Getting rid of the last Turkmen?

[....] In the eyes of those in Amerli, the world has turned its back on them.

"After the attack of Mosul, all the Shia Turkmen villages around Amerli were captured by Islamic State," explains Dr Ali Albayati, a local resident. "They killed the people and displayed their bodies outside the village."

The majority of the residents of Amerli are part of the Turkmen ethnic group, who make up roughly 4% of Iraq's population. As Shia, they are directly targeted by Islamic State, who consider them apostates.

"We have been trying to fight them off for 70 days," says Dr Albayati. "We have no electricity, no drinking water." [.....]

'Godless and merciless'

When it comes to defending the town, it is the residents themselves who must step up to the plate.

"There are no soldiers," explains Nihad. "The families are working together to fight Islamic State - fighting to defend ourselves and our land."

Among those fighters is Nihad's own son. He is just 13 years old.

"Am I scared for him? No, I am proud," he says. "We parents are proud that our children are helping. This is our jihad. Islamic State are godless and merciless people."

In reality, the residents see little alternative.

"You know what happens when Islamic State captures a village?" Dr Albayati asks. "They capture all the men, women and children and they kill them all, believe me. They keep just a few girls, you know, for other things..."

The town is no stranger to the brutality of extremist Sunni militants. In one of the bloodiest attacks in Iraq after the US invasion, 159 residents were killed and a further 350 wounded in an al-Qaeda truck bombing in 2007. Amerli knows all too well what it feels like to lose loved ones to acts of violence.

'Completely forgotten'

Sundus Abbas is the UK representative of the Iraqi Turkmen Front, a political party which represents the community.

She is campaigning desperately to get the West's forces to intervene in Amerli as they did in Mount Sinjar [.....]

from

Amerli: Iraqi town besieged by IS starving to death
By Lydia Green BBC Arabic, Aug. 22