ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iraq’s migration and displacement minister on Tuesday said that a new batch of Yazidis, consisting of 100 people, returned to their hometown of Shingal years after fleeing the Islamic State (ISIS) war to Duhok province.
Iraqi Migration and Displacement Minister Evan Faeq Gabro was quoted by her ministry as saying that 100 Yazidis from Duhok camps returned to Shingal “as part of the ministry’s plan to end the dossier of displacement in the country,” adding that the process is conducted in coordination with the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
Pir Dayan Pir Jaafar, the head of Duhok’s migration office, which is linked to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), told Rudaw's Hemin Baban on Tuesday that a total of around 4,000 Yazidis have returned to Shingal in the last eight months.
“From the beginning of this year, a total of 800 Yazidi families - consisting of nearly 4,000 people - have returned to their areas in Shingal and its vicinity. Every day, some IDPs return. Yesterday, 18 families from Barsiv 1 camp in Duhok province returned [to Shingal],” said the Kurdish official.
He added about 26,000 Yazidi families currently live in Duhok camps and 37,000 others live outside the camps.
The Yazidis in Shingal were subjected to countless heinous atrocities, including forced marriages, sexual violence, and massacres when ISIS captured the city in 2014, bringing destruction to many villages and towns populated by the minority group. The Yazidis were forced to flee to displacement camps across Iraq and the Kurdistan Region.
Political disputes over the city between the federal government and the KRG as well as the presence of several armed groups have disrupted the reconstruction of the city. A Human Rights Watch (HRW) report in June slammed Iraqi authorities for failing to adequately compensate thousands of Yazidi families who bore the brunt of ISIS’ atrocities.
“To be honest, we don’t have much hope, because when they [the families] go back [to Shingal], they are often re-displaced, due to the unfavorable conditions in Shingal,” Srwa Rasul, head of the KRG’s Joint Crisis Coordination Center (JCC), said in mid-June.
According to IOM, around 80 percent of Shingal’s public infrastructure and 70 percent of civilian homes were destroyed during the years of the ISIS war from 2014 to 2017. Fundamental services such as electricity and water are not consistently available, and numerous health and education facilities are yet to be reconstructed after being destroyed during the war.
There is a myriad of armed forces in Shingal with various allegiances, including the Kurdistan Region Peshmerga, pro-Iran Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF, or Hashd al-Shaabi in Arabic), and groups affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). They gained footholds in Shingal after ousting ISIS.
Baghdad and Erbil signed an agreement in 2020 to normalize the situation in Shingal but the deal has yet to be implemented. The United States has repeatedly called on the Iraqi and Kurdish government to “immediately break the political deadlock” in the city.