The Pandora's box Bush opened in Iraq: civil wars!

[ProSense]

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Massive Attack on Yazidis Kills nearly 200

The BBC says that Ninevah Province police are reporting that three car bombs targeted a Yazidi village in northern Iraq near Sinjar not far from the Syria border. One of them was a fuel truck. The bombings destroyed buildings and 175 are now being reported dead, with 200 wounded. The death toll is expected to rise.

Yazidis were targeted by Sunni gunmen last April, in part because of a clan feud sparked by a Juliet and Romeo star-crossed romance between a Yazidi young woman and a Sunni man.

This massive bombing is likely to be the work of the Sunni Arab guerrilla movement, which has been blocked from carrying out such destabilizing operations in Baghdad itself by Gen. Petraeus's efforts. The point is to spread generalized fear. It may be that Salafi Jihadis are also especially targeting non-Sunni populations in the north, since that has the double value to them of also punishing lack of orthodoxy.

From the Reuters article linked above:

MOSUL/BAGHDAD,, 23 April 2007 (IRIN) - MOSUL/BAGHDAD,, 23 April 2007 (IRIN) - Members of the Yazidi religious minority have asked the Iraqi government and international NGOs to protect them after gunmen on Sunday killed 23 Yazidis in Mosul, northern Iraq.

"It is unacceptable because Yazidis, in addition to being a minority in Iraq, have been discriminated against for their beliefs and are forced to isolate themselves to stay alive," Hebert Yegorova, a spokesman for Yazidi Peace Association, said.

"The attack against the sect was clear after the gunmen asked Christians to leave the bus in which the Yazidi workers were, shooting to death only people from our community," he added.

Yazidis are members of a culturally Kurdish, syncretistic religious group, which is neither Christian nor Muslim, who worship an angelic figure considered by some Muslims and Christians to be the devil. The group is pre-Islamic. While most of its adherents live in northern Iraq, smaller communities live in Syria, Iran, Turkey, Armenia, Georgia and Russia.

"Whatever we worship doesn't affect the normal lives of Iraqis and as we respect their beliefs, we have to have ours respected too," Yegorova said. "We don't worship the devil but they are confusing terminologies and this is unfair."

More on the Yazidis.


Be patient. In a "decade or so" this will end

[MADem]

1. Not civil wars....HOLY war.

This shit goes back a-ways. Now they've got defacto "permission" to take the gloves off.

[ProSense]

2. Agree, this one certainly is. n/t

[ProSense]

3. Kick! n/t