SINJAR: Since Iraqi forces pushed the Kurds out of the Yazidis’ mountainous heartland of Sinjar in northern Iraq in October, residents are wondering what could happen to them next.

Food and money are in short supply since aid organisations stopped delivery after Iraq’s advance. Buildings collapsed in the fighting and of those still standing, many are marked with bullets and littered with IEDs. Water and electricity barely work.

The Yazidis, whose beliefs combine elements of several ancient Middle Eastern religions, have long been viewed with suspicion and repeatedly persecuted by other groups in Iraq.

In 2014, more than 3,000 were killed by Daesh militants in a campaign described by the United Nations as genocidal.

Now the land they have lived on for centuries is caught up in a tug of war between Baghdad and Iraq’s Kurds, who had controlled it since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

“We’re trapped in this game of political football, between Iraq and the Kurds,” said a Yazidi resident of Sinjar, Kamal Ali. “But neither of them cares about our future.”

The militias have hoisted Iraq’s tricolour flag over government buildings and any remaining Kurdish flags have been scrawled over with the words “Iraq,” the blazing sun at its centre scribbled over in black marker.

Sinjar is politically important because it’s in the disputed territories, ethnically mixed areas across northern Iraq, long the subject of a constitutional dispute between Baghdad and the Kurds, who both claim them.

Sinjar fell under the Kurds’ control, despite lying outside Iraqi Kurdistan’s recognised borders.

Baghdad did little to challenge the arrangement until its October offensive, launched to punish the Kurds for their Sept.25 independence referendum. Iraqi forces have seized the disputed areas the Kurds had expanded into including Sinjar.

The referendum reignited long-simmering tensions over geographic dominance in the oil-rich north, between Baghdad and the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG), who fought side by side to defeat Daesh.

The Yazidis are divided about what should happen now.

Some are glad the Kurds have gone and see an opportunity for increased autonomy now that they are under federal control following the offensive by Iraq’s security forces last October. Kurdish forces handed over Sinjar without a fight to the Lalesh Brigades, a Yazidi militia backed by Baghdad’s paramilitary forces (PMF).

Reuters