In the early morning hours of August 3, 2014, militants of the terrorist organization ISIS, known as the Islamic State, massacred the Yazidi population, leaving lasting consequences. In fact, 10 years after the atrocities committed against Yazidis, thousands of Yazidi women and girls remain missing after they were kidnapped and sold to ISIS in 2014. Meanwhile, dozens of mass graves await exhumation, to identify victims and give a sense of closure to grieving families. Yazidi minority need more than just remembrance, they need continued support to continue their ongoing struggle for reconciliation and justice.

Roots of violence

The rise of ISIS has been years in the making. Although its roots date back to 1999, the terrorist group has manifested itself with increasing force in the early 2010s. The 2004 invasion of Iraq by the U.S. and its allies played a role in this development as it disrupted the political landscape in the Middle East. In addition, post-invasion initiatives such as the process of overthrowing the Baath Party exacerbated instability in Iraq, especially among the Sunni minority.

Along with political turmoil, as Abid Shamdeen wrote, "Yazidi community in Iraq has become more vulnerable due to increased hate speech and misinformation, as well as ongoing targeted religious persecution." In fact, this unique national and religious community of Iraq's Yazidi minority has fallen into disfavor with Islamic religious fanatics genocide and ethnic cleansing of Iraq's Yazidi population has begun. The community has suffered from aggressive stereotyping and mischaracterizations, partly attributed to groups such as ISIL, which have conflated terminology in the Yazidi religion, casting Yazidis in an undeservedly negative light and making them vulnerable to attack.

Even worse for society, crimes against minorities are rarely investigated, creating a sense of impunity among perpetrators. While there are many examples of such cases, one particularly horrific attack is the murder of 23 Yazidis in northern Iraq in 2007. On that fateful day, unknown assailants attacked a group of Yazidis who were returning by bus from a textile factory in Mosul. The attackers separated Yazidis from the other passengers, hijacked the bus, drove it to eastern Mosul, and killed members of the Yazidi minority.

The previously agreed upon withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq in 2010, when more than 150 U.S. bases and facilities were closed, created a power vacuum. Thereafter, "resources to support minorities were removed, leaving the Yazidi community without much protection", Shamdeen wrote. In this context, ISIS attacked and captured the Sinjar region, which at the time had the largest Yazidi population in the world.