He said that local Arabs would not be allowed back to Sinjar. Yazidis accuse local Arabs of siding with the militants. “How can we let them back?” asked the colonel. “They lived with us for 100 years but they stabbed us in the back. They took our women and raped them. Arabs who lived here either helped ISIS militarily, financially or supported them ideologically.”

Speaking in the streets of Sinjar outside the burned homes of his Yazidi relatives and one Shia family (the house had been marked “Shia” in an effort to prevent revenge looting targeting Sunnis), Sulaiman Omar, 37, a Yazidi fighter acknowledged that not all Muslims were guilty. “We don’t have problems with other groups coming back, our concern is with those who helped ISIS and betrayed us. We can’t forgive them and they won’t be allowed back.”

Another Yazidi fighter said that he, too, would have fought the family with the sheep and prevented them from entering Kurdistan. He raised another point. He said that in the future “there definitely will be problems” between the Yazidis and Kurdish forces that they believe abandoned them. “Half of my family are still with ISIS,” he said.