The Soldiers of Sinjar, 2014
In a run-down facility close to Peshkhabour on the Syrian side of the border with Iraq, Kawa Sinjari’s unit gather men from various villages in Sinjar who are ready to fight against Islamic State (IS) militants.
Christians, Muslims or Yazidis, they are mostly in their 20s or 30s. But those men, who fled from the Sinjar Mountains when IS advanced in Iraq, all consider themselves Kurdish and fight for their homeland.
They wear matching uniforms and carry various incarnations of Kalashnikov rifles. Most were with the Iraqi army. Some were Peshmerga (Kurdish Iraqi military), and some were common workers. There are few among them who didn’t have relatives killed or abducted by IS in the days that followed.
At the training camp they receive basic weapons provided by the YPG (the Kurdish acronym for the People’s Protection Units). The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Kurdistan Regional Government also give their support, unlike NATO and United States, which still categorizes PKK as a terrorist organization.
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