Neighbours In Iraq

"Eighty years ago, they joined three nations together and formed Iraq. This mistake must not be repeated ... The solution is a breakup."
Kurdish General Maghdid Haraki, Erbil, Iraq

"We tried to withdraw all the women and kids from the village. People who could get to the mountains were safe, people who stayed were killed."
"When ISIS came to the village, they took all the women, and any man who could hold a weapon was slaughtered. Now they are selling Yezidi women for $5 in the slave market in Mosul."
"My parents were too old and sick to come with us, and we had to leave them. We don't know what has happened to them. Also, some people didn't have fuel for their cars, and those ones couldn't get to the mountain."
"Our neighbours in Iraq became our enemies, and killed us."
Kawa, 30, Erbil, Iraq

Kurdish peshmerga fighters celebrate as they pose for the camera after retaking Buyuk Yeniga village from Islamic State September 4, 2014. REUTERS/Ahmed Jadallah

Kawa's story skipped a few beats; desperate people who fled their towns at the approach of ISIS whose plan was to destroy the presence of Yezidis in the territory they were annealing to the geography they had already taken in Iraq and Syria, were not at all safe on the mountain they fled to. Their plight on Mount Sinjar transfixed the world as news of their situation made headlines in the international community, compelling the U.S. airforce finally to bomb ISIS militias in an effort to aid the desperate Yezidis dying of hunger and thirst on the mountain.

But it was the Turkish PKK Kurdish guerrillas, along with the Kurdish YPG militia from Syria who demonstrated that it was possible to meet the ISIS jihadis in conflict and win the day, by opening up an escape corridor through which they escorted the tens of thousands Yezidis off the mountain to haven in Kurdistan. Armed with Kalashnikovs and light machine guns, experienced Kurdish fighters created passage from Sinjar to the refugee camps that absorbed the tens of thousands of desperate Yezidis, an ancient offshoot of Kurds.

ISIS claimed it beheaded a Peshmerga fighter in graphic video and threatened 14 others.  Youtube

Turkey has been supporting the Sunni jihadis known as the Islamic State. And it has been recently reported that the oilfields that ISIS has taken possession of in Syria and Iraq have produced oil that Turkey has helped to distribute and sell, with the proceeds enriching the Islamic State. Some of the countries now known to have purchased that oil are members of the European Union.

Chaldean Christians from Mosul, Yezidis from the Sinjar area live in tent encampments in open areas close by the Kurdistan capital.

And Irbil remains surrounded by Islamic State jihadis anxious to assault the city and breach its defenses. But the Kurdish peshmerga maintains a position 45 kilometres northwest of Irbil to keep the jihadis at bay. The front line stretches along an enormous corridor on the frontier between Syria and Turkey. ISIS is now in full control of huge swaths of Syria and Iraq, and is determined to continue adding to its holdings.

American air strikes helped stem the ISIS advance. But General Haraki and his peshmerga fighters know that the prevailing quiet is temporary. ISIS forces must advance over flat terrain to reach Irbil, and to do so would make them vulnerable to attack by air. The Kurds would request again the assistance of the U.S. airforce which would obliterate any militias that ventured onto that flat, easily-seen and -targeted terrain.

Slowly, the peshmerga are beginning to retake lost areas including oilfields close to Mosul and the Mosul Dam, critical for water and electricity provision for most of northern Iraq. After ISIS took the Mount Sinjar area, a series of atrocities took place, giving the peshmerga more than adequate knowledge of what they would face were ISIS ever to be successful in surmounting the Kurds' defences.

Out of this period in their troubled history, the Kurds are at long last determined to forge a country of their own, carving their territory away from Syria, Iraq, Turkey and Iran.