Typical of our nominalist POTUS (President of the U.S.), words make reality. Evidenced by recent U.S. bombing of jihadi positions between the northern Iraqi cities of Mosul & Erbil, indigenous Yazidis are no longer harmed by ISIS. By removing the threat of an emerging self declared Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Americans can claim victory and come home.
But according to the Yazidi spokesman Magdi al-Yazidi, the threat has morphed into low intensity warfare. Several major villages throughout northern Kurdistan like el-Qush & Shaikhan continue to be hit even besieged. What team Obama fails to acknowledge is that the Yazidi’s, being non-Muslim, are subject to forced conversion or murder.
According to the Parisian exiled leader of the Yazidis, Emir Muawwyyah, his people survived the forced cultural assimilation of Hussein’s Bath Party only to need greater force protection from fellow Iraqi’s. This was the job description of the previous Iraqi PM, having failed, the Yazidis are at the mercy of US strategic thinking.
“To Us Spoke Zarathurstra” is the book title from Amir Taheri’s 1983 masterpiece. Written after six months of interviews with Emir Muawwyah, Taheri reveals that the Kurdish Yazidis possess strong pacifict convictions making them subject to violence from centralist, socialist tendencies typical of Arab regimes.
“The Yazidis always pretended to be Muslim” says Muawwyyah. It was the only way to avoid genocide.
The image of a non-Muslim people living in the heartland of Iraq scandalizes fanatical Muslims who seek forced conversions and ‘Ghazi’, the social standing of being a Holy Warrior. The Yazidi’s also shun polygamy, an unthinkable moral attribute for any Ghazi.
There are 1.8 million Yazidis in Syria, Turkey, Iran and Transcaucasia. We should remember that Iraq remained a historic mosaic of foreigners, even under previous Caliph’s. Six decades ago, Baghdad’s population was 20% Jewish. Today there are only 6 Jews in Iraq.
The self proclaimed Caliph, Abu Bakr’s dream of possessing an Iraqi state governed by forced imposition of Sharia is taking place.
William Holland
William Holland 