The genocide of the Yazidis devastated the Iraqi community ten years ago – however the roots of the unfairness that fuelled it lay much deeper

On the morning of August 3, 2014, the terrorist militia Islamic State a ruthless and rapid campaign in Sinjar, in northwestern Iraq. The goal was Yazidis: a monotheistic religious group whose members have long been persecuted.

As forces affiliated with the regional Kurdish government fled in disarray, captured and enslaved An estimated 6,800 Yazidis, mostly women and kids. About 1,500 Yazidis were executed. An identical number lost their lives as a consequence of excessive heat, thirst or hunger while trapped on Mount Sinjar before the US Air strikes Just a few days later, this enabled them to flee to the relative safety of the Kurdish-controlled areas in Syria and Iraq.

The entire Yazidi population of Sinjar, about 250,000 peoplehave lost their homes: Around half all Yazidis around the globein my estimation.

Ten years later, it is straightforward to see the massacres because the work of extremist militants. But IS in Iraq recruited massively from local Sunni Muslims from northwest Iraq. People who lived with the Yazidis for a few years became their tormentorsRapists, looters and murderers.

What explains the wildness of this Genocide campaign? As a scientist who studies political violence and Middle East politicsI argue that two major aspects led to the atrocities against the Yazidis.

First, Muslim authorities have historically stigmatized Yazidis and denied their existence as a non secular group – certainly one of the focuses of my 2024 book “Border minorities.” Second, the changes that followed the U.S. invasion of Iraq fueled resentment amongst extremists against this marginalized religious group.

A world pattern

The Yazidi experience reflects a world pattern: a type of marginalization and discrimination against religious groups that I call “liminal minorities.”

Border minorities have two core propertiesFirst, they lack theological recognition within the eyes of the region's dominant religion. In other words, more powerful religious groups don’t recognize the legitimacy of their religion and denigrate the minority's beliefs and rituals.

Second, liminal minorities face widespread stigma that’s passed down through generations. They are sometimes perceived as a threat to the moral order and are sometimes accused of engaging in sexually deviant practices. These patterns of stigmatization Create discrimination.

The liminal minorities include the Yazidis Alevis in TurkeyBaha'i in Iran and Ahmadis in Indonesia and Pakistan. Religious liminality is just not limited to the Muslim world: Jehovah’s Witnesses, for instance, are energetic in quite a few countries and Falun Gong There are also marginal minorities in China.

Centuries of prejudice

The marginal status of the Yazidis is nothing latest. In the Ottoman Empire, Christian and Jewish communities were offered a limited degree of protection and autonomy in return for paying a special tax – often called the millet systemThese groups were recognized as “People of the Book”: monotheists whose religious beliefs were recognized by the Muslim authorities. The Yazidis, nonetheless, lacked this status.

Even today, Yazidis are sometimes insulted as “devil worshippers.” According to Yazidi belief, God entrusted the world to his chief angel Tawûsî Melek, which “Peacock Angel.” However, some Muslim religious authorities confuse this angel with Iblisthe private name of the devil in Islam.

This false identification found widespread acceptance amongst Muslim clergy within the sixteenth century. Among Ottoman rulers and Kurdish tribal leaders, the claim was used to justify extreme types of violence against Yazidis, including Mass enslavement and mass murder.

Political discontent after Saddam

The stigmatization of Yazidis remained widespread in Iraq within the late twentieth century. Under the regime of Saddam Hussein, there have been no large-scale religiously motivated massacres of Yazidis. Nevertheless, many driven out of their mountain villages as a part of his party's Arabization campaigns: forced deportations with the aim of weakening the non-Arab minorities within the north of the country.

Iraq is home to people of each major Islamic denominations – Sunnis and Shiites – in addition to Minority religions similar to Yazidis, Christians and Sabean-Mandaeans, who follow an ancient monotheistic religion. The country can be home to many alternative ethnic groupswith a big Arab majority and significant minorities of Kurds, Turkmen and Assyrians.

The Sunni Arabs, who make up a minority of the population, formed the backbone of the Saddam regime, while the Shiite Arabs and the Sunni Kurds predominantly excluded from powerAfter the US invasion, nonetheless, the Shiite majority was capable of dominate electoral politics, and plenty of Sunni Arabs complained about exclusion.

The Kurdish region has now consolidated its autonomy. The Yazidis’ votes are getting used to support the Kurdish claims to additional area – encourage more Sunni resentment against the Yazidis.

boiling point

My field research, including extensive interviews between 2017 and 2019, suggests that the Islamic State’s goal of ethnic cleansing used these feelings of resentment and aimed to undermine Kurdish territorial claims.

Hundreds of Yazidis were Victims of violent attacks long before 2014. As the Islamic State group gained power, it further reinforced anti-Yazidi stigmas. The group instructed fighters that extreme types of violence, including systematic rape, justified by their faith.

The combination of historical hatred, political resentment and the denial of the legitimacy of the Yazidi faith contributed to the violence that devastated the Yazidi community in Iraq in 2014.

Striving for recognition and security

After the genocide by IS, the Yazidis received unprecedented international attention as a persecuted religious group, and a number of other countries, like Germanycreated resettlement programs for Yazidi refugees. Yazidis within the diaspora were more visible and arrangedcalls for justice and goals to mobilize public attention.

However, their situation stays dire. The Yazidis cannot return to Sinjar, which remains to be unsafe zone between rival forces. Many remain in camps in Iraqi Kurdistan, an uncertain future.

Others have sought refuge abroad, and a few have benefited from specialized humanitarian Asylum programs like Germany. The country has been home to a part of the Yazidi diaspora because the early Seventies and have become a vital destination for Yazidis fleeing Iraq after 2014. Today about 200,000 Yazidis It is estimated that live there.

But the rise of anti-immigrant sentiments in Europe has made the situation of the Yazidis much like that of many other migrants and refugees. As public attention to the genocide progressively fades, these latest arrivals face an increasingly inhospitable political climate.

Given the existential insecurity of their homeland and the legal uncertainty within the diaspora, the Yazidi limbo stays.