Desperate Iraqi Yazidis Flee into Syria After Kurdish Forces Secure Escape Route

[Comrade Grumpy]

Source: Washington Post

BAGHDAD — Thousands of desperate Iraqi Yazidis who have been trapped by Islamist extremists on a parched mountaintop for almost a week trekked Friday into Syrian territory, seeking refuge in another war-ravaged country.

Some managed to collect water and food that had been dropped overnight by U.S. planes before heading northwest on a 12-mile walk across mountains and desert to the Syrian border. There, Syrian Kurdish forces waited to transport them to refugee camps or to safe crossings back into the Kurdish region of Iraq.

Mount Sinjar had become a prison for as many as 40,000 civilians who fled to its barren peaks to escape Islamic State fighters who seized the surrounding area last weekend. The Yazidis’ plight — and warnings that children and the elderly were dying — caused international outrage and prompted Washington to conduct humanitarian airdrops for the stranded Yazidis and airstrikes against the militants, to prevent what President Obama described as an attempted genocide.

The followers of the ancient Yazidi religion are particularly vulnerable to the Islamic State extremists, who consider the sect’s members apostates and have vowed to exterminate them.

Kurdish forces from Iraq, Syria and Turkey organized the evacuations and were positioned along the escape route to protect refugees from the extremists. The organizers said Friday that around 20,000 people had been rescued from the area but most from hideouts in the vicinity of Mount Sinjar, rather than on the mountain.

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Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/desperate-iraqi-yazidis-flee-into-syria-after-kurdish-forces-secure-escape-route/2014/08/08/817a17ad-233a-4ee9-935e-820eb53594e4_story.html

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You know things are bad when people are FLEEING INTO SYRIA!

[Comrade Grumpy]

1. They're fleeing to the protection of the PKK and YPG.

Those are Kurdish guerrilla groups, designated as terrorist organizations by our State Department.

This just keeps getting stranger and stranger. In a bad sort of way.

[Ex Lurker]

2. The Peshmerga are pretty salty, and have Green Berets assisting and advising

who will be up close to the action, regardless of any official US policy about "no boots on the ground." That, plus air power will probably turn the tide in the north. Now the Iraqi government needs to get its shit together in the south. That may take Iranian assistance. Like you said, stranger and stranger.

[Uncle Joe]

3. I don't believe it's bad so much as the jelling of a new reality.

There seems to be a recognition, at least for the time being that IS poses a greater danger to the region and peoples are crossing ethnic and national lines to stabilize the situation.

[quadrature]

4. setting Syria on fire, was a mistake ...nt

[Comrade Grumpy]

5. Absolutely, and one in which our government was involved.

Although the majority of the credit goes to Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar.

The attempt at regime change in Syria--that has been US policy for several years now--has created the conditions for ISIS to flourish.

Of course, we also did our part by invading Iraq, setting off a Sunni rebellion there, and giving Al Qaeda in Iraq a chance to grow up and now morph into ISIS.

[roamer65]

6. I don't think we have much choice but to fully arm the Peshmerga.

ISIS needs to be contained or eliminated.