SINJAR, IRAQ // The narrow lanes of Sinjar’s old town form a dense maze that is both disorientating and easily defendable, two attributes that are appreciated by the historic quarter’s only inhabitants, the Kurdish fighters battling ISIL.
In the few old stone houses still standing after a year of fighting, groups of men and women in olive green uniforms have settled in, young warriors hardened by constant exposure to war.
During lulls in the battle they sit together drinking tea and smoking, enjoying each other’s company. They smoke a lot. “Cigarettes and enemies are the only things we have enough of,” jokes one fighter.
When needed at the front line they stream through the labyrinth of rubble, shot-up facades and burnt-out cars to man the barricades, sandbagged firing positions and sniper nests that keep ISIL at bay.
The fighters, many still in their teens, are from the armed wing of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
Since ISIL stormed into the Sinjar region last August, the PKK presence in the area has been growing.
Founded in the late 1970s, the PKK led an armed insurgency against the Turkish state over its discriminatory policies towards the Kurdish minority until a ceasefire agreement in 2013. That ended last month when the Turkish air force began bombing PKK bases in Iraq’s Qandil mountains as the group resumed attacks inside Turkey.
In Sinjar, PKK fighters have joined forces with the peshmerga, the troops of the autonomous Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) that governs Iraqi Kurdistan, to keep ISIL at bay in the city, which is still largely held by the extremists.
But unlike the peshmerga, who regularly rotate in and out of the front lines, PKK fighters claim they never leave the battlefield.
“I’ve been in Sinjar for a year now, and I’m always at the front. No matter what happens, we are always in the city, and we will always be here,” says a fighter who goes by the nom de guerre Agir, or “fire” in Kurdish.
Though just 24, Agir is already a veteran among his comrades. Most of the positions that overlook the slender stretch of no-man’s-land between ISIL and the PKK are manned by teenage fighters carefully peering through narrow slits in the fortifications at a foe no further than 100 metres away.
Somewhere in the rubble, young snipers lie in wait for a sighting of the enemy. The snipers and the proximity of the opponents have frozen all movement along the front line. Only occasionally does a shot ring out, marking a rare instance of someone being foolish enough to break cover.
There is more visible activity in the skies above. Aircraft from the global anti-ISIL coalition keep a steady presence over Sinjar, and thuds of exploding bombs regularly reverberate though the ruins of the city. After a year of fighting, Sinjar is largely destroyed. The old town, most of which has been recaptured by the Kurds, was particularly hard hit, as the coalition supported their advance with air strikes against the entrenched ISIL fighters.
ISIL’s advance on Sinjar quickly turned into genocide, as the extremists killed hundreds of Yazidis, a religious minority that has been living this remote part of northern Iraq for hundreds of years. It captured thousands of Yazidi women and children, enslaving the women and seeking to indoctrinate the children.
Facing little resistance, the extremists soon encircled Mount Sinjar, the 75km-long plateau that rises from the plains behind the city, where about 130,000 Yazidis took refuge from the onslaught. The peshmerga that were stationed in the area fled without a fight, leaving the poorly armed Yazidis in a desperate struggle to keep ISIL from the mountain top.
Within days, the PKK and its Syrian subsidiary PYD sent fighters to Mount Sinjar. Sustaining heavy losses, they managed to prise open ISIL’s stranglehold long enough to allow most of the Yazidis to flee to safety, and to reinforce the defences on the mountain.
By the time the siege of Mount Sinjar was finally lifted in December, and Kurdish forces had retaken part of the city, the PKK had become hugely popular with the Yazidis. Hundreds joined the Shingal Resistance Units (YBS), the PKK’s newly formed military subsidiary for Yazidis keen to defend their homeland. In Sinjar, PKK and YBS units fight side by side, and some PKK veterans have joined the Yazidi militia to provide experience.
For the PKK, gaining a second foothold in Iraqi Kurdistan is strategically valuable, and Sinjar has gown in importance since Turkey began bombing its bases in the Qandil mountains.
By its own account, the PKK has about 1,200 fighters from Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran in Sinjar. Clad in their distinctive baggy uniforms held in place by a broad cloth belt, they man checkpoints and bases, and fight on the front line that runs straight through Sinjar city and along the southern side of the mountain.
However, the PKK’s numbers are likely to increase, as young Yazidis are still joining the YBS.
“I came because I have a chance to protect my people,” says Ari, 16, one of a group of Yazidi girls receiving basic training at a base at the northern approaches of Mount Sinjar. Ari, who joined the YBS a month ago, escaped Mount Sinjar with her family last August after the PKK opened the corridor to Syria.
“When we were surrounded on the mountain and suffering, the PKK were the first ones who came to help,” says Nahar Apogee, 18, who is training at a different base at the foot of the mountain, and whose aunt is still held captive by ISIL.
The PKK competes for influence in the Sinjar region with the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), which was dominant in the area before ISIL attacked. The PKK and the KDP, led by the KRG’s president Masoud Barzani, have long been rivals in Iraqi Kurdistan. Whereas the influential Mr Barzani stands for a more traditional style of leadership based on personal and family ties, the socialist revolutionaries of the PKK seek a wholesale transformation of society, says Vera Eccarius-Kelly, a professor at Siena College in New York who studies Kurdish politics.
“Barzani is keen to weaken the PKK,” she adds.
Mr Barzani has the support of the influential Yazidi leader Qasim Shesho, who is seeking to integrate 5,000 Yazidi volunteers into the peshmerga. The initiative has done little to persuade the PKK to leave Sinjar. Keen to retain its presence in the region and proud of its military prowess, the PKK continues to build up the YBS instead.
“If the YBS becomes strong enough, we will leave. If they need us, we will stay,” says Shoresh, a 31-year-old PKK commander whose nom de guerre is Kurdish for revolution.
foreign.desk@thenational.ae