SURGE IN MIGRATION: Why Yazidis are still leaving Iraq, years after IS was defeated

After nearly four decades in the Yazidi-majority town of Sheikhan, Hadi Dubani, 57, and his family are leaving for Germany. Many of his other friends and family had already gone.

“IS [the extremist group known as the Islamic State] destroyed everything for us, they turned our lives upside down,” Dubani said. “I never imagined I would leave the land I grew up on. But many factors pushed us to this point: Security, fear of the future, discriminations, and the absence of justice.”

Dubani served as director of the Yazidi Endowment in Duhok for nearly seven years and he warns that if emigration was easier, most Yazidis would simply up and leave. There are already far fewer members of the ethno-religious group in cities they historically occupied, he pointed out.

It all started in August 2014 when the extremist Islamic State, or IS, group attacked cities and towns in northern Iraq. This included many in Yazidi-majority areas. The IS group saw the Yazidis as infidels because they practice a religion that is not one of those of “the book” — that is not Muslim, Christian or Jewish. The IS group would go on to kill thousands of Yazidis and kidnap and enslave thousands more. Those who could, fled — either elsewhere in the country or abroad.

According to the Directorate of Yazidi Affairs in the semi-autonomous northern region of Iraqi Kurdistan, around 550,000 Yazidis remain in Iraq today. About 360,000 left the area during and after the IS attacks, and another estimated 100,000 have emigrated to other countries.

The district of Sheikhan had traditionally been a Yazidi stronghold as it is home to the minority’s most sacred temple in Lalish, a site of pilgrimage for Yazidis everywhere.

Dubani remembers when he first moved to Sheikhan in the early 1970s.

“At that time, there were only three Muslim families and a few Christians,” he counts. But thanks to political changes that saw the central Iraqi political party, the Baath party, move Muslim Arabs into the area, things began to change in the 1990s.

Before the IS group’s attacks, Yazidis made up around 90% of the population. Now its thought they only constitute around 30% of locals here.

“The migration of Yazidis has not spared a single household in Sheikhan,” says local community leader Falah Hassan. He says that over 100 houses in his neighborhood were either abandoned or rented out after 2014. A lot of Yazidi families sold their homes at way below market prices just so that they could leave. The IS group never captured Sheikhan but the fear that they might, caused many to flee anyway.

Before the IS period in 2014, only a few families left every year. But after 2014, migration surged, Hassan explains.

“We lived a stable life until everything changed.” Dubani says, adding that he and his family had to sell much of their property in order to be able to leave.

There are also other reasons why Yazidis are continuing to choose to leave Iraq, even though the threat of IS has been more or less removed. The Iraqi government declared military victory over the group in 2017.

There are still security fears, Dubani explains, but also economic struggles, a lack of opportunities and ongoing discriminations.

Local researcher Mohammed Aref says that an influx of jobseekers from other Iraqi communities has left the Yazidis here feeling marginalized. The federal government also confiscated land after the IS group was defeated, and then sold it, which also has escalated demographic change.

Many Yazidis now feel like second-class citizens at home, community leaders argue.

The mayor of Sheikhan, Khalid Narmo, says people are leaving because of a lack of security and representation. “Yazidis were targeted for their identity and as a result a number of European countries offered asylum,” he explained.

In order to halt the exodus, leaders like Narmo and others say that trust needs to be rebuilt and that the Yazidi people need to be properly represented in the government. In turn that would facilitate economic development, job creation and the provision of state services.

The community also needs modern schools and hospitals, Jawhar Ali Begg, a spokesman for the Yazidi community, has said. He thinks these facilities would also help people decide to stay.

Yazidi man Qidar Namar, who’s been living in Germany for some time now, isn’t so sure. “Ninety percent of Yazidis who emigrate leave because they don’t feel safe in Iraq anymore,” he argues. “Not because of poverty.”

This investigation was completed under the supervision of the NIRIJ Investigative Reporting Network as part of the “Investigative Journalism for Detection and Follow-up” project and is being republished in coordination with Al Menasa network.