SINJAR, Iraq (AP) – One by one, the flags of a patchwork quilt of armed forces were lowered in a city in northern Iraq once mistreated by the Islamic State group. The territorial claims symbolized by each were replaced by the flutter of just one: that of the Iraqi state.
The hoisting of the national flag in Sinjar, home to the Iraqi religious minority Yazidi, is the result of a deal months in the making for the federal government to restore order from a maze of paramilitaries who have sown chaos in the district during the following night. liberation from IS three years ago.
This month, the Iraqi army has deployed there for the first time since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.
Lt. Imad Hasan climbed a rocky climb overlooking the abandoned ruins of the ancient city of Sinjar, empty since ISIS was expelled. His gaze fell on a lookout on the other side of the mountain – the latter, he said, belonging to a local branch of a banned Kurdish guerrilla group known as the PKK.
“We have problems with it,” he said. “Their leaders have agreed to withdraw, but some of their fighters have not.”
Closing the deal was hard enough. Implementing it brings new problems. Critics say it takes more than a change of flags to strengthen the rule of law in Sinjar.
The Yazidis, traumatized by the mass murder and slavery that IS unleashed against them, have no faith in the Iraqi authorities, they say abandoned to the brutality of the militants. With the central government weak, they fear militias – including Iranian-backed Shia factions – will take control of them.
The militias that have controlled Sinjar for the past three years are a mix. They include peshmerga fighters from Iraq’s Kurdish autonomy zone, as well as the PKK and its subsidiary made up of local Yazidi fighters, the Sinjar Resistance Units or YBS. There are also Yazidi units that belong to the Popular Mobilization Forces, an umbrella group of state-sanctioned paramilitaries created in 2014 to defeat IS.
There are signs of a recovery from Sinjar. The city center was buzzing with shoppers, merchants – and the strange Iraqi army tank. More of the 200,000 Yazidis displaced by the 2014 ISIS attack are returning – some 21,600 are returning between June and September, many times the pace of previous years.
But scratch the surface, and almost everyone harbors a raw, unresolved trauma. Everyone vividly remembers the ISIS attack that killed fathers and sons, enslaved thousands of women and sent survivors up Sinjar Mountain.
In the Sinjar market, a farmer named Zaidan Khalaf introduced himself by telling The Associated Press how many family members he lost under IS: 18. Others in the market did the same.
“We have lost our dignity,” he said.
Communities remain deeply divided and bitterly angry with each other.
“What deal?” spotted Farzo Mato Sabo, an 86-year-old in the predominantly Yazidi village of Tal Binat, south of Sinjar. She and her three daughters were taken by IS militants and later rescued by smugglers. Eleven of her relatives are still missing.
“I’ve lost everyone,” she sobbed. “Will it bring them back?”
Neighboring Tal Binat is the Sunni Arab village of Khailo.
“We used to be like brothers, but now the Yazidis stay away from us,” said a tribal elder, Sheikh Naif Ibrahim. “They cannot distinguish between civilians and IS members.”
Many Yazidis accuse local Sunni Arabs of supporting IS. Since the militants’ fall, Sunni Arabs have had frictions with Yazidi militias – and a number of Sunnis have been killed. At the same time, many Yazidis are rejecting the Kurdish peshmerga, who consider the Sinjar area part of their domain.
“Seven flags ruled us, you never knew on what day who was in control of you,” said Khalaf, the farmer.
The UN has focused on the return of displaced Yazidis, but this is not the only criterion for success, said Sajad Jiyad, a fellow at The Century Foundation. “It’s about services, schools, safety and the ability to move around without being shocked by different groups,” he said.
“This is a test of the effectiveness of post-war governance and post-war liberation,” he said. “Is the government sufficiently prepared to allow a return to normalcy?”
The Iraqi army will secure the area for the time being, while other factions are leaving their positions, although many remain in the Sinjar area. Under the plan, the Kurdish authority is to appoint a mayor – a prospect that many Yazidis are against – and the local police will eventually take over security, working under the government’s intelligence agency and national security adviser. According to the plan, 2,500 new security personnel must be hired on site.
Most of the Yazidi leaders and residents interviewed said they were outraged that the community was not consulted by the government in making the plan.
“We are the ones who sacrificed us and lost our lives,” said Fahed Hamed, Sinjar’s district mayor. “We should have been the most important discussion partners.”
‘We want our own strength. We don’t trust anyone. “
The force most trusted by the locals is a faction trying to eject the plan – the YBS, whose fighters are largely Sinjar Yazidis. While other troops withdrew from the IS attack in 2014, many recall that it was the YBS who fought to secure a safe route for civilians.
“They were the only ones who stayed to protect us,” said Sherko Khalaf, a Yazidi village mukhtar.
Despite protests from locals, the negotiations resulted in YBS’s withdrawal from Sinjar city center.
YBS fighters interviewed said they expected to be subsumed as a unit of the Popular Mobilization Forces, giving them much-needed political legitimacy. Some of the 2,500-3,500 YBS fighters are already on PMF’s payroll.
In theory, the plan calls for the PMF to also discontinue its presence in the city. To date, they support the troops and secure the periphery of Sinjar. But Khal Ali, the commander of the Lalish Brigades, a Yazidi unit of the group, told the AP, “The (PMF) will remain forever, we are kings over the heads of the security forces in Sinjar.”
That prospect has divided Yazidis. Some want Yazidi PMF factions to be included in the security scheme. Others fear that this will put Sinjar under the influence of the Shia Arab factions that dominate the umbrella group close to Iran.
“If the international community and central government don’t care about Sinjar, the PMF will take control,” said a prominent Yazidi leader, who asked anonymity to speak up. “This is clear.”