The travel ban imposed by Donald Trump on seven Muslim-majority countries has had the effect of excluding some of those who suffered most at the hands of Islamic State extremists.
The Yazidi religious minority, whose beliefs are derived from Zoroastrianism, Christianity and Islam, were subjected to what the United Nations classified as genocide when Isis militants overran their homes in northern Iraq in the summer of 2014, killing and enslaving thousands of women and girls.
Since then, many Yazidis have worked alongside US forces in the fight against Isis. But neither their military service nor the genocide committed against them has spared them from the Trump travel ban.
“What is particularly painful is that there is no distinction between victims of terrorism and the perpetrators of terrorism in this order,” says Vian Dakhil, a Yazidi MP in Iraqi parliament whose pleas for her people in August 2014 helped convince the US government to intervene on their behalf.
She was able to get an exemption to the ban to collect a humanitarian award in Washington on Wednesday from the Lantos Foundation after the state department and US consulate in Erbil intervened on her behalf, but in her acceptance speech she noted that most of her fellow Yazidis were still excluded and treated as potential terrorists because Iraq is one of the seven listed countries on Trump’s executive order.
“Iraqis are not terrorists,” Dakhil said. “We are friends and allies.
“Let’s say a Daesh foreign fighter who has repeatedly raped Yazidi girls manages to go back to his country without being noticed by the authorities,” she said, using another name for Isis. “If his country is not part of these seven countries, he can easily apply to go to the US ... But the Yazidi girl who was raped repeatedly by the same fighter will be blocked by the Trump order to travel to America.”
Haifa Mirza and her husband are among almost 500,000 Yazidis scattered across IDP camps in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq hoping that the Trump administration will make an exception in their case and allow them to enter the US.
Around 5,000 Yazidi girls and women like Haifa were enslaved by Isis in Sinjar area, and close to 2,700 have been rescued. “I would have either been killed or taken by Daesh like many other women and girls, had we stayed in Sinjar,” said Haifa, who fled hours before Isis militants arrived in her village near Sinjar and climbed Mount Sinjar to reach safety.
“I see no future for myself and my family in this country,” said Haifa’s husband Ismail Alkhalty, who worked with the US army from 2003 to 2011 as an interpreter. Yazidis like Alkhaty who worked with US forces are not only considered infidels by insurgents such as Isis, but also traitors.
But the US military personnel they served with see them in a very different light. Col William J Finley (now retired), who Alkhaty translated for near Mosul from 2007 to 2008, said that he had served “honorably”.
“Both mine and the lives of my nine Soldiers depended on Ish [Ismail] every day while deployed in Iraq,” he wrote in a supporting letter for Alhalty. “I fully trust and completely support his packet for refugee admission to the United States.”
Other Yazidi interpreters who worked with the US army are facing similar problems. Fearing for his life, 60-year-old Kheder Namer Darweesh, who was a US army interpreter for seven years, applied for resettlement through International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and had been cleared to travel to the US when Trump’s ban came into force, stranding him and leaving him separated from his family.
Ten days earlier, his son, Adel, and his young family travelled to Seattle and resettled there, and they are now appealing for the former interpreter to join them.
“I understand that President Trump wants to protect his people from terrorism, but how many Yazidis have carried out terrorist attacks in the world?” Adel Kheder, 26, told the Guardian in a phone interview from Seattle. “My father served the American army in Iraq risking his life many times, so he deserves to join me here in Seattle.”
The ban has led countless Yazidis families being split between continents. The executive order makes an exception for refugees who are members of religious minorities but that distinction is not being implemented in Iraqi Kurdistan. Yazidis who were in the process of traveling to the US, were simply told their appointments at the US consulate in Erbil were cancelled.
Thirty four-year old Khudeeda Naif’s mother, sister and brother had already been resettled in the US when Trump’s ban came into effect, stranding him in a camp in Iraq’s Kurdish region, to which most Yazidis fled when Islamic State overran their homes. “We want to go and join the rest of my family there, we are desperate” Naif said. “Our life in this camp is miserable”.
Naif’s brother was a translator with the US army and was killed with two US soldiers on 15 March 2008 when a suicide bomber blew himself up in Rabia crossing between Iraq and Syria.
“Ethnic and religious minorities like the Yazidis have endured horrifying crimes against humanity at the hands of the Islamic State, including massacres, beheadings, and sexual slavery,” said Democratic congressman Alcee Hastings, who introduced a Justice for Yazidis Act last month, calling for better social support for the minority group. “It is undeniably genocide. President Trump’s callous shut-down of the refugee program sends a clear signal that he places no value on their lives.”
He added: “Unfortunately, President Trump is not just turning his back on refugees, but is also reneging on America’s commitments to Iraqi and Afghani translators previously employed by the American government. We must keep our commitments to those who risked their lives in service to our country.”
