ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Yazidi leader Mir Hazim Tahsin is in the United States seeking assistance from the White House and the United Nations for his community, thousands of whom have been displaced from their homes for nearly a decade. “We have held meetings with top officials from the Department of State and the White House. We talked about the condition of Yazidis in general and Shingal,” the Yazidi leader told Rudaw’s Sinan Tuncdemir in New York on Wednesday. “They said that they are willing to help Yazidis after we said that our people should return [to Shingal]. We called on them to have great relations with Iraq, Kurdistan and Yazidis so that we can find a solution for our people who have been living in camps for nine years,” he added. When the Islamic State (ISIS) captured Shingal in 2014, it committed genocide against the Yazidis, massacring men and older women, enslaving women and children, and destroying many villages and towns. Those who escaped the group were forced to flee to camps across Iraq and the Kurdistan Region. Shingal was liberated from the group in late 2015, but there is now a myriad of armed forces in the town with various allegiances, including the Kurdistan Region Peshmerga, pro-Iran Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF, or Hashd al-Shaabi in Arabic), and groups affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). They gained footholds in Shingal after ousting ISIS. Approximately 40 percent of Shingal residents have returned to their home, said local officials said last month, blaming political tensions for people's reluctance to return. Mir Hazim said that he also met with UN officials in New York and they promised to continue helping Yazidis.
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