Part -1

A small village, simple people and they are at the same distance from everyone, love illuminated their nights and their rivers pass while they are busy with their works, they participated in Yazidi’s social and religious rituals, and all the Yazidis were participating in their rituals.

In front of everyone’s eyes, and suddenly the light in the village turned to darkness, and the darkness became blacker completing the series of the painful August for Yazidi community, and August 15th became another black spot on the whiteness of Shangal.

Kojo and the simplicity of life

the hands of the village’s people were not leaving the dirt and they are plowing it, the hands of the mothers were not getting tired of raising livestock and doing simple daily homework, due to not having the power, she was unable to escape from the beneath of dirt of the mass graves in Solax village, located in east of Shangal district.

Except the whiteness Shangal wore entirely, Kojo had a special whiteness for men, women, old, and young , There were athletes in Kojo, soldiers, farmers, students and graduators, life did not smile at them, but rather perished them and took them to eternal sleep.

The Geographical location

Kojo was one of the small villages in Shangal, it was far away about 20 km from Shangal, it was far from Yazidi villages ,locates at Arab borders, Hatimiye village was the nearest Yazidi villages to it, and separate them by about ten kilometres.

The lands of the village were suitable for agriculture and therefore most of its people were working in agriculture and depended on it as a primary source of livelihood and to obtain a livelihood.

Village Residents

The entire village were from the Yazidi component, and they lived in mud houses, worked continuously to keep life going normally, Most of the people of the village were relatives, so the village was like a small community in it’s own.

According to statistics approved by the United Nations, the population of the village was 1,700 people of both genders and of all ages, when IS attacked the village there were about 1,200 person in the village only a handful of them survived.

Kojo and ISIS attack

Life was going on normally in Shangal, including the village of Kojo, When ISIS invaded Nineveh province in north-western Iraq, and due to the close distance between Kojo and the areas that ISIS controlled, there was a greater dangers on the village, but it resisted until ISIS’s occupation of Shangal district.

The ISIS movement was waving around the village because it was located between Al-Ba’aj district, which was occupied by ISIS at that time, and Qairanwn sub-district, which was also occupied by ISIS, affiliated to Shangal district.

Due to its far distance from Shangal district, people of the village, on August 3, 2014 could not flee towards the mountain like other villages and compounds in Shangal, except a number of families they continued to practice their lives amid a great fear , under the control of the terrorist organization ISIS.

Even though ISIS control on the village, a small number not more than 10 people managed to flee the village choosing freedom over the darkness of ISIS , they managed to get freedom and their souls on their paws.

Ezidi24.com