BAGHDAD — Violence and sluggish
reconstruction have prevented the return to Iraq’s northwestern town of Sinjar
of its predominantly
Yazidi population after the abuses of Islamist extremist
rule, the Norwegian Refugee Council said Wednesday.
اضافة اعلان
Five years after the defeat of the Daesh, which
committed massacres against the Yazidis and used their women as sex slaves, the
town’s Yazidi, Muslim
Kurdish and Arab residents are no closer to returning
home, especially after a surge in violence earlier this month.
The aid group said that “nearly two-thirds of
Sinjar’s population — over 193,000 Yazidis, Arabs, and Kurds — remain
displaced”.
The Yazidis are a
Kurdish-speaking minority who were persecuted by
Daesh for their non-Muslim
faith after its capture of the town in 2014.
“Widespread destruction of civilian houses, new
clashes, and social tensions” are preventing returns, NRC said in a report.
Out of 1,500 people surveyed by the aid group to
determine how decisions to return home are made, about 64 percent “said their
homes were heavily damaged”. It added that: “A staggering 99 percent of those
who applied for government compensation had not received any funding for damaged
property.”
The aid group called on the Iraqi government and the
authorities in the autonomous Kurdistan region to “prioritize the
rehabilitation of infrastructure and the restoration of services to allow for
safe housing, land, and property, alongside public infrastructure”.
In early May,
fighting broke out between Iraqi troops and Yazidi fighters affiliated with
Turkey’s banned
Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), killing at least one Iraqi
soldier.
More than 10,000 people fled the latest fighting, adding to
the population of displaced.
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