One of the most tragic examples of the last firman against the Êzidîs and one of the stories that tell the tale of betrayal and despair and hope and heroism best is the story of YBŞ fighter Dilxwaz Girzerik.

Everybody in Girzerik’s 9 person family except for him and his sister fell prisoner to ISIS, and Girzerik says “If the hevals hadn’t come to our rescue, there would be nobody left in Shengal today, the Êzidî people and their faith would have been erased from the face of the earth.”

Girzerik says the gangs took his family on August 3 in the attack on their village Koço: “My mother, father and siblings were taken by the gangs then. Only my sister and I were safe because we weren’t in the village during the attack. I was in Solak village with my sister. I have heard nothing of any of my family since the attack. I try to ask everybody who comes through and who has escaped the gangs, but nothing yet. Not just my family, we haven’t heard from anybody from the Koço village. Nobody from that village got out. We don’t even know if they’re alive.”

Girzerik says everybody can see those who said they would protect them but then abandoned them and ran: “Everybody saw those who said they would protect us, the Êzidîs, but then sold us out, abandoned us. If the YPG and HPG forces hadn’t come to our rescue, there would be nobody left. Security was established after the hevals came, opened a corridor and started protecting Mount Shengal. During the time of the massacre, the last firman, when there was nothing but pain and desperation, only the HPG and YPG were with us. There was nobody else except for them, everybody else had abandoned us.”

“WE NOW HAVE A FORCE TO DEFEND OURSELVES, WE HAVE YBŞ”

Girzerik says his training has been most fruitful and continued: “Êzidîs also need to return to their lands. The training is very effective. Both in the ideological and the military sense, we learn so much. We want to take part in the operations and save our villages and captive people after the training.

I call for all our people outside of Duhok, Zaxo and Shengal to return to their lands. There is nothing that requires them to be out anymore. They should return to their lands and take part in the defense rebuilding of Shengal. Now they have a force to defend them and an assembly to build a new Shengal. They have the YBŞ, they have the Shengal constituent assembly. If we don’t want the same pains to be repeated, we don’t have any option other than turning ourselves into a military and political power. We will not make the mistake of believing traitors to be powerful or of thinking they have our back. We will build our own force and our self government.”