Jan Ilhan Kizilhan 1, Thomas Berger , Laura Sennhauser and Thomas Wenzel
Background: The genocide against the Yazidis by the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham (#ISIS# ) in the Sinjar area of Northern Iraq has costed many lives and has also caused a psychological long-term impact in this minority. This impact can be seen among individual survivors. Additionally, there is a large number of direct and indirect victims and for this reason, the impact can also be observed on the level of the group and society in this region at large.
Methodology: The research examines three different population groups (Yazidis members who had been exposed to violence by terrorist group actions, those not exposed to this experience as they were living in an area not directly exposed to ISIS violence, and a control group of non – Yazidi general population members). In total, 425 participants (age range 15–78) took part in the study and participated in interviews using standard scales to measure general physical and mental health.
Results: The results demonstrate that psychological stress and suicidality are higher among the Yazidis survivors of violence than in the other Yazidi participants.
Conclusion: Psychological disorders after a genocide and war in post-conflict populations should receive more attention in the planning of mental health care and prevention and should be seen as a major problem, especially in camp settings and displaced persons besides the usual increased prevalence of posttraumatic stress and other disorders covered by research so far in this context.
Introduction
The Yazidis are a small ethnic-religious minority group which is spread over several Middle Eastern countries including Iraq, Syria, Armenia, Georgia and Turkey (Maisel, 2008). They speak Kurdish and most of them consider themselves ethnic Kurds, although some communities prefer identifying themselves as Yazidis with their own ethnic and religious identity (Kreyenbroek and Omarkhali, 2016). There are about 800,000–1,000,000 Yazidis worldwide (Cetorelli et al., 2017), the largest group of about 400,000 Yazidis lives in Northern Iraq in the area of Mount Sinjar in Nineveh governorate (Maisel, 2008). They practice one of the oldest religions, notably Yazidism, which contains elements of Islam, Christianity, Judaism and Zoroastrianism (Cetorelli et al., 2017) and is passed on orally (Kizilhan, 2014). Many derogative prejudices exist against the Yazidi community, one of them being the wrong accusation of engaging in “devil-worshipping” (Maisel, 2008). For this reason, they are considered as “Devil Worshippers” and not regarded as “Followers of the Book” by radical Muslims (Kizilhan, 2017a). Yazidis have been victims of persecution, forcible conversion to Islam and systematic murder for many centuries. In the last 800 years, 74 genocides against this minority group have been perpetrated (Kizilhan, 2017a). The Yazidis have been particularly affected by massacres due to their religion and their secluded settlement areas in the Sinjar Mountains (Kizilhan et al., 2020a) and the lack of protection (Maisel, 2008). For these reasons, it can be argued that the group as a whole has been exposed to a “genocidal environment” with far reaching, also trans-generational impact (Kizilhan et al., 2022), while other groups in the region were not exposed to transgenerational, multiple genocides.
In August 2014, ISIS attacked the Sinjar region of Northern Iraq (Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic, 2016). The Yazidis were forced to seek refuge on Mount Sinjar (Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic, 2016). More than 3,000 of them were killed and almost 7,000 kidnapped (Cetorelli et al., 2017). Thousands of Yazidis were tortured, suffered inhuman and degrading treatment, were held hostage, or were forced to convert to Islam. Young boys were separated from their families and placed with ISIS fighters and women and young girls were raped and sold on Arab markets (Cetorelli et al., 2017; Kizilhan, 2017a). Many of those who managed to flee remained trapped in tremendous circumstances without water, food, shelter, and enduring extreme temperatures and were killed or kidnapped if they could not flee in time. They were evacuated between the 9th and 13th of August and finally managed to flee through Syria into the KRI (Yazda, 2017). The majority was displaced in camps in the KRI, others settled in camps in Syria or Turkey (Daloglu, 2014; Sidky and Rummery, 2014). While some Yazidis returned to their home villages (Spencer, 2015), many of them found asylum in foreign countries including Germany or Turkey (Tekin et al., 2016; Kizilhan, 2017a). But the biggest part still lives as internally displaced people (IDP) in so-called IDP camps or informal settlements (Yazda, 2017). Most of the severely traumatized Yazidi women live in one of the 24 refugee camps near Dohuk and Zakho in the KRI. Each camp consists of up to 28,000 IDP (Kizilhan and Noll-Hussong, 2017). There are an estimated 360,000 Yazidis who have lived in camps for IDP in the KRI (Yazda, 2017). Not only did the Yazidis experience their own individual trauma, but they also experiences a collective and transgenerational trauma which is passed on to the next generations (Kizilhan and Wenzel, 2020)...[1]
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