IRAQ - Yazidis & Iraqi Intolerance.

This atrocity casts light on a more diffuse phenomenon in Iraq which the US has failed to comprehend and which cosmopolitan Iraqis have long ignored - a ruthless intolerance of the other. Yazidis hold themselves apart from their Muslim or Christian neighbours. Neighbours view the Yazidis as heretics as their sect draws on elements of those two creeds but contradicts crucial doctrines of each. The Yazidis do not accept converts and disbelieve in evil; they worship a figure whom Christians and Muslims identify with Satan but whom the Yazidis regard as a chief angel who repented and was pardoned by God.

Like the predominantly Sunni Muslim Kurds living around them, Christians, Shi'ites, or Jews, the Yazidis have had times when they could live their separate lives in peace and other times when they were persecuted. The chain of events leading up to the Aug. 14 blasts began months ago, when a 17-year-old Yazidi girl eloped with a Sunni and converted to Islam. As punishment, she was stoned to death. A cellphone video of the stoning was circulated on the Internet, and seems to have incited attacks against them, including the murder of 23 Yazidi factory workers in April. The police said they were taken off a bus by killers from al-Qaeda.

The desolating reality illuminated in the truck bombings and each of the incidents preceding it is a collective refusal to accept differences, whether of one individual from a community or of one group from another. This is the billowing nightmare which has descended on all the people of Iraq. Beyond the obvious struggles for power and resources, old sectarian and ethnic animosities - some from as far back as the 7th century - are being revived. Long-dormant vendettas between Shi'ites and Sunni Arabs, between Kurds and Turkmen, or between Islamists and secular Iraqis have been let loose.

The Boston Globe said: "for American policymakers, the lesson is that an invading power cannot destroy the administrative and security structures of a fragile society and expect to harvest a pluralist democracy. The lesson for the disparate Iraqi communities is that if they don't find a way to live together, they will go on killing one another".

Khader Aziz, a Yazidi who recently fled the Mosul area to Kirkuk, said leaflets signed by the ISI were distributed in Yazidi areas warning them that it "will exterminate them and bring down homes tumbling on their heads". Aziz said Yazidis were now seriously considering assembling a 10,000-strong force to protect their communities because authorities had failed them. After the killing of the Yazidi girl, Dua' Khalil, by her family, there had been numerous attacks in the Mosul area against Yazidis. On April 22, 23 were dragged out of a minibus and shot on the side of the road.

Neo-Salafi Web postings praised the Aug. 14 attack, calling the Yazidis "devil worshipers". Yazidis are often scorned by Muslims as infidels because their beliefs blend Judaism, Islam, Christianity, and Zoroastrianism. Makhzoum Khasro, a Yazidi who fled to Kirkuk, said 32 members of his family were missing after the Aug. 14 attack. He sent his eldest son to Turkey on Aug. 16 and planned to sell his business and join him along with the rest of the family. He said: "This is the most heinous message for us to leave Iraq immediately".

Yazidis, like other ancient communities in Iraq such as Christian ChaldoAssyrians, Sabean Mandaeans, and Shabaks, are facing extinction, particularly in their traditional areas, in what is known as the Nineveh plains. They blame Neo-Salafis as well as Kurds seeking to consolidate their grip on the area which borders Kurdistan. During a trip to London in July to raise international awareness of the crisis facing Iraq's minorities, Hunain Qaddo, a Shabak leader, told the BBC his people were "facing a genocide".

In a pattern of almost mass exodus of minorities from the country, only about 5,000 Sabean Mandaeans are left in Iraq from an estimated 25,000 in 2003, according to testimony given by Suhaib Nashi, a community leader, to the US Commission on International Religious Freedom in Washington in July. Rev. Canon Andrew White, vicar of St. George Church in Baghdad, told the commission: "The situation is unbelievably bad for minorities. It is difficult to imagine how much worse things could become, but in reality they could become considerably worse".

Small pockets of Yazidis live in Syria, Turkey, Georgia, and Armenia. Much of the Yazidi tradition is still held secret. The group worships an angel figure, the Peacock Angel, which some Christians and Muslims believe is the devil. The Yazidis, who claim not to believe in evil or the devil, deny this characterisation. The group considers marriage outside its faith a sin punishable by ostracism or death.