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Sousan, a young Yazidi girl of 16, had one of the happiest days of her life when she was married to Fouzi, a Yazidi man, in the town of Sinjar, northern Kurdistan, Iraq. What she didn’t know was that five months after the wedding, in August 2014, ISIS would attack and take her town. This was after ISIS had already attacked and taken a large part of Iraq as well as Syria. The ISIS fighers swooped in with machine guns, tanks, and mortars, destroying all in front of them and targeting the Yazidi especially for brutal treatment. The Yazidis practice...

This past week, 2018 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Nadia Murad was the latest victim of the West’s cancel culture, as she was disinvited from a book event by Canada’s Toronto District School Board. Alongside colonialism, imperialism, and nation-building, “cancel culture” is the latest of toxic Western ideas to be foisted upon the Middle East. This past week, 2018 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Nadia Murad was the latest victim of the West’s cancel culture, as she was disinvited from a book event by Canada’s Toronto District School Board. This may sound trivial, but it’s a big deal. Murad is a member...

Turkey, which has developed rather odd relationships with some of its neighbors in recent years because of its reckless foreign policy, has begun treating Kurdish notables coming from Iraqi Kurdistan as official leaders. According to former Turkish Consul-General at Erbil Aydin Selcen, when Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) President Massoud Barzani used to come to Turkey, he was received in Istanbul and not in Ankara, the capital. The meetings were not held in palaces but at less-impressive locations. The Kurdistan flag was never displayed. Meetings were held in Arabic, not Kurdish. To give the impression that the meetings were unofficial, nobody wore ties. In short, everything was...

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region-As Peshmerga forces entered the town of Shingal (Sinjar) on Friday Kurdish Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani congratulated the Yezidi people as well as the Peshmerga and coalition forces for the town's liberation from Islamist militants, hailing it as an important achievement for Kurdistan and the civilized world. "I would also like to congratulate the people of Kurdistan in general and in particular the Yezidi Kurds, the Mir of Yezidis, Baba Sheikh and the members of the spiritual council of Yezidis on the liberation of Sinjar," said Prime Minister Barzani in a statement. "I offer my deepest condolences to...

The leader of Iraqi Kurds declared Friday that the Iraqi town of Sinjar has been liberated from ISIS militants. ..."This operation has moved perhaps faster than some may have thought," said CNN senior international correspondent Nick Paton Walsh, who is traveling with the troops.

Extremist fighters from the group known as the Islamic State have left the Sinjar area the same way they came in during August this year: without any real combat or pitched battles. “I feel as if I’m watching the same thing I saw five months ago,” says Maizar al-Shammari, standing in front of his house, which is on the road into Sinjar, watching Iraqi Kurdish troops move forward. “At that time the Peshmerga [Iraqi Kurdish forces] withdrew without a fight. Today the Islamic State group is doing the same thing. It’s as if they just decided to swap roles,” he...

Two Yazidi sisters held captive by ISIS have told of how they tried to kill each other when they realised they were going to be sold as wives to terrorist fighters. Wafa, 27, and her sister, who has not been identified, were captured along with hundreds of other Yazidi women when the town on Sinjar fell into ISIS hands in August. Fearing they would be forced to marry or sold to another captor, they tried to strangle each other late at night and only stopped after other girls they were with woke up and separated them.

Iraqi Kurd Fighters Take Sinjar Back From ISIS (Photo: Reuters/Azad Lashkari) A convoy of Kurdish peshmerga fighters drive through Arbil after leaving a base in northern Iraq, on their way to the Syrian town of Kobani, October 28, 2014. By Anugrah Kumar December 21, 2014|9:38 am Kurdish Peshmerga fighters have announced that they've taken the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar back from Islamic State militants in a battle months after tens of thousands of minority Yazidis had to flee their homes while others remained trapped after the town's capture by the terrorists.The Kurd soldiers, backed by U.S.-led airstrikes, Saturday reached...

For the last three days, United States and French warplanes have shelled the Sinjar city center and the surrounding areas in northern Iraq. According to sources from Peshmerga forces in the area, as a result of Tuesday night airstrikes on the Yezidi majority town, sixteen Islamic State (IS) militants have been killed along with the destruction of ten IS-stolen Humvees. The Peshmerga source also told BasNews that after the attacks, as an act of revenge, the Islamic insurgents burned about 60 houses in Sinjar. The source also revealed that the Jihadi group has planted IEDs in some neighborhoods in Sinjar....

United states warplanes target the center of the Yazidi town Sinjar in northern Iraq. According to a Kurdish Yazidi Peshmerga commander on Mount Sinjar, Kurdish Worker’s Party (PKK) guerrillas are obstructing US and Yezidi Peshmarga attacks in Sinjar. The commander, Qasim Shashou, claimed that in collaboration with the Peshmerga, US jets have successfully bombed the center of Sinjar and have inflicted heavy losses on the Islamic State (IS) militants. “We are ready to advance into Sinjar and we have a strong, coordinated plan. However PKK fighters, who call themselves the Sinjar people’s protection force, are making it difficult for us...

An Iraqi MP and United Nations relief workers today dismissed claims by the U.S. and the UK that the humanitarian crisis on Mount Sinjar was all but over. Yazidi MP Vian Dakhil claims some 70-80,000 refugees are still stranded on the mountain despite assertions from American and British leaders that they number only in their low thousands. President Barack Obama yesterday said the ten-day siege by the Islamic State had been 'broken' by missile strikes and humanitarian aid drops, allowing tens of thousands of Yazidis to escape. Downing Street also said the situation had improved so much that further aid...

The prospect of having U.S. troops help stage a rescue mission in Iraq appears "far less likely" a Defense Department official said Wednesday following the return of a team of military personnel from a mountain where religious refugees had taken shelter. Earlier in the day, the White House appeared to walk a fine line on the question of an evacuation attempt as armed U.S. troops arrived in Islamic State-held territory in northern Iraq to plan a possible rescue mission while officials insisted they wouldBut Wednesday night Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Admiral John Kirby said the troops sent to Mt. Sinjar...

Stranded on a barren mountaintop, thousands of minority Iraqis are faced with a bleak choice: descend and risk slaughter at the hands of the encircled Sunni extremists or sit tight and risk dying of thirst. Humanitarian agencies said Tuesday that between 10,000 and 40,000 civilians remain trapped on Mount Sinjar since being driven out of surrounding villages and the town of Sinjar two days earlier. But the mountain that had looked like a refuge is becoming a graveyard for their children. Unable to dig deep into the rocky mountainside, displaced families said they have buried young and elderly victims of...

Al-Qaeda-inspired extremists seized control of the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar on Sunday, advancing against overstretched Kurdish forces and sending thousands of residents running for their lives. Families described scenes of panic as gunmen entered the town around 7 a.m. after Kurdish forces withdrew. The majority of residents are Yazidis, followers of a pre-Islamic faith, and the extremists accuse them of being devil worshipers. “People were terrified,” said Ilias al-Hussani, who like tens of thousands of others had fled on foot toward the mountains as soon as gunmen entered. “They are savages. We’ve seen what they’ve done to people of...

White House sources confirm that in the run up to the decision to involve U.S. military personnel, President Obama was fully briefed that a large portion of the Libyan rebel forces most active in areas around such critical cities as Benghazi had ties to al Qaeda, particularly Al Qaeda in Iraq, the wing of the terrorist group that killed hundreds of U.S. troops in Iraq.... "Secretary Clinton knows it, the White House knows it, but we're working with these thugs anyway because the President thinks it's the moral thing to do in the face of Gaddafi."

Little has been known about so-called foreign fighters in Iraq, other than that they are typically motivated by ideology and are usually smuggled in through Syria in small numbers. Many perform suicide bombing missions and instigate some of the country's starkest violence.But a new analysis published last month by experts at West Point shows that most of these individuals come from Saudi Arabia and Libya

On his own admission, rebel leader Abdul-Hakim al-Hasadi fought American troops in Afghanistan and recruited Libyans to fight American troops in Iraq. Shortly after unrest broke out in eastern Libya in mid-February, reports emerged that an “Islamic Emirate” had been declared in the eastern Libyan town of Darnah and that, furthermore, the alleged head of that Emirate, Abdul-Hakim al-Hasadi, was a former detainee at the American prison camp in Guantánamo. The reports, which originated from Libyan government sources, were largely ignored or dismissed in the Western media.Now, however, al-Hasadi has admitted in an interview with the Italian newspaper Il Sole...

Arbil, Aug 16, (VOI) – A 340-strong Kurdish Peshmerga force was sent to northwestern Iraq's district of Sinjar to restore security and provide protection to the afflicted community, an official Peshmerga source said on Thursday. "The force will remain in the district until the security situation is secure," Peshmerga Commander Maj. Gen. Aziz Waizy told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).

TAL AFAR, Iraq – May 3 will mark a historic day in Western Ninevah Province as 3rd Battalion, 3rd Brigade, 3rd Iraqi Army Division assumes the lead in security operations in and around Sinjar. The ceremony will serve as the latest example of the increased Iraqi Army role in providing security to the people of Iraq . The 3rd Battalion has proven itself to be a skilled and professional fighting force and is confident in its ability to handle its increased responsibility. After completing a number of successful missions in conjunction with U.S. forces, the battalion recently planned and executed...

Iraqi police nabbed two persons Feb. 29 who were apparently preparing to launch a rocket-propelled-grenade attack on a local council meeting in Bajar, northern Iraq. The suspects, according to a Combined Joint Task Force 7 press release, were arrested and then turned over to coalition forces along with one RPG launcher and three RPG rounds. Also Feb. 29, U.S. 14th Cavalry Regiment soldiers detained three persons suspected of anti-coalition activities during an operation in Rabiyah in northern Iraq, and American 23rd Infantry Regiment troops in Mosul seized two persons suspected of stealing and selling weapons in northern Iraq. Meanwhile, in...