The Yazidis
The Yazidi are a Kurdish-speaking people, and their cultural practices are observably Kurdish. Almost all speak Kurmanjî (Northern Kurdish), with the exception of the villages of Bashiqa and Bahazane, where Arabic is spoken. Kurmanjî is the language of almost all the orally transmitted religious traditions of the Yazidis.
Their religion represent an ancient religion linked to Zoroastrianism and Sufism. Points of resemblance are found with ancient Zoroastrian and Assyrian religion. It is a branch of Iranian religions that blends elements of Mithraism, pre-Islamic Mesopotamian religious traditions, Christianity and Islam.
It is Islamic Sa highly syncretic complex of local Kurdish beliefs that contains Zoroastrian elements and ufi doctrine introduced to the area by Sheikh Adi ibn Musafir in the 12th century. The Yazidi believe in God as creator of the world, which he placed under the care of seven holy beings or angels, the chief of whom is Melek Taus, the Peacock Angel.
Historically, the Yazidi lived primarily in communities in the Nineveh Province of northern Iraq, but with significant numbers in present day, Syria and Turkey, in addition to in Armenia and Georgia. However, events since the 20th century have resulted in considerable demographic shift in these areas as well as mass emigration. As a result population estimates are unclear in many regions, and estimates of the size of the total population vary.
The Yazidis are the largest ethnic and religious minority in Armenia. Yazidis are well integrated into the Armenian society. They have freedom of religion and non-interference in their cultural traditions (although this does not account for, as is the case with all countries, prejudices among the people of Armenia).
Many Yazidis came to Armenia and Georgia during the 19th and early 20th centuries to escape religious persecution, as they were oppressed by the Ottoman Turks and the Sunni Kurds who tried to convert them to Islam. The Yazidis were massacred alongside the Armenians during the Armenian Genocide, causing many to flee to Russian held parts of Armenia. The first ever Yazidi school opened in Armenia in 1920.
Due to the ethnic tension created by the war with Azerbaijan, the Yazidi community has renounced its ties with the mostly Muslim Kurds that fled the country and tried to establish itself as a distinct ethnic group. The Yezidis showed Armenian patriotism during the Nagorno-Karabakh war when many died in service.
The bulk of the Yazidi population lives in Iraq. They are particularly concentrated in northern Iraq in the Nineveh Province. The two biggest communities are in Shekhan, northeast of Mosul, and in Sinjar, at the Syrian border 80 kilometers west of Mosul. In Shekhan is the shrine of Sheikh Adi ibn Musafir at Lalish. During the 20th century the Shekhan community struggled for dominance with the more conservative Sinjar community. The demographic profile is likely to have changed considerably since the start of the Iraq War in 2003 and the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime.
Yazidi in Syria live primarily in two communities, one in the Al-Jazira area and the other in the Kurd-Dagh. Population numbers for the Syrian Yazidi community are unclear. In 1963 the community was estimated at about 10,000, according to the national census, but numbers for 1987 were unavailable. There may be between about 12,000 and 15,000 Yazidi in Syria today, though more than half of the community may have emigrated from Syria since the 1980s. Estimates are further complicated by the arrival of as many as 50,000 Yazidi refugees from Iraq during the Iraq War.
The Turkish Yazidi community declined precipitously during the 20th century. By 1982 it had decreased to about 30,000, and in 2009 there were fewer than 500. Most Turkish Yazidi have emigrated to Europe, particularly Germany; those who remain reside primarily in their former heartland of Tur Abdin.
Population estimates for the communities in Georgia and Armenia vary, but they too have declined severely. In Georgia the community fell from around 30,000 people to fewer than 5,000 during the 1990s. The numbers in Armenia may have been somewhat more stable; there may be around 40,000 Yazidi still in Armenia. Most Georgian and Armenian Yazidi have relocated to Russia, which recorded a population of 31,273 Yazidis in the 2002 census.
This mass emigration has resulted in the establishment of large diaspora communities abroad. The most significant of these is in Germany, which now has a Yazidi community of over 40,000. Most are from Turkey and more recently Iraq, and live in the western states of North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower Saxony.
Since 2008 Sweden has seen sizable growth in its Yazidi emigrant community, which had grown to around 4,000 by 2010, and a smaller community exists in the Netherlands. Other diaspora groups live in Belgium, Denmark, France, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, and Australia; these have a total population of probably less than 5,000.
The Conflict in Syria
The Battle of Ras al-Ayn was a battle for control of the town of Ras al-Ayn mainly between Kurdish separatists and armed groups of the Syrian opposition, with the occasional involvement of the Syrian Armed Forces.
On 19 February, an agreement was announced between Arab rebels and YPG fighters in Ras al-Ayn following a weeklong truce, but three days after the agreement was signed, FSA commander-in-chief Salim Idris rejected it, citing the Democratic Union Party’s (PYD) connections to the PKK and Iraqi and Iranian Kurdish groups in his decision. Analysts believed that the repudiation was designed to placate Turkey, who had been actively supporting Arab rebels fighting the Kurds in Ras al-Ayn.
Rebel leader Nawaf Ragheb al-Bashir, a prominent Arab tribal figure from Hasakah Province who has engaged in disputes with Kurds in the past, stated that his forces “will not allow the separatists to control [Hasakah] province because it is the richest part of Syria in terms of oil and agriculture”.
On 17 July 2013, Kurdish fighters expelled the jihadists from the town of Ras al-Ain after a night of fighting and soon after took control of the border crossing with Turkey. 11 people were killed during the fighting, including nine jihadist and two Kurdish fighters.
According to PYD’s leader Salih Muslim Muhammad, Arab rebel control of Ras al-Ayn would have two effects. First, it would isolate Kurdish separatist pockets in Aleppo Province from the main area in Hasakah Province, giving the FSA and its affiliates more leverage over the PYD/YPG. Second, it would secure a vital supply line from Turkey that could potentially enable Arab rebels to seize control over greater parts of Syria’s east, including the city of Hasakah itself.
The PYD routinely accuses Turkey of supporting Arab rebels fighting against their YPG units in Ras al-Ayn. Arab rebel leaders have publicly confirmed this support.
The PYD flag, which replaced the flag of the opposition Free Syrian Army (FSA) on July 19 after the Syrian Kurdish group seized control of the Syrian town on the Turkish border, was removed from the top of an abandoned factory a few days later, July 26, following concerns from Ankara.
But as the Kurdish armed fighters of the Popular Protection Units (YPG), the military wing of the PYD, have achieved a considerable advance on the ground, the extremist armed groups have reportedly changed their military tactics, depending more on the methods of hit-and-run, and the use of land-mines and ambushes on the roads of the YPG especially in the rural south and south-east where they make use of the forests on both sides of the (Aljrajab, Alzerkan) rivers that in turn facilitate the process of disappearance and camouflage.
As clashes continue in Ras al-Ayn city and its suburbs, violence remains prevalent in the Kurdish areas, north Syria. In the city of Ras al-Ain, with a heterogeneous mix of Syriacs, Arabs, Kurds, Armenians, and Chechens, the brigades of the al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State in Iraq and Sham (ISIS, or Daash) are constantly storming the city, using tanks and mortars to carry out operations against the Kurdish populated area.
The shelling is focused on the neighborhood of al-Mahatta (the station), which contains the border gate with Turkey, in an attempt to take over the strategic crossing area. The city saw fierce attacks by the Islamic militants in an attempt to storm the city.
The Kurdish attempts to face the Islamist groups and defend the city led those groups to attack Tel Hallaf and Almushrafa, in order to drain the capabilities of the Kurdish forces and exhaust the front of Ras al-Ain.
The Yazidies remain one of the most endangered religious minorities in Syria, especially with the growing power of the al-Qaeda linked Islamist groups in the northern region in Syria. Several Yazidi villages have been attacked by fighters from Jabhat al-Nusra and the ISIS, including Jafa, Dardara, and al-Asadia. The attacks has resulted in dozens of casualties among the Yazidi residents, which at the same time has been looted in addition to being forced to evacuate the area.
The leaders of the extremist Islamic groups has called on their fighters to take over the Yazidi villages and property describing them as “infidels” and “disbelievers”; the fact that has led many Kurdish Yazidi families to leave their homes and resort to other neighboring areas, fearing of any approaching attack by Islamists.
Civilians are the most affected victim of the ongoing conflict in Ras al-Ayn. According to local estimates, more than 90% of the city’s population are displaced, including families that resorted to Turkey, Iraqi Kurdistan and other neighboring areas.
According to Kurdish activists, the current violent campaign by different Islamist groups against the Syrian Kurds is meant to contribute to the implementation of an already prepared agenda to change the demography of the Kurdish areas in Syria.
Battle of Ras al-Ayn – Wikipedia
Assault on Ras Al-Ayn – A Closer Look On Syria
Yazidis Benefit From Kurdish Gains In Northeast Syria
Kurdish Yazidi minority in Syria targeted by Islamist armed group
Yazidis Benefit From Kurdish Gains in Northeast Syria
Filed under: Uncategorized
