In 2014, the plight of Yazidis trapped on Mount Sinjar to flee genocide prompted Barack Obama to launch America’s first new round of airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq. Now Yazidis are back up the mountain, escaping different sorts of clashes.
Khatoon Khider used to sing folk songs about the suffering of her people, the Yazidi religious minority. After ISIS overran her hometown in northern Iraq, she put down her tambur instrument and picked up a gun, forming the first all-female Yazidi peshmerga battalion to fight the militant group.