HASAKAH, Syria—Simply exterior the small Yazidi village of Barzan, in northeastern Syria, 10-year-old Shadi Rasho stood as much as recite a prayer. His mild however melancholic voice continued for a couple of minutes because the room listened in silence.
“That is what kids who keep right here can do,” mentioned Shadi’s older brother, 21-year-old Souliman Rasho.
Many of the household’s kin have left for Europe—pushed away by the discriminatory insurance policies that Syrian authorities enforced over many years and persecution by the Islamic State. Yazidis are a predominantly Kurdish-speaking ethno-religious minority, traditionally inhabiting components of modern-day Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. Their faith, which dates again hundreds of years, consists of pagan, Zoroastrian, Christian, and Muslim components.
Souliman gestured to a framed image of a peacock, hung within the heart of the lounge. For Yazidis, the peacock’s identify is Melek Taus, an angel who beautified the earth at its creation. Etched beneath the peacock’s ft was a small drawing of the Yazidi Lalish Temple in Iraq.
Souliman reaches towards a photograph of his late father, positioned beneath a drawing of the symbolic Yazidi peacock, of their house close to Barzan on July 24.
Yazidis have lengthy confronted persecution. Different faiths have misinterpreted Melek Taus as Devil and subsequently accused Yazidis of being “devil-worshipers.” Members of the Yazidi neighborhood say they’ve endured 74 genocides over the millennia. The latest was carried out by the Islamic State, which killed greater than 3,000 Yazidis and enslaved, raped, and forcibly transformed almost 7,000 others.
Over the past decade, many Yazidis in Syria gained official recognition and a way of safety underneath the Kurdish administration—which nonetheless controls a lot of the northeast. However now, with the arrival of Ahmed al-Sharaa’s authorities, Syria’s Yazidis are unsure of their future but once more. U.S.-backed Kurdish forces at the moment are going through rising stress to merge into Sharaa’s nationwide military—which has been implicated in massacres of different spiritual minorities within the nation.
“We’re all afraid of the brand new authorities,” mentioned Layla Mehmo, one of many administrators of the Yazidi Home, an umbrella group defending the rights of Yazidis in Syria. “We noticed what occurred to the Alawites and the Druze. They [the government] have the identical mentality of ISIS.”
Ahmed Darwish Rasho’s grandson stands behind him within the dim mild of their front room close to Barzan on July 24.
Barzan is so small that it doesn’t seem on virtually any map however sits simply north of Hasakah metropolis and consists of dozens of mud properties—a lot of which now stand deserted.
In 1947, Souliman’s kin got here to the world in the hunt for a protected house to develop their crops and lift livestock, discovering safety in an remoted patch of desert. His household hails from Iraq, however many Yazidis have lived in different components of Syria, akin to northwestern Afrin province, since a minimum of the twelfth century.
Souliman’s great-uncle, 88-year-old Ahmed Darwish Rasho, nonetheless tends to his olive timber and greens on the village land. Sporting an all-white gown and sporting a bushy, droopy mustache—a distinguishable Yazidi type—he defined that like the vast majority of Yazidis in Syria, his household was stateless, which means that that they had no formal rights over their land.
Ahmed in his front room close to Barzan on July 24.
Yazidis have been marginalized and denied recognition by successive Syrian governments, finally maintaining a lot of the neighborhood impoverished. Below the Assad regime, they had been forbidden from celebrating spiritual holidays and displaying spiritual symbols and had been pressured to take part in Islamic research courses in public college.
This poverty and discrimination had already pushed many Yazidis to go away Syria earlier than the Islamic State invasion, Mehmo mentioned. Then, in 2014, because the group took over swaths of territory, about half of Yazidis fled the nation—the inhabitants dropping from round 60,000 folks in 2012 to simply about 34,000 to 40,000, Mehmo added.
Amongst those that fled Barzan had been six of Ahmed’s 9 kids. They’re now residing in Germany, the place Ahmed believes the Yazidi tradition will stop to exist. He fears that their strict spiritual customs will show tough to take care of in Western international locations. Historically, marrying exterior the Yazidi religion ends in exclusion from the neighborhood. There’s additionally an inside hierarchy throughout the religion that has historically decided marriages, with spiritual and neighborhood leaders belonging to a distinct caste. Ahmed worries that this, too, shall be tough to protect with the Yazidi neighborhood now scattered throughout the globe.
But whereas we spoke, Ahmed referred to as one in every of his sons, who supplied a distinct perspective. Barakat Rasho now lives in Hanover along with his seven kids. Over the cellphone, Barakat defined how, not like his father, he was hopeful that the Yazidi neighborhood may proceed its traditions. He famous that there have been greater than 350,000 Yazidis in Germany and that they had been advocating to construct Yazidi temples and heritage museums in areas with important diaspora communities. “It is dependent upon us and our solidarity,” Barakat mentioned.
Left: A conventional Yazidi pendant tied round Siham Darweesh Moustafa’s waist as she stands within the cemetery the place her husband is buried on the outskirts of Barzan on July 24. Proper: Moustafa tends to her livestock within the yard of her house close to Barzan on July 24.
By 2018, the Islamic State had misplaced most of its territory, and the dwindling Yazidi inhabitants gained official recognition underneath the newly established Kurdish administration, which had taken management of a lot of the northeast and components of Aleppo governorate within the west.
With this safety, Yazidis may apply their faith overtly for the primary time in trendy Syrian historical past. Cultural establishments, such because the Yazidi Home, had been established to take care of Yazidi traditions and unfold consciousness of their beliefs.
Nevertheless, this newfound safety would show tenuous amid the shifting tide of the Syrian civil battle. Following an offensive in early 2018, Yazidis residing in Afrin discovered themselves residing underneath the management of the Syrian Nationwide Military (SNA), a coalition of Turkish-backed opposition factions.
Fulla Shakro, 48, was among the many hundreds of Yazidis uprooted from their properties consequently. For 50 days, she mentioned, SNA militiamen attacked her village, displacing almost all of its residents. Greater than half of the Yazidi shrines in Afrin had been additionally destroyed or desecrated, making it almost inconceivable for the few Yazidis who remained to overtly apply their religion.
Most fled to areas nonetheless underneath Kurdish management, akin to Aleppo metropolis’s Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafieh neighborhoods and an space often called Shahba Canton in northern Aleppo governorate.
However in December 2024, as Syrian rebels launched their lightning offensive to topple Bashar al-Assad, the Turkish-backed SNA drove Kurdish forces out of Shahba Canton, forcing hundreds of Yazidis to flee as soon as once more.
A number of months later, in April, Kurdish forces additionally withdrew from Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafieh, handing management to Damascus in accordance with a March settlement between the brand new Syrian president and Kurdish chief Mazloum Abdi, who heads the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
Shakro, who has been residing in Sheikh Maqsoud since fleeing Afrin, mentioned she doesn’t really feel protected underneath the brand new Syrian forces. She and different Yazidis have restricted their actions and are reluctant to enterprise exterior their neighborhood as they as soon as did.
“We’re not residing a superb life. We’re barely residing,” she mentioned. “The place is the liberty? The place is the safety?”
Sharaa, a former chief of al Qaeda’s department in Syria, has included a slew of Salafi jihadis into prime authorities and army positions. Amongst them are former SNA militiamen who attacked Afrin in 2018.
Sharaa appointed Ahmad al-Hayes, who led the SNA faction Ahrar al-Sharqiya, as commander of a lot of the northeast. Hayes was straight complicit in his militia’s abuses in opposition to spiritual and ethnic minorities, together with the trafficking of Yazidi girls and youngsters.
The brand new Syrian authorities has tried to reassure spiritual minorities that they are going to be protected. Nevertheless, Syria’s new draft structure describes Islam because the “principal supply” of laws and solely respects freedom of perception for “divine religions”—which means Christianity and Judaism however not the Yazidi religion.
“We really feel excluded now, as if nobody includes us,” Shakro mentioned.
Layla Mehmo and Ismail Deif website beneath the symbolic peacock after a gathering on the Yazidi Home in Barzan on July 24.Sandro Basili pictures for International Coverage.
In the meantime, Yazidis within the northeast have watched the occasions unfold in Aleppo because the Kurdish administration leaves, fearful they, too, will quickly face the identical destiny.
“There are undoubtedly considerations,” mentioned Ismail Deif, 47, a director of the Yazidi Home in Barzan who works with Mehmo. “The present authorities main Syria consists of dozens of factions whose palms are stained with the blood of the Syrian folks.”
Deif mentioned that after the December offensive, the northeast acquired round 2,600 Yazidis fleeing areas in Aleppo. Many got here from displacement camps in Shahba Canton, which he mentioned had been attacked by “extremists.”
“We want the SDF to maintain management over the world,” Mehmo added.
Nevertheless, america has been pressuring Kurdish forces to speed up implementation of their settlement to merge with Damascus. On Oct. 16, The Related Press reported that Abdi had reached a breakthrough within the talks with Damascus, agreeing on the “mechanism” for the merger through which his forces would be part of the brand new Syrian army as a single giant unit.
This has unsettled Barzan villagers. Souliman mentioned he doesn’t belief the brand new Syrian authorities. He mentioned he wouldn’t dare enterprise into Damascus, afraid of what the brand new safety forces would possibly do to him at checkpoints alongside the best way. Some official procedures, akin to acquiring a passport, require residents of northeastern Syria to journey to the capital.
His great-uncle Ahmed expressed his frustration with america, explaining that he feels america as soon as helped defend his neighborhood from the Islamic State however is now turning its again by supporting the brand new Syrian president.
“We’re upset with what America is doing,” he mentioned—insisting that his assertion make it into print.
Mehmo and Deif additionally concern that with out the SDF, the seek for hundreds of Yazidis kidnapped by the Islamic State will come to a halt. The group kidnapped a complete of 6,417 Yazidis and solely about half, or 3,573 folks, have been freed, Deif mentioned. The Yazidi Home coordinates carefully with Kurdish authorities on the seek for the lacking, together with some kidnapped kids who’re nonetheless within the sprawling Islamic State detainment camp of al-Hol.
Thus far, the brand new Syrian authorities has made no effort to seek for the handfuls of Yazidis suspected of nonetheless being held captive in areas akin to Idlib, Aleppo, and Hama, Deif mentioned. “If the SDF is gone, it will likely be inconceivable to seek for or free any lacking individuals.”
Mediha Ibrahim al-Hamad, a 20-year-old Yazidi activist and filmmaker, worries that the worldwide neighborhood has forgotten the Yazidi trigger. At age 10, she was kidnapped from her house in Sinjar, Iraq. She was bought as a intercourse slave to an Islamic State fighter and remained in captivity for 3 years, till she was 13.
The whereabouts of her mother and father stay unknown. “The place is my mother? The place is my dad?” she mentioned in an interview with International Coverage in New York Metropolis, the place she now lives.
“I really feel so unhappy for my folks. They’re nonetheless lacking, residing in camps,” Hamad mentioned, calling for the worldwide neighborhood to place extra assets towards the seek for the lacking—her story mirroring that of hundreds of different girls and women.
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A lady in an extended gown holds a water bottle and sprinkles water on giant raised stone graves formed like coffins. - Moustafa sprinkles water on graves within the cemetary close to Barzan on July 24.
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A bearded man in a T0shirt subsequent to a girl in an extended gown and head white head overlaying who’s turned partially away and seeking to the proper. - Moustafa and her grandson Souliman go away the cemetery on July 24.
Again in Barzan, Souliman mentioned he hopes to remain in his village and keep on Yazidi customs like his father and grandfather earlier than him. However the older era was much less hopeful that the Yazidi neighborhood would survive. Souliman’s grandmother, 67-year-old Siham Darweesh Moustafa, mentioned her kids who left will doubtless by no means return.
She wandered exterior their house, previous the rooster coop and sheep corral, to her husband’s grave. With a pointed cement roof, his headstone resembled the holy temple of Lalish.
She splashed water on his grave, cooling it from the scalding desert warmth. She then used a plastic water bottle to fill a small stone basin with water, explaining that it was one in every of her husband’s dying needs to go away water for the birds. Different gravestones like his sat deserted, with nobody to go to them as she does.
If all her kin returned to the village, she mentioned, there could be tons of extra folks to take care of the Yazidi neighborhood in Syria. “However the individuals are afraid,” she mentioned, turning round and letting the remaining water trickle from her bottle into the basin.
