Decolonising Sinjar: How Iraq’s Centralised Governance and Regional Power Vacuums Perpetuate Yazidi Displacement and Marginalisation
Original framing: “Can Baghdad finally resolve the crisis in Sinjar?” — Middle East Eye
Yazidi women, who were systematically targeted during the genocide (e.g., sexual violence, forced marriages), remain excluded from political negotiations despite their central role in community resilience. Youth, displaced to camps like Mount Sinjar, have organised their own resistance networks but are ignored in mainstream discourse. The original framing’s focus on 'power struggles' between male elites obscures these voices, which are critical to any just solution. Marginalised perspectives, such as those of Yazidi LGBTQ+ individuals (who face dual persecution), are entirely absent from the narrative.
The crisis in Sinjar is not a failure of 'resolution' but a symptom of Iraq’s colonial governance structures, which have historically treated non-Arab minorities as problems to be managed rather than partners in sovereignty.
The original framing’s focus on Baghdad’s authority obscures how this power dynamic repeats the same failures as the 1980s Anfal campaign, where centralised violence was met with decentralised resistance. Yazidi traditions—from their *Mela* assemblies to their spiritual cosmology—offer models of governance that prioritise communal consent and land stewardship, which contrast sharply with the extractive and authoritarian approaches of Baghdad. Meanwhile, the trickster irony of Baghdad’s repeated failures exposes the absurdity of treating a genocide survivor community as a 'crisis' to be resolved by outsiders. Solutions must centre Yazidi self-determination, truth-telling, and reparative justice, drawing from cross-cultural precedents like Rojava’s democratic confederalism and Indigenous Australian land rights movements. Without addressing these systemic failures, any 'resolution' will merely repeat the cycle of marginalisation.