Yazidi genocide survivors in Iraq recall horrors of Daesh’s siege of Kocho

Special Yazidi genocide survivors in Iraq recall horrors of Daesh’s siege of Kocho
A soldier inspects the remains of members of the Yazidi minority killed by Daesh in a mass grave in Sinjar. (AFP)
Short Url
Updated 14 August 2024
Follow

Yazidi genocide survivors in Iraq recall horrors of Daesh’s siege of Kocho

Yazidi genocide survivors in Iraq recall horrors of Daesh’s siege of Kocho
  • Daesh militants launched a genocidal campaign against the ethno-religious minority in their Iraqi homeland in August 2014
  • Kocho, uniquely among the 80-plus Yazidi villages in Sinjar, was subjected to a 12-day siege before the slaughter began

LONDON: For 12 days in August 2014, the lives of the inhabitants of the Yazidi village of Kocho hung in a fearful balance.

In the early hours of Aug. 3, Daesh fighters had swept west from Mosul, attacking the town of Sinjar and the dozens of Yazidi villages scattered to the south of Mount Sinjar in the Nineveh Governorate of northern Iraq.

The approximately 1,200 residents of Kocho were woken at about 2 a.m. by the sound of gunfire coming from surrounding villages. At any moment, they feared, their turn would come.

It would, indeed, come, and in the most brutal fashion. But Kocho would experience a fate unique among the suffering of the 80-plus Yazidi villages in the region.




Ten years on from the massacres, 200,000 Yazidis remain in those camps, refugees in their own country, unable or afraid to return to their ruined homes.

For reasons that remain largely unclear to this day, Daesh commanders chose to keep the surrounded villagers of Kocho suspended between hope and fear for almost two dreadful weeks.

And on Aug. 15, 2014, 10 years ago this week, hope gave way to horror.

The Yazidis, an ethno-religious minority indigenous to northern Iraq and parts of Syria and Turkiye, had suffered centuries of persecution, but nothing on the scale of what they were about to experience.

The leadership of the so-called caliphate that had been proclaimed two months earlier by Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi regarded the Yazidis as infidels, and in August 2014, their objective was nothing less than genocide.

Thousands of men, women and children would be murdered, their bodies thrown into dozens of hastily dug mass graves scattered across a wide area.

More than 6,000 women and young girls were taken into slavery and subjected to physical and sexual abuse. Ten years on, 2,600 remain missing.

Driven from their homes, survivors sought sanctuary first on the barren heights of Mount Sinjar, where many young children would die from dehydration, and later in the camps for internally displaced persons that sprang up in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Ten years on from the massacres, 200,000 Yazidis remain in those camps, refugees in their own country, unable or afraid to return to their ruined homes.

But in Kocho, a small village 15 km south of Sinjar, things were different — at first.




Daesh fighters attacked the town of Sinjar and the dozens of Yazidi villages scattered to the south of Mount Sinjar in the Nineveh Governorate, Iraq. (AFP)

On the morning of the attack, a unit of the Peshmerga, the army of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan Region that was stationed in the village school, fled the village in the face of the Daesh advance. It was a similar story across Sinjar.

A couple hundred residents of Kocho left at the same time as their supposed defenders, hoping to reach the relative safety of Mount Sinjar to the north. Some made it. Others were captured en route.

What happened next reflected one of the lesser-known tragedies of the genocidal attack by Daesh on the Yazidis.

There is a general perception that the Daesh fighters who swept through Sinjar in 2014 were all foreigners, mainly overseas volunteers who had flocked to Syria in answer to Daesh’s murderous call.

In fact, far from being foreigners, or even strangers, many of the Daesh fighters who would commit such terrible crimes against the Yazidis were their neighbors.

“It’s hard to have accurate statistics,” said Natia Navrouzov, a Georgia-born Yazidi and lawyer who headed up Yazda’s legal advocacy efforts and documentation project, gathering evidence of Daesh crimes, and is now the nongovernmental organization’s executive director.

“But in terms of what survivors have described in the testimonies we have collected, they often say that Daesh members came mainly from Al-Ba’aj, which is a region under Sinjar, and then a lot of neighbors joined.”

The town of Al-Ba’aj is barely 20 km to the southwest of Kocho.




The Yazidis, an ethno-religious minority indigenous to northern Iraq and parts of Syria and Turkiye, had suffered centuries of persecution. (AFP)

Although many of the Daesh attackers wore masks, when Yazda was collecting testimonies, “survivors were able to identify them really clearly by name, based on their tribes and on their dialects, because the accent they were speaking with was clearly from a certain tribe or village in Sinjar.

“When it comes to foreign fighters, they were mainly present in Raqqa in Syria, and the Daesh attacks on Yazidis in Sinjar in the first days were really locally led.”

Many of the Yazidis also had economic and social relations with the neighbors who turned against them.

“We have testimonies of survivors who say that even before Aug. 3, they already felt some movement from these neighbors, who were looting their belongings or were watching them.

“Some neighbors even called some of the Yazidi people they knew and liked to tell them, ‘You should go because something’s going to happen.’ But I think the Yazidis just didn’t realize that it would be a genocide; they just thought something political was happening.”

The worst betrayal came at the hands of people who had been intimately involved with Yazidi families.




More than 6,000 women and young girls were taken into slavery and subjected to physical and sexual abuse. (AFP)

“There were social connections,” said Navrouzov. “For example, when a Yazidi child is born, they get an equivalent of the Western godfather, called a ‘kreef.’  The kreef is often an Arab. A lot of Yazidis had these almost family connections with their neighbors, and yet even those people attacked them.”

It should not, said Navrouzov, have come as a great surprise, “because in the past, we have often been attacked by our neighbors,” motivated by enduring misconceptions about the faith of the Yazidis, including that they are devil worshippers — a lie exploited by Daesh propaganda.

Yet even now, “10 years after the genocide, and with all this documentation we have gathered and the advocacy work we and others have done, a lot of people in Iraqi society still think that we are exaggerating, that Daesh did not commit the crimes that we are describing.”

Worse than such denial, “some people still think that what Daesh did was right because the ideology behind it is so deeply rooted in the society.”




Thousands of Iraqis flee from the town of Sinjar. (AFP)

According to some reports, the leader of the Daesh attack on Kocho may have been a local man, initially hesitant to carry out the orders from above. Others think local kreefs may have intervened to try to have the village spared.

Either way, Kocho, uniquely among the 80-plus Yazidi villages in the area that were simply overrun, was subjected to a 12-day siege.

“The devastating thing is that the village was surrounded for about two weeks, from Aug. 3 until Aug. 15,” said Abid Shamdeen, who was studying in the US at the University of Nebraska at the time and helped to mobilize support among the Yazidi diaspora.

“We knew that Daesh had killed the men that they captured on Aug. 3, and that in other villages, they had taken women and children into captivity.

“We were communicating with US officials, with Iraqi officials and Kurdish officials, trying to communicate the message that Daesh will commit a massacre in Kocho. But they didn’t get any help.”

Daesh had first entered the village, delivering its usual ultimatum — convert to Islam or die — on Aug. 3. But over the next 12 days, the Daesh commander, “Abu Hamza,” sat down for a series of negotiations with village leaders, including headman Sheikh Ahmed Jasso.

Whatever the reason for the 12 days of reprieve, on Aug. 15, 2014, the talking ended and the remaining 1,200 inhabitants of Kocho were herded into the village school.

What happened next was described in distressing detail in the book, “The Last Girl — My Story of Captivity and My Fight Against the Islamic State,” by Nadia Murad.

At the school, the men and boys deemed to be adolescents were separated from the women, loaded onto trucks and driven away to be murdered. In all, 600 people died, including six of Murad’s brothers and half-brothers. The women in the school could hear the gunshots that killed their sons, brothers and husbands.

Dozens of older women who were considered too old to be sold as sex slaves were also killed, including Murad’s mother, Shami.




A Yazidi child refugee at Delal Refugee Camp in Zakho. (Getty Images)

The fate that awaited Murad and many other young women from Kocho, including underage girls, was sexual slavery. They were driven to Mosul and sold to Daesh fighters and supporters. In all, an estimated 3,000 Yazidi women were enslaved.

Murad’s ordeal continued until November 2014, when she managed to escape her captor, found her way to a camp for displaced people and from there applied successfully to become a refugee in Germany, where she arrived in 2014.

She went on to found the NGO Nadia’s Initiative and, for her “efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict,” in 2018 was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

The dreadful story of the genocidal Daesh attack on the Yazidis, the battle for justice and the search for the missing that continues a decade later, is told in an Arab News Minority Report, published online here.

 

The Yazidi nightmare
Ten years after the genocide, their torment continues

Enter


keywords

 


Families yearn for an end to PKK-Turkiye war

Families yearn for an end to PKK-Turkiye war
Updated 18 February 2025
Follow

Families yearn for an end to PKK-Turkiye war

Families yearn for an end to PKK-Turkiye war
  • The PKK’s jailed founder Abdullah Ocalan is widely expected to urge followers to lay down their arms in the coming weeks
  • The new peace efforts are backed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government, and families on both sides of the divide want it to succeed

DIYARBAKIR, Turkiye: A mother weeping for a teenaged daughter shot dead by a Turkish sniper and a father mourning a son killed by PKK militants are among countless families hoping that a new peace drive can end Turkiye’s four-decade-old Kurdish conflict.
Both live in the Kurdish-majority southeast, where tens of thousands of lives have been lost in violence between the Turkish state and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
The new peace efforts are backed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government, and families on both sides of the divide want it to succeed.

Fahriye Cukur (L) and Mustafa Cukur hold a portrait of their daughter Rozerin, who was killed in 2016 during fierce clashes between militants and security forces in January 2016, during an interview in Diyarbakir, southeastern Turkey, on February 14, 2025. (AFP)

At her home in the city of Diyarbakir, Fahriye Cukur, 63, cannot take her eyes off a picture on the wall of her daughter Rozerin in school uniform. She was killed during clashes between militants and security forces in January 2016.
The collapse of a truce in 2015 sparked a new round of the conflict when many government curfews were imposed, including in the city’s Sur district.
Cukur said her daughter — who was passionate about photography — had gone to Sur during a break in a curfew to collect exam papers from friends. But the authorities suddenly reduced the break from five hours to three and the fighting reignited.
“People were stuck there, including my daughter. She took refuge at the home of an elderly couple, but when she tried to leave, she was shot by a sniper,” her mother told AFP.
The family found out about the death through a news bulletin.

It took five months, several protests and a hunger strike for the grieving parents to get her body back.

A women walks next to the Four-Legged Minaret Mosque where Kurdish lawyer Tahir Elci was shot dead at the historical Sur district in Diyarbakir, southeastern Turkey, on February 14, 2025. (AFP)

Cukur said the authorities had mixed up their teenage daughter with a female PKK fighter, codenamed Roza, who had been hiding in the same district.
They claimed she had been trained in the mountains, but her mother told AFP: “My daughter was never engaged in political activism.
“She loved school, she wanted to become a psychiatrist and help her people,” she added, indicating the “TC” insignia — meaning “republic of Turkiye” — on her school uniform.
The PKK’s jailed founder Abdullah Ocalan is widely expected to urge followers to lay down their arms in the coming weeks.
Many families hope this will end the conflict and spare other families from the pain they live with.
“We can’t forget what happened but we have to hope. I have two more kids: how do I know the same thing won’t happen to them tomorrow?” she said.
Last month, the International Crisis Group said clashes between the militants and Turkish troops were largely confined to northern parts of Iraq and Syria, with violence on Turkish soil at its lowest level since 2015.
“At least we can breathe a bit now,” she said.
“I want the bloodshed to stop. I want a ceasefire. And I am not alone.”

In the nearby province of Mardin, Sehmuz Kaya, a 67-year-old Kurd, recalled how his son Vedat, a police officer, was kidnapped by PKK militants in eastern Turkiye in July 2015.
Vedat Kaya, wearing civilian clothes, was in a car with his brother and four others when militants blocked the road.
“They only kidnapped Vedat,” he told AFP, saying it was months before the family saw a PKK video of him in the Kandil mountains of northern Iraq.
The family tried every possible channel, through the state and the main pro-Kurdish party, to secure his release.
But after six years, they received a devastating call from the authorities, who said he was one of the 13 “Gara martyrs.” The 13, all but one of whom were soldiers or police, had been killed by the PKK in the Gara region of northern Iraq.
“I was devastated,” he said, struggling for words, saying his son had been tortured before his death.
“They have no faith nor conscience. My son was just doing his job,” he said.
Pinned on the ceiling is a huge Turkish flag, and on the walls are photos of Vedat, whose name has been given to a nearby park.
Although he wants peace more than anything, he admitted he has little faith.
“They are not honest,” he snapped, referring to DEM, the main pro-Kurdish party that is relaying messages from Ocalan to the government. He suspects they have ties to the PKK.
“The families of the martyrs are heartbroken. Enough is enough,” he said. “We support the process but we want something real.”
 

 


Israel defense minister announces agency for ‘voluntary departure’ of Gazans

A photograph taken by a drone shows tents amidst the destruction caused by the Israeli air and ground offensive in Beit Lahiya.
A photograph taken by a drone shows tents amidst the destruction caused by the Israeli air and ground offensive in Beit Lahiya.
Updated 18 February 2025
Follow

Israel defense minister announces agency for ‘voluntary departure’ of Gazans

A photograph taken by a drone shows tents amidst the destruction caused by the Israeli air and ground offensive in Beit Lahiya.
  • Earlier this month, Katz said he had ordered the army to formulate a plan to allow Palestinians to leave Gaza

JERUSALEM: Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz said Monday that a special agency would be established for the “voluntary departure” of Gazans, after Israel expressed commitment to a US proposal to take over the Palestinian territory and expel its residents.
“Defense Minister Israel Katz held a meeting today (Monday) on the voluntary departure of Gaza residents, at the end of which he decided that a directorate for the voluntary departure of Gaza residents would be established within the ministry of defense,” a ministry statement said.
Earlier this month, Katz said he had ordered the army to formulate a plan to allow Palestinians to leave Gaza, adding that he welcomed “Trump’s bold plan, which could allow a large portion of Gaza’s population to relocate to various places around the world.”
An initial plan presented during the meeting on Monday “includes extensive assistance that will allow any Gaza resident who wishes to emigrate voluntarily to a third country to receive a comprehensive package, which includes, among other things, special departure arrangements via sea, air, and land,” the statement added.
Earlier on Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was “committed to US President Donald Trump’s plan for the creation of a different Gaza,” also promising that after the war, “there will be neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority” ruling the territory.
Trump’s repeated proposal for a US “takeover” of Gaza and the resettlement of Palestinians in other countries such as Egypt and Jordan lacks detail but has triggered widespread international outrage.
Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel sparked the Gaza Strip’s deadliest war and resulted in the deaths of 1,211 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed at least 48,284 people in Gaza, the majority of them civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory that the United Nations considers reliable.
More than 15 months of war destroyed or damaged more than 69 percent of Gaza’s buildings, displaced almost the entire population, and triggered widespread hunger, according to the United Nations.


Zelensky says arrived in Turkiye for talks with Erdogan

Zelensky says arrived in Turkiye for talks with Erdogan
Updated 17 February 2025
Follow

Zelensky says arrived in Turkiye for talks with Erdogan

Zelensky says arrived in Turkiye for talks with Erdogan

KYIV, Ukraine: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Monday he had arrived in Turkiye for talks with Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan on prisoner exchanges and other matters.
“Official visit with the First Lady to Turkiye. Meetings with President Erdogan and First Lady Emine Erdogan,” Zelensky said on his Telegram account.


 

 


In first, French minister visits Western Sahara claimed by Morocco

In first, French minister visits Western Sahara claimed by Morocco
Updated 17 February 2025
Follow

In first, French minister visits Western Sahara claimed by Morocco

In first, French minister visits Western Sahara claimed by Morocco
  • Algeria has backed the separatist Polisario Front and had already cut diplomatic relations with Rabat in 2021 — the year after Morocco normalized ties with Israel under a deal that awarded it US recognition of its annexation of the Western Sahara

LAAYOUNE: France’s Culture Minister Rachida Dati became on Monday the first French official to make a formal visit to the Western Sahara, a sign of Paris’s recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over the disputed territory.
“This is the first time that a French minister has come to the southern provinces,” Dati told AFP, using Morocco’s name for the area, a former Spanish colony controlled by Rabat but claimed by the Algeria-backed Polisario Front.
Dati described the visit as “historic.”
The United Nations considers Western Sahara a “non-self-governing territory” and has had a peacekeeping mission there since 1991, whose stated aim is to organize a referendum on the territory’s future.
But Rabat has repeatedly rejected any vote in which independence is an option, instead proposing autonomy under Morocco.
Dati, accompanied by Moroccan Culture Minister Mohamed Mehdi Bensaid, launched a French cultural mission in Laayoune, Western Sahara’s main city.
She promised to open the territory’s first French culture center to “benefit children in the region, but also teachers, schools, students and teacher trainers.”
In Dakhla, the Western Sahara’s second city some 530 kilometers (330 miles) south of Laayoune, Dati said she is set to sign a cooperation agreement in the field of cinema and audiovisual art.
France’s stance on Western Sahara has been ambiguous in recent years, often straining ties between Rabat and Paris.
But in July, French President Emmanuel Macron said that Morocco’s autonomy plan was the “only basis” to resolve the Western Sahara dispute.
The turnabout marked by Macron’s statement drew a strong reaction from Algiers.
Algeria has backed the separatist Polisario Front and had already cut diplomatic relations with Rabat in 2021 — the year after Morocco normalized ties with Israel under a deal that awarded it US recognition of its annexation of the Western Sahara.
Macron renewed French support for Morocco’s plan in October, pledging investments and a “strong and exceptional partnership.”
Also in October, the UN Security Council called for parties to “resume negotiations” to reach a “lasting and mutually acceptable solution” for the Western Sahara dispute.
 

 


Israel minister says Hamas must leave Gaza, surrender arms

Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Israel should go for a “complete conquest” of Gaza. (File/AFP)
Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Israel should go for a “complete conquest” of Gaza. (File/AFP)
Updated 17 February 2025
Follow

Israel minister says Hamas must leave Gaza, surrender arms

Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Israel should go for a “complete conquest” of Gaza. (File/AFP)
  • “If Hamas refuses this ultimatum, Israel will open the gates of hell,” said Smotrich, echoing an expression used by both Trump and Netanyahu

JERUSALEM: Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Monday that Hamas militants must surrender their arms and leave Gaza.
He was speaking ahead of a cabinet meeting to discuss the next phase of the truce between Israel and Hamas Palestinian militants.
Smotrich in a video statement said he “will demand a vote” by ministers on US President Donald Trump’s plan and that Israel must “issue a clear ultimatum to Hamas — immediately release all hostages, leave Gaza for other countries, and lay down your arms.”
“If Hamas refuses this ultimatum, Israel will open the gates of hell,” said Smotrich, echoing an expression used by both Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
A strong opponent of stopping the war, he has threatened to quit Netanyahu’s ruling coalition if the war is not resumed after the end of the first stage of the ceasefire.
Trump’s plan lacked detail but has triggered widespread outrage internationally for his call to resettle Palestinians in other countries such as Egypt and Jordan under a US “takeover” of Gaza.
Smotrich said Israel should go for a “complete conquest” of the territory.
According to Israeli media, the security cabinet convened on Monday evening to discuss phase two of the fragile ceasefire which began on January 19.
More than 15 months of war destroyed or damaged more than 69 percent of Gaza’s buildings, displaced almost the entire population, and triggered widespread hunger, according to the United Nations.
“It’s them or us. Either we crush Hamas, or God forbid, Hamas will crush us,” Smotrich said.
“I call on the prime minister to declare that once the war resumes after Phase One, Israel will, from the first day, seize 10 percent of Gaza’s territory, establish full sovereignty there, and immediately apply Israeli law,” he added.
“Furthermore, it must be announced that once combat resumes, all humanitarian aid will be completely halted.”
Smotrich further said that according to a plan currently in preparation “Gaza’s residents will be allowed to leave, but only in one direction — with no possibility of return.”
“The loss of territory is the only heavy price our enemies understand — the only thing that will make them realize we are serious,” Smotrich added.
Since the first phase of the truce began last month, 19 Israeli hostages have been released in exchange for more than 1,100 Palestinian prisoners.
Out of 251 people seized in Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which sparked the war, 70 remain in Gaza, including 35 the Israeli military says are dead.