Attacking the Yezidis

The Yazidi's are members of one of the smallest religions in the world with between 200,000 and 300,000 members, primarily centered around Mosul in Northern Iraq, they have been the targets of catastrophic attacks in the recent weeks.

Suicide Bomb Kills 28 in Tal Afar
Iraqi Red Crescent says 500 killed in Yazidi attack


This has been significant for our team for a couple of reasons. First of all, 4 of our 5 interpreters are Yezidi, luckily all of their immediate family members were okay, but it still hit very close to home for them. Second, our IA battalion has responded to the tragedies by delivering food, water, clothing and other humanitarian items to the villages, and finally, the threat of huge dump trucks full of explosives pulling into town and blowing themselves up is particularly unnerving, especially when you consider how much time we spend living in the city. (See my post from March 29)

I'm not sure what news story pushed this carnage out of the American Mainstream Media, probably something as important as how to solicit anonymous gay sex while traveling through the twin cities. But whatever it was it pales in comparison to seeing the destruction in person

I encourage anyone interested in other religions to read further on this small religion. Some of the places mentioned in literature are very familiar to us here. Sinjar Mountain is to the West of our FOB and we watch the sun set behind it almost every night. One of our former interpreters, “Daniel” recently emigrated to Germany to link-up with his father where apparently there is an additional enclave of Yazidis .
Anyway, I took some pictures while we were in the village so I thought I would go ahead and post them here.