Sarah Ingham is the author of The Military Covenant: its impact on civil-military relations in Britain.
Ten years ago tomorrow, the fanatics of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria began their onslaught against the Yazidi people. What followed would become one of the five acts of genocide legally recognised by the United Kingdom.
A Kurdish-speaking ethnic group, the Yazidi ancestral homeland centres on mountainous Sinjar area in northern Iraq, where an estimated 550,000 lived. Their ancient religion is linked to Zoroastrianism but incorporates elements from Christianity and Islam. In April, the Yazidi marked the beginning of their new year: 6774.
Emerging from the wreckage of Iraq destabilised by the 2003 US-led invasion, Islamic State (aka ISIS, ISIL, and Da’esh) began its brutal reign of terror in Iraq and Syria in 2013, declaring a caliphate across the region in June 2014. Mosul and Tikrit in Iraq, as well as Raqqa in Syria, were among the cities that fell under its control.
On 3rd August 2014, the first day of the genocide, 1,268 Yazidi were butchered, say the campaigners Yazda. In all, 400,000 Yazidi would be displaced, and thousands of girls and women would be abducted and sold into sexual slavery. Thousands more were killed or forcibly converted to Islam. Boys were conscripted into the Islamic State and brainwashed into fighting. Yazidi religious and cultural sites were destroyed.
Today, fewer than half of those who fled Sinjar have returned, reports the UN’s International Organisation for Migration. More than 80 mass graves have been uncovered and almost 3,000 women and children have vanished. As many as 280,000 Yazidis remain in refugee camps in Iraq and the neighbouring semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region.
In the camps, efforts are made to preserve Yazidi heritage which the Islamic State tried to obliterate. Chaired by the indefatigable Emma Nicholson, the Amar Foundation encourages the teaching and playing of Yazidi music, as part of its education and therapy programme in the camps. Last month, the charity sponsored a Yazidi women’s choir from the Khanke camp near Dohuk to perform here. Accompanied by traditional instruments, which the Islamic State sought to destroy, they were recorded by the BBC.
Having suffered such collective trauma, the displaced Yazidi people have been facing more uncertainty with the threatened closure of their camps by the Iraqi government. The plight is further complicated by the political instability in the region, including wrangling between the Iraq federal government and the Kurdistan Region over control of Sinjar. The absence of security hampers reconstruction efforts there, which in turn prevents many of the displaced from returning home.
The latest reports suggest that the camps have become a reprieve. It is in Britain’s interest to keep them open, otherwise, many more people could be taking the dangerous illegal route from Northern Iraq to Europe and the UK.
The chronicle of the Yazidi in the past decade – conflict, displacement, camp – is one shared by many of the world’s estimated 100 million refugees. Last Friday, the 37-member Refugee Olympic Team was in the second boat in the Opening Ceremony’s Seine flotilla. The International Olympic Committee claims that the Team “demonstrates to the world that refugees are an enrichment to society.”
A refugee is “someone who has been forced to leave their country to escape war and persecution” states the International Rescue Committee. It was founded in 1933 by a small group which included Albert Einstein who had fled from Germany. It is keen to stress the positive contribution made by refugees or their descendants, whether Rita Ora, Freddy Mercury, or Michael Marks, the founder of retailer M&S.
The post-stabbing public disorder in Southport has underscored the widespread unhappiness in Britain, much of it rooted in immigration. For decades, policymakers have put immigration in a box marked “too difficult”, slammed down the lid, and consigned it to the remotest, darkest corner, hoping all the related problems would solve themselves.
Despite the Conservatives’ successive election manifesto promises to cut immigration numbers, 1.2 million entered the country in 2023: net migration was 685,000. The ill-conceived Rwanda plan was a costly waste of time.
Meanwhile, the small boats continue to cross the Channel, symbolising the loss of control of Britain’s borders and adult male migrants claim that they are children. The immigration system, if anything so chaotic can be called a system, is being gamed.
Many voters have lost confidence in policymakers who seem content to blur the boundaries between economic migrants who are entering the country illegally and asylum seekers, both of whom are legally distinct from refugees. Britain is not unwelcoming to them, welcoming more than 200,000 Ukrainians after the Russian invasion in 2022.
Germany has secured three convictions against former members of the Islamic State for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. Britain legally recognised the Yazidi genocide last year, but according to the Yazidi Justice Committee “an ocean of impunity” exists about it. Next month brings the end of the mandate for the UNITAD (the UN’s Investigative Team promoting accountability for crimes committed by Islamic State) which has been compiling evidence since 2017. The UK’s ambassador to the UN stated “The United Kingdom does not see the closure of UNITAD as the end of the fight for accountability against Da’esh.” Let’s hope not.
Southport, Harehills, Southend… Sinjar? With so much else in policymakers’ in-trays, allied with voters’ disquiet over immigration, it is surely inevitable that genuine refugees lose out.
