The Sinjar Resistance Units (YBS) have agreed to hand over their arms and integrate into the Iraqi security forces. The Iraqi Prime Minister’s Office said on September 11 that Iraqi Prime Minister Ali Al-Zaidi “announced that the Sinjar Resistance Units will commence handing over their weapons to the state, and that Sinjar Mountain will be under the full authority of the federal government and its security and administrative institutions.”
The government emphasized that “confining weapons to the hands of the state and unifying security decision-making represent the foundation for protecting the people of the district, consolidating its stability, and ensuring its future.”
This is part of a broader push by Baghdad to get various armed groups in Iraq to hand over their weapons to the state. The process has been easier with the YBS than with the more powerful Iranian-backed militias.
The deal with the YBS is important. It could pave the way for more peace and security in the Yazidi region in and around Mount Sinjar. Also called Shingal, the area is home to the Yazidi minority.
In 2014, ISIS attacked the Yazidis and massacred thousands of them, carrying out a genocide against the group. ISIS also kidnapped thousands of women and children, forcing them into slavery.
Massacre of Yazidis a major reason for intervention against ISIS
The massacre of the Yazidis and the heart-wrenching scenes of hundreds of thousands of them fleeing the attacks were among the reasons the US and other countries intervened to help fight ISIS.
Many Yazidis were saved in 2014 in an operation by the People’s Protection Units, who crossed the border from Syria to help them flee. The YPG is linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). This led some Yazidis to choose to join the local Iraqi group YBS, which was linked to the PKK. This led to several overlapping controversies.
The PKK has been fighting Turkey for decades. Turkey has operated in Iraq against the PKK since the 1990s. The emergence of the YBS led to Turkey setting its sights on Sinjar, with several rounds of airstrikes over the years.
The Yazidis found themselves divided between those who were working with the Kurdistan Region of northern Iraq and its Peshmerga, and those working with Baghdad and those linked to the YBS. For a small and vulnerable minority, living in an economically deprived landscape that had just emerged from genocide and war, these divisions led to immense challenges.
For years, Baghdad has largely ignored Sinjar. However, changes in Ankara and Damascus may now have an effect. Turkey is working on a peace deal with the PKK, hoping to see the group dissolved. The SDF in Syria has also been dissolved.
The SDF was formed with support from the YPG. With the YBS now also moving toward laying down its arms, this basically means a swath of groups linked to the PKK are shifting back to civilian life.
This could be good news for Sinjar because Turkey has objected to any real progress there so long as the YBS was active.
Iraqi parliamentarian Murad Ismael has played a key role. Iraq’s Prime Minister’s Office said that the recent meeting “came during his reception today, Friday, of a delegation from the leadership of the Yazidi Cause Alliance and the head of its parliamentary bloc, MP Murad Ismael, along with the leadership of the Sinjar Resistance Units, to discuss the overall situation in Sinjar district and the files related to its stability, reconstruction, and the future of its people.”
Iraq’s prime minister said that “the state will guarantee the rights of members of the Sinjar Resistance Units and the Women's Units and their sacrifices, by regulating their status and integrating the qualified among them into Iraqi security institutions in accordance with legal and official frameworks.”
Baghdad says it will focus on the Sinjar district and its “needs for infrastructure projects and reconstruction, the file of compensating those affected, preparing suitable conditions for the return of the displaced to their areas, in addition to addressing a number of administrative issues related to the management of the district and its institutions and government departments, as well as the management of the Sinjar Reconstruction Fund.”
This is important because Baghdad is now speaking of a project that may support one million “residential plots of land, and working to prepare the necessary conditions for the complete return of the displaced to their areas, and following up on the file of reconstructing Sinjar district and providing its service requirements, in a way that contributes to stabilizing the population and enhancing social and economic stability.”
Murad Ismael, the Yazidi MP, wrote on X/Twitter about the historic agreement “that resolves the integration of the Yazidi Resistance Forces (YBS) into the ranks of their brothers in the official security forces, and the confinement of arms to the hands of the state, and the turning of an important page that preserves the rights of our people within the framework of the law and the constitution.”
Ismael, as head of the Yazidi Cause Alliance Bloc, said he was working with “various segments of our people, including the Sinjar Resistance Units; for today we have succeeded in reaching a historic agreement that preserves the security and sovereignty of our beloved Iraq, and grants our youth who bore arms the opportunity to integrate with their brothers in the other security forces, to protect their region and land and every inch of Iraqi soil wherever the national need calls for it.”
Extremist groups, al-Qaeda historically threaten Yazidis
It’s worth taking a step back to recall some of the complex and tragic history here. The Yazidis suffered from the rise of the Iraqi insurgency and extremist groups that emerged after the US invasion in 2003. In 2007, four coordinated car bombings targeted Yazidi towns near Tel Ezer-Qahtaniyah in northern Iraq near the Syrian border. Hundreds of people were killed. Gunmen also massacred Yazidis on a bus.
Al Qaeda was suspected of being behind the attacks. Kurdish Peshmerga were deployed in some areas to help defend the towns. Reports indicated they attempted a tactic they were using in other areas, digging ditches and trenches around towns to physically stop suicide car bombings.
This rudimentary type of defense continued until June 2014, when ISIS swept into Mosul south of Sinjar. The Yazidis in Sinjar were left mostly defenseless, carrying only AKs and small arms.
With the collapse of two Iraqi divisions, ISIS was far better armed than the Yazidis or the Peshmerga. Minorities, especially Christians, fled Mosul for safety in the Kurdistan Region.
In August 2014, ISIS attacked Sinjar, rapidly taking over Yazidi villages, capturing thousands of people, who were massacred and sold into slavery. People fled to Mount Sinjar, where they were dying of thirst in the hot summer.
After the YPG intervention, the Peshmerga launched an offensive that eventually helped push back ISIS. Yazidi resistance fighters also held out, including Qasem Shesho, a well-known commander from the area.
Sinjar was liberated in November 2015. Dozens of mass graves, containing the Yazidis murdered by ISIS, were found. The result of the liberation battles was a patchwork of various armed groups, with Yazidis joining many of them.
In 2017, after a Kurdistan Regional Government referendum on independence, the Iraqi government and Shi’ite militias launched an offensive into Sinjar. The Kurdish Peshmerga were pushed back, but the YBS remained.
Airstrikes by Turkey followed, and the YBS also clashed with the Iraqi security forces. In March 2025, the YBS clashed with an Iraqi unit, leading to several Iraqi soldiers being wounded. The YBS was outraged after it emerged that the Iraqi soldiers had referred to them as “terrorists.”
They said, “everyone knows that the Sinjar Resistance Units (YBS) are the force that defended and liberated Sinjar from ISIS [Islamic State] mercenaries, and it is the force that took over the protection of Sinjar's security afterward.”
Now, in 2016, it’s possible all this complex and tragic history going back to 2007 may be changing. If Sinjar can become a peaceful area, without various armed groups, and Iraq can invest in it, things may improve. The changes in Syria, stabilizing it as well, could help Iraq. It’s unclear at the moment if these two trends, on both sides of the border, will progress.