Sinjar to become a new province

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (K24)—A delegation from the Iraqi parliament visited Sinjar on Thursday to closely observe the situation in the recently liberated city and discuss the process of turning the city into a new province.

Sinjar, mostly known as Shingal among Kurds, hosted Yezidi Kurds for over a century. The city was invaded by the Islamic State (IS) on August 2014 and liberated by the Peshmerga forces on November 13, 2015.

Khasro Goran, Head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party in the Iraqi parliament, told K24, “Sinjar is a ruined city now. Reconstructing it requires significant support. We want the city to become what it was before the Islamic State attacked it.”

“Assisting Sinjar is not easy because of the financial crisis in the Kurdistan Region and Iraq,” Goran added.

Renas Jano, a Kurdish MP in the Public Relations Committee of the Iraqi parliament, said that efforts have been made on the international level to help rebuild Sinjar and recognize Sinjar massacre as genocide. “The meeting with Sinjar mayor was to develop mechanisms to works with the international community to recognize Sinjar genocide.”

According to a K24 reporter, the Iraqi Kurdish MPs and the city’s administration discussed turning Sinjar into a new province to help find legal mechanisms and speed up efforts in that regards.

Mahma Khalil, the mayor of Sinjar, speaking on the phone with K24 said that, “The process of rebuilding has not been very successful; we have called for an international conference and have invited international organizations to have a plan for rebuilding the city.”

“Some works have been done, but these works are not effective enough to reconstruct what the IS damaged in this city,” Khalil added.

“As people of Sinjar, we have made our decision… We want Sinjar to become an independent province in order to get rid of the administrative routines that have held us back from re-building the city,” Khalil said.

The Iraqi parliament delegation promised us to support the efforts to turn the city into a province, Khalil added.

On November 13, the Kurdistan Region President, Masoud Barzani, in a press conference on the Mount Sinjar said, “We will make our best efforts with the Iraqi government and the Kurdistan Regional Government to turn Sinjar into a new province.”

(Chakdar Jamal from Sinjar contributed to this report)