Vying for a Voice, Tribe in N. Iraq Feels Let Down

After decades as an underground movement here, the KDP now has 10 offices and tens of thousands of supporters in the Sinjar district alone. The KDP won some 80,000 votes in the Dec. 15 elections, or about 75 percent of the total for western Nineveh, compared with about 11,000 for the Yazidi party, according to the parties' tallies.

Terwanishi rejected accusations of KDP voter manipulation, leveling his own charges at the Yazidis. "The voice those other small parties got was from forgery and fraud," Terwanishi said, waving an envelope he said contained evidence of broken seals on election booths.

The mayor and KDP leaders make clear that they will fight a U.S.-backed plan to withdraw the up-to-500 pesh merga from Sinjar and western Nineveh as early as next month. "If they leave, this area will become like Tall Afar or other difficult, violent places," Hason warned, referring to a city farther west that had fallen into insurgent hands this year.

The KDP's political and military sway here is matched by its economic impact through investments and aid to the region. The party has hired 1,200 teachers, rented school buildings and water tanks, and provided medicine and emergency supplies of blood to local hospitals. It also gives money every month to Sinjar's poorest residents.

Yazidis, meanwhile, are appealing for American support for their fledgling political movement, asking U.S. officials to mediate election disputes and to aid their quest for greater economic independence.

In Kharsi, Jundu greeted Reilly, the U.S. military commander in the region, with a flourish of praise, spraying him with puffs of cologne. Then, gazing over terraced fields of tobacco and fig trees, he described his people's plight.

"Back in the Saddam days, it was like someone threw a big rock on us and we fell down the hill with a rock on our chest," he told Reilly. "Now, with Saddam gone, we feel the rock has been lifted off our chest but no one has helped us up."

Forced off their farmland by Hussein decades ago, the 137 Yazidi families in Kharsi cultivate tiny plots here in the Valley of Tiers, traveling by donkey to lowland markets to sell their produce and buy food. Some work as laborers on lowland farms owned by Arabs, but drought in recent years has shriveled this income. With jobs virtually nonexistent, many Yazidi youth seek to escape poverty by joining the Iraqi police or army -- but even here the Yazidis say they face discrimination, with only two or three from the village gaining entry.

Desperate for help, the village welcomed Kurdish funds for refurbishing its school. In return, the whole village voted for the KDP in the Dec. 15 election.

"We, the Yazidis, are the weakest people in the world," Jundu said, inviting Reilly to a breakfast of fried eggs, soft cheese, flatbread and honey. "The Americans have the strongest army in the world -- you have air power and sea power, and even the land is afraid of you. You are the supreme law -- why can't you make things work and help us?"

Reilly, commander of 1st Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, and a Persian Gulf War veteran, says he's used to such expectations from Yazidis. Once a villager asked him to park a tank in front of his house "forever." He promised Jundu he would return with a pallet of packaged military meals and a one-day medical clinic for the village and would hire three villagers to work at his camp in Sinjar.

"We'll do what we can," said Reilly, of Sacramento.

"Thank you," Jundu said heartily, pulling out a worn book with blank pages. "May I have your autograph?"