Ruptured Atlas
Creative Mapping of Yazidi Odyssey of Home, Displacement, Migration and Return
The Ruptured Atlas (December 2023 - December 2024) is an innovative spatial architectural heritage of more-than-inhabitation project that employs creative, participatory mapping techniques to document the intricate and multi-layered built-environments and journeys of the Yazidis over the past ten years (since the 3rd of August 2014 Yazidi Genocide).
The Yazidis are an ethno-religious minority indigenous to northwest Iraq who have been subjected to years of discrimination, marginalisation and more recently, genocide. By mapping the complexities of home, displacement, migration, and the persistent yearning for return, the project traces the Yazidis' collective spatial experiences before and in the aftermath of the ISIS-perpetrated genocide in August 2014, their ensuing existence in Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps in Kurdistan, Iraq, and their inherent longing to return to their homeland, Sinjar (Yazidi homeland).
The Ruptured Atlas project is funded by the AHRC Impact Accelerator Fellowship that Dr Sana Murrani (project lead) was granted after the success of the previous AHRC Impact Accelerator project, Ruptured Domesticity (funded by the British Academy’s British Institute for the Study of Iraq and the LSE Middle East Centre).
The Ruptured Atlas project is in partnership with Sinjar Academy, Yazda Iraq, IOM Iraq and the LSE Middle East Centre.
Background
For centuries, ethnic minorities in Iraq have endured continuous cycles of discrimination and violence. These systemic issues manifest in diverse ways: land grabbing and appropriation impacting communities such as the Jews, the Christians and the Sabian-Mandaeans of Iraq; territorial segregation enforced through strategic housing and geopolitical tactics, as experienced by the Yazidis; and persistent harassment and persecution, evidenced by targeted stop-and-search practices, confiscation of official documentation leading to unwarranted imprisonment, mass killings, and a variety of harm-inflicting strategies.
Against this backdrop, the Ruptured Atlas project focuses on one of Iraq's minority, the Yazidis, and their stories of trauma and resilience. It strives to serve as a sanctuary, a beacon of hope for these marginalised communities. The project engages trauma-informed and person-centred approaches to participatory and co-design dedicated to preserving and restoring the rich heritage, historical spatial narratives, and the collective identity of these communities, reinforcing their rightful place within Iraq's diverse societal fabric and its ancient civilization. Furthermore, the project's emphasis on engaging with indigenous communities can foster novel insights into the critical trauma geographies contexts within the Middle East.
The project uncovers a wealth of spatial lived experiences that demonstrate the complexity of displacement, survival, and return for one of Iraq’s minorities, the Yazidis. Through personal spatial stories and imaginative mappings, the project reveals the resilience of the Yazidis, their resourcefulness, and their profound attachment to their homeland, Sinjar. It also highlights the continuing challenges the Yazidi community faces, including the struggle to rebuild their homes, restore their community, and overcome trauma.
Alongside the 15 Yazidis whose stories feature in this atlas, the research team comprises Dr Sana Murrani, Associate Professor in Spatial Practice at the University of Plymouth and multi-disciplinary artist and researcher Kimbal Bumstead. The research team delivered a series of online Creative Mapping Workshops training through Sinjar Academy and conducted individual interviews with the 15 Yazidis which were turned into multi-modal story maps.
The atlas is featured on Sinjar Academy website and went live on the eve of the 10th year commemorating the genocide (3rd August 2024). A symposium about the findings of the project will be held on the 2nd October 2024 at the LSE Middle East Centre. Invited guests will include project researchers, partners and policy individuals with interest in both Iraq and UK migration.
Map showing the north east of Iraq where Sinjar is located, the river Tigris which cuts through Iraq, Syria and Türkiye, and the main locations and cities where Yazidis took refuge over the past ten years. .
Map showing the north east of Iraq where Sinjar is located, the river Tigris which cuts through Iraq, Syria and Türkiye, and the main locations and cities where Yazidis took refuge over the past ten years. .
A close-up map of the Sinjar Mountain (south of the river Tigris) and the surrounding villages and Ba'ashiqa (north of the Tigris, near Mosul) where Yazidis fled from on the 3rd of August 2014.
A close-up map of the Sinjar Mountain (south of the river Tigris) and the surrounding villages and Ba'ashiqa (north of the Tigris, near Mosul) where Yazidis fled from on the 3rd of August 2014.
Project phases
After a process of ethical clearance for fieldwork, the project went through three phases which began with a recruitment campaign led by Sinjar Academy. 160 Yazidis from Sinjar, surrounding villages and camp sites inside Iraq as well as those based outside Iraq signed up to PHASE 1: Mapping Workshops, a series of seven online training workshops delivered over five weeks, exploring multi-modal methods of map-making. Each workshop was accompanied by a piece of homework that was pivotal for workshops that followed. Workshops included:
- Co-making of Ethical Protocol
- Deep Listening and Interviewing
- Drawing and Cognitive Mapmaking
- GIS Storytelling
- Photographing and Filmmaking
- Sound Recording
- Sharing and Multimedia Storytelling
At the end of phase 1, we invited 15 Yazidis from the cohort to continue on PHASE 2: Atlas Storytelling. This phase began with a review of the co-created ethical protocol for the project followed by a series of deep storytelling sessions in the form of one-to-one interviews with Yazidis over two months. The ethics protocol focused on researchers' positionality, meaning of collaborative approach to co-creation of data, data sovereignty, and possible project impact and reflexivity. The sessions focused on intimate stories of home, displacement and migration (including failed attempts) or return. During which Yazidi researchers shared photographs, films, drawings, maps and sound recordings of snippets of their stories. This phase was followed by PHASE 3: Atlas Co-Making, an iterative process of making, editing and sharing over two months.
Story maps
This research project would not have been possible without the generous contribution of the 15 Yazidis who collaboratively built the Yazidi story of the past 10 years since the genocide. Each story map is written in their voice, told and charted the way they wished for the events to appear and be visualised. Content on each story map is created by the 15 Yazidi researchers. The reader might notice complexity and non-linearity in the way these stories are constructed; that is because of the non-linear impact of the trauma and violence they have endured and the way memory works, presenting a series of fragments in stories where every detail, feeling, and place is important.
Ruptured Atlas delves deeply into human stories and their trauma geographies; that is why we have avoided any mention of statistical numbers regarding the scale of the genocide, including how many were killed, abducted, displaced, or have returned.
Toolkit
This toolkit was co-created with the 15 Yazidi researchers together with our partner organisations. Sinjar Academy facilitated creative mapping workshops and provided access to Yazidis involved in the project. Yazda Iraq offered ethics training and contributed to the policy recommendations, while IOM Iraq contributed mental health support and data for the policy paper. The LSE Middle East Centre hosted a policy event on the 2nd October 2024 and supported the publication of the policy paper.
Ruptured terminology and imagery
Throughout the 15 story maps, several terms will appear following different styles and dialects. We have had three points of collective discussions with the researchers to agree on terminology and imagery. It is important to remind the reader that Phase 1 workshops were delivered in English and Iraqi Arabic dialect, and we had live interpretation to Kurmanji, the Yazidi dialect, at each session by one of our Yazidi researchers, Ghazi Murad Ismael. Sinjar, as it is widely known, is Shingal to Yazidis of Iraq in Kurmanji. During our storytelling interviews in Phase 2 of the project, Yazidis referred to their homeland as Sinjar and Shingal interchangeably, and we have respected their choices throughout their story maps. Another important point to make about terminology is the use of Daesh (as the group is commonly known in the Iraqi dialect) instead of ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) when referring to the militants of the so-called Islamic State throughout the story maps. Sometimes the use is reversed depending on personal preferences that the researchers themselves stipulated. The team have translated and only made simple grammatical edits to the text in each of the story maps. All views expressed belong to the individual storyteller.
Regarding the imagery throughout the atlas, drawings, maps, photographs, films, and soundscapes were provided by the Yazidi researchers unless otherwise stated in a note at the bottom of each story map. People featured in the work have all consented to their images being part of the atlas, while others have had their faces pixelated to protect their identity. In general, maps refer to the approximate locations of places and villages rather than exact GPS localities. A few villages, particularly those on the border between Iraq and Syria, are not identified on any of the open-source maps online and therefore locations might be approximate and not exact. There might be women and girls shown in certain photographs with headscarves loosely worn. Not to be confused with the Muslim hijab, the Yazidi scarves are usually made of light blue cotton material, worn by elderly women or by any woman or girl during times of mourning. None of our female Yazidi researchers wore the scarf.
This atlas features collaged maps with base maps taken from a variety of online map resources including Googlemaps, Open Street Map, and ESRI to create each of the 15 story maps. Please note that these collaged maps combine elements from multiple sources including screenshots taken by participants on their mobile phones.
Image credits for these maps include: Googlemaps, Airbus, CNES/ Airbus, Landsat/ Copernicus/ Maxar Technologies, Earthstar Geographics, Esri, TomTom, Garmin, Foursquare, FAO, METI/NASA, USGS, lomlom, barmin, FAU, MElV/INASA and Openstreet contributors.
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