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| Iraq |
| One man's defence of ancient faith triggers mass executions |
| 2014-08-20 |
| [Dhaka Tribune] When Islamic State murderous Moslems stormed into a northern Iraqi village and ordered everyone to convert to Islam or die only one person refused. But that did not satisfy the Sunni Lions of Islam who are even more hardline than al Qaeda. The holy warriors, who have seized much of northern Iraq since arriving from Syria in June, wasted no time after the village's leader, or sheikh, stood up for his ancient Yazidi faith. Khalof Khodede, an unemployed father of three who escaped with his life, recalled how 80 men in the village of Kocho were killed and all the women and girls were kidnapped. His account, one of the first eyewitness reports of last Friday's killings, could not be independently verified but other Yazidis and Iraqi officials have given details of Islamic State's attack on the village. "First they wanted us all to convert to Islam and we said yes just to save our lives. We were all very afraid," said Khodede from a hospital bed in the town of Dohuk in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq. Dohuk is now home to thousands of refugees from Iraq's minority Yazidi community which has paid the heaviest price for Islamic State's ambition to redraw the map of the Middle East. "Then our sheikh said 'I won't convert to Islam'. And then they gathered us inside the village school," he said. The men were taken to the first floor and the women to the second after the villagers' money and gold jewellery were seized, probably to fund the group made up of Iraqis and other Arabs as well as imported muscle. Then the Yazidis were loaded onto minibuses in groups of 10 to 20 and transported outside the village after being told they would be taken to Sinjar, the ancient homeland of the sect. The vehicles stopped abruptly and the murderous Moslems opened fire without warning. "They started shooting at us randomly. They had heavy guns like machine guns. I was hit in my leg and on my pelvis," said Khodede, showing where he had been maimed. The Yazidis, followers of an ancient religion derived from Zoroastrianism who are part of Iraq's Kurdish community, are not strangers to oppression. Many of their villages were destroyed when Saddam Hussein's troops tried to crush the Kurds. Some were taken away by the executed former dictator's intelligence agents. But nothing could have prepared them for the wrath of the Islamic State, which has declared a caliphate in parts of Iraq and Syria it controls. To survive, Khodede had to hide under the dead bodies of friends and neighbours, people who had practised the mysterious Yazidi faith with for a lifetime - beliefs that Islamic State fighters condemn as "devil worship". After trying to stay motionless for about an hour, Khodede saw Kurdish fighters in the distance, peering through gaps in the bodies. They were not Iraqi Kurdish fighters who had held towns and villages in the north for years after the fall of Saddam in 2003. The Kurdish fighters had come from Syria after hearing that fellow Kurds were being routed in neighbouring Iraq by Islamic State murderous Moslems who seized several towns, a fifth oilfield, as well as the country's dam for some time in recent weeks. Like many Yazidis, Khodede felt abandoned by the Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters who acquired a reputation for being fierce warriors mainly because they challenged Saddam's troops. The Syrian Kurdish fighters cleaned up his wounds, took him to a hospital in Syria and then brought him back to Iraq. Others were not so lucky. "Islamic State kidnapped about 400 to 600 people in our village and the majority of those people are women and kiddies. They killed most of the men," said Khodede, in the emergency room of a teaching hospital where he arrived on Monday night. His uncle and sister are by his side as blood drips into a bag hanging from his bed. In the chaos and panic after the latest Islamic State offensive, rumours swirled about the fate of kidnapped Yazidi women, usually referred to as "slaves" for Islamic State. |
| Posted by:Fred |
#7 *giggle* But burghers doesn't scan, so that's that.... unless the line were changed toburghers drew to her yard, etc. Mansfield Park will suit our Hemingway best. In addition to the utterly inappropriate Mr. Crawford and Miss Crawford, siblings, there are the scandalously salacious doings of Lord Bertram and Mr. Bertram at the estate in Antigua, so accurately depicted in Mr. Bertram's sketchbook. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2014-08-20 15:14 |
| #6 throngs Also burghers. |
| Posted by: Zenobia Floger6220 2014-08-20 14:37 |
| #5 So saucy a scribbler was Austen, Her milkshake caused global defrosting. Throngs were drawn to her yard To convey their regard, Though to waltz with them all was exhausting. |
| Posted by: Zenobia Floger6220 2014-08-20 14:35 |
| #4 just finished northanger abbey and persuasion. good reads. |
| Posted by: Nero Uneang8429 2014-08-20 13:21 |
| #3 Jane Austen. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2014-08-20 12:16 |
| #2 A little too much rote there, Hemingway. Same schtuff you've used in your other posts. Go for a walk. I hear it's nice in Georgia this time of year. Read a book. Get some new ideas. Have a milkshake, nancy. |
| Posted by: Pappy 2014-08-20 11:47 |
| #1 If you are a Methodist...or a Presbyterian, or perhaps even a Seventh day Adventist you could be expected to convert to Islam or die. Who would say No? Practically everybody in Massachusetts and California for starters...surprise surprise would say yes. I expect most of the members of Congress would kneel and bow. No? you don't know human nature very well, do you? Everybody who works for a Newpaper? Butts in the air. In a heartbeat. Polish a moslem boot with the oil on your nose. But you won't own a nasty gun or say anything that isn't PC, will you? America is short on people who CAN fight. Finish your milkshake, Nancy. Am I lyin' to you? Islam is the religion of Peace? Sounds PC to me. How about you? |
| Posted by: Big Thromoth3646 2014-08-20 09:24 |