Children from Sinjar receive FAI sponsored school packs.
Turkish warplanes conducted an airstrike in Northern Iraq on Wednesday, killing the commander of a Yazidi militia and four of his fighters. Several more were wounded, including at least one civilian. Zardasht Shingali was a central figure in the Sinjar Resistance Movement (YBS), a Yazidi mlitia formed in 2007 to protect the minority group from attacks on their communities by militant Islamists during the US-Iraq War. The YBS later became a partner of the Kurdish Peshmerga and other Yazidi militia groups in the counter-offensive against the Islamic State (ISIS).
Wednesday’s airstrike is just the latest in a string of recent bombings against Yazidi militias around Sinjar and their parent organization, the Kurdish PKK, in the mountainous region of Iraqi Kurdistan. A ceasefire between Turkey and the PKK broke down in 2015, after which Turkey began an intermittent, ongoing bombing campaign against PKK targets in different parts of Iraqi Kurdistan. An FAI field worker recently described the dire situation: “For the first time in recent memory, we have homeless Kurdish families living in Duhok [a major Kurdish city near the Iraqi borders with Syria and Turkey]. We find women sorting through trash at night, looking for food for their families, and men who just can’t find work anywhere. They all have one thing in common: They come from a village on the northern border, and it’s just not safe for them to stay anymore.” The recent influx of rural Kurds to Duhok have placed an incredible strain on public health and education services, which do not have the resources to absorb such rapid growth.
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Although the YBS is affiliated with the PKK, it is not a party in the PKK’s resistance against Turkish oppression of its Kurdish population. Rather, the YBS and other Yazidi militias exist in order to protect the Yazidi people from jihadist organizations such as ISIS, which killed thousands of Yazidis in an attempted genocide, and sold thousands more into slavery. A Kurdish source with decades of experience in the Kurdish Peshmerga militia framed the recent string of Turkish airstrikes within the larger context of Turkish aggression against the Kurdish people over the last 200 years across the territories of the former Ottoman Empire. He emphasized that Iraqi Kurds interpret the bombing campaign as a concerted effort by the Turkish government to prevent all Kurdish groups from growing in strength, whether those groups are a threat to his regime or not.
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FAI field workers in Iraqi Kurdistan have requested ongoing prayer and partnership as the Turkish bombing campaign continues. FAI medical clinics have recently expanded into the Duhok Governate in order to absorb some of the strain on the public heath system. FAI field workers are also providing packs to local children, containing supplies that they need for school, as well as other assistance to the school system in Duhok. Please continue to pray for this important work, and you can sow into it by clicking on the link below.
