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Muqtada al Sadr’s faux withdrawal from politics and associated clashes in Baghdad’s Green Zone may dominate diplomatic attention. They do not, however, represent the only life-and-death issue facing Iraq.
It has been more than eight years since the Islamic State laid waste to much of northern Iraq. For the Yezidi communities of Sinjar, the trauma continues. Yezidi women and girls still live in captivity in portions of Syria controlled by Turkey and its proxies, if not in Turkey itself.
The tragedy is that the entire episode was avoidable.
The Islamic State was not an indigenous entity. There would have been no Islamic State had it not been for the resources, equipment, banking, and free passage for recruits that Turkey provided. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan played a double game with the Islamic State for ideological reasons, but he was not the only figure to see an advantage in the Islamic State’s rise. In 2014, Nouri al Maliki was still Iraq’s prime minister. Kurdistan Democratic Party leader Masoud Barzani wanted to keep Maliki weak and, prior to the group’s surprise capture of Mosul, quietly provided weaponry to the Islamic State and other Sunni Islamist extremists in the belief that their insurgency would keep Baghdad weak. It was immoral, it was cynical, and it cost thousands of lives.
Barzani’s son Masrour also bears direct responsibility. Nepotism rather than competence led the elder Barzani to appoint Masrour as the Kurdish intelligence head. Masrour then directed his resources to repress civil society rather than infiltrate external threats. He misread the Islamic State. The Yezidis did not. Prior to the Islamic State rampage, they asked Barzani to reinforce their territory. He refused. They then asked for weaponry so that they might protect their own communities. Again, Barzani refused. As the Islamic State began its sweep through Yezidi towns and villages, Barzani simply withdrew his Peshmerga forces, leaving unarmed Yezidis to their fate: mass graves and sex slavery. The only Kurds to defend the Yezidis were those affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which carved out a corridor to evacuate thousands. To this day, Barzani and his son refuse to publish Erbil airport flight manifests, which would expose who fled in the Kurdish hour of need.
Ultimately, Iraqis answering Grand Ayatollah Ali al Sistani’s call, Syrian Kurdish militias close to the PKK, and American air power helped turn the tide of war. Barzani’s forces stood down, hoping that the Islamic State might kneecap his Syrian Kurdish rivals. Only when it became clear Syrian Kurds would win did Barzani order his peshmerga to fight so that they might share in the victory. This was the Kurdish equivalent of the Soviet Union waiting to declare war on Japan only when its World War II defeat became clear.
Today, the Barzanis continue to victimize the Yezidis. They divert reconstruction aid to their own bank accounts and businesses. Masrour’s forces keep Yezidis in camps and refuse to allow them to go back to lands the Barzanis hope to steal. Some do escape and return. These the Barzanis address by collaborating with Turks to bomb the towns and villages Yezidis reconstruct.
The world pays lip service to Yezidi suffering but still ignores that the Islamic State was simply the tip of the iceberg in the betrayal of this community. As Yezidis suffer in refugee camps, the Barzanis purchase estates worth tens of millions of dollars in Los Angeles, McLean, Paris, London, and Dubai, and Erdogan builds a palace more than 30 times the size of the White House.
This is perverse. It is time to demand Erdogan and Barzani pay reparations to the Yezidis. The Yezidi genocide did not occur in a vacuum. It is time to stop pretending that the Turkish and Iraqi Kurdish leaders were anything but willing collaborators.
Michael Rubin (@mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential. He is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
