After the liberation of Kobani from the Islamic State (IS), which was achieved following a 134-day Kurdish resistance, the focus is now on Mount Sinjar, the Yazidi area on Iraq’s border with Syria. Cooperation between Kurdish forces in Kobani in the Sinjar region has been replaced by bitter rivalry, which is delaying the liberation of the area.

Yazidis, who speak Kurdish, live in various settlements on the foothills of the Sinjar Mountains, about 120 kilometers (74.5 miles) west of Mosul. While roughly 300,000 Yazidis live in Iraq, it is estimated — exact figures are not available — that the number of Yazidis totals 700,000-800,000 worldwide including those living in Syria, Turkey, Germany, Russia, Belarus, Armenia and Georgia. For the Yazidis, who have been under pressure for a long time to convert or at least to submit to the established order, the Sinjar Mountain range is their only refuge.

Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had forced the evacuation of the villages in the foothills of the Sinjar Mountains by moving the Yazidis to settlements called "mucemma." Sinjar, which was referred to by the 2005 Iraqi Constitution as a disputed area whose status had to be defined with a census and referendums, had come under the Kurdish peshmerga forces after the US invasion in 2003 and regained its Kurdish identity. But the identity conflict in the Arab, Kurdish and Yazidi triangle was never reconciled. The Kurdish-language courses that the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) organized in Sinjar were strongly criticized by the Baathist Yazidis.

On Aug. 3, 2014, unexpected disengagement of peshmerga forces from clashes with IS in Sinjar seriously tarnished the prestige of the president of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and the chairman of the KDP, Massoud Barzani.