The role of Hasaka's Yazidi House in rescuing genocide survivors.
BY: Lazghine Ya'qoube

Prior to the announcement of the Kurdish –led Autonomous Administration of Rojava, and within the political turmoil prevailing Syria, Yazidis there were preoccupied with something else.
In 2008 the Yazidi community of Hasaka sought to set up a local Yazidi society. However, their efforts fell to the ground as security services of the Syrian regime denied it authorization. The idea was given up, however, temporarily.
With roots found in Mithraism and Mazdaism, the Yazidi religious mythology differs immensely from that of Islam and Christianity in the sense it is a non-missionary sect.
Depoliticized and invisibilzed, Yazidis saw in the so-called Arab Spring, to which Syria had a most substantial part, an opportunity to organize and run their internal and communal affairs.
On May 11, 2012, and after long months of deliberations, the first ever overall conference of Hasaka's Yazidis was convened. The long-awaited idea was materialized.
The ceremony that took place in the ancestral Yazidi village of Qazlachokh in Hasaka, was crowned with the establishment of the Yazidi House of Jazira (Hasaka Region).
The Yazidi House is an aid body that used to spot and bring in captors, give them medical treatment and facilitate their return to Shingal. Structurally, the house is made up of 52 members, 21 of them are females.
Religiously hierarchical and stratified, the idea of Yazidi house(s) is a newly devised one in the Yazidi community. There had never been such houses in the Yazidi culture. The idea was modeled upon those houses set up in diaspora. Elias Sido, a Yazidi House member, who serves as the Co-chair of the Jazira Culture Body said in interview.
The newly born body served as the foundation stone for the Yazidi community in Hasaka for the years to follow substantially helpful for members of the sect in both Syria and Iraq.
The Yazidi house was recognized as an overall umbrella body for all Yazidi institutions in Rojava.
The onslaught on August 3, 2014, by fighters of the Islamic State (ISIS) against the Yazidi ancestral homeland of Shingal resulted in the forcible displacement to Syria of thousands of men, women and children. However, though the majority crossed to Kurdistan Regional Government, many, fearing that ISIS would attack them again, remained on Syrian soil.
With 1,293 people killed in the first days of the ISIS attack, the Islamic State abducted 6417 Yazidis men, women and children, according to figures from the Kurdistan Region's office for Rescuing kidnapped Yazidis. The majority, for strategic de-Yazidization ends, were transported to Syria. The Islamic State wanted Yazidis be separated from their ancestral homelands.
Much of the Yazidi women and girls were squeezed into Baghouz. After the capture by the Kurdish- led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) of Baghouz in March 2019 the House was flooded with Yazidi women, girls and boys.
Since then the house assumes the role of a mediator and a rehabilitation center where those freed from activity are introduced anew to the Yazidi community after long year of family loss, bereavement and sexual enslavement.
In June 2022, Rosetta Haj Baijo from the Shingal village of Tal Qasab was rescued from the al-Hol camp. She was handed over by the Yazidi House to her relatives. However, 2717 (1273 female and 1444 male) Yazidis remain unaccounted for up to date.
Notably, the capture of Baghouz facilitated the return of abducted Yazidis. However, in broader lines, ISIS's territorial loss made finding those still missing a more difficult mission.
The Hasaka Yazidi House was pivotal in rescuing and shielding Yazidi women and girls from captivity of the Islamic State until handed over to their families in Kurdistan Regional Government. In hindsight, it has proven a step in the right direction.
The Yazidi House is the center of activities for the community and is perfectly placed to assist those Yazidis coming out of ISIS captivity as they reunite with their families, Nadine Maenza current President of the International Religious Freedom Secretariat and former head of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), who visited the House on several occasions, said via WhatsApp.
In close collaboration with the Kurdish- led authorities of Rojava, many Yazidis have been rescued from areas as far as Idlib in northwest and Daraa in the southwest.
Farouq Tozo, Co-chair of the Yazidi House says 413 Yazidis were spotted and rescued from Islamic State's captivity by the Yazidi House. Tozo noted that out of the 413, the total of 263 are women and girls and the remainder (150) are boys born to Yazidi fathers and mothers. Children born to fathers affiliated to the Islamic State, however, are not included in this data, Tozo confirmed.
However, the Yazidi House played another role, though not very much brought under the spot, however, substantially important and relevant.
The Mala Ezidiya played an important role in the search for Yazidi children and women in al-Hol camp and cooperated with traditional religious leaders of the community. They also hosted survivors until they could return to Iraq and helped to find foster families for children of Yazidi women who were raped by IS fighters and who were not taken with their mothers to Iraq. Austrian researcher and author Thomas Schmidinger said.
With the bulk of the rescued coming from Baghouz, many of those assumed missing are believed to be held at the notorious al-Hol camp, some 45 kilometers in eastern Hasaka city. Prior to the recently launched security operation, there are though unverified, however, 70 Yazidi women, at least, are believed to be held in the al-Hol camp, Farouq Tozo claims.
These either fear to disclose their true identities, or are not willing to do so, among other, they want to keep their ISIS born children.
The Yazidi House proved crucial in the aftermath of the fall of Baghouz in that it embraced and rendered medical treatment to Yazidi survivors and reuniting them with their families in Shingal. However, something is lucking.
The U.S. and the international community should be giving them more financial resources as they support their own community still recovering from genocide, Maenza said.
In the past, Syrian Yazidis were invisiblized and remained in the darkness, now they unreservedly and openly celebrate their religious festivals and observe all the community's rituals and cultural festivities, however, their existential presence in their ancestral homelands strikingly remains a threatened one.
With conversions are not allowed and outer marriages are severely punished by the community, the Yazidi belief in maintaining ancient bloodlines and self-containment combined with the disallowance of new converts is causing the Yazidi religion to disappear.
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