Bombing The Iraqi Minorities Back to the Stone Age

That’s what actually happened with the ill conceived and criminal invasion and occupation of Iraq by the United States and Great Britain in March 2003. I had a chance to look through the archive here @BooMan because the city Tal Afar brought back memories. I didn’t realize the Yazidis [also spelled Yezidis and Jezidis] had been touched upon in comments and diaries. A brief view back in recent history …

Al Qaeda’s Wrath Bombing for Death by Stoning
by Oui Wed Aug 15th, 2007 at 04:07:00 PM PDT

In de UK, SKY News reported a plausible cause for the devastating coordinated suicide bombing in the northern city of Sinjar in the Kurdish region of Iraq. In the broadcast, a video was shown of the horrific death of a 17 year old girl who had fallen in love with a Sunni muslim and converted to its version of Islam.

« click for more info Du'a Khalil Aswad; a 17 year old Kurdish woman of the Yazidi faith (Wikipedia)

The barbaric public stoning to death in Iraq of Du’a Khalil Aswad; a 17 year old Kurdish woman of the Yazidi faith – for having converted to Islam to marry a Muslim boy. Reported by Phil Black for CNN – graphic video footage.

At present, the death toll stands at 260 with another 320 innocent Iraqi’s seriously wounded. The death toll is expected to rise to 500.

YAZIDIS A RELIGIOUS MINORITY “ANTI-ISLAMIC”

Minority sects such as the Yazidis are especially vulnerable as militants seek new targets to avoid the strict security measures clamped on Baghdad and surrounding areas to stop violence among warring Sunni and Shiite factions.

Some Muslims and Christians consider an angel figure worshipped by Yazidis to be the devil, a charge the sect denies. The Islamic State in Iraq [ISIS], an al-Qaida front group, distributed leaflets a week ago warning residents near the scene of Tuesday’s bombings that an attack was imminent because Yazidis are “anti-Islamic.”

Operation Iraq Freedom, some of these peoples which are being deleted from this world: Yazidis, Baha’is, Chaldeo-Assyrian and the Syriac Christians and Mandaeans

Continued below the fold …

The sect also gained unwanted attention when some members stoned an 17-year-old Yazidi woman to death in April after she converted to Islam and fled her family with a Muslim boyfriend. Recent attacks on Yazidis have been blamed on al-Qaida-linked Sunni extremists seeking to avenge her death.

Balad 3-car bombs 85 killed & 110 wounded ● Tal Afar : Bomber Kills 8
by Oui Wed Sep 28th, 2005 at 04:53:24 AM PDT

BAGHDAD, Iraq : 30 minutes ago — A suicide attacker detonated explosives amid a crowd of job applicants at an army recruitment center in northern Iraq, killing at least eight people and wounding 37, police said. The attacker had the explosives hidden beneath her clothes and struck in Tal Afar [a Turkmen city!], about 95 miles east of the Syrian border and 260 miles northwest of Baghdad, police Brig. Saeed Ahmed Al-Jibori said.

« click for more info text

“Tal Afar is an amazing place – when I visited in June (2004) to do research for the book, I found there were no hotels. Imagine, a city of 400,000 people, with not one hotel! It’s a closed little corner of northern Iraq, the place that time forgot.”

Case Studies from the Long War by William G. Robertson, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas [large pdf]

The only Yazidi legislator in Iraq’s 275-seat parliament called on the government to do more to protect the country’s small communities.

“The ethnic and religious minorities do not have militias while all the powerful parties have strong militias in Iraq,” Amin Farhan said. “The government should protect these minorities by giving them weapons so that they can confront the terrorist groups.”

The following excellent and compelling diary could still be frontpaged today, very informative!

The Mandaeans
by balbuz Thu Mar 1st, 2007 at 03:16:42 AM PDT

The assessment of the current situation of the people of Irak centers around the fate of the Islamic communities, Arabs or Kurds. But Saddam Hussein’s Irak was a secular state, where some very old non-muslim communities have coexisted in relative peace for over 2000 years. At least, they have managed to survive by keeping a low profile.

It’s not the sheer number and scale of deaths, rapes, destruction, ethnic cleansing. It is what is – to my mind – the ultimate sin : they are destroying entire peoples and their culture. It is one thing to blindly slaughter animals or people : eliminating species or peoples is at an entirely different scale of evil.

It is even less possible to forgive if one considers the American goverment did it out of pure greed and the British goverment out of racism – because dropping some bombs on funny browny little people is no big deal.

Now, let me introduce you to some of these peoples which are being deleted from this world while you read my words :

The Yazidis
The Baha’is
The Chaldeo-Assyrian and the Syriac Christians
The Mandaeans

While it may be argued that the first three will not be eliminated as a people, it is almost certain that the Mandaeans will not survive America’s sanguinary adventure in Irak.

So this diary is about the Mandaeans, who are sometimes called Sabeans, or Nasoreans.

Always a Stranger – The Survival of the Mandaeans of Iraq

by Shane HensingerFollow on Dec. 6, 2006

Re: “Security Gains in Iraq Fragile”

And what about the extended family that is so central to the lives of every Iraqi? So, people should be ripped away from their uncles, aunts, grandparents, or cousins, never to see them again?

And what about neighborhoods that in places like Iraq tend to remain stable, not just for years, but for generations, and where neighbors, regardless of sect or ethnicity, become like family.

And given that most of the Arab tribes are mixed Sunni and Shi`a, what are you going to do, force each tribe to divide itself by sect?

And then what will you do about those who do not fit at all into any of those nice, neat, three little categories you so paternalistically endorse? What would you do with the Christians, of which there are – to name only the most prominent groups – Assyrians, Chaldeans, Armenians, Catholics, and Protestants? Would you create a no-man’s land between partitions just for them, and forceably relocate them to those areas? And what about the Yezidis? Where would you force THEM to live? And what about the Mandaeans? Where would you forceably deport them to?

And what about secular Iraqis? Where would they be forced to live?

| by Hurria (Muslawia@gmail.com) | Tue Sep 16th, 2008 at 01:22:34 PM PDT |

Re: Torture is Poor Judgment

With great respect to Juan Cole for what he DOES have to offer, he is woefully lacking in background on Iraq [article: One Year Later: Did Obama Win the Iraq War?], he has no “feel” for it, and his analysis is based more on his personal biases as an American (not to mention an American from a strongly military family), and as a partisan for the Shi`a than on a real understanding of the country, its society and its social and political history. [Juan Cole is slanted towards Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood, just as the White House under Hillary Clinton – Oui] He has never been to Iraq, and is even lacking in information about very obvious aspects of its physical terrain, let alone realities of demography, social history, or the culture and mentality of Iraqis. Consequently, his analysis mostly makes little or no sense to anyone who does know and “get” the country and its people from the POV of the country and its people.

| by Hurria (Muslawia@gmail.com) | Tue Feb 2nd, 2010 at 12:24:46 AM PDT |

Re: Jackson Diehl: Armchair Warrior(none / 0)

This is a great example of how limited knowledge combined with credulity and a bit of arrogance leads to overly-simplistic, inaccurate analysis.

Da`wa (not DAWA – it is not an English acronym, as you would know if you knew the history of this party) and SCIRI did not come about because of abuse by Saddam or his regime. They were anti-secularists who wanted to overthrow the secular government, take power in Iraq, and institute a theocratic government and a society to match. Oh wait! Thanks to American “leadership” they got exactly that, didn’t they? And women, Christians, Madaeans, Yezidis, and secular Iraqis have been paying the price ever since.

It’s funny how, when threatened with being overthrown, dictators tend to crack down on those groups who are attempting to overthrow them irrespective of whether those groups are secular, sectarian, Sunni, Shi`a, or you name it. Interesting how people who want to believe the simplistic tripe you all have been fed automatically attribute the behavior of the regime to sectarian motivations, never asking whether there might be a different explanation.

| by Hurria (Muslawia@gmail.com) | Mon Apr 30th, 2012 at 04:28:59 PM PDT |

« click for more info Sunni insurgents operated under a number of different names in Iraq, using "al-Qaida Between Two Rivers" or "al-Qaida in Iraq" (AQI) in 2005 (BBC: Iraq Crisis today)

Some Thoughts and Predictions
by BooMan Thu Feb 24th, 2011 at 09:36:57 AM PDT

It’s easy to forget how much energy went into Pan-Arabism in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. How many people remember that Syria and Egypt were one country between 1958-1961, called the United Arab Republic, and that it was loosely aligned with North Yemen? How many people remember that Iraq and Jordan formed an alliance/country in 1958 called the Arab Federation which was basically a Hashemite Kingdom? It only lasted six months until a military coup removed the Iraqi king from power. I think we should keep this history in mind when we think about the possible attitude of a future democratically elected government in Egypt.

Personally, I don’t think Egypt will be much friendlier towards Iran than the Mubarak was during his reign. But they probably will be friendlier towards Syria. And, while I don’t expect any revival of the United Arab Republic, I do think there is a possibility of more Arab unity, which could mean a big reduction in how much influence Iran has over Syria. I think it’s hard to overestimate how much disdain there is among most Arabs, especially the elites, for Shi’ites. So, to a large degree, Arab unity translates as Sunni unity. Certainly, that is the sentiment that the Saudis will try to exploit. The Saudis have been losing influence in Syria and Lebanon, and the wave of democratic reforms sweeping North Africa and parts of the Arabian Peninsula are threatening to their regime. What better distraction than to ramp up the Sunni/Shi’a divide?