Nearly all Iraqi Kurds consider themselves Sunni Muslims. In our survey, 98% of Kurds in Iraq identified themselves as Sunnis and only 2% identified as Shias. (A small minority of Iraqi Kurds, including Yazidis, are not Muslims.) But being a Kurd does not necessarily mean alignment with a particular religious sect.

Kurdish sovereign enclave The U.S. Air Force continued to enforce a no-fly zone over northern Iraq since March 1991, to defend Kurds fleeing their homes in northern Iraq, the U.S. military also built and maintained several refugee camps in 1991.

Kurds make up an estimated 15% to 20% of Iraq’s population. They have historically enjoyed more national rights than Kurds living in neighbouring states, but also faced brutal repression. In 1946, Mustafa Barzani formed the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) to fight for autonomy in Iraq.

Main religions that currently exist in Kurdistan are as follows: Sunni Islam, Shia Islam, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Yarsanism, Yazidism, Alevism, and Judaism. Today, Sunni Islam is the most adhered religion in Kurdistan.

The Kurds are the largest ethnic minority in Turkey. The Turkish government categorized Kurds as “Mountain Turks” until 1991, and denied the existence of Kurds. The words “Kurds” or “Kurdistan” were banned in any language by the Turkish government, though “Kurdish” was allowed in census reports.

135,000

The YPJ is part of the Syrian Democratic Forces, the armed forces of Rojava, and is closely affiliated with the male-led YPG. While the YPJ is mainly made up of Kurds, it also includes women from other ethnic groups in Northern Syria.

The Peshmerga (Kurdish: پێشمەرگه‎, romanized: Pêşmerge, lit. ‘those who face the death’), are the military forces of the autonomous Kurdistan Region of Iraq.

The unit is composed mostly of people from Western Europe, including communists, socialists and anarchists. The unit’s initial statement mentioned their principles and causes, highlighting the common unity between communists and anarchists as an anti-fascist front against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

Ideology. The guerrillas’ ideology was anarchist communism. Among its objectives was to defend the Rojava Revolution against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the different jihadist groups of the Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army, and the Turkish occupation in Syria.

The supporters of the region’s administration state that it is an officially secular polity with direct democratic ambitions based on an anarchistic, feminist, and libertarian socialist ideology promoting decentralization, gender equality, environmental sustainability, social ecology and pluralistic tolerance for …

People’s Protection Units

The PYD’s fierce military arm, known as the People’s Protection Units (YPG), benefited from PKK’s decades of fighting Turkey. (There’s also the YPJ, which is the women’s militia.) The Syrian civil war ultimately enabled the PYD’s rise to power.

Qamishli in northeastern Syria is mainly controlled by the Kurdish forces, although government troops and allied militia have a security presence near the airport and other neighborhoods. Tensions occasionally flare between the two sides over territory, leading to fighting.

Anarchism in Syria emerged as a largely disorganized movement during the authoritarian rule of the Assad government, but following the initiation of the Arab Spring has been a particularly notable factor during the events of the Syrian civil war, playing a role in the civil uprising against the government as well as in …

Hediya Yousef (Kurdish: Hediya Yûsif‎, Arabic: هدية يوسف‎) is a Syrian-Kurdish politician who held the office of co-president of the Executive Council of Rojava from 17 March 2016 to 16 July 2018….Hediya Yousef.

It is a politics exercised by free and equal confederal citizens by electing their own free regional representatives. It is based on the principle of its own strength and expertise. It derives its power from the people and in all areas including its economy it will seek self-sufficiency.

The Iraqi Kurds have their own autonomous region and their own armed forces, the Peshmerga. However, they are unable to purchase or import military hardware since they don’t have an independent state, and Baghdad hasn’t supplied the region with any modern armor.

100,000 Peshmerga

Small arms

Kurdish language, a West Iranian language, one of the Indo-Iranian languages, chiefly spoken in Kurdistan. It ranks as the third largest Iranian language, after Persian and Pashto, and has numerous dialects.

Today they number as little 6,000 by some estimates, including recent refugees from Sinjar in Iraq, who fled to Georgia following persecution by ISIL.

The genocide led to the expulsion, flight and effective exile of the Yazidis from their ancestral lands in Upper Mesopotamia. Thousands of Yazidi women and girls were forced into sexual slavery by the Islamic State, and thousands of Yazidi men were killed.

Kurmanji

About 50,000 Yazidis fled into the Sinjar Mountains, where they were trapped without food, water or medical care and faced starvation and dehydration. The U.S. government, Kurdish Peshmerga forces, and Western media reported that thousands of Yazidis in the Sinjar Mountains were under siege by ISIL.

Yazidism or Sharfadin (Kurdish: شه‌رفه‌دین ,Şerfedîn‎) is a monotheistic ethnic religion that has roots in a western Iranic pre-Zoroastrian religion and is followed by the mostly Kurmanji-speaking Yazidis and based on belief in one God who created the world and entrusted it into the care of seven Holy Beings, known as …