Iraq on Thursday revoked an earlier decision to close camps housing Yazidis displaced by the PKK terrorist group that has occupied their homes in northern Sinjar district.
In an Aug. 3, 2014, attack on the Sinjar district, the historic land of Yazidis, Daesh terrorists kidnapped and killed thousands of people, including women and children, or detained them in areas they controlled.
Approximately 300,000 people lived in Sinjar before the attacks, with two-thirds of them being Yazidis and the remaining population comprising Sunni Kurds and Arabs.
The PKK terrorist group managed to establish a foothold in Sinjar in 2014 under the pretext of protecting the Yazidi community from Daesh terrorists. The terrorist group was accused of blocking aid to the Yazidi minority in Iraq while hindering their return to the Sinjar region.
Hundreds of thousands of Yazidis, who had to flee their homes after the Daesh attack, have been living in the camps in northern Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) under harsh conditions.
Baghdad and KRG capital Irbil signed a deal in 2020 to end the presence of the PKK in Sinjar, but it has not been implemented yet.
Despite the Iraqi Ministry of Migration and Displacement’s initial decision to close the camps by July 30, the PKK’s presence has forced Yazidis to endure harsh conditions at the camps.
Pir Dayan, director general of Migration, Displacement and Crisis Management in Duhok Governorate, said the closure decision was made by Baghdad without consulting the Iraqi Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) or the Yazidis.
He noted ongoing discussions with the Iraqi government to find a more suitable mechanism for the camps’ situation, confirming that “the camps remain as they are, and the closure decision is on hold.”
Dayan said that some Yazidis had previously returned to Sinjar but came back to the camps due to “security issues, unemployment and a lack of services” in the PKK-controlled area.
The Yazidis, whose mass killings were recognized as a genocide by the United Kingdom last month, are a Kurdish-speaking ethno-religious minority found mainly in Iraq.
They are followers of an ancient religion rooted in Zoroastrianism that emerged in Iran over 4,000 years ago.
Of the world’s nearly 1.5 million Yazidis, the largest number, 550,000, lived in Iraq before the Daesh attacks in 2014.
Daesh attacked the Yazidi bastion of Sinjar in August 2014, killing over 1,200 people, leaving several hundred children orphaned and destroying nearly 70 shrines, according to local authorities. A further 6,400 Yazidis were abducted, around half of whom were rescued or managed to flee.
