a creation of the PKK which has received occasional support from the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU). A kind of uneasy peace held between the two forces (with some exceptions) as each party sought to gain the support of those Yazidi residents who remained in Sinjar.
The advent of the Iraqi Government’s Mosul Offensive and subsequent campaign to liberate southern Sinjar introduced a third and potentially more potent competitor for the district’s hearts and minds; the Yazidi Lalish Battalion of the PMU. The existing factions that predated the Lalish’s arrival in the south had cause for concern about this new development. The ruling KDP maintained its dominance in the north through a combination of patronage, intimidation, and sheer force. The YBS on the other hand, while having earned the good will of locals for its defense of Sinjar, succeeded in angering many Yazidis by forcibly conscripting and indoctrinating children into an ideology alien to Sinjar’s conservative mores.
