Iraq’s Yazidis return home to Sinjar

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• HARI SREENIVASAN:

  More than a year ago, the desperate plight of Iraq`s Yazidi religious minority stranded on Sinjar Mountain helped draw the United States into the war against ISIS in Iraq. The militants are believed to have killed hundreds of civilians from Sinjar and surrounding areas. Is also captured several thousand Yazidi women, whom they systematically enslaved.

  Earlier this month, American airstrikes and Kurdish forces drove ISIS out of Sinjar City, cutting off a main IS supply route to Syria and allowing residents to go back.

  Jane Arraf reports on what some of them have found.

• JANE ARRAF:

  There`s no running water or electricity in Sinjar. Even making tea is a challenge. But Burgess Gharbi and two of his sons have come back every day for the past week to try to get their house in shape for the rest of the family. They were luckier than a lot of Yazidis. No one from their immediate family was killed or captured by ISIS.

  Although his fabric shop was destroyed, there was only minor damage to his home. But it`s still not safe enough to live here.

  BURGESS GHARBI, Shop owner (through interpreter): If the forces advanced a little further we would have been out of mortar range, and a lot of families would have come back as long as we stayed out of mortar range. We were back here two days when a mortar landed over there.

• JANE ARRAF:

  Burgess searched the house for hidden bombs and then he and the boys started repairing and cleaning. It`s a mixed neighborhood of Yazidis and Muslim Kurds. Burgess says he has called his Muslim neighbors and hopes they`ll come back.

  The last time Basima Ismael and her family saw their house they were fleeing ISIS. They`ve come back to Sinjar from Iraq`s Kurdistan region to see if there's anything left to come home to. They spent five years building the house. They'd only lived in it for three. Every room has been damaged and looted.

  They took the TV, the fridge, the freezer and the car. But they did much, much worse.

• ALI QASSIM, Sinjar Resident (through interpreter):

  We Yazidis, Muslims, all the different people of Sinjar were the same. We were living together. They set us against each other and they killed us. We killed each other. They created sectarianism.

• JANE ARRAF:

  The family is Muslim Kurdish in a city of Yazidis and Kurds. In one room, they find the dust-covered Koran. It`s one of the few things ISIS didn`t steal.

  Rayan rescues photographs. With the takeover of Sinjar, that part of his life is now over. Basima retrieves some pots and pans, some blankets, a favorite tea-set, as they put what they can salvage in the taxi.

  A roadside bomb explodes on a nearby street. They get back in the taxi to head for the safer Kurdish region.

  Kurdish forces are busy still fighting ISIS on the other side of the mountain and the city seems lawless. Civilians wander around with guns. Politicians and union leaders drive around posing for photos.

  Apart from fighters, the city is almost deserted. "We`re all going to America," this resident jokes.

  Security forces have placed red flags near some of the roadside bombs left by ISIS but there are a lot more remaining. Along with Kurdish government Peshmerga, there are competing Kurdish forces and Yazidi fighters staking their claim. The city feels as if it`s just waiting for a spark to re-ignite.

  Sinjar has been re-captured, but the challenge now for Kurdish forces is to maintain control. ISIS controls villages to the south of here and there's already looting in the city. So this guard unit has been brought in to maintain security.

  Along these streets, ISIS has marked the homes with graffiti identifying the owners' religion. Some of those marked "Shia" were almost completely destroyed, looted and then set on fire.

  In another area, a misspelled "the Islamic State" remains. This one vowed death to the Kurdish Peshmerga.

  While ISIS was driven out of Sinjar, they are still a threat just a few miles from here.

  Ahmed Ghaib Hussein, the head of a mostly Shia Kurdish neighborhood here, says people won`t come back to the city until some of the surrounding villages are retaken.

  AHMED GHAIB HUSSEIN, Sinjar neighborhood leader (through interpreter): Whether it`s America, Iraq, or Kurdistan, we want them to liberate those areas so people can return to their homes. If these areas are liberated, families will return.

• JANE ARRAF:

  Of the 700 houses in his neighborhood, the owners of only about 100 have come back so far — many just to check on their houses. In between explosives laid by ISIS, and the U.S. and British air strikes, entire sections of the city are destroyed. And as Kurdish and U.S. forces recover more territory from ISIS, there is more evidence of mass killings being uncovered.

  These are human bones — scattered by dogs after being buried in a shallow grave, and placed in this pile by villagers. No one has cordoned off the site, on the outskirts of what Yazidis call Shingal.

• HUSSEIN HASSOLIN, Government Adviser:

  Really, you need to liberate the whole area, the whole Shingal to find out how many massacres. But according to our information, we have discovered already on the north, north part of the mountain, about 11 mass graves, and still here, four official in the south part of the mountain.

• JANE ARRAF:

  Villagers believe at least 22 men are buried in this field. But the Kurds are still trying to identify victims of Saddam Hussein's Anfal campaign from decades ago. And identifying these bodies could take years. Near Sinjar`s technical college, ISIS turned an empty fish tank into a mass grave for Yazidi women they killed.

  Hadi Breem Oulo and his family own the land for miles around here. He says ISIS used dynamite to blow up their houses. They even set fire to the pomegranate and fig trees.

  He says their Arab neighbors were part of ISIS.

• HADI BREEM OULO, Farmer (through interpreter):

  If one Arab stays here in our region, we will not be able to live together, never. Arabs took our mothers and sisters, they took our honor and they sold it. They`ve killed old people. They`ve killed children. There is no way we can all live together.

• JANE ARRAF:

  As dusk falls, these Yazidi men stop to look out over Sinjar. Their village is still held by ISIS, but they were able to see it from a distance.

  Saad Aido was looking for the body of his mother where she died on the mountain. He found only her shoe. But he thanks God they were able to catch a glimpse of their village again. Despite the tragedy, Sinjar is still home.

  For the PBS NewsHour, I'm Jane Arraf in Sinjar, Iraq.