1200: #ClassicLeeMason: Yazidis in Duhoq, Kurdistan, Iraq. December 23, 2014; report by Lee Mason. Executive Producer, John Batchelor Show.

Published: Feb. 22, 2021, 3:56 a.m.

Photo: No known restrictions on publication.1932.  Iraq, Ziggurat, Ur   http://JohnBatchelorShow.com/contact http://JohnBatchelorShow.com/schedules Parler & Twitter: @BatchelorShow #ClassicLeeMason: Yazidis in Duhoq, Kurdistan, Iraq. December 23, 2014; report by Lee Mason. Executive Producer, John Batchelor Show. John Batchelor Show reporter visits northeasternmost Kurdistan, where hundreds of thousands of Yazidis who fled ISIS are living: entire families in small tents if they're lucky, or rough under plastic sheeting, or in abandoned, half-built concrete commercial structures with no heat in the depth of winter. The UNHCR has provided pretty little white tents on bulldozed paths in hundred- and two hundred-acre camps where facilities may be a quarter-mile away with no light at night; cooking is difficult or impossible; bathing is highly problematic; food supply is rice and cooking oil — sometimes. Occasional low tables set along the unpaved paths with baskets of cheap, sugary candies to keep the children from crying for hunger. Limited or no medical care. Most terrifying is the winter lining of the tents: seems to be one of the most flammable fabrics known to Man; if any spark hits it, it ignites and everyone has forty-five seconds to leave the tent or be burned to a crisp. Despite these fearful conditions, the Yazidi religion (ancient, syncretic; non-Christian and emphatically non-Muslim) obliges all members to be immaculately clean in their person and surroundings. The interiors of the tents and nearby land are pristine.  Mention of interviews with the small number of girls who'd been abducted and brutalized for months by ISIS, and repeatedly sold to Saudi emirs and Sunni men from around the world, then amazingly had managed to escape. This almost-unbearable catastrophe in their young lives has also traumatized their parents, siblings, husband (if they were married), and the entire Yazidi culture. It may be generations before the horror lifts.