"40 trenches terrifies ISIS" .. Uncle Nimr recounts part Şingal stroy

Every Firman (Genocide) the Yezidis were subjected to, left with him a painful past and an unclear future, but the last one broke this rule, and it was the first time, their pain turned into a new life, the elderly Yezidis saw that a great hope, including uncle Nimr and the people of his village Khirbati.

31 July, 2021 00:13

Nojyian Berivan -Şingal

Nimr Khalaf Darwish, known as uncle Kaka, from Tel Aziz village, born in 1942. He is originally from the Yazidi "Faqira Zaroor" clan, from the village of Khirbi Qawala.

Uncle Kaka's personality is very cheerful and kind. He is now 79 years old. He currently lives in the village of Tel Aziz, south of Mount Şingal.

The elderly are always like large libraries, with many stories, novels and experiences that tell a long history of the region, Uncle Nimr is a “living library”, but his talk about the last Firman is all we want talk about now.

The uncle, despite his old age, but he is still very energetic. He hosted us in a large room. despite the heat of July. We drank tea with him before we started our conversation with him about what they fought during the Firman .

When the Yazidis cozied up to Mullah Mustafa Barzani...

In his words, Uncle Kaka mentioned a history of what the Yazidis were subjected to, he says 50 to 60 years ago, the Yazidi community was cozying up to the Kurdistan Democratic Party, so they were harassed by the Baath Party in Iraq.

The Baath Party demanded that the Yazidi soldiers surrender all their weapons, and within one day they took 1,500 weapons from them, and two months on, they increased their practices against them. They formed 14 compounds of the Yazidis alone, cutting off fresh water from them, providing them with murky water.

Uncle Nimr said that the regime said, "The Yezidis should not drink from Iraq's fresh water," and indicated that all these practices were due to the Yezidis' closeness to Mullah Mustafa Barzani.

He stated that each family was given only 400 Iraqi dinars, and they were sent them to the wilderness. (i.e., the complexes that were established after they were expelled from their villages), and there they suffered so much that their children almost suffocated from the severity of the dust.

All of that was because of the KDP, which abandoned them. The Yazidis sacrificed 1500 martyrs in many battles at that time. The uncle touched on the agreements of the PDK and the Iraqi government against Şingal.

Kill those who do not convert to Islam

Whoever listens to Uncle Nimr's talk, will be greatly affected by it, especially when he talks about what the KDP." The Turks are against us, the Peshmerga fled from Şingal, and they collected weapons from the area and abandoned us.”

Everyone hatched against us, "The Yazidis' bread and water are forbidden; enslaving their women is a path to paradise; this is our situation in Iraq."

He continued, for what his father had done, today Masoud hatched against the Yezidis again, and he himself said, "The Yezidis must become Muslims Kurds and not Arabs," but Uncle Nimr commented on this: No one can ask us to follow his religion, it is not permissible to force anyone to convert to another religion, God did not command that, God called that you adhere to the teachings of your religion, and when your grandchildren are satisfied with your religion that you have chosen, God is satisfied with you.

40 trenches terrified ISIS..."We will make our own history"

About the beginning of the Firman in 2014, Uncle Nimr confirmed that they were alert afraid of ISIS gangs. Before the ISIS attack, the uncle was living in the village of Khirbi Qawala, east of Tel Aziz, so far from it that the houses of the two villages are adjacent.

He indicated that they realized the seriousness of the situation before the attack, and the villagers dug 40 trenches, each of them has the capacity for two or three people along one of the lands of Khirbi Qawala. The digging went on for 40 continuous days. They removed the dirt from around so that no one can know that it had been newly dug.

It was supervised by (Bir Qiro). He gave instructions that when their vehicles approached the trenches the attack should begin, indicating that the tanks should also be taken into account so that if the trenches were bombed, the plan would fail.

Uncle Nimr mentioned a talk between them during the preparation of the resistance.

Uncle Nimr: You know that they will not leave one of us alive, and the others around us will not come to support us, as everyone is holding on to the dollars offered by Barzani, and they will not come with us.”

Bir Qiro said: So be it, near us there is a stronghold of ISIS, we too will make our own history.

Uncle Kaka: So, annihilate us all.

Under those conditions and when some bullets were fired at night by the mercenaries, they realized that there were people coming out of the ground and did not dare approach the trenches.

Also in the morning, they could not approach because they were afraid of the trenches.

The ISIS headed towards the village of Karzark, which is only half a kilometer from Tel Aziz, and the majority of its people are from the Qirani clan.

Uncle Nimr, he said, during the ISIS attack on the Qiranis, they did not leave their defensive lines in the trenches for fear that ISIS would take advantage of that and launch an attack on Tel Aziz as well, and confirmed that they saw 12 ISIS cars full of them heading towards Karzark.

Their decision was to withstand until the end against ISIS, and he continued, "Every minute was like an hour, and the hours are long. the day does not end, anticipation and curiosity about what will happen, eyes are open and ears are attentive."

Late at night, the uncle and his men heard a great noise coming from Tel Aziz, the sound was very close to them, again they were watching what was around them but no one appeared.

Then the sun rose up, lighting up around them, they receive a call from someone who said to them, "Come, we are in the nearby village of Jadalah, the men next to us are also gone."

According to what the uncle said, the “martyr Eliyas” had tried very hard to drive them away from there by cars and tractors, but they did not go, at first, they put the children and women in the cars and called out to them.

According to Uncle Nimr, a conversation took place between him and the martyr Elias:

Eliyas: Come on, let's go.

Nmr: I won't go.

Eliyas: Why don't you go.

Nimr: By God, I will not come down from this hill even if I am killed here.

Eliyas: We won't go without you.

Nimr: How can you not go? You will be captured by ISIS.

Elias: We swear we won't go either.

According to him, he walked towards the car in order to save what was left in the cars.

He said that he promised not to leave his place, "I will not leave my place alive. My grandfather told me if you stick to your place, ten men will attack you, nine of them will die. Never leave your comrades in a time of need."

Uncle Nimr and those with him all left the village of Khirbi Qawala and saved themselves. After a while, ISIS entered the village, but there was no one there. The entire village was evacuated thanks to the trenches that had been dug, so ISIS was defeated.

During the ISIS attack on the village, a big massacre was committed, and until now many mass graves are still discovered around the village, the effects of the Firman are still alive as if they were yesterday, some Şingal people were lucky and saved themselves.

Uncle Nimr and those with him arrived at the mountain. Then they headed through the humanitarian corridor to Dêrik in Rojava, but he could only wait 20 days away from Şingal.

In the twenty days he spent in Dêrik, he missed Şingal very much, and he thought that about a thousand families of his clan Zaro were still stuck in the mountain and they would blame him, and he decided to return to his land.

With a group of men and young men, they left behind 18 tents from their families in Derek and headed to Şingal. They reached the village of Kursi, near Sardashti, at the top of Şingal. At that time, the guerrilla forces had not yet reached that village, and there they set up tents for themselves.

Without the PKK, none of us would be left

Undoubtedly, the hopes of the Yazidis from those around them were in vain. All of them hatched against them.

When Firman took place on August 3, 2014, a great massacre occurred. Whoever saved himself remained alive, whoever was killed was killed, and many got lost and left Şingal and did not return yet.

Uncle Nimr when he talks about those days, pain and sadness accompany his speech, and he says if they were late after that, no one would come out alive from the Firman.

In this Firman, we almost all died of hunger and thirst, the comrades came to us (referring to the guerrilla fighters), they opened the way for us to Rojava. Some of us had not eaten anything for two days. We didn't expect to arrive safely at Dirk."

And now they say why do you stand with the PKK, but how can we deny their help. They are the ones who saved us from death. we may not know what will happen in the end, but we Yazidis say, “The basis is God and what happens in the end.”

We must unite

Throughout history, the Yezidis have been subjected to hundreds of Firmans (genocidal campaigns), but only 74 are mentioned.

What the Yazidi community was exposed to created a great division, and the greater the division, the greater the pain is.

Uncle Nimr pointed out that the division is the main reason behind the sufferings of the Yazidis, and indicated that "dissociation from oneself blocks the way to freedom and creates disagreement."

When the uncle talks about the existing division, he draws attention to the practices of some in favor of the enemies of the Yazidi community and says: In order for the Yazidis to live a life full of love, they must support each other and unite their ranks against everyone who tries to exterminate their language, culture and faith.

(A)

ANHA