Once more, Yazidis find themselves as targets
By SUSAN TAYLOR MARTIN, Times Senior Correspondent
Published August 16, 2007
Even in a country where horrific death is common, the bombings Tuesday that killed at least 250 Yazidis in northern Iraq were shocking. And they jolted me back to 2004 when photographer Jamie Francis and I spent a week with these so-called "devil worshipers" - in reality, a gentle people whose unusual faith is widely misunderstood.
It was April, the month when Yazidis believe God created the world. We went along as hundreds of Yazidis from a village near Dohuk scrambled up steep slopes gloriously carpeted in wildflowers. At an ancient mountaintop shrine, they prayed for good luck and left money for the poor.
April is the holiest month in their calendar, but Yazidis that year had canceled many of their other springtime rituals for fear of extremist attacks.
"There are people in the Islamic religion who are against democracy, and there are Islamic parties that want to run all of Iraq," Namir Kahchow Hassn, a Yazidi judge, warned us.
His remarks were eerily prescient of this week's attack, in which four suicide bombers thought to be connected to al-Qaida in Iraq blew themselves up in a Yazidi village west of Mosul. It was the single deadliest attack since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.
No one knows how many Yazidis there are; estimates range from less than 100,000 to more than 600,000. Throughout much of their 4,000 year history, they have lived in secrecy to escape persecution for beliefs that can seem bizarre and even blasphemous to outsiders.
Like Christians, Jews and Muslims, Yazidis worship one God. But they also revere Malak Ta'us, an angel in the form of a peacock that they believe was sent to earth to teach Adam and Eve how to procreate.
Yazidis have no devil in their religion, and the reason they are called devil worshipers has long been lost in time. One theory is that those of other faiths misconstrued Malak Ta'us as a fallen or "bad" angel even though Yazidis believe he was sent to earth because he was God's favorite.
Nor do Yazidis have the concept of hell, instead believing that the souls of the dead repeatedly return to earth until they are purified. As punishment, a bad person might first come back stricken with disease or in animal form.
"Someone like Saddam might return as a donkey," a Yazidi teacher named Murad Hamed joked.
Like other Kurds, Yazidis suffered greatly under Saddam Hussein, whose troops destroyed their villages and killed thousands in a drive to purge Iraq of non-Arabs. Survivors were denied national identity cards, forbidden to write about their religion and barred from government jobs.
After Hussein's regime fell in 2003, Yazidis won seats in the Iraqi and Kurdish parliaments. But many Muslims continue to regard them as infidels because of their strictures, which include a ban on marrying outside the Yazidi faith.
The tensions escalated in April when a crowd of Yazidis stoned to death a young Yazidi woman who had "shamed" her family by falling in love with a Muslim. In reprisal for what Muslims perceived as a slight against Islam, gunmen dragged 23 Yazidi factory workers off a bus two weeks later and killed them. Christian and Muslim workers were not hurt.
Then Tuesday's attack.
"This is an act of ethnic cleansing, if you will, almost genocide," said Army Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon, commander of U.S. forces in northern Iraq.
The Yazidis we met three years ago were eager to talk about their religion, even as they acknowledged we could live with them for 10 years and never fully understand it.
But the Yazidis also said they found it strange that followers of other religions have been so brutal. How, they asked, could anyone who believes in God persecute and kill people who only want to live in peace?
"We respect other religions," said Hamed, the teacher. "Why can't they respect us?"
Susan Taylor Martin can be contacted at susan@sptimes.com
Developments on Wednesday
Troop level: Gen. David Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, said he was preparing recommendations on troop reductions before he returns to Washington next month for a report to Congress. He predicted the U.S. footprint in Iraq would have to be "a good bit smaller" by next summer. But Petraeus cautioned against a quick U.S. withdrawal that could surrender "the gains we have fought so hard to achieve."
Violence: At least 44 other people were killed or found dead Wednesday. Five civilians also died in separate car bombings in Mosul, Kirkuk and Hillah.
No charges for soldier: Army Pvt. Jonathan Aponte, 21, who admitted paying someone $500 to shoot him in the leg so he could avoid another tour of duty in Iraq won't face felony charges, though his wife and the gunman were indicted by a grand jury. Aponte was shot July 9, the day he was scheduled to return to duty. In an interview after his arrest, Aponte said his legal troubles were better than being shot at every day in Iraq. "Mentally I can't do it anymore. I can't handle it anymore," he said then.