ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Shahab Bashar spends hours every day working on a 12-acre farm in Lincoln, Nebraska where he improves his English and plants the vegetables that he grew up eating in his hometown of Shingal. He is one of thousands of Yazidis who are calling the American city home. They are establishing a new Yazidi heartland in the heart of middle America.
Bashar had to flee his Shingal home in northwestern Iraq a decade ago in the face of the Islamic State (ISIS) assault. Despite the eventual liberation of the district, he could not see a stable future there and chose Lincoln as a more fertile land to plant the seed of hope.
He used to work as a translator for the United States army and then as a teacher before the brutal ISIS attack in 2014.
“Before ISIS came, I had a stable life, working at a laboratory and teaching at a school close to my home,” Bashar reminisced with deep sorrow in his voice. “We enjoyed our lives.”
Like many others fleeing the radical group, he spent a week on top of the nearby Mount Shingal, suffering under the intense August sun with limited food and water and the constant fear of ISIS. He then lived in an internally displaced persons (IDP) camp in Sulaimani province until returning to Shingal in 2016.
Bashar tried to resume his life as a school teacher. He received funds from various non-governmental organizations to run the school and tried to start a new life in his hometown.
“I opened the school and started from scratch,” Bashar recounted.
But Shingal was not the same. The infrastructure was in ruins, various armed groups were moving in, and most of the Yazidi population had not returned. Restoring the normalcy that he knew before ISIS was inconceivable.
ISIS committed genocide in Shingal. The terror group abducted 6,417 women and children, forcing a large number of them into sexual slavery and labor. So far, 3,581 have been rescued, Hussein Qaidi, head of the Office for Rescuing Abducted Yazidis, which is affiliated with the Kurdistan Region Presidency, told Rudaw in August.
According to unofficial figures from Qaidi, between 120,000 and 130,000 Yazidis have left Iraq since ISIS swept through Shingal. Iraq has failed to provide the community with protection and prosperity and a huge number of Yazidis no longer consider the country home.
Bashar had been reluctant to make such a life-changing move, but finally decided that his best chance of creating a home again lay outside of the country.
The journey in pursuit of a better life was somewhat easier for those who had worked with the US army during the 2003 invasion of Iraq and for those sponsored by European countries, but many Yazidis had to take irregular routes, putting their fate at the mercy of the waves of the sea and snow-covered forests in search for a better life.
Lincoln, Nebraska, already home to thousands of Yazidis, became the favorite choice for those who used to work for the American army and were fleeing ISIS atrocities. Bashar was one of them.
He arrived in Lincoln along with his wife and daughter in 2017. The couple had two more daughters born in the US. In 2018, he joined Community Crops, a non-profit organization that supports local agriculture. He began working as a translator but soon found an unexpected love for farming. Today, he is responsible for 12 acres of farmland, in addition to providing translation services for Yazidi farmers.
“When I first came here, it was really difficult as I could not speak good English and I had to work at a factory for three to four months and also worked at markets,” Bashar said, stating that the Yazidi Cultural Center helped him improve his English and join Community Crops.
“I joined this job to improve my English. Then I started to love nature and soil and wanted to help my community to find the right seeds of vegetables we could not find in USA markets,” he told Rudaw English.
In addition to wanting to grow the familiar vegetables that are part of the northern Iraqi diet, Bashar wished that Nebraska’s plains had mountains like Shingal.
Bashar’s success story has been widely featured in US media. He has given many interviews about the tragedy he witnessed in Shingal and the start of a new life in Lincoln.
“We are a small Shingal here. We are building it and we have our freedom to talk and work and feel we are not second class, we feel we are home,” he said.
Lincoln is home to the largest community of Yazidis in the US, numbering about 3,500, according to unofficial figures Rudaw English obtained from the Yazidi Cultural Center - the most prominent Yazidi center helping immigrants start new lives in the US and integrate into the American community. The center is affiliated with the non-profit organization Yazda.
Ahmed Mastto, the director of the center, told Rudaw English that they offer Yazidis translation services and help them find jobs. The American government has been financially supporting the center since its establishment in 2017.
Bashar also works as a translator at the center.
The first Yazidi family is believed to have moved to the city in the late nineties. They faced many challenges, primarily when learning English and finding jobs. Those who fled ISIS atrocities struggled with the additional challenge of overcoming the trauma they experienced.
Mastto was in the town of Khanasor, on the north side of Mount Shingal, when ISIS attacked. He was displaced to a camp in Duhok’s Zakho district before moving to the US along with his wife and four children in 2016. Working as a translator for the US army in 2004 paved his path of immigration to Nebraska.
His aunt and her family were kidnapped by ISIS. She was able to escape, but her husband and their son remain missing.
Asked why he chose to live in Lincoln, Mastto replied, “because the largest Yazidi community is here and we practice our religion freely and we do whatever we did back in Shingal.”
He said Yazidis are also treated with a lot of respect by the local community.
Lincoln Mayor Leirion Gaylor Baird told Rudaw English that they are “proud” to host the largest Yazidi community in the US.
"In Lincoln, Nebraska, we are proud to be home to the largest community of Yazidi refugees in the United States. Through years of collaborative efforts by local organizations and individuals, we have created strategies to ensure that refugees are fully included in our community's economic, social, civic, and cultural life,” she said.
“We believe that, by fostering a welcoming and inclusive community, we create new opportunities for everyone in our capital city,” added the mayor.
She visited Bashar and other Yazidi farmers in 2021.
Community Crops has helped Yazidis wanting to farm.
“Our nonprofit program has worked with New American families from all over the world in our garden program for many years. Many Yazidi were gardeners with us. As they asked for more and more land and we learned more about their backgrounds, we realized this community had many experienced farmers that might want to create new farm businesses here in Nebraska. From this, the Yazidi Farmers Project was born,” Megan McGuffey, Community Crops program coordinator, told Rudaw English.
Bashar has been working with them as a translator and interpreter since the early days of the project. It was through this program that he and his wife decided to become farmers.
Bashar has become “an integral part” of the organization, McGuffey said.
About ten Yazidis have participated in the Yazidi Farmers Project over several years.
Bashar said farmers from Shingal grow vegetables in large quantities, including several types of produce that are new to Lincoln markets such as varieties of pepper, eggplant, and cutting celery.
“We are trying to help farmers to sell their vegetables through Yazidi markets or Arab markets. We are building our relationship to sell to other American markets too,” he said.
McGuffey said that although farming requires extremely hard work and marketing the products is a challenge, Yazidi farmers have “shown real resilience in pursuing their farm business dreams.”
Some of the Yazidis, who used to farm on Mount Shingal before the ISIS attack, have transferred their experience to Lincoln.
“The knowledge and skill of the Yazidi farmers we work with is impressive. They are constantly experimenting to improve their farms and are always willing to learn new skills and ideas to improve their farm businesses,” McGuffey said, adding that a “bright” future awaits them.
Murad Ismail, a prominent Yazidi activist, told Rudaw English that the United States is one of the most hospitable countries and that American people respect Yazidi faith and culture, “something we lacked in our environment back home.”
He recently visited Bashar and other Yazidi farmers and was impressed by their work. He explained why most Yazidis prefer Lincoln to other American cities.
“The main reason people settled here is that when the first group of Yazidis came in the '90s, they were Yazidi Iraqis who became refugees in Syria. A group of them settled in Lincoln randomly by the resettlement agency; others were sent to other states, but the Lincoln group became a kind of attraction for them. Lincoln makes sense as it is a small town, easier to live in than big cities, and it's economically doing well too. When new Yazidis arrived after 2007, it was natural for them to come to Lincoln because a large community was already here,” he stated.
He explained that preservation of the Yazidi culture and faith is one of the advantages of living where there is an existing community.
“There are weddings here every month, Yazidis have a cemetery where they bury their dead, and people come together all the time. In many ways, they have recreated the life they once had,” said Ismail, who co-founded Yazda.
There are challenges as well, he noted, including how much Yazidis can integrate into American society and accept American norms.
Khalida Shamo was only a baby when ISIS attacked her home in Shingal. Her family fled and moved to Nebraska when she turned four.
Now 16, Shamo told Nebraska Public Media on the tenth anniversary of the genocide that she teaches her school peers about the massacre.
“It was really scary. Even though it didn’t impact me directly, it still did because it was my family… It’s hard hearing your grandma cry over the phone because she doesn’t want to leave the place that she grew up in,” she said.
Her grandmother finally joined them in the US, but her grandfather chose to stay in Shingal.
Matthew Miller, spokesperson for the US State Department, said on the tenth anniversary of the genocide on August 3 that the survivors “bear the painful scars” of that catastrophic day.
“We urge continued implementation of the Yezidi Survivors’ Law and full application of the security, reconstruction, and administrative provisions of the 2020 Sinjar Agreement, in consultation with the communities that call Sinjar home,” he said in a statement.
Iraq’s parliament passed the Yazidi Survivors Bill in 2021, after it languished in the legislature for two years. It offers reparations to the survivors of ISIS, but implementation has been criticized as flawed.
“Implementation of the law will need to be focused comprehensively supporting & sustainably reintegrating survivors,” Nadia Murad, one of the survivors of the genocide said in a post on X (then Twitter). She is a prominent Yazidi activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
The 2020 agreement Miller referred to was signed between the Iraqi government and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in a bid to normalize the situation in Shingal, especially its security. Both sides have accused the other of not implementing it.
The presence of several armed groups, including ones linked to Baghdad and Erbil, has hindered efforts to restore life in the town, making many Yazidis sheltering in the Kurdistan Region reluctant to return to their homes, despite pressure from the Iraqi government.
Bashar still considers Shingal his home, but does not plan to return.
“I see Lincoln as my second home after Shingal,” he said, adding that he prefers living in Lincoln. “I have a normal life now.”
He hopes for better lives for his relatives who have chosen to remain in Shingal or have not yet had a chance to leave.
