Azad Barış
“The sole reason for this last attack on the refugee camp and all the other periodic attacks is hostility to the Yazidis. These attacks are a resumption, on another dimension, of the 73rd firman,” writes Azad Barış for Yeni Yaşam.
The very name of Yazidi calls to mind firmans [decrees of genocide], exiles and massacres. The Yazidis are back on the agenda and occupying the minds of the world public because of their mass slaughter by ISIS in the last seven years. This is no coincidence, and it is once again clear, particularly from the developments of the past two weeks, that despite the changing of the players and the agents this is part of a systematic policy of attrition and annihilation. The attacks against Sinjar (Şengal) in recent weeks and against a refugee camp in Zakho (Zaxo) two days ago are an accelerated trailer updating the film of the Yazidis’ unfortunate history.
Although it may be difficult in today’s conditions to understand the feelings of people forced to flee from war and genocide, compelled to abandon relations established with memory and place and to live in a refugee camp, do you know what it is to target and bomb a refugee camp using unmanned planes? Of course, you cannot know! I would never want it to happen to you, but I hope that massive meteors fall on the hearths of those who do this, that stone does not remain on stone, that their homes collapse around them, and that their cries mingle with the cries of the children of Sinjar.
First and foremost, the bombing of a refugee camp and the raining of bombs onto a hospital are not consistent with “human” activity and the values constructed by filtering through the experiences of humanity’s history. It is the rot of humanity, the barbarity of today, it is as cold-hearted as the unmanned planes themselves. If we are to express it with the language of tribal hearts, it is merciless, remorseless and barbaric. These are people whose homes were burnt, whose family members and other relatives were murdered, whose young girls and women were seized as booty of the Islamic war, whose children, even unweaned, were abducted, who were forced to change their religion, and who had their property plundered, all by the Islamic State. To then bomb the tent city where they have taken refuge displays not one crumb of humanity, not one vestige of virtue.
The sole reason for this last attack on the refugee camp and all the other periodic attacks is hostility to the Yazidis. These attacks are a resumption, on another dimension, of the 73rd firman [the Yazidis have numbered the firmans issued against them through the centuries], the bloody form of which still remains alive in the collective memory of the Yazidis, and those perpetrating them are kindred spirits of those who perpetrated that other act of genocide. The air attacks against the holy places, the leaders, the settlements and the refugee camps of the Yazidis are at least as horrendous a mass murder as that of the 73rd firman, nothing less.
That the targets are selected independently of time and economic conditions, and the methods of committing the murders, are an overt manifestation of deep-seated hostility, rancour and hatred. The clearest aspect of this hostility is the targeting with this last attack of the Yazidis’ homeland, will and very existence in order to heap horror upon horror as if the horrors that came about as a result of the 73rd firman and what followed were not enough. It is a clear indication of a historical hostility which has made 73 attempts but is somehow unable come to any finality.
The most recent target to be selected, the refugee camp in Zakho where Yazidis previously driven from their homelands live, is just as innocent a place as the hospital in Sinjar that was the target selected two weeks ago. Bombing the people who fled that bloody massacre seven years ago before the eyes of the whole world as comfortably as if it were a series of takes for a film is indescribable brutality, rank hypocrisy an evil of our time. Devoid of faith, hostile to knowledge and understanding. The basic message intended by this and the basic meaning to be drawn from it is that it is nothing less than a perpetuation of the 73rd firman. We are aware of this with all of our being, because we know it well from experience drawn from our memories of the patchy face of Salafism [a kind of fundamentalist Sunni Islam subscribed to by ISIS]. It is clear that these attacks, timed for the month of August, which holds an important place in the collective memory of the Yazidis, were carried out with the same method and purpose as the previous attacks. Just as the perpetrators of these attacks do not feel the need to conceal this, the carefully selected targets and the meticulous planning indicate that this last attack was a multiple assassination done to “special order”.
Whether we talk about the previous assassinations conducted on the sacred mountain, the Yazidi personalities targetted in Sinjar city centre, the Sinjar hospital murders or the most recent attack on the refugee camp, in all these cases we are faced with murders which have occurred through the leaking of information from within, and involving mutiple players. The basic intention of each of them independently, from the similarities of the aims and the methodologies, is to prevent the Yazidi awakening which has been emerging since the 73rd firman, and to prevent the Yazidis’ efforts to become a people on their own right and to protect themselves.
Turkey basically does all this to prevent the establishment of a Yazidi (Kurdish) structure and as a requirement for its geostrategic, geopolitical and economic interests. As a result, it wants to dominate wide areas from now in order to be involved in the ‘Big Middle East Project’, which is about to come onto the agenda following the events in Afghanistan. As a result Turkey is conducting these attacks against Sinjar and Rojava within the framework of a specific plan and project with the permission of the global forces effective in the region, in particular the central Iraqi government and Erbil. In other words, it wants to render the people who razed the myth of Islamic State to the ground, and their children, landless and homeless before the eyes of the world. This situation tells and shows us clearly that this situation is nothing other than historical hostility to the Yazidi people.
