Yazidis are slaughtering Muslim Arabs who helped ISIS kill them

Members of Iraq's Yazidi minority (pictured) have been accused of carrying out
attacks on Sunni Muslim villagers they believe helped Islamic State commit atrocities.

What Goes Around Comes Around

Members of Iraq's Yazidi minority have been accused of carrying out revenge attacks on Sunni Muslim villagers they believe helped Islamic State commit atrocities on their community last year.

Arabs living in Sinjar in Iraq's Nineveh province say groups of heavily armed Yazidis have made four raids on the villages over the past two weeks, leaving 21 people dead and a further 17 missing.

Yazidis, whose ancient religion has elements of Zoroastrianism, Christianity and Islam, suffered grievously after ISIS' rapid offensive last year. Hundreds were killed and thousands captured, enslaved and raped by the Sunni Muslim militants, who consider Yazidis devil worshippers. 

Yazidis returning to their homes in Sinjar are uncovering one mass grave after another in the area - evidence of ISIS rule there from last August until its fighters were driven out late last year.

Now some Yazidis are striking back. 

More than a dozen Sunni Arab residents have told journalists that armed groups of Yazidis raided four of their villages in Sinjar two weeks ago, killing at least 21 people. A further 17 went missing.

'It was an act of revenge by the Yazidis,' said 41-year-old Dhafer Ali Hussein from Sibaya, one of the affected villages. 

'The aim is to expel Arabs from the area so that only Yazidis remain: they want to change the map.'

The identity of the Yazidi assailants is unclear because there are several competing forces fighting ISIS in Sinjar, with them all blaming each other for the raids.

But what is certain is that the reprisals expose how ISIS; incursion created divisions between communities that had coexisted for decades, turning one village against another and making enemies of former friends. 

They also show the risk of similar violence when other groups displaced by ISIS, such as Shi'ite Turkmen and Shabak, Christians and Kakais, are able to return home.

Amid ISIS' brutal rape and slaughter of the Yazidis, those who could fled in the summer heat in an exodus that prompted U.S.-led airstrikes against the jihadists in both Iraq and Syria.

Over the past week, the remains of more than 40 Yazidis who had been unable to leave before the arrival of ISIS were discovered in two bloodstained pits in northwest Iraq.

Read more: Daily Mail 

A skull is seen resting on the ground a day after at a mass grave
containing the remains of members of the Yazidi community
killed by ISIS is uncovered.

Grim task: Kurdish forces found the remains of about 25 men,
women and children of the Yazidi minority killed by the Islamic
State in the grave while searching for explosives left
behind by the terror group.

Terrorized Yazidi refugees flee Islamic killers.

Not Approved by Allah
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The Yazidis live primarily in the Nineveh Province of Iraq. Additional communities in Armenia, Georgia, and Syria.
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.Their religion has links to Zoroastrianism and ancient Mesopotamian religions. Yazidis are monotheists, believing in God as creator of the world, which he has placed under the care of seven holy beings or angels, the chief of whom is Melek Taus, the Peacock Angel, who, as world-ruler, causes both good and bad to befall individuals, an ambivalence reflected in myths of his own temporary fall from God's favor, before his remorseful tears extinguished the fires of his hellish prison and he was reconciled with God. They venerate Sheikh Adi ibn Musafir whose shrine is at Lalish.
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