“We will stay in Shingal and not withdraw. Because if we leave Shingal, the people will become very desperate, leading to more and bigger problems for the people of Shingal,” Haider Shasho, head of the Ezidkhan Protection Units, told Rudaw.
The Ezidkhan force did not heed an official order from the Peshmerga Ministry to retreat from Shingal and station their forces in another location following the October 16 events which saw Kirkuk and later Khanaqin, Makhmour and Shingal fall to the Iraqi army and Shiite Hashd al-Shaabi, according to Peshmerga Ministry Chief of Staff Jabar Yawar.
The Peshmerg Ministry, therefore, cut their salaries and other privileges, he added.
Shasho added their issue with the Peshmerga Ministry was not resolved yet.
He warned of increasing military movements by the PKK affiliated groups in absence of the KRG armed forces.
“It has been 10 days now since the PKK increased their movements in Shingal,” Shasho said, adding the PKK forces were enjoying “good relations with the Hashd al-Shaabi.”
Some 1,000 fighters of the Ezidkhan force were officially put under the Kurdistan Region’s Peshmerga Ministry in early March 2017.
When ISIS attacked Shingal in August 2014, Shasho, former member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) fought the group near Sheikh Sharafadeen shrine on Mount Shingal, encouraging many to stand by him and fight.
Later on he formed the Ezidkhan force consisting of nearly 5000 men.
Shasho had gotten into trouble with Kurdish authorities in Erbil in the beginning for having ties with Baghdad, an issue that was solved after his force was incorporated into the Peshmerga forces.
He was also briefly arrested in 2016 on charges of receiving salaries from Baghdad.
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