Yazidis wary of going back to liberated Sinjar
Liberation of the Yazidi Iraqi town Sinjar from 16 months of IS occupation delighted everyone except thousands of Yazidi refugees who have no intention of going back.
DIYARBAKIR, Turkey — The Shengal Camp along the Diyarbakir-Mardin highway has been animated in recent days. A crowd of people — including Selo Karo, his wife and four children, who have been living in this refugee camp — were waiting at the camp entrance with their bags.
They were waiting for their bus. That bus, however, will be taking them to Istanbul and not to Sinjar. Most of the Yazidis who have escaped to Turkey over mountain trails don’t have passports. They will first apply for passports at the Iraqi Consulate in Istanbul. Then what will they do?
“Sinjar has been liberated, but there are Arab tribes around it. We can’t go back. They can keep Sinjar. We are going to Europe. We will cross the sea. Either we will eat fish or fish will eat us,” Karo told Al-Monitor.
“We had enough of this life. Sinjar was a proper town; they razed it,” Karo added. “We lived in our own houses, now in tents. Nobody has been asking us what happened to [us] for more than a year.” Karo boarded the bus with his family to start a trip for a new hope.
