Syria’s Yazidi Community Faces the Future With Concern

HASAKAH, Syria—Just outside the small Yazidi village of Barzan, in northeastern Syria, 10-year-old Shadi Rasho stood up to recite a prayer. His light but melancholic voice continued for a few minutes as the room listened in silence.

HASAKAH, Syria—Just outside the small Yazidi village of Barzan, in northeastern Syria, 10-year-old Shadi Rasho stood up to recite a prayer. His light but melancholic voice continued for a few minutes as the room listened in silence.

“This is what children who stay here can do,” said Shadi’s older brother, 21-year-old Souliman Rasho.

Most of the family’s relatives have left for Europe—driven away by the discriminatory policies that Syrian authorities enforced over decades and persecution by the Islamic State. Yazidis are a predominantly Kurdish-speaking ethno-religious minority, historically inhabiting parts of modern-day Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. Their religion, which dates back thousands of years, includes pagan, Zoroastrian, Christian, and Muslim elements.

Souliman gestured to a framed symbol of a peacock, hung in the center of the living room. For Yazidis, the peacock’s name is Melek Taus, an angel who beautified the earth at its creation. Etched below the peacock’s feet was a small drawing of the Yazidi Lalish Temple in Iraq.

A beareded man reaches up toward picture frames above a double window.

Yazidis have long faced persecution. Other faiths have misinterpreted Melek Taus as Satan and therefore accused Yazidis of being “devil-worshipers.” Members of the Yazidi community say they have endured 74 genocides over the millennia. The most recent was carried out by the Islamic State, which killed more than 3,000 Yazidis and enslaved, raped, and forcibly converted nearly 7,000 others.

Over the last decade, many Yazidis in Syria gained official recognition and a sense of protection under the Kurdish administration—which still controls much of the northeast.