Sinjar, Iraq: Fahad Qasim was just 11 years old when Daesh militants took him captive in an invasion of the Yazidi community in Sinjar, northern Iraq, in August 2014.
The attack marked the beginning of a systematic killing, enslavement and rape of thousands of Yazidis that shocked the world and drove out most of the 550,000-strong ancient religious minority. Thousands were rounded up and killed during the initial attack, which began in the early morning hours of August 3.
Many more are believed to have been captured and killed. Survivors fled to the slopes of Mount Sinjar, where some were trapped for weeks by Daesh's siege.
The attacks on the Yazidis, an ancient religious minority in eastern Syria and northwestern Iraq who follow the Zoroastrian, Christian, Manichaean, Jewish and Islamic faiths, were part of the militant group Daesh's efforts to establish a caliphate.
The group once controlled a third of Iraq and neighboring Syria, but collapsed in 2019 after being overtaken by U.S.-backed forces and Iranian-backed militias.
Now 21, Qasim lives in a small apartment on the outskirts of a refugee camp in Iraq's Kurdistan region, far from his homeland.
He was trained as a child soldier and fought in grueling combat before being released in 2019 after Daesh collapsed in Baghduz, Syria, but only after losing his lower leg in a U.S.-led airstrike.
“I have no plans for the future in Iraq,” he said as he waited for news on his visa application to a Western country.
“People who are returning say they are afraid that something like what happened in 2014 will happen again.”
Qasim’s reluctance to return is shared by many. A decade after what many governments and UN agencies have recognized as genocide, the Sinjar district remains largely destroyed.
The old city of Sinjar is a heap of gray and brown stones, and villages like Kojo, where hundreds of people died, are crumbling ghost towns.
Resettlement is difficult, with limited services, poor electricity and water supplies and local residents saying the government is not paying enough compensation for reconstruction.
Power struggle
The security situation further complicates matters: a mosaic of armed groups that fought to liberate Sinjar remain in this strategic corner of Iraq, holding de facto power on the ground.
The 2020 Sinjar Agreement called for the withdrawal of these groups and the appointment of a mayor with a police force comprised of local residents, but this is not the case.
And from above, Turkish drone strikes frequently target fighters allied with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which Turkey outlaws. Civilians have also been killed in these attacks, adding to the unrest.
Akhtin Intikam, a 25-year-old commander of the PKK-aligned Sinjar Protection Units (YBS), one of the militants in the area, defends their continued presence.
“We control this area and have the responsibility to protect Sinjar from any external attack,” she said.
Speaking in a room decorated with photographs of more than 150 fallen soldiers, Intikam views the Sinjar Accords with suspicion.
“We will fight tooth and nail against anyone who tries to implement this plan. It will never succeed,” she said.
Government efforts
As the standoff continues, Sinjar remains underdeveloped. Families who return receive a one-time payment of about $3,000 from the government.
Meanwhile, more than 200,000 Yazidis remain in Kurdistan, many living in squalid tent cities. The Iraqi government is trying to dismantle the camps and insists it is time for people to return home.
“You can’t blame people for losing hope. The scale of the damage and displacement is so great and very little has been done to address it over the years,” said Khalaf Shinzari, an adviser to the Iraqi prime minister on Yazidi issues.
He said the government was taking Sinjar seriously.
Hundreds of millions of dollars, including all unused funds since 2014, are planned to be spent on development and infrastructure, including paying compensation, building two new hospitals and a university, and connecting Sinjar to the national water grid for the first time. “There is hope for life,” said Sinjar, a member of the Yazidi community.
But fears are growing that history could repeat itself, with an estimated 50,000 Daesh fighters and their families being held in detention facilities and camps across the Syrian border.
Efforts by some Iraqi lawmakers to pass a general amnesty law that would have freed many Daesh prisoners from Iraqi prisons have only added to these concerns. And the fight for justice for the Yazidis has stalled, with the government this year ending a UN mission that sought to bring Daesh fighters to justice for international crimes, citing a lack of cooperation between the government and the mission.
Despite the hardships, some Yazidis are choosing to return. Farhad Barakat Ali, a Yazidi activist and journalist who was driven out by Daesh, decided to return several years ago.
“I am not encouraging everyone to return to Sinjar, but I am not encouraging everyone to stay in the IDP camps either,” he said from his home in the city of Sinjar amid the blistering heat of the power outage.
“Having a hometown and living in one's hometown is something people can be proud of.”
