Kocho's Living Ghosts - Part Eight
This is Part Eight of a serialized long-form essay. If you missed them, read Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, and Part Seven. Make sure to subscribe to receive the remaining parts and subsequent writing in this newsletter.
I'd pictured Kocho, its school, and the mass graves, so many times over the years that visiting them had become a compulsion, not a choice. Despite Kocho being freed from ISIS control, I quickly realised that reaching the village wouldn't be simple. When I arrived back in Iraq, I'd expected to find some of the men had returned there, or that we'd be able to visit together. As we'd talked, I'd come to recognize that I couldn't ask Saed, Ali or Kichi to come to Kocho with me. Getting to Kocho meant being able to fully render and understand the massacre and its impact on the people and the place, but I'd have to do it alone.
Getting to Kocho wasn't easy. A broken bridge added several hours to the drive from Erbil to al-Qarayya Air Base, outside the KRG's borders. From there the Iraqi Army flew me by helicopter up to Tal Qassab, a small town just south of Sinjar mountain that housed a make-shift barracks, and little else. I stayed overnight in the base with the pilots, in an old-school nestled among the rubble.
The next morning, I met Naif Jasso, the brother of Kocho's deceased Mukta and Kocho's new leader, who had agreed to take me to Kocho. Jasso was in Istanbul tending to a family emergency when ISIS arrived in Kocho and murdered his brother, leaving a role he had to fill. "I had to step up to lead the tribe; to protect and control my people," Jasso told me. Dressed in military fatigues denoting his membership of the Yezidi Haashd al-Sha'abi, a localized unit of Iraq's People's Mobilisation Unit (PMUs) forces, an umbrella for a range of typically Shi'a militias including some that are overtly sectarian. While some Yazidi men joined Iraqi-Kurdish Peshmerga forces, others felt betrayed by them during the genocide and joined militias under the Haashd banner for the fight to take their towns and villages, including Kocho, back from ISIS control. The battle to wrest Kocho back from ISIS was bitter, but rapid, though the terror group left suicide bombers in tunnels to kill and maim the forces that had beaten them out.
Because of the continuing ISIS threat in the area, we set off for Kocho accompanied by two trucks of Yezidi Haashd al-Shaabi fighters, many of them from Kocho itself. The fourteen-kilometer drive took an eternity; my stomach was in my throat—I'd been suppressing the urge to vomit since I'd woken up. We approached the first checkpoint at the entry to the town, where some local Yazidi fighters recognized the Mukta and exchanged greetings while waving us on.
Our first stop was the school. The dozen armed men I was with walked in ahead, while I took pause. The largest building in the village, the school building cut an imposing presence on the northern edge of town; its coral paintwork and green edgings fading in the sun, having been left without upkeep for the three years of ISIS rule. The front gates stood ajar, where they'd remained since the people of Kocho were shepherded out of them. Having pictured the school for years, I wanted to stand where Kocho's people stood; to understand how it felt to be here; to know its power. After steeling myself, I walked in.
This is Part Eight of a serialized long-form essay published in newsletter form. Subsequent installments will arrive in your inbox over the next two days, during the fifth anniversary of the genocide in Kocho. I spoke to the Global Dispatches podcast about Kocho and the Yazidi genocide. Give it a listen.
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Revolutionary Ghosts is a newsletter of personal writing by Emma Beals. It’s about how Syria changed the world and how reporting on it changed me, the idea of moral injury and the practice of moral repair, and the mess we're in and what we do about it. There will also be recipes.