SINJAR, Iraq (AP) – One by one, flags belonging to a mosaic of armed forces were shot down in a northern Iraqi city, once brutalized by the Islamic State group. The territorial claims symbolized by each of them were replaced by the flutter of one: that of the Iraqi state.
The hoisting of the national flag in Sinjar, home of Iraq’s Yazidi religious minority, is the result of an agreement by the federal government to restore order to a tangled network of paramilitaries who wreaked havoc on the liberation district. ‘IS three years ago.
This month, the Iraqi army has been deployed there for the first time since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.
Lieutenant Imad Hasan climbed a rocky ascent overlooking the desert ruins of the old town of Sinjar, vacant since IS was evacuated. His gaze fell on a lookout on the other side of the mountain: the latter, he said, belongs to a local subsidiary of an illegal Kurdish guerrilla group, known as the PKK.
“We have problems with them,” he said. “Its leaders have agreed to withdraw, but some of its fighters have not.”
Sealing the deal was hard enough. Its implementation entails new problems. Critics say it will take more than a change of flags to consolidate the rule of law in Sinjar.
The Yazidis, traumatized by the murder and mass slavery that IS unleashed against them, they do not trust the Iraqi authorities who say they abandoned them to the brutality of the militants. With the weak central government, they fear that militias, including Shiite factions backed by Iran, will impose themselves on them.
The militias that have been monitoring Sinjar for the past three years are a mix. They include peshmerga fighters from the Kurdish autonomy zone of Iraq, as well as the PKK and its affiliate of local Yazidi fighters, called Sinjar Resistance Units or YBS. There are also Yazidi units belonging to the Popular Mobilization Forces, an umbrella group of state-sanctioned paramilitaries created in 2014 to defeat the IS.
There are signs of Sinjar recovery. The city center was lined with buyers, traders and the strange Iraqi army tank. More than 200,000 Yazidis displaced by the 2014 IS attack are returning, some 21,600 returning between June and September, many times the rate of previous years.
But it scratches the surface and almost everyone has a raw and unresolved trauma. Everyone vividly remembers the ISIS attack that murdered parents and children, enslaved thousands of women and sent survivors fleeing Mount Sinjar.
At the Sinjar market, a farmer, Zaidan Khalaf, first appeared telling The Associated Press how many relatives he lost with IS: 18. Others at the market did the same.
“We have lost dignity,” he said.
Communities continue to be deeply divided and bitterly resentful of each other.
“What agreement?” he mocked 86-year-old Farzo Mato Sabo in the predominantly Yazidi village of Tal Binat, south of Sinjar. She and her three daughters were taken by IS militants and then rescued by smugglers. There are not yet eleven members of his family.
“I lost everyone,” she cried. “Will he return them?”
Neighbor Tal Binat is the Sunni Arab village of Khailo.
“We used to go like brothers, but now the Yazidis are staying away from us,” said an elder of the tribe, Sheikh Naif Ibrahim. “They can’t distinguish between civilians and ISIS members.”
Many Yazidis accuse local Sunni Arabs of supporting ISIS. Since the fall of the militants, Sunni Arabs have had frictions with Yazidi militias and several Sunnis have been killed. At the same time, many Yazidis reject the Kurdish peshmerga, who consider the Sinjar area part of their rule.
“What day we were dominated by seven flags, you never knew who had power over you,” said Khalaf, the farmer.
The UN has focused on the return of displaced Yazidis, but that is not the only criterion for success, said Sajad Jiyad, a member of The Century Foundation. “It’s about services, schools, security and the ability to move without being shaken by various groups,” he said.
“This is a testament to the effectiveness of post-war governance and post-war liberation,” he said. “Is the government prepared enough to allow a return to normalcy?”
The Iraqi military will secure the area for now, with other factions leaving their positions, although many remain in the Sinjar area. Under the plan, Kurdish authorities will appoint a mayor – a prospect that many Yazidis oppose – and local police will eventually take over security, working under the government’s intelligence agency and security adviser. national. The plan envisages hiring 2,500 new security guards locally.
Most Yazidi leaders and residents interviewed said they were upset that the community was not consulted by the government in drafting the plan.
“We are the ones who sacrificed, we lost our lives,” said Fahed Hamed, Sinjar district mayor. “We should have been the main interlocutors.”
“We want a force of our own. We don’t trust anyone. “
The most confident force of the locals is a faction that the plan seeks to expel: the YBS, whose fighters are largely sinjar yazidis. While other forces withdrew from the ISIS attack in 2014, many recall that it was the YBS that fought to ensure a safe route for civilians.
“They were the only ones left to protect us,” said Sherko Khalaf, a mukhtar of the Yazidi people.
Despite local protests, negotiations led to the withdrawal of YBS from downtown Sinjar.
YBS fighters interviewed said they hoped to subsume themselves as a unit of the Popular Mobilization Forces, providing them with the necessary political legitimacy. A portion of the 2,500-3,500 YBS fighters are already on the PMF payroll.
In theory, the plan calls for the PMF to end its presence in the city as well. So far, they support the forces and secure the outskirts of Sinjar. But Khal Ali, the commander of the Lalish brigades, a Yazidi unit of the group, told the AP: “The (PMF) will stay forever, we are kings of the heads of the security forces in Sinjar.”
This perspective has divided the Yazidis. Some want Yazidi PMF factions to be included in the security agreement. Others fear that it will put Sinjar under the influence of Shiite Arab factions close to Iran that dominate the umbrella group.
“If the international community and the central government don’t care about Sinjar, the PMF will take control,” said a prominent Yazidi leader, who asked for anonymity to speak freely. “That’s clear.”