Hazim Tahsin Bek, prince of the Yazidi people, with a sculpture of peacock representing Yazifi archangel Melek Taus
Credit: Sam Tarling
As leader of one of the world’s most persecuted minorities, Hazim Tahseen Bek has kept count of how his people have nearly been wiped out.
The prince of Iraq’s Yazidis claims it has happened scores of times over history, the culprits ranging from ancient Muslim tribes through to the Ottoman Turks and Saddam Hussein.
Then, in 2014, came the Islamic State, whose campaign of genocide brought a medieval barbarity to the 21st century.
"It was shocking that something like this could happen in this day and age," Mr Bek told the Daily Telegraph from his home in the town of Ba’adra, overlooking Iraq’s Nineveh Plains. "But it was not the first time we have been attacked in this way."
Last month marked the fifth anniversary of the liberation of Sinjar, the Yazidi city that bore the brunt of the IS onslaught, in which around 5,000 men were slaughtered and more than 6,000 women abducted for use as sex slaves.
Five years on, the wounds are still fresh. Much of Sinjar remains in ruins, many Yazidis languish in refugee camps, and nearly half the abducted women are still missing.
But as Mr Bek steers his people out of one existential crisis, he is also confronting another — this time thrust upon him by fellow Yazidis, for whom 2014 has also led to profound questions about their political leadership.
For the first time in centuries, bitter divisions have spilled out into the open, with different groups vying for power, and the 1,000-year-old monarchy itself facing calls for reform.
"Now it feels like anyone who wears military clothes and has a weapon feels he can have a say in our community," Mr Bek said. "They are affecting our unity, and interfering in matters that are not their business."
Smoke rises above the Yazidi town of Sinjar, Iraq, shortly after the town was liberated from IS by the PKK and Iraqi Kurdish forces in 2015
Credit: Sam Tarling
Mr Bek, 56, spoke while sitting next to a statue of a peacock — the traditional depiction of the Yazidi arch-angel Melek Taus.
In Yazidi religion — which blends Christian, Zoroastrian and ancient Mesopotamian beliefs — Taus was expelled from Heaven, before his tears of remorse extinguished the fires of Hell. Other religions have often confused Taus’s story with that of Satan, leading to the Yazidis being persecuted over the centuries as devil-worshippers.
Even the secular Saddam Hussein repressed them, forcing them to identify as Arabs rather than Kurds during his campaign to "Arabise" Iraq’s Kurdish north. For centuries, such horrors convinced Yazidis that the only way to survive in Iraq was to keep a low profile, as did Christians and other religious minorities.
The prince, or emir, ruled quietly in tandem with a spiritual leader, the so-called Baba Sheikh, upholding a conservative, inward-looking elite.
All that has come under challenge in the wake of the genocide, which has seen the once tight-knit community exposed to outside influences. Mr Bek is concerned, for example, about the PKK, a Left-wing Kurdish militia group.
Yazidis who fled their homes in Sinjar after the town was captured by the Islamic State are taught how to assemble an AK-47 rifle by a Kurdish PKK fighter
Credit: Sam Tarling
They came to the aid of the Yazidis in Sinjar when Kurdish regional government troops fled the IS advance, leaving the city defenceless. Initially welcomed as saviours, the PKK have now recruited many Yazidis to their cause, which preaches a radical, Left-wing agenda that is at odds with the traditional Yazidi outlook.
Also challenging the status quo are Western NGOs, many of them keen to promote women’s rights in the wake of IS’s atrocities.
The genocide has further opened a schism between the Yazidis in Sinjar, who suffered IS’s horrors, and the royal elite, whose base in Ba’adra, which lies in territory controlled by Iraq’s Kurdish regional government, was not attacked.
Some Sinjar Yazidis distrust Mr Bek because he served as an MP with the regional government’s ruling KDP party, which they claim should have done more to stop Sinjar falling into IS’s hands.
Discontent first surfaced last year, when Mr Bek took over from his late father, who ruled for seven decades and died without nominating a successor. Critics said Mr Bek was chosen ahead of several other candidates without proper consultation with the wider community.
"We were hoping for a more democratic selection process that would have let people have their say," said Ahmed Burjus, deputy director of Yazda, a Yazidi non-profit organisation set up in the wake of the genocide.
"One reason the prince was chosen was because he has support from the main KDP party. But that’s like having a Queen of Britain who is Conservative or Labour."
A Sinjar-based claimant to the throne even declared himself prince in a rival ceremony, allegedly instigated by the PKK. Further discord broke out last month, when the new Baba Sheikh, Ali Elias, was inaugurated at Lalish, a mountain temple that is the Yazidis’ holiest site.
A Yazidi worshipper enters the Sheik Adi ibn Mussafir temple in Lalish, the spiritual home of the Yazidi religion
Credit: Sam Tarling
Some in Sinjar boycotted the event, again claiming that Mr Bek, who oversees the appointment, had not consulted widely enough. Mr Bek has already tried to address the divisions, setting up a new community council that is designed to give Sinjar Yazidis more of a voice.
But for some Yazidis, far more sweeping reforms are now needed. A more engaged, accountable leadership, they say, is vital — not just to stop genocide ever happening again, but to end the rifts it has left.
"The prince should be a symbolic position like it is in Britain, and we should have a democratically-elected body to lead Yazidis everywhere," says Khalil Jindy Rashow, a Yazidi writer. "The Yazidi wound is now too big to be healed otherwise."
Mr Burjus also points out that unless Iraq achieves a lasting peace, the 500,000 strong Yazidi community may dwindle further. Around a fifth have already fled abroad in the wake of the genocide — and those who remain will need little encouragement to follow.
"Even if we have political representation, there are still other religious parties in the system here who believe that we are infidels," he said. "All it requires is another atrocity against us — be it a genocide or a car bomb — and all Yazidis will flee the land."
Свежие комментарии