Sinjar: 14 Days to Saving the Yazidis from Islamic State

Shand, a producer at the Voice of America radio network, tells of the “suffering and resilience, hubris and heroism, arrogance and naivete” that ensued when the small community of Yazidis, a religious minority in Iraqi Kurdistan, became the victims of a genocide perpetrated by the Islamic State in 2014. Shand’s blow-by-blow narrative of a two-week period cuts at a breakneck pace between the remote mountain redoubt to which residents of the town of Sinjar fled and Washington, D.C., where Yazidi expatriates in the U.S. tirelessly lobbied officials to help, and generals and diplomats discussed the fate of a people many of them had never previously heard of, half a world away. In Shand’s telling, seduced by the favorable optics of “a tale with contemptible villains and innocent victims” and the opportunity to play the hero, the American government took action and the bulk of the refugees were saved. Readers will need to look elsewhere for details of the Yazidis’ origins, culture, and beliefs, and the broader social and political situation in Iraq and Kurdistan, but this is both a moving tale and an instructive example of combating genocide and ethnic cleansing. Photos. (Sept.)