ISIS on Aug. 19 released a video purporting to show a mass conversion of hundreds of members of the 4,000-year-old Yazidi religion. The "conversion" is clearly forced, undertaken on pain of death. The video was published shortly after ISIS released a video showing one of its members beheading US journalist James Foley, sparking outrage around the world. (IraqiNews.com) More than 90,000 Yazidi refugees who fled Mount Sinjar to the Kurdish-governed Dahouk governorate live in horrific conditions, according to Saleh Dabbakeh, spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Iraq. Thousands are without even rudimentary shelter, seeking refuge form the blazing sun under trees and bridges. He said many of the refugees who made it to Dahouk are now struggling "to get food and water for their families and many have no access to medical care." (Azzaman)

After the abduction of more than 500 Yazidi women and girls by ISIS fighters at Sinjar, the jihadist group has established a special office in the Quds neighborhood of Mosul city where the women are being sold, according to Evar Ibrahim, head of the Women's Committee in the Kurdistan Regional Government's parliament. Ibrahim said the girls are being sold for 30,000 dinars, or about $26. "Despite selling them, the Yazidi girls have been raped by the IS insurgents," Ibrahim added. (BasNews) An official spokesman of Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) in Khanaqen district, Hemin Mansour, charged that ISIS militants are evicting any remaining Kurdish families from Jalawla (Diyala governorate), and have demolished some houses belonging to Kurdish residents of the town. The evictions are being justified on the grounds that the Kurdish families were collaborating with the Peshmerga. The ISIS flag is also being raised over seized Kurdish homes to make them a target for air-strikes. (BasNews)

The taking of the Mosul Dam on the Tigris River from ISIS by Kurdish Peshmerga forces backed by US air power highlights the strategic nature of water in the multi-sided Iraq conflict. Even before ISIS seized the giant dam in early August, the militants were taking advantage of the country's drought, cutting off the flow of water from the dam to Baghdad through territory under their control. "ISIS is starting to use dams as weapon of war," wrote meteorologist Eric Holthaus, Slate's Future Tense blog. "So they've made [it] high on their list to take over those dams and control the water downstream." July saw battles between ISIS militants and government troops over the Haditha Dam and its hydroelectric works on the Euphrates. The fall of the complex to ISIS would have given the rebels control over Baghdad's electricity source. But the most grave danger has not passed: ongoing fighting and air-strikes in the area of the Mosul Dam could lead to the dam being breached, which would flood Mosul and other downstream cities, possibly even affecting Baghdad.

ISIS fighters shot and beheaded some 700 members of the Shueitat tribe in eastern Syria over the past two weeks, crushing a local uprising against the jihadi forces, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reports. Tribesmen expelled ISIS fighters from the villages of Kishkiyeh, Abu Hamam and Granij in Deir el-Zour governorate earlier this month before the jihadists launched their counter-offensive. "They considered all members of the Shueitat tribe apostates because they rose against them," said a Turkey-based activist who is from the region and in touch with residents there. "Some men were taken out in the fields and beheaded while others were shot in the head." Syrian warplanes are bombing ISIS positions in an attempt to halt the militants' advance on an army base in the area. (AP, Aug. 18)

A Yazidi militia group has entered the fight against ISIS, clashing with militants near Sinjar. Khudida Kicho, a member of the Yazidi militia, said in a press conference in Erbil: "In the Kahbel area near Sinjar our fighters were able to attack IS militants and kill 24 of them. In the clashes three of our fighters were killed as well, but we will continue to fight terrorists until the end." (BasNews) Kurdish Peshmerga leaders meanwhile said their forces have seized full control of the Mosul Dam, in coordination with US air-strikes on ISIS positions in the area. (IraqiNews.com) But in Baghdad, the general command of Iraq's armed forces warned against foreign planes breaching the nation's airspace and arming "a certain Iraqi faction"—a clear reference to Western arming of the Peshmerga. "We welcome international support for Iraq in its war against terrorism," read the statement. "But Iraq's territorial sovereignty must be respected." (Rudaw, IraqiNews.com)

A survivor who managed to escape by feigning death described a general massacre at the ISIS-occupied Yazidi village of Kojo 20 kilometers south of Sinjar. The village was surrounded by ISIS fighters 12 days ago, with residents ordered to convert on pain of death. On Aug. 15, the fighters moved in, and rounded up the villagers, separating the men from the women and children. The men were lined up and machine-gunned. Up to 80 are believed to have been killed. (BasNews, AP, Reuters) ISIS forces have reportedly brought Sunni Arabs into the cleansed Yazidi town of Sinjar in response to US air-strikes on nearby Arab villages. Yazidi homes are being given to the Arab families. (BasNews) The Kurdistan Regional Government's Peshmerga forces have joined with PKK-aligned Kurdish militias to form the Sinjar Defense Units, to take back the town. (Rojava Report) The KRG's Peshmerga Ministry issued a statement naming several villages where "IS militants" suffered "heavy losses" under US bombardment. Peshmerga forces backed by US air-strikes have also opened an operation aimed at recovering the ISIS-held Mosul Dam. (BasNews, Rudaw)

Defense Department officials said Aug. 13 that US air-strikes and Kurdish forces have broken the ISIS siege of Mount Sinjar, allowing thousands of the Yazidis trapped there to escape. An initial report from some dozen Marines and Special Operations troops who arrived the previous day said that "the situation is much more manageable," a Defense official told the New York Times. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, speaking to reporters at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., said it is "far less likely now" that the US will undertake a rescue mission. A White House official said: "The president's decisive decisions [sic] in the immediate wake of the crisis kept people alive and broke the siege of the mountain." But Yazidi leaders and relief workers dispute the claim that the siege has been broken, asserting that tens of thousands of Yazidis remain on the mountain in desperate conditions. Speaking from her hospital bed in Istanbul, Vian Dakhil, a Yazidi member of Iraq's parliament who was injured in a helicopter crash on the mountain, said that up to 80,000 remain stranded there. "It's better now than it had been, but it's just not true that all of them are safe—they are not," Dakhil said. "Especially on the south side of the mountain, the situation is very terrible. There are still people who are not getting any aid." (NYT, NYT, Ahram, The Guardian)

Another 130 US troops arrived in northern Iraq on Aug. 12 on what the Pentagon described as a temporary mission to assess the scope of the humanitarian crisis facing thousands of displaced civilians trapped on Mount Sinjar. Kurdish sources said four US Osprey aircraft landed in Erbil, where the military advisors disembarked and were greeted by officials of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). On a visit to California's Camp Pendleton, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel emphasized: "This is not a combat boots on the ground kind of operation. We're not going back into Iraq in any of the same combat mission dimensions that we once were in in Iraq." (AP, Rudaw)