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EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

Anger, apprehension haunt ruined Sinjar years after IS ousted

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SINJAR, Iraq: It’s dawn in Sinjar and the only sounds are the footsteps of guards patrolling a golden-domed shrine on a hill overlooking a vista of collapsed rooftops.


More than three years after IS was driven out of this city in northern Iraq, all that remains in the once bustling market are the bomb-scarred facades of shops. Dozens of streets are blocked by metal barrels - a sign of unexploded ordnance that has yet to be cleared.


In a city whose former occupiers slaughtered thousands of minority Yazidis, water is scarce and power intermittent. The closest hospital to reopen is a 45-minute drive away. There are only two schools.


The physical devastation is extreme, but it is not the city’s only challenge. Caught in a power tussle between Iraq’s central government and the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government, the city also struggles with a political impasse.


“It is in ruins. There has been no progress at all,” said Ibrahim Mahmoud Ezzo, 55, the Yazidi owner of about a dozen shops, all of which are damaged.


“There is no mayor and no local council. People are losing billions of dinars in lost business and property every year, they don’t know who to turn to,” he said.


“How long are we supposed to wait?”


Overrun by IS in 2014 and liberated by an array of forces the following year, little has been rebuilt and only a fraction of the population has returned. Residents say both the KRG regional government and the central government have made no effort at construction.


Before August 2014 when the militants overran it, Sinjar had a population of about 100,000. They included Yazidis, a religious minority.


Today only a quarter have returned, all of them Yazidi. The Norwegian Refugee Council says none of the members of the other communities have returned because of a lack of reconciliation.


The Yazidis, 3,000 of whom where killed in an onslaught described by the United Nations as genocidal, say nearby Arab villages and townspeople aided the militants.


In the meantime, people are put off returning by tensions arising from the presence of rival armed groups.


Sinjar lies in a sensitive area straddling the borders of Iraq’s Kurdistan region and neighbouring Syria, Iran and Turkey.


“The PKK are here, the police are here, the Popular Mobilization Units are here, the army is here,” Ezzo said, listing the names of various units of the Iraqi government forces and militias that are in the city and around it.


“We don’t understand what the situation is,” Ezzo said.


The KRG had controlled the region without much objection from Baghdad since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 until 2017 when, in retaliation for an independence bid, the central government pushed out the KRG, its Peshmerga forces and allies, and brought in their own.


These included a paramilitary force, the Popular Mobilization Units known as PMU, as well as the national army and the police.


At their hilltop post, the PMU guard a shrine with a golden dome that can be seen from many parts of the city. IS had destroyed it along with all other religious landmarks.


Despite the hardship, farmers and villagers from Sinjar still gather daily for a sheep auction. Trader Khodida Qassem lit a cigarette as he watched villagers argue about price.


“What you see here is a lot of sheep but no one has the money to buy,” Qassem, 40, said.


Nayef Yazdi, 26, who reopened his store six months ago, says he does not expect things to improve soon. “It is all political,” said Yazdi, who lost a brother and two uncles in the fighting in 2014. Dindar Zebari, the KRG coordinator for international advocacy, said “in Sinjar today, there is no legitimate authority, there are no official and decisive security forces.”


— Reuters


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