US sponsored War Crimes in Iraq: Yazidis, The People of the Peacock Angel by Felicity Arbuthnot

[Joanne98]

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“The earth’s trees have become tears of heaven’s cheeks…. The flower that tempted the wind to carry its perfume, died yesterday.” Ali Ahmad Said, Victims of a Map, Saqi Books *

When the Mongol hordes invaded what is now Iraq, Gengis Khan is: “ …said to have declared: ‘all cities must be razed, so that the world may once again become a great steppe, in which Mongol mothers will suckle free and happy children.’” **

This was the twelfth century “war on terror” and it is not delusional to witness what has happened to Iraq since March 2003: the destruction of an entire civil society, history, records, education, health, life, to draw the parallels. “We fight them over there, so we don’t have to fight them over here” is the Capitol Hill mantra, regarding a society with no weapons of mass destruction, unable even to board a ‘plane from Iraq, during the thirteen year pre-invasion embargo. A people, the majority of which, just prayed their baby would be born whole and healthy and survive to adulthood, in a country where medicines, surgical equipment and therapeutic aids were vetoed by the US and UK - and where hyper-inflation was such that many families ate in rotation, one giving up food for a day, so the others would have a little more.

A thousand years before the Mongol invasion, the region had developed a “sophisticated civilisation” with “innovations in literature, science, art and civil engineering … gardens, irrigation systems, libraries; ornate palaces flourished. With the Mongol onslaught, all were ‘comprehensively looted’, the region depopulated. Men, women and children were butchered, not alone by the Mongols, but by willing and unwilling collaborators they brought with them: ‘..whole cities lay in ruins.’ Those not slaughtered fled a reign of terror, where culture and creativity had previously dominated.” How history repeats.

The latest slaughter for whom the occupiers are responsible (as occupying forces, all be it illegally, the American and British forces are responsible for the safety of and provision of essential services to the population) is that of at least five hundred Yazidis, in the north west Sinjar region, on 14th August. Four truck bombs left three settlements “looking as if a nuclear explosion” had occurred. At least fifteen hundred are estimated to have been injured, according to Dr Said Hakki of the Iraqi Red Crescent - and history has again repeated itself.

Previous attacks against the Yazidis were under another ruthless invasion, that of the Ottomans, when they were subjected to twenty major massacres, between 1640 and 1910. “Liberated” Iraq, whose, health services, education and infrastructure, until the embargo, were the envy of the region and where safety was pretty well guaranteed - the absolute exception being if opposition politics were indulged in - has, at every level, been returned by America and Britain’s hordes, backwards to Mesopotamian history’s darkest eras.

Washington’s knee jerk reaction to the Yazidi bloodbath was, of course, to blame “Al Qaeda”, then to state that: “Extremists continue to show to what lengths they will go to stop Iraq from becoming a stable and secure country.” Then, of course, that they would “track down those responsible”. Is there intelligent life anywhere by the Potomac? They were “suicide bombers”. Thus dead.

It would be interesting, to know though, how the US army knew within minutes that “two tons of explosives” were involved.

Indisputable is that truck bombs, car bombs, suicide bombers, beheadings, kidnappings, the daily toll of bodies found bound and terribly tortured and dumped in the great biblical rivers, in streets, the Sunni-Shia “divide”, all came in with the US-UK invasion and the murderous militias they brought with them.

Why the gentle, pastoral Yazidis? This ancient sect, whose beliefs are drawn from Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Zoroastrianism and Mandeanism, of whom there are believed to be only 750,000 worldwide, have their largest population in the Sinjar highlands in Iraq’s northern Nineveh Province, a little west of Mosul and the remains of the equally ancient town Tel Afar, decimated, Falluja-like, in a pre “surge” “pacification”.

This previously religiously and ethnically mixed region is a microcosm of pre-invasion Iraq, known for its welcome and peaceful co-existence. The prophet Jonah is believed buried in the great Mosque which overlooks Mosul, whilst Saint Matthew is believed buried in the Christian Monastery, on the top of Mount Maqloub, nearby. Both were places of pilgrimage and wonder, for Muslim and Christian alike.

The place of pilgrimage for Yazidis worldwide, in late August, is the shrine at Lalish, nearby, of Sheikh Adi (died 1162) believed to be the reincarnation of their deity Malak Ta’us: The Peacock Angel. “

The Yazidis have throughout history, been often wrongly interpreted as “Devil worshippers. Their belief in fact should be a lesson to all: no soul is beyond hope. Malak Ta’us WAS the Devil, who REPENTED. After he fell from grace, he filled seven urns of tears, over seven thousand years, tears that were used to extinguish the fires of hell; thus, this great grief in repentance, the Yazidis believe, erased the concept of hell, and embraced belief that all humanity is redeemable. Malak Ta’us became the Peacock Angel.

God is revered by Yazidis as the Creator of all and having achieved this wondrous task, is no longer an active force. He entrusted the world to seven angels, of whom the archangel was the redeemed Malak Ta’us.

Yazidis believe that good and evil both exist in the mind and spirit of human beings. It depends on the humans, themselves, as to which they choose. Thus, their devotion to Malek Ta’us is integral, since it was he who was given the same choice between good and evil by God, and ultimately, searingly, repented and chose the good.

Malek Ta’us has been described as: “a sort of fire wall between an imperfect world and the perfection of the Supreme Being”. (Isya Joseph, Sacred Books and Traditions of the Yazidis, 1919.) Yazidis believe that periodically their seven holy beings are reincarnated in human form, as Sheikh Adi, so love your neighbour; you never know who he may be.

Mohammed is regarded as a Prophet but Jesus Christ too, was an angel in human form. Yazidis are born into and marry within their sect and there is no converting, in or out. Other beliefs are that the first Yazidi was born of Adam alone and that there was a great flood, long before Noah and his ark. Yazidis, as Samaritans and/or Druze are “a little island of diversity in a world increasingly homogenised by globalisation”.

The annual August, six day pilgrimage...Continued>>>>
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