Ten years have passed since the referendum on the Iraqi post-occupation constitution of 2005. Throughout these years, Iraq has been fraught with administrative corruption, and Sunnis who have been subjected to political isolation have largely allied with the remnants of the former Baath Party.
This instability has produced an extremist militant organization in the city of Fallujah that expanded to all other Sunni cities in Iraq.
What Iraq is reaping today goes back to what happened there in 2004 and 2005.
In June 2014, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared himself the caliph of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). He sold Yazidi women as slaves in markets. Millions of people from displaced minorities fled their cities. Even the Iraqi Sunnis fled.
Yazidi camps at Mount Sinjar
ISIS leaves behind booby-trapped houses, mass graves and evidence of rape
On November 13, the government of Kurdistan, the region which enjoys a federal governing under the central government in Baghdad, said the Peshmerga forces liberated Mount Sinjar and defeated the ISIS fighters after a year and eight months of control over the mountain and villages surrounding it.
The road to Sinjar is 450 km long. It starts from Erbil, the capital of Kurdistan where the government and the Peshmerga Ministry (which the Kurds refuse to call Defense Ministry) are located.
The streets of Baghdad, the central capital, are filled with pictures of religious symbols and slogans amidst fleets of armored vehicles and soldiers. People do not leave the city so as to protect it from an ISIS attack.
But in Erbil, the Kurdish Sunni city, the streets are filled with flowers. Religious slogans are not allowed here. The police make sure the law is applied. And the people welcome you warmly when they know you are Egyptian. They will tell you about the first newspaper they published with the help of President Nasser.
Kurdistan flags in Sinjar
Rafidah Abdullah, a professor of history and cuneiform at the University of Sulaimaniyah, tells us the history of this region. She says Kurdistan lies in the northern part of Mesopotamia and constitutes 5.2 percent of the total area of Iraq. It dates back to the Assyrian era 3,000 BC.
Cuneiform texts say the term “Kurds” points to a particular geographical area and political entity, she says, adding that parts of the Kurdish linguistic heritage is still used today, and that certain geographical locations and tribes still bear the old names mentioned in cuneiform texts.
On your way to Mount Sinjar in the north you will pass through many checkpoints. Only those who have a residence permit of at least one year in Erbil may pass.
You will also pass through Dohuk, the city that hosted camps for those who have fled ISIS.
We reached Sinjar in a car carrying supplies. It took us a whole night to pass the numerous checkpoints. We arrived there at 1 pm.
At the foot of the mountain we saw the camps the Yazidis fled to and have been living in for a year and a half. They were freed by the PKK party. And as we came closer to the mountain we saw Kurdish flags fluttering. Not a single Iraqi flag was in sight because there were no Iraqi troops fighting with the Peshmerga.
Peshmerga soldiers dancing in victory
Our driver Sami pointed to the road behind us and explained that this was the road ISIS took to go from Tal Afar and Mosul to Al-Raqqa in Syria, but it is under the control of the Peshmerga now.
As to the city of Sinjar, because ISIS did not want anyone to live in the city after they were forced out of it, they left behind booby-trapped houses and cars. They also wrote on the buildings “No entry by order of the Islamic State”.
Iyad Ibrahim Khalil, a Shi'ite who had fled the area, says he did not find his house when he returned. “They have demolished 15 houses in my neighborhood and the rest were booby-trapped,” he says, contending that ISIS had informants who showed them the houses of the Shi'ites and Yazidis.
Luqman Ghanem, a displaced Yazidi, says only the center of Sinjar city was liberated. “ISIS still controls the outskirts of the city,” he says.
There are no civilians in Sinjar. There are only Peshmerga troops patrolling the place and watching ISIS who is only 7 km away. “We will liberate Mosul from those tyrants,” they tell us.
As to why ISIS was defeated in Sinjar, Hisham al-Hashimi, an expert on jihadist groups in Iraq, says ISIS withdrew from Sinjar because there were no local fighters supporting them there. “ISIS capture places with the help of local fighters loyal to them,” he says. “But there are no loyalists in Sinjar.”
On why ISIS slaughter, rape and sell Yazidis in slave markets, Hashimi says they do so based on texts of jurisprudence related to the handling of slaves and prisoners of war.
Mass graves
The destroyed city is also full of tunnels that ISIS used to hide from US airstrikes or for storing weapons. The Peshmerga found in them medical supplies for the fighters that ran from the siege at the mountain. They also found women's clothes, which a Peshmerga officer told us were evidence that ISIS soldiers had sex with captives in those tunnels under the pretext of what they call “sexual Jihad”.
The Peshmerga also found 18 mass graves of some 400 bodies. When they opened them they found that most bodies were decapitated and handcuffed.
Once the sun began to set, we were ordered to leave because no one is allowed to stay there at night, as fights may be waged again with ISIS.
On our way back we saw trucks carrying oil smuggled via Syria and Turkey.
Sinjar, the city of massacres from the Ottomans to ISIS
Sinjar means the beautiful side. It is located in the far west of South Kurdistan, 120 km away from Mosul, the capital of Iraq's Nineveh province. The mountain extends for more than 70 km. Its peak is 4,800 feet above sea level. At the foot of the mountain you see the villages of the peasants. They were inhabited by Yazidis, Sunnis, Shi'ites and Christians before ISIS invaded them on August 3, 2014.
The Yazidis in this city have been subjected to genocide throughout the ages. It is said that Tamerlane did not leave one house there without burning it. But the bloodiest period was under the Ottoman Empire when they were killed and their houses were destroyed because of their religion.
And the latest of the atrocities was ISIS killing them and selling them as slaves.
The Kurdistan government wants to annex Sinjar, while the central government in Iraq says it is part of the Nineveh province. However, Rafidah Abdullah says Sinjar is an integral geographical and historical part of the Kurdistan region, despite the religion of the Yazidis.
ISIS tunnels
Egyptians should fight the environment incubating ISIS
Major General Fathi Ismail Abdo, the commander of the seventh legion, says ISIS used to take taxes from traders taking the road to Mosul. “Mosul is all that is left for ISIS now, after Tikrit and Baiji were liberated,” he says. “And even Mosul is besieged.”
“ISIS is a global terrorist organization that knows no religion, nationality or race,” he says. “They are not human. Even the Tatars and the Mongols did not commit the atrocities they did. But people in Mosul have begun to find out what ISIS really is like. They want anyone to save them from ISIS, even if it is the Israelis themselves.”
“The whole world thought ISIS is invincible,” he adds. “I say ISIS is but an empty bubble. The only weapon they have is planting horror in the hearts of innocent people. We have have defeated them. Now they only make booby-traps and the like.”
Abdo says the reason they were able to conquer places in the beginning was because the Sunnis in Ramadi, Tikrit and Nineveh sympathized with them. Also, the remnants of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party thought they could bring them back. But they defeated the Iraqi army and made Mosul their capital.
He says the Peshmerga did not get enough help from the Iraqi army. “Had we had the capabilities of the Iraqi army we would have liberated all the regions controlled by ISIS.”
“I advise the Egyptians to fight the environment incubating ISIS in Sinai,” Abdo says. “ISIS always relies on locals supplying them with food, ammunition and information. We do not have military troops in the streets of Kurdistan because the community is against terrorism in the first place.”
Major General Fathi Ismail Abdo
Home of ISIS judge turned into eighth regiment headquarters
The home of Hazem al-Khatuni, the ISIS judge, became the headquarters of Colonel Luqman Ibrahim, the commander of the eighth regiment. He is a Yazidi who joined the Peshmerga
“When we entered Sinjar we found an Afghani ISIS sniper hiding in a house. He had a weapon in one hand and a cannula of some nutrient solution in the other because they had left him there without food,” Ibrahim says. “We killed him on the spot.”
“They destroyed the infrastructure of Sinjar,” he says. “And they blew up the houses and set other improvised explosive devices.”
Colonel Luqman Ibrahim
“I am surprised by what the Americans do,” Ibrahim adds. “We provide them with information, their planes come to hover above the ISIS troops, wait until they run away and then start bombarding.”
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
