Loyal? To What/Whom?
"Seventy-five percent of the village was [ISIS]. They stabbed us in the back."
Sgt.-Major Hazem Zedu, Kurdish Peshmerga
"From 2003, in Barzanke some always supported al-Qaedac some supported the Kurds."
"It was, 'I blow up your house, you blow up my house'."
Eissa al-Jabouri, Barzanke, Iraq
"We were called to attend a mosque, and I was so scared I could hardly walk. One of the [ISIS] people told us he was going to kill all of us. At every checkpoint I was thinking, OK, I am on my way to my death."
Abu Sahr, policeman, Sumud, Iraq
In one of two Sunni Arab villages situated on the Kurdish front where the Islamic State jihadists are being fought to a standstill for either side, children play in the street, and families courteously invite strangers in to share tea. The other village is a devastated ruin, its houses crushed, its streets blackened and razed in rubble. These are both, it should be repeated Sunni-dominated villages. And their outcomes in this pitiless onslaught of jihad represents the ultimate dichotomy in social-ideological-political polarities.
Both the villages, Barzanke and Sumud in northern Iraq were taken under siege by the armies of Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham. In the village of Barzanke, the resident Sunnis welcomed the Sunni jihadists calling themselves the Islamic State. Black flags sprouted simultaneously and immediately the Islamic State jihadists took the town amid great jubilation. As Kurdish troops explain it, most of the village residents overwhelming supported the jihadists.
| A Turkish armored personnel carrier patrols on the Turkish-Syrian border in the southeastern town of Suruc, Sanliurfa province, across from the Syrian town of Ain al-Arab, known as Kobani by the Kurds, on Oct. 7 |
And when the Kurdish Peshmerga fought to reclaim the village, the locals were quick to join the jihadists in the defence of the village which they wanted to keep in the hands of the jihadists. But when the Islamic State terrorists were hit from the air and then by tanks they fled. As they fled they took the time to booby-trap the buildings. And this careful attention to a 'scorched earth' revenge left the village in ruin.
Now, not one house remains intact. The outlines of its peaceful existence predating the incursion of the Islamic State clearly resemble an archaeological site, but one entered at one's own risk. The streets are mined and entry is only for the foolhardy.
ISIS in Iraq was formed from a nucleus of jihadi-minded Iraqis along with soldiers formerly with Saddam Hussein's military, furious at their loss of standing after his overthrow, unwilling to live in a fractured country where the Shiite majority lorded it over the once-ruling Sunni minority.
Villages and communities gradually fragmented socially and ideologically along sectarian and tribal lines with many of the locals supporting the jihadists, reasoning that their harsh rule by Sunnis over Sunnis was far preferable to the ignominy and shame of being oppressed and discriminated against by Shiites who were once subservient to the Sunnis.
In Barzanke, as distinct from its neighbouring village Sumud, a small local tribe of Sunnis dominated, and they fought alongside the minority Kurds increasingly. The Al-Jabouri tribe acknowledged as one of the most celebrated anti-jihadist of Arab tribes in the country is dominant in Sumud. When the terrorists arrived in August the residents were terrified, many of whom had served in the armed forces or with the police.
When ISIS entered the village it took possession of every weapon existing there, and coerced the police to swear a formal oath of allegiance in the mosque. The fearful villagers were frightened enough to do just as ordered. Abu Sahr and his friends explained that the men who were charged to run the village while it was in ISIS control were not even Arab, but Turkmen from the town of Tal Afar, captured by ISIS in June.
Though the third-largest ethnic group after Arabs and Kurds, the Turkmen are a minority in Iraq, divided along religious lines, half Sunni, half Shia in their religious identity. Shia Turkmen have been massacred and bombed by ISIS across the north, but Sunni Turkmen joined up with ISIS in large numbers. Ghost villages now line the roads across the north of Iraq; areas outside the Kurdish autonomous region, yet still defended by the Peshmerga.
Labels: Iraq, Islamic State, Kurds, Shiites, Sunnis, Terrorists
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, October 08, 2014
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