Yazidis Return Home to Face Economic Blockade

“This siege is targeting a specific faction within the Yazidi people,” confirmed Saeed Hassan, a senior commander in the Sinjar Resistance Units. “That is despite the fact that this force is legitimized by the Iraqi government itself and that it too is fighting the IS group.”

However the mayor of Sinjar, Iraqi Kurdish politician, Mahma Khalil, denied that there was any kind of siege. “Nobody is preventing the entry of food,” Khalil, who is also a member of the KDP, told NIQASH. “There are just some measures being taken to prevent the smuggling of food from Sinjar into Syria. But that is all.”

Khalil says the situation in Sinjar is deteriorating simply because of the lack of services and ongoing threats from the IS group. But it was also the fault of other groups who came from outside the country and who didn’t obey the rule of law or the will of the people of Sinjar and the local government, he added somewhat tellingly.

And all this is happening with the IS group still nearby. So, locals wonder, what will happen if the extremists are really driven out and the remaining armed groups are left to their own devices? Right now, the KDP’s attitude seems to be driving other groups closer to either the Iraqi government or the PKK.

“Things are getting worse,” says Daoud Jundi of the Yazidi Protection Forces. “They’re definitely not going in a direction that best serves the people of Sinjar. That is why we will soon take the side of the neutral party, in an effort to ease tensions. But it seems to me that there will still be some more fighting,” he concluded.