Kurds and Yazidis trapped between Iraq and Syria

The Karsi region in Sinjar, Iraq, where displaced Yazidis have sought refuge

All photos are by Fouad el-Hassan

Orientxxi.Info : A cement wall now runs along the Iraq-Syria border for four hundred kilometers. On both sides, Yazidis who survived the massacres carried out by the Islamic State and Syrian Kurds displaced by the war still live in camps where the temporary has become permanent.

Iraqi writer Fouad el-Hassan describes the journey of those who cling to life, convinced that their last hope lies on the other side of the border.  

A reader might recoil in shock, perhaps even get a case of the nightmares, after learning the stories of the people of Iraq or Syria. Even more unsettling are the tales gathered from both sides of the border, smuggled across lines like drugs, weapons, or human beings. They are the stories of people whose lives have closed in around them.

Travelers to Sinjar today would not miss the colossal wall stretching along the Syrian border. It rises on the horizon like a fence encompassing an empire of horrors, kept inside, lest they break loose exposing stories that would shatter the sanitized narratives promoted by governments on both sides on the border. The wall towers over the land, impenetrable to the masses who once crossed freely when they decided to escape their “great national death”, delivered to them by barrel bombs and the “pure and pious” Takbir¹ cries. 

Designed to span 614 kilometers, around 400 kilometers of the wall have already been constructed. The barrier is a concrete structure reinforced with tunnels and thermal cameras, intended to secure the border with Syria, as Iraqi authorities in charge of this project have declared.

A frantic escape

More than half a million Yazidis once lived in Sinjar, under the protection of the sacred Mother Goddess². Within hours, their homeland was transformed into a ghost town. Women were transformed into commodities traded in slave markets, men were rendered into skeletons jumbled in mass graves, and children were lured by fanatics who wanted to recruit them as future-suicide-bombers.

As the sun set behind the mountain, families climbed onto the rooftops of their mud homes to escape the summer heat. Men took their positions behind makeshift barricades, armed with rusty, light weapons, ready to resist ISIS militants alone, after the forces assigned to protect the area withdrew without warning. Two hours of sleep was all the residents of Tel Azir had before waking to the sound of gunfire. Death was approaching like a sky closing in.

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