Yazidi UPDATES genocide has occurred and is ongoing

[Anthea]

Let us not forget the
Yazidi women victims of ISIS

THE headlines have been dominated by stories of women in the caliphate since Shamima Begum’s plea to return to the UK following four years as a wife to an Islamic State jihadist

Noticeably absent, however, are stories on the thousands of Yazidi women who remain missing in the hands of the caliphate and who are begging for their freedom.

The case of Shamima Begum raises important questions surrounding citizenship and terrorism, legal justice and rehabilitation, among others. It is important to consider the potential for prosecution in Britain and to discuss how this may happen. However, we need to remember the victims of the murderous group she travelled to join, and whose suffering has been marginalised in media coverage.

This is especially the case for the Yazidis of Iraq and Syria, who have been subject to genocide by Isis and are recognised as the most persecuted victims of the terror group.

Having spent six months with Yazidis in a Greek refugee camp, there was a prevailing sense of abandonment; both in 2014 and at present, with more than 3,000 Yazidi women and children in Isis captivity. More than 80 per cent of Yazidis in Iraq have been displaced and languish in tents in Kurdistan, susceptible to fire and flooding. Those who have risked their lives to reach Europe remain vulnerable to further attack.

Nadia Murad, a Yazidi and Nobel Peace Prize recipient, is often seen as a beacon of hope for the community. She has travelled across the globe seeking justice for her community. The UK, among many others, has recognised the genocide but refuses to give safe haven to its victims. Her calls for justice remain largely unheard. Such calls will continue to go unheard if the focus remains on the terrorists themselves.

There are numerous obstacles to achieving peace and a bright future for the Yazidis. A good starting point, however, would be to provide exposure on their plight, rather than those who have committed and supported genocide against them. Forgetting is the first step to ensuring it will happen again.

https://www.heraldscotland.com/opinion/ ... s-of-isis/

[Anthea]

Yazidi leaders call for help finding thousands of
missing women and children kidnapped by ISIS

More than 3,000 Yazidis are still unaccounted for

Yazidi tribal leaders and organisations have called on the international community to do more to investigate the fate of thousands of women and children still missing after being kidnapped by ISIS.

Dozens from the small religious minority have been rescued over the last few months as the Isis caliphate has been reduced to a small patch of land in the eastern Syrian village of Baghouz. But more than 3,000 are still unaccounted for, and with the battle nearly over, time is running out to find answers.

The discovery of a mass grave on the edge of the village this week, in an area recently recaptured from ISIS, has raised fears that many of the missing may not have not survived their captivity. An investigation is currently under way into who the victims were.

“We call on the coalition forces, namely the US and all other troops that fight ISIS under the leadership of the coalition, to discover the destiny of victims and help to return the prisoners soon,” said a statement from the Yazidi leaders, according to the news website Kurdistan 24.

“We also call on the Foreign Ministry of Iraq to shoulder the responsibility it has on its citizens to search for the Yazidi girls and return the bodies of the martyrs or their remains through their relations with the concerned governments,” it added.

The mass grave found a few days ago contains the remains of men and women, but the total number of victims is unclear.

"Investigation is still underway to determine their nationality and the manner of killing," said Adnan Afrin, a spokesman for the Syrian Democratic Forces. He added that they were looking into reports that they may be Yazidis or ISIS fighters.

For years now, Yazidi groups have called for more efforts to be made to rescue their missing.

"It is outrageous that thousands of our women and girls have been missing since 2014 and it has not been a priority or main area of discussion with the Global Coalition and the international community," said Pari Ibrahim, founder of the Free Yazidi Foundation.

"We can understand that this is a war zone situation, and because of that, maybe locating and rescuing the women is very difficult. So we understand and appreciate that," she told The Independent. "But we still feel that this should have been considered important and necessary. Instead, our women and girls were being tortured in excruciating agony, month after month, year after year."

In the summer of 2014, shortly after ISIS declared its caliphate, the group carried out a murderous rampage against the Yazidi people in their traditional homeland in northern Iraq.

The attackers killed thousands, and took more than 6,000 women and children as slaves. The UN would later declare the attack on Sinar, and the ongoing enslavement of Yazidi women, a genocide.

Images of thousands fleeing to the top of Mount Sinjar prompted the US to launch its first airstrikes against ISIS, paving the way for the creation of an international coalition to destroy the group’s caliphate.

Nearly five years later, that battle is almost over. The caliphate is now little more than a field of tents, where only the most hardened fighters remain.

Over the past two months, tens of thousands of civilians have fled the shrinking territory. Yazidi captives, who had been unable to flee for years, have been leaving with civilians.

Earlier this week, Reuters reported two young Yazidi girls leaving Baghouz on a truck with phone numbers written on their arms. And a group of 11 Yazidi boys left the territory and taken back to Iraq after years in captivity.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/worl ... 00996.html

[Anthea]

Yazidi children still carry
trauma of 'caliphate' captivity

In the four years he was enslaved, jihadists killed his father and sold his mother. Saddam is free now, but even with the "caliphate" in ruins, his life is filled with trauma

The warm living room in northeastern Syria where the 15-year-old sits is a far cry from the cold trenches and dingy basements that protected him from shellfire that targeted his Islamic State group captors in recent weeks.

But his newfound comfort does little to ease the tension that grips him as he tries to tell his story to AFP.

Saddam was among 11 Yazidi children rescued by US-backed forces from ISIS's last sliver of territory in the village of Baghouz near the Iraqi border in recent days.

The Yazidis are a mostly Iraq-based Kurdish-speaking religious minority. The jihadists consider them heretics and in 2014, tried to exterminate them.

Saddam arrived in a Kurdish-run shelter for Yazidi children in the town of Gumar in the northeastern province of Hasakeh on Tuesday.

His lips pursed, he is mostly quiet. He says a few muffled words between long stretches of silence.

The other children in his group don't want to talk at all, some of them even hiding their faces.

They quit the last ISIS redoubt after jihadists trapped there allowed thousands of people to flee.

Upon receiving them, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces contacted The Yazidi House, a shelter that reunites rescued Yazidi children with surviving relatives.

Days after their harrowing journey out of the jihadist proto-state, the desert dust has been washed off.

They sport colourful tracksuits and sleep on velvet-coloured mattresses in a room furnished with carpets and cushions.

- Families separated -

Most, including Saddam, come from the Yazidi bastion of Sinjar in northern Iraq, between the jihadists' former stronghold of Mosul and the border with Syria.

In 2014, ISIS jihadists massacred hundreds of men and kidnapped thousands of women to be used as sex slaves or sold on.

The fate of some 3,000 remains unknown, but some may remain in the last ISIS pocket of Baghouz.

Nobel laureate Nadia Murad, herself an Iraqi Yazidi who was abducted and raped, called Thursday on the Iraqi government to facilitate the transfer of rescued Yazidis across the Syrian border.

"There is not one family in Sinjar that has not had a member killed... or raped," says Mahmoud Racho, one of the volunteers at the House of Yazidis.

Racho says the shelter has so far helped 300 Yazidis rescued from ISIS. For each new arrival, they contact relatives in Iraq, who come to pick them up after a few days, he says.

Saddam says jihadists separated his own family.

With teary eyes, he says IS fighters told him that they had killed his father.

They abducted his mother and separated her from her five children, he adds.

He has not seen his mother or siblings in four years, but Saddam does not condemn the jihadists.

He says he did not personally suffer from mistreatment but the jihadists showed him videos of executions and "spent most of their time" teaching him the Koran.

"I didn't like them, I didn't want to stay," he says. "I arranged to leave."

- 'Scared to death'-

Saddam's reluctance to speak is no surprise to Halifa Hasso, another volunteer at the Yazidi shelter.

"Where they were, they were scared to death," she says.

"When you talk with them (at first), they close their eyes or hide their faces because they are so scared," she adds.

Saddam, who has only been at the shelter for two days, "didn't tell us anything", Hasso says.

"It usually takes four or five days for them to start telling their stories."

"We take care of them, we give them food. Some vomit, they are given medicine. After that, they get to talking. They don't cry, but tell us everything," she says.

It can take up to six months for some arrivals to start speaking, especially when their relatives are still being held by ISIS, Racho says.

He says some children come back brainwashed by jihadists. "We are asking for specialised medical follow-up," he adds.

Ziad Avdal, who co-chairs the association, says it's harder for some children to get rid of this mentality than it is for others.

"But little by little, these children get better," he says.

Saddam now hopes he will be reunited with his mother and siblings, who have sought refuge in Canada.

"I want to go there. I haven't seen them for four years," he says.

"I miss them a lot."

https://www.france24.com/en/20190301-ya ... -captivity

[Anthea]

Power vacuum in Sinjar prevents Yazidis' return

Around 200,000 Yazidis have little choice but to live in poorly equipped camps in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq

The defeat of the ISIL in the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar in 2015 has left a power vacuum.

The area is rife with various armed groups vying for control and the lack of agreement among them has prevented thousands of people from the minority Yazidi community from returning home.

Al Jazeera's Charles Stratford reports from Makhmour.

Link to Video:

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/03/ ... 23363.html

[Anthea]

Displaced from Shingal for 4 years
girls find comfort in ballet lessons

Children have been displaced from the Yezidi homeland of Shingal because of the Islamic State (ISIS) group since August 2014. Some of these girls are finding ballet lessons a welcome relief to the monotony of camp life

"I am very excited to perform this dance, which is different from ours, but it is really great," said one of the ballet students.

Elissa from the US NGO Greater Change is their instructor. So far 20 children have learned ballet.

"I take [a ballet] course and also teach my friends. I taught them and made them happy," Nasi, an IDP.

All the residents of Kabarto camp are from Shingal – 60 percent are Yazidis, the rest are Muslims, about 10 Arab and two Turkmen families also reside there.

The Kurdistan Region continues to host some 1.2 million IDPs and Syria refugees.

Shingal is a disputed area in Iraq that is claimed by both the Iraqi federal and Kurdistan regional governments.

Displaced people Shingal complain that they cannot return until there are adequate services and security in the war-ravaged area.

Link to Article - Video:

http://www.rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/02032019

[Anthea]

Little boys brainwashed into being suicide bombers:
Ian Birrell on Yazidi children turned
into jihadis by barbaric ISIS fighters

Iraq estimates 2,000 children have been brainwashed by ISIS
Need counselling to recover from being abused and beaten
Experts warn they could become a security threat

Milad was just seven when Islamic State gunmen tore him from his family as they cowered in a building alongside hundreds of other Yazidi villagers in the captured Iraqi city of Tal Afar.

The brutal jihadis whipped his hands with cables to force the terrified child and his trembling brother to join the other young boys being taken away in buses.

Later, a man with a long black beard spoke to them. 'He told me there is no point in being scared because we have sold your family,' recalled Milad. 'When he told me that, I cried.'

I met this sweet-natured boy, now probably 11 years old, in a Yazidi safe house. The previous day Milad and a boy called Farwaz had finally escaped the clutches of ISIS and ended a nightmare of almost five years.

They escaped the terror group's last pocket of resistance in Baghouz – into the arms of the Western-backed Kurdish forces crushing the last of an ISIS 'caliphate' once the size of Britain.

Milad told me his family was safe. Tragically, he did not know yet that his father had been murdered and his mother was missing after almost certainly being sold into sexual slavery, like thousands more Yazidi women and girls as young as ten.

But at least he could speak, despite his confusion, as he began to adjust after years of barbarism and brainwashing following ISIS attempts to turn him into one of the feared 'cubs of the caliphate', the army of suicide-attack teenagers.

Farwaz, by contrast, could not talk as he sat cross-legged. He stared at the ground with a haunted look in his sunken eyes, having learned the agonising truth about his own family's murder.

He spoke just five words in all the hours we sat together. 'The Daesh [ISIS] flag is horrible,' he mumbled.

It was gut-wrenching to see the trauma of these abused boys, who had joined a group of 11 others aged seven to 15 who had also escaped ISIS thugs two days earlier.

They were among almost 6,500 Yazidis kidnapped by the jihadis, who despise their gentle, ancient faith. Almost half are still missing – and inevitably, much of the world's outrage has focused on the horrific sexual abuse of women and girls.

Yet the Yazidi activists offering Milad and Farwaz solace had no doubt that these boys, like many of the 600 others passing through the safe house before them, had been forcibly converted to the Islamists' creed and trained to kill.

'They will have learned how to use weapons. I'm sure they know how to shoot very well,' said Mahmoud Rasho, a community leader whose phone pinged repeatedly with messages from families looking for loved ones.

'Then Rasho gestured towards a ten-year-old boy I had met earlier. 'Give the car keys to Mazan and he would drive better than any adult,' he said.

When I asked why, the answer was chilling. Mazan had been taught to drive a vehicle loaded with explosives on a suicide mission – something difficult to believe when looking at the child standing near by in a hoodie and jeans.

It was equally disturbing to witness the grip ISIS still held on these terrified boys. One after the other – until Milad opened up a little and admitted firing guns – they claimed they had been treated well and had not had military training.

This was a shocking illustration of Stockholm Syndrome, when kidnap victims develop a bond with their captors – and one more example of the intense fear inspired by the savagery of ISIS fanatics.

Those helping these indoctrinated boys said they had heard them talking among themselves at night, agreeing not to admit to anything for fear ISIS might return and punish them. Milad confirmed this to me.

Rasho said: 'The ISIS policy was to plant fear in their minds so it is difficult for the boys to recover. All those over four were taken from their families, isolated in well-guarded places and turned into fighters.'

Clearly these are deeply distressed children, some clinging to their imposed faith and calling their Yazidi protectors 'infidels'.

Zuhour Kado, 58, the maternal figure running the house, said the children screamed in their sleep and some woke up vomiting.

'When they first get here I hug them, kiss them, and then I bathe them,' she said. 'But sometimes their bodies have so many wounds it is hard to wash them.'

Many younger survivors have no memory of their homes or native Kurdish tongue after being kidnapped in 2014 when ISIS swept through Iraq's Yazidi regions.

They can be so confused that it takes a week for them even to recall basic family details.

Saddam, 15, the oldest in the rescued group, could at least remember growing up in Iraq's Sinjar region. 'I remember my father going to work and going to school,' he said. His family was caught by IS as they attempted to flee and taken to Tal AfThis was a shocking illustration of Stockholm Syndrome, when kidnap victims develop a bond with their captors – and one more example of the intense fear inspired by the savagery of ISIS fanatics.

Those helping these indoctrinated boys said they had heard them talking among themselves at night, agreeing not to admit to anything for fear ISIS might return and punish them. Milad confirmed this to me.

Rasho said: 'The IS policy was to plant fear in their minds so it is difficult for the boys to recover. All those over four were taken from their families, isolated in well-guarded places and turned into fighters.'

Clearly these are deeply distressed children, some clinging to their imposed faith and calling their Yazidi protectors 'infidels'.

Zuhour Kado, 58, the maternal figure running the house, said the children screamed in their sleep and some woke up vomiting.

'When they first get here I hug them, kiss them, and then I bathe them,' she said. 'But sometimes their bodies have so many wounds it is hard to wash them.'

Many younger survivors have no memory of their homes or native Kurdish tongue after being kidnapped in 2014 when IS swept through Iraq's Yazidi regions.

They can be so confused that it takes a week for them even to recall basic family details.

Saddam, 15, the oldest in the rescued group, could at least remember growing up in Iraq's Sinjar region. 'I remember my father going to work and going to school,' he said. His family was caught by IS as they attempted to flee and taken to Tal Afar.

'There were many families there. We were asked if we were willing to convert to Islam and said yes, because those who said no were being killed.'

Later, the men, women and boys were separated.

'Daesh called all the men to the mosque, including my father and uncle,' he said. 'I've never seen my father since. I have heard he was killed. I waved at him as he left – it breaks my heart to think of this moment.'

Milad could not remember his village of Solakh, in Iraq, but recalled being separated later from his own family in Mosul. 'We were reluctant to leave our mothers so they [IS] beat us – it was unbearable pain.'

Then he admitted: 'They taught us to shoot,' before claiming they were just toy guns. He added: 'But I was not a good shot and kept missing. They used to tell us that you should know how to shoot.'

Milad said he spent his last two years of captivity in Baghouz with a senior IS fighter and his brother.

'His own two children got boots but there was nothing for us,' he said. 'But he never hugged them – he said it was haram [sinful] to kiss his children.'

No doubt these boys will start to reveal the full truth as they slowly recover.

The Iraqi government estimates about 2,000 children have been brainwashed by IS ideology.

Some receive counselling to help them recover from being abused, beaten, taken from families, trained in militancy and often orphaned.

Yet these are the fortunate ones – many others died after being forced into fighting for the jihadis as their caliphate crumbled.

Others have reportedly been used as human shields to prevent air strikes and Kurdish attacks.

Experts warn that if the mental stresses of such child victims are not treated, they could become a security threat.

'Some people say it's like a ticking timebomb,' said Kani Areef, of SEED Foundation, a specialist charity in the region, earlier this year. 'You don't know when it will blow.'ar.

'There were many families there. We were asked if we were willing to convert to Islam and said yes, because those who said no were being killed.'

Later, the men, women and boys were separated.

'Daesh called all the men to the mosque, including my father and uncle,' he said. 'I've never seen my father since. I have heard he was killed. I waved at him as he left – it breaks my heart to think of this moment.'

Milad could not remember his village of Solakh, in Iraq, but recalled being separated later from his own family in Mosul. 'We were reluctant to leave our mothers so they [ISIS] beat us – it was unbearable pain.'

Then he admitted: 'They taught us to shoot,' before claiming they were just toy guns. He added: 'But I was not a good shot and kept missing. They used to tell us that you should know how to shoot.'

Milad said he spent his last two years of captivity in Baghouz with a senior ISIS fighter and his brother.

'His own two children got boots but there was nothing for us,' he said. 'But he never hugged them – he said it was haram [sinful] to kiss his children.'

No doubt these boys will start to reveal the full truth as they slowly recover.

The Iraqi government estimates about 2,000 children have been brainwashed by ISIS ideology.

Some receive counselling to help them recover from being abused, beaten, taken from families, trained in militancy and often orphaned.

Yet these are the fortunate ones – many others died after being forced into fighting for the jihadis as their caliphate crumbled.

Others have reportedly been used as human shields to prevent air strikes and Kurdish attacks.

Experts warn that if the mental stresses of such child victims are not treated, they could become a security threat.

'Some people say it's like a ticking time-bomb,' said Kani Areef, of SEED Foundation, a specialist charity in the region, earlier this year. 'You don't know when it will blow.'

Link to Article - Photos:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... hadis.html

[Anthea]

The lost childhood of traumatised
Yazidi children abducted by ISIS

Eighteen Yazidi children have been reunited with their families, more than four years after they were kidnapped by the Islamic State armed group in Iraq’s northern Sinjar region

The 18 children, aged 10 to 15 yeras, crossed into Iraq from Syria and met their families in Iraq on the road between Sinjar and Dohuk on 2 March.

Few parents were able to meet their children as some are still missing or have been killed. Others have moved to Western countries seeking asylum.

“The children are traumatised and most of them were raised by Islamic State families. We assume that they were brainwashed,” explains Tom Peyre-Costa, the spokesperson of the Norwegian Refugee Council in Iraq.

“The first support they will get will be from their families, of course. But they will need years of psychosocial support as well to allow them to reconnect with their childhood. And to reintegrate within their communities.”

Children in need of support

The NRC’s Education team is providing psychosocial support to the displaced Yazidi children. It is one of the programmes NRC delivers to displaced children and youth, affected by stress from living in war and conflict.

The Islamic State considers the Yazidi religious minority to be heretics. After years of being brainwashed by ISIS, some children struggle to find their place within the Yazidi community.

And there are reported cases of boys communicating with ISIS a year after they returned or even refusing to leave ISIS.

“Some children were actually very young when they were kidnapped. Some of them totally embraced the Islamic State’s ideology. This make reintegration even more difficult,” says Peyre-Costa.

In Yazidi camps around Dohuk, NRC’s psychosocial support to the children involves a number of activities to enable them to reconnect with their friends and people around them. The activities range from improving the learning abilities of traumatised children to singing, sports or drawing.

No home to return to

In August 2014, ISIS attacks on Sinjar and the Yazidis were so violent – including rape, killings, abduction, enslavement – that the United Nations later decribed it as a genocide.

An international coalition managed to drive out ISIS from Sinjar region from November 2015. But, unlike elsewhere in Iraq, reconstruction in Sinjar, home to the Yazidis, has not started yet.

“The way home will still be very long for Yazidis because most of them are still living in displacement camps, far from home. They are simply unable to return because there is no home to return to,” declares Peyre-Costa.

“Sinjar, their home town is heavily damaged. There is no water, no electricity. The hospitals have been destroyed. There are only two schools opened. Most of the old city is [a pile of] rubble, laced with unexploded bombs. That makes their return impossible.”

More than 3 thousand Yazidis are still missing. NRC believe a number of them might still be held in Baghouz, ISIS’s last enclave in Syria, and used as human shields along with other civilians.

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/lost-childhoo ... 16244.html

[Anthea]

Yezidis lose hope of finding loved ones

Yezidi families had hoped their missing loved ones would emerge among the droves of humanity flooding out of Baghouz, eastern Syria, where the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have besieged the Islamic State (ISIS) group’s last holdout

Families have waited five years for news of their missing relatives, abducted by jihadist militants from their homeland of Shingal, northern Iraq in August 2014.

Thousands of Yezidi men and elderly people were executed and buried in mass graves, while around 6,400 women and children were kidnapped to be sold into slavery.

“We had hoped they return; we were waiting. But they never returned,” Wadiha Ibrahim, 67, tells Rudaw. “We hoped they might be in Syria or in Baghouz. We’re still waiting on God to see them again. They didn’t return. We depend on God.”

Wadiha’s husband, three of her sons and one daughter have been missing for five years.

The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Special Office for Yezidi Abductee Affairs says it has liberated 25 people since the Baghouz operation began. Many more missing Yezidis are thought to be held in other cities throughout Iraq and Syria.

Some 3,046 people are still missing

Link to Article - Must See Video:

http://www.rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/050320191

[Anthea]

Female Yazidi worshippers gather to remember the thousands of women and girls seized as sex slaves, tortured and murdered by ISIS fanatics

Please click image to enlarge:

Yazidi women gather to commemorate thousands of girls and women killed by ISIS in the so-called caliphate

Worshippers lit candles and at the ceremony to remember the victims of murder, rape and sexual violence

At Lilash Temple in Shikhan north of Iraq during International Women Day the deaths were commemorated

Dozens of Yazidi women have gathered to commemorate the thousands of girls and women who were killed by ISIS under the so-called caliphate.

The worshippers lit candles and attended a ceremony to remember the victims of murder, rape and sexual violence at the hands of the militants.

Please click image to enlarge:


ISIS overran the Yazidi faith's heartland of Sinjar in northern Iraq in 2014, forcing young women into servitude as 'wives' for its fighters and massacring men and older women.

The Yazidis are a religious sect whose beliefs combine elements of several ancient Middle Eastern religions.

Islamic State considers them devil worshippers and its attacks on the group were condemned as a 'genocide' by the United Nations.

The ceremony at Lilash Temple in Shikhan in the north of Iraq today during International Women Day was to commemorate the deaths of women killed by the fanatics.

A month ago the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) launched what it called a 'final battle' to take the cluster of houses and farmland, and people leaving in the enclave of Baghouz near the Iraqi border have described harrowing conditions of peril and hardship.

A Yazidi woman who emerged on Thursday spoke of years of enslavement and abuse by the jihadists.

Salwa Sayed al-Omar spent years as a Yazidi prisoner of ISIS but she escaped its clutches this week, fleeing its last populated enclave in east Syria along with two Iraqi boys pretending to be her brothers.

Describing how jihadists bought and sold their Yazidi captives or passed them around as sexual slaves, Omar said: 'They took women, abused them and killed them.

'A woman was shifted from one man to another unless it was to one who had a bit of mercy... if she was in good condition, she would carry on. If not, she would get married to avoid being abused.'

Omar was eventually married to a jihadist from Tajikistan.

As the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) besieged the enclave at Baghouz, some surviving Yazidi women and children emerged among many thousands of others fleeing deprivation and bombardment, including the group's own unrepentant supporters.

The SDF is waiting to evacuate all civilians from the Baghouz enclave before forcing the remaining jihadists there to surrender or storming the tiny area by force.

Omar escaped along with two Iraqi children, Mustafa and Dia, who had been her neighbours for two years as their respective households moved through Syria together during Islamic State's long retreat to Baghouz.

As Islamic State's many enemies advanced against it, the group would move its captives from place to place. 'They were hiding us in different places so we couldn't be seen or helped', Omar said.

Their Islamic State captors were 'rigorous' in checking who left, said the teenage boys, Mustafa and Dia, who said they had stayed longer in the enclave to help Omar leave.

After a month of siege in the tiny pocket at Baghouz, a cluster of hamlets and farmland on the banks of the Euphrates at the Iraqi border, they were reduced to eating grass and hiding in holes when there was fighting, they said.

They all managed to get away from her 'husband' by paying him money. Many Islamic State fighters remained in Baghouz as they left on Thursday, dug into tunnels under the area, the boys said.

Speaking in the desert outside Baghouz, where people who had left the enclave were searched, questioned and sorted between civilians and fighters, Omar spoke of how she had been captured.

'They took me from Iraq. They captured us on the road and said 'we won't do anything bad to you, but you must convert to Islam'. We were afraid to be killed so we converted,' she said.

It did not save them. After months of capture, the women were split from the men, whom she never saw again. Captured boys aged seven-15 were taken to be brainwashed and trained as ISIS fighters, she said.

She was taken to Raqqa, the group's Syrian 'capital', which fell to the SDF during Islamic State's year of big defeats in 2017, and then down the Euphrates to Baghouz.

'Today I reached the democratic forces and they said 'we will let you go out of the Islamic State'... and thank God, they helped me and let me out,' she said.

Kurdish fighters will resume their assault on ISIS's last, small patch of ground in eastern Syria if no more civilians come out by Saturday afternoon, one of their spokesmen said today.

The SDF have slowed their offensive on the jihadist enclave at Baghouz near the Iraqi border to allow many thousands of people to pour out in an exodus that has lasted weeks.

The SDF said a week ago that it believed all civilians had come out and renewed its assault, leading to a new surge of displacement, including obdurate disciples of Islamic State, some of its captives and hundreds of surrendering fighters.

However, the head of the SDF media centre, Mustafa Bali, said no more people had emerged on Friday.

'We are waiting for tomorrow morning or perhaps until the afternoon, we'll give another space, for the possibility that civilians are present and the chance to get them out,' he said.

After that, 'if no civilian or terrorist comes out, we will launch our military operation anew.'

The capture of Baghouz will mark the end of Islamic State's territorial rule over populated areas of Iraq and Syria, and the culmination of a U.S.-backed military campaign waged by the SDF for four years.

After suddenly seizing swathes of land straddling the Iraqi-Syrian border in 2014 and declaring it their caliphate, Islamic State were beaten back by numerous local and foreign forces in both countries, suffering major defeats in 2017.

However, the jihadists remain a menace. In Iraq they have gone to ground, staging waves of killings and kidnappings.

In Syria, their comrades hold out in remote desert areas and have carried out bombings in areas controlled by the SDF.

Those who have fled Baghouz have mostly gone to al-Hol, a displacement camp in northeast Syria whose population has swelled to 62,000 people, 90 percent of them women and children.

Link to Article - Lots More Lovely Photos:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... -ISIS.html

[Anthea]

Yezidi doctor treats female survivors of ISIS

Here at this camp in Shekhan, thousands of displaced Yezidis are living in tents, many of whom cannot afford health examinations or treatment

That's where Doctor Nagham Mawzad Hassan comes in. The gynecologist has particular empathy for what these Yezidi people are going through - since she is herself a Yezidi survivor.

Yezidis are an ancient religious group who live mainly in Iraq and Syria and speak Kurdish or Arabic. They revere a high angel called Malek Taws, also known as the Peacock Angel.

They have often suffered at the hands of Sunni extremists who have tried to portray them as devil worshippers, and the Islamic State group (IS) tried to eradicate them.

Thousands of Yezidi women and girls were forced into sexual slavery by IS. While many have escaped or been released, around 3,000 are still missing.

Dr Hassan now dedicates her life to helping women survivors rebuild their lives, by providing them with free consultations and psychosocial support.

She pays regular visits to the Yezidi displacement camps in the Shekhan area in Dohuk governorate in the northern Kurdish region of Iraq.

These women have been through extremely harrowing experiences.

Gawre Khedir Faris, a mother from Tal Uzeyir-Sinjar, lost her children and husband five years ago after IS invaded the area.

"From early morning until the evening, I am waiting and hoping for the mercy of God to hear any news on my children," she says.

Other patients endured awful abuse at the hands of their militant captors before they managed to escape.

Nasrin Saado Murad, a Yezidi survivor from Sinjar, was pushed to the brink of suicide by IS.

"They were beating me with a big cable, the one that is used in the main power, and they were very bad with me, so I swallowed bleach," she says.

Dr Hassan visits the women, examines them and provides them with medicines.

She says being a woman and a Yezidi helps her communicate with them, but that their situation makes it difficult for them to move on with their lives:

"All the women survivors are suffering from physical pain, lack of sleep, fear, anxiety and from severe depression, because the economic situation of the women survivors is very bad, and the social condition is worse. They have continued fear of the future.

They fear many things, and they always see nightmares in their dreams," she says.

Hassan is working with a local non-governmental organization called Hope Makers Organization for Women (HMOW).

It is based in Dohuk and focuses on providing protection and assistance for the women survivors of ISIS atrocities.

More than 6,000 Yezidis were killed, kidnapped, or sold as slaves by the ISIS militants, when they swept into the Yezidi areas in Sinjar and its surrounding areas in August 2014.

Link to Article - Video:

http://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iraq/080320191

[Anthea]

ISIS beheaded 50 Yazidi women remaining
3000 likely to be sold into sex slave market

A mass grave including the decapitated heads of 50 Yazidi women held captive as sex slaves by ISIS was unearthed by international forces in the Eastern Syrian town of Baghuz this week

It is believed that ISIS beheaded and buried many of the women they held captive in Eastern Syria this week because the Syrian Democratic Front are closing in on the terrorist group's last strongholds in the region. There was no time to on-sell these captive women into the sex slave market and transporting them while on the run would have been too difficult.

The likely fate of the remaining 3000 women held captive by ISIS, however, is lifetime servitude in the sex slave market -- an income stream ISIS relies on to stay operational.

This week, Yazidi-Australians and their allies demonstrated in Wagga Wagga, Coffs Harbour and Toowoomba as part of simultaneous global protests calling on the UN and governments across the world to help free their sisters, daughters, cousins and friends.

Hundreds of people attended the demonstration in Wagga Wagga for which the Yazidi community worked with politicians, the multicultural council, police and other community members. Deputy Prime Minister and local MP, Michael McCormack said “the Yazidis have come to call Wagga Wagga their home and, in turn, they have enriched our community with their culture and traditions.”

Recent figures from the UN Office of Drugs and Crime show during the height of ISIS’s territorial control, the market in sexual slavery could have contributed up to $USD21million to the caliphate’s economy.

At present, it costs $USD20,000 to $30,000 for the community to buy back a former slave. With approximately 3000 women remaining in captivity across the region, ISIS have the potential to earn up to $US90 million from buy backs. This is at a time when the organisation has low costs and overheads but a dire need for diverse income streams to maintain deadly terrorism attacks across the globe.

Since August 2014, thousands of Yazidis have made their home in Australia under the humanitarian migration program. They have joined regional communities across Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland.

When ISIS took control of their towns and villages across Syria and Iraq, thousands of men were killed, boys were forced to convert and become child soldiers, and thousands more women and girls were kidnapped and sold into sexual slavery.

Survivors like Delal, who now call Australia home, know what it’s like to suffer the life of a sex slave under ISIS. She was sold to the highest bidder in Iraq, brutally mistreated and tormented before fleeing and finding safety in Australia. Other women, who were held in servitude by Australians are seeking some sort of reparations for what they experienced.

They are entitled to justice under Australian law which prohibits sexual violence as war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide against the Yazidis, but so far not a single fighter has been prosecuted for these crimes.

The world watched when Nadia Murad and Denis Mukwege received their Nobel Peace prizes “for their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict” but what both really want is an end to impunity.

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/dateline/is ... ave-market

[Anthea]

It's not rape in Islam:

ISIS 'wife' defends jihadis' sexual assault and murder of Yazidi women because it is 'allowed in the Quran' as the last remaining fighters face being pushed from their final stronghold

ISIS woman defended the rape of Yazidi women taken prisoner by the militants

She claimed Quran permitted the rape of prisoners of war who became slaves

Unidentified woman said 'it's not rape in Islam..because they are your property'

But the Muslim holy book specifically prohibits the rape of female slaves

Thousands of Yazidis forced into slavery when their land was overrun by jihadis

An ISIS 'wife' has said Yazidi women can be raped as sex slaves because it states prisoners of war are 'property' in the Quran - before admitting she had not read the text.

The unidentified female was speaking to another woman who asked her about the treatment of Yazidis under the so-called caliphate.

Speaking to a mobile phone camera, she described her interpretation of the Quran as a justification for the rape and murder of Yazidi women taken prisoner as sex slaves, saying because the Muslim holy book defines prisoners of war as 'property' they can be treated as objects.

But when pressed on if it does actually states in the Quran that prisoners can be treated this way, the woman replied she 'did know much' about the Islamic text.

In fact, sura 24, verse 33 of the Islamic holy book explicitly states: 'Force not your slave-girls to whoredom that ye may seek enjoyment of the life of the world, if they would preserve their chastity.'

Another verse extols followers to treat prisoners respectfully and to 'feed, for the love of Allah, the indigent, the orphan, and the captive.'

Some fundamentalist Islamic scholars have argued passages of the Quran justify the keeping and holding of female slaves.

Wearing a black niqab with glasses, she added that 'it's not rape in Islam..because they are your property'.

The woman is thought to have originally come from outside Iraq and Syria, and made the comments in a refugee camp in the Kurdish-controlled north of the country.

She said: 'They were prisoners of war, and they become slaves, it is in [the] Quran.

'They are property so in Islam you are allowed to use them, it's not rape in Islam. Because they are your property they are your slaves.'

She then went on to say: 'If it's in the Quran then who am I to question [it]?'

When asked if does state this in the Quran, the woman replied while laughing: 'I don't know much about the Quran.'

Afarin Mamosta posted two videos on social media yesterday evening.

She previous posted videos of children of ISIS fighters raising the jihadi 'tawheed' finger gesture.

ISIS overran the Yazidi faith's heartland of Sinjar in northern Iraq in 2014, forcing young women into servitude as 'wives' for its fighters and massacring men and older women.

The Yazidis are a religious sect whose beliefs combine elements of several ancient Middle Eastern religions.

Islamic State considers them devil worshippers and its attacks on the group were condemned as a 'genocide' by the United Nations.

Thousands of Yazidi women were forced into sex slavery by their ISIS 'husbands' when their homeland was overrun by militants in 2014.

One Yazidi sex slave changed 'owners' 17 times as she was raped and abused by ISIS thugs who was forced her to eat grass before she fled from Baghouz.

A Swedish jihadi owner would lock her in the home for days without food while he went to fight.

Another man, an Albanian, stomped on her hands in his military boots, after she scolded him for buying a nine-year-old slave girl.

Jihadis decapitated dozens of Yazidi women and dumped the heads in dustbins, according to British SAS troops who entered recapture ISIS territory

A month ago the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) launched what it called a 'final battle' to take the cluster of houses and farmland, and people leaving in the enclave of Baghouz near the Iraqi border have described harrowing conditions of peril and hardship.

As the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) besieged the enclave at Baghouz, some surviving Yazidi women and children emerged among many thousands of others fleeing deprivation and bombardment, including the militant group's own unrepentant supporters.

Diehard jihadists swelling Syrian refugee camps have vowed revenge as the last remaining ISIS holdout in Baghouz faced collapse.

One veiled woman, feared to be among thousands of unrepentant fanatics who have fled Baghouz and surrendered to US-backed Kurdish forces, chillingly warned: 'We will seek vengeance, there will be blood up to your knees.

'We have left, but there will be new conquests in the future.'

At an outpost for US-backed forces outside the village, ten women stood in front of journalists, pointing their index fingers to the sky and shouted: 'The Islamic State is here to stay!'

The gesture - known as 'tawheed' - is used by ISIS supporters to proclaim the 'oneness of God'.

One 60-year-woman, who did not want to be named, said that ISIS will continue because the boys under the terror group's rule have been trained to fight from a young age.

The remaining hardened militants and their families were forced to set up camp amongst battered pickup trucks and tents on the last scrap of land of ISIS-controlled territory between advancing Kurdish forces and a riverbank.

Those who have fled Baghouz have mostly gone to al-Hawl, a displacement camp in northeast Syria whose population has swelled to 62,000 people, 90 percent of them women and children.

An estimated 3,000 Yazidis are still unaccounted for.

Close to 200,000 members of the minority fled their homes when ISIS swept into their heartland over four years ago

International airstrikes had killed some Yazidis living as slaves in the caliphate and there are thought to still be 1,000 Yazidis inside Baghouz, including 130 boys training to become jihadis.

International Women Day on Friday, Yazidi worshippers gathered at Lilash Temple in Shikhan in the north of Iraq to remember the thousands killed by ISIS.

Link to Article - Photos:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... Quran.html

[Anthea]

Hopes dim for thousands of missing Yazidis as
ISIS battle nears its end, but search must go on

A few months ago, when the Isis caliphate had been reduced to a string of towns and villages along the Euphrates River, there was still a glimmer of hope

For the families of more than 3,000 Yazidis who were taken into slavery and are still unaccounted for, there was a possibility that their loved ones could be living among the population, unable to escape, or waiting for the right opportunity.

But as the caliphate has slowly collapsed, so have the hopes of finding the missing.

“We have had the same number of missing for years now. The problem is, not many are coming back,” said Ahmed Burjus, deputy executive director of Yazda, a Yazidi advocacy group.

“We were hoping that many people would be liberated from Baghouz, but only 50-60 [Yazidis] have escaped,” he told The Independent, referring to the last village under Isis control.

Tens of thousands of women and children have fled the shrinking Isis territory in eastern Syria over the past few weeks, but most of them have been families of fighters or sympathisers. Only a few dozen Yazidi captives have been among them.

Those who have emerged have done so after sneaking out among the families of those who tortured and enslaved them. Defiant Isis women have been filmed after fleeing Baghouz shouting the terror group’s slogans and justifying the enslavement, while not far away Yazidi women have burnt the black abayas they were forced to wear, after tasting freedom for the first time in years.

The Syrian Democratic Forces said Monday that it had 16 freed Yazidis – including children – in an operation days earlier. Last week, Salwa Sayed al-Omar was among them. She fled the enclave with two Iraqi boys pretending to be her brothers, according to Reuters.

“They took women, abused them and killed them,” she said, describing how jihadists bought and sold their Yazidi captives or passed them around as sexual slaves.

“They took me from Iraq. They captured us on the road and said ‘we won’t do anything bad to you, but you must convert to Islam’. We were afraid to be killed so we converted,” she said.

A small number of boys have escaped, too. Hundreds of them were taken along with the women when Isis overran the Yazidi heartland of Sinjar in 2014, and were brainwashed by the group.

Despite these escapes, in the last days of the caliphate, Yazidi groups have had to confront the possibility that they will never find the answers they are looking for. But they are not ready to give up.

Yazda is now calling on the international community and local authorities to widen the search, looking in the camps holding tens of thousands of Isis families, and in areas liberated from the group years ago.

“They have found a Yazidis in Baghdad, in Mosul, even in Turkey two days ago. We believe many are living in these places and they cannot escape,” said Mr Burjus.

“They are forcing Yazidis to wear veils and cover their faces, and there must be many children who were very young when they were kidnapped and have forgotten who they are,” he said. “Most of the women and girls from villages and they don’t even know how to use internet. So it’s difficult for them to escape.”

Mr Burjus said a specialist task force could go into these areas and search for missing Yazidis.

“Around Mosul and Nineveh, we think many Yazidis are still there,” he said. “There has to be steps by intelligence services to get into the local community to search, offer rewards for missing Yazidis. There is no plan like this,” he said.

The lack of closure has only added to suffering the community has endured since Isis carried out its most heinous crime five years ago.

In the summer of 2014, shortly after Isis declared its caliphate, the group carried out a murderous rampage against the Yazidi people in their traditional homeland in northern Iraq.

The attackers killed thousands, and took more than 6,000 women and children as slaves. The UN would later declare the attack on Sinar, and the ongoing enslavement of Yazidi women, a genocide.

Yazidi groups have consistently complained that not enough has been done to find and rescue the thousands of women who were taken.

"It is outrageous that thousands of our women and girls have been missing since 2014 and it has not been a priority or main area of discussion with the global coalition and the international community," Pari Ibrahim, founder of the Free Yazidi Foundation, told The Independent recently.

"We can understand that this is a war zone situation, and because of that, maybe locating and rescuing the women is very difficult. So we understand and appreciate that. But we still feel that this should have been considered important and necessary. Instead, our women and girls were being tortured in excruciating agony, month after month, year after year."

There is a concern, too, that the neglect will continue after the battle is won, and that this will have an impact on the quest for accountability. The current debate over the fate of British Isis members is just one example, according to Mr Burjus.

“It’s sad to see the international community, with all their resources, constantly having debates about whether to allow Shamima Begum to come home. No one is talking about justice,” he said.

“If you are not punishing them you are telling them to come kill people, the field is yours. Letting people get away with their crimes is not reconciliation,” he added.

Everyone is sympathetic - no one has acted

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/worl ... 17806.html

[Anthea]

Yezidi children must be rehabilitated
then returned to Shingal

PARIS, France – Yezidi families torn apart by the Islamic State (ISIS) in 2014 must be rehabilitated and returned to their homeland of Shingal, a charity chief providing aid to the displaced minority said

Shirin Azad Pur, head of the LAFAM Organization, was speaking at an event in the French capital this week, where 14 Yezidi children were invited to attend from Khanke displacement camp in Duhok province.

“Our main message is for people to stay in Shingal,” Azad Pur told Rudaw.

“To whom should they abandon their land? They all have to return and settle in Shingal. We are doing our utmost to help their women and children.

“The future of any community lies on the shoulders of children. Children are the future of any homeland,” she added.

The 14 boys and girls had lost one or both of their parents and witnessed some of the worst atrocities committed by the jihadist group when it rampaged across northern Iraq in the summer of 2014.

The event, organized in aid of the children’s rehabilitation, was attended by non-governmental organizations, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) representative to Paris, and French politicians.

Jacky Deromedi, a French senator, said her country wants to train displaced Yezidis so they can rebuild their lives in Shingal.

“The idea is to be able to get these people into Europe, have them trained, and then go back to their countries to be able to train other people,” she told Rudaw.

Ali Dolamari, the KRG representative in Paris, thanked France for its continued support of Yezidi and Christian IDPs sheltering in the Kurdistan Region.

“France is currently aiding two camps in the Kurdistan Region. They are planning to supply assistance to another camp in a bid to lift some of the burden on the KRG,” Dolamari told Rudaw.

“They plan to carry out some crucial projects in the future in the Kurdistan Region. One of the camps they assist is in Bardarash and the other in Duhok. There are also many other non-governmental French organizations operating at Duhok and Erbil camps.”

Thousands of Yezidi women and children are still unaccounted for after their abduction by jihadist militants almost five years ago.

With instability, destroyed infrastructure, and a lack of basic public services, many displaced Yezidis choose to remain in the IDP camps of Duhok or move abroad rather than return to Shingal.

http://www.rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/09032019

[Anthea]

Yazidi doctor soldiers on in
mental battle against ISIS

The military fight against the Islamic State group may be nearing an end, but one Yazidi doctor treating survivors is soldiering on against unseen scars the jihadists carved into her community

"They tell me that wherever they go, they have pain. They can never forget what happened," said Nagham Hasan, a 41-year-old gynaecologist from the Yazidi town of Bashiqa in northern Iraq.

"These negative feelings get transferred to me, too," she said.

When ISIS first rampaged across northern Iraq in 2014, Hasan fled with her family to the sprawling city of Dohuk further north.

Just a few months later, the jihadists descended on Sinjar, the remote Yazidi heartland in northwestern Iraq.

Declaring the secretive minority an "apostate" sect, ISIS killed Yazidi men, took boys as child soldiers, and forced thousands of women and girls into "sex slavery".

Those that could flee settled in camps and other shelters in Dohuk's hilly outskirts.

That's when Hasan's phone began to ring, and it has hardly stopped since.

Yazidi survivors asked about their sisters, wives, and daughters, who were not only physically wounded but also suffering panic attacks, insomnia, non-stop crying, and even suicide attempts.

Hasan began visiting survivors for medical consultations, which quickly expanded into impromptu therapy sessions as they detailed their traumatic experiences to her.

"The fact that I'm from the same sect played a huge role. It allowed them to feel closer to me, to trust me, to break that wall of fear," she told AFP.

- 'Dedicated my life' -

In recent weeks, dozens of Yazidi women and children have escaped ISIS's last desert holdout in east Syria, many of them making their way across the border to Sinjar.

But Hasan said there is a long way to go to heal the community-wide trauma, which has taken a vicarious toll on her.

"Seeing so many affected my own mental state. I'm a human being with feelings, too," she said quietly.

Her somber eyes are cupped by dark semi-circles, hinting at a lack of sleep.

She gets phone calls from survivors in the middle of the night. Some come visit her in the modest apartment where she lives with her parents, brother, and sister.

Her family tried to return to Bashiqa, retaken from IS in 2016, but found their home half-destroyed.

"My family life, my social life, my work were all affected by this work," said Hasan, tucking her thinning shoulder-length hair behind her ear.

She is dressed in a dark green sweater, matching blazer, and faded pink lipstick.

"I never married and don't have kids. My sister is studying medicine too, but I told her not to do the same thing I'm doing."

She began spending so much time on psychotherapy sessions and advocacy that she closed her women's health centre.

"I have dedicated my life to this now," she said, estimating that she has helped more than 1,000 Yazidis since 2014.

Each case is more heartbreaking than the last. One girl was raped 22 times by ISIS fighters. Another was eight when she was taken and assaulted.

Among her former patients is Nadia Murad, a Yazidi who escaped ISIS and won the Nobel Peace Prize for her activism on behalf of the minority.

Hasan keeps Murad's autobiography at home, the first page signed by the author.

"Each one of us fought Daesh with whatever we had, but you fought them with the strongest weapon when you decided to treat us," wrote the Nobel laureate, referring to IS by its Arabic acronym.

- Another shock -

Hasan said more than half her patients have resettled abroad, but those still in Iraq almost all live in camps with poor conditions and no breadwinner, which is slowing their mental recovery.

"Even after a survivor is freed from Daesh, she's hit with another shock when she comes to live in a miserable camp," she said.

As she walked down a dirt thoroughfare between shabby tents in the Kabarto Camp, Hasan was hailed down by a smiling woman.

Layla's 15-year-old daughter was abducted by ISIS at age 12, but was freed with her mother and treated by Hasan in the camp.

"She was inconsolable when she first arrived. She wouldn't talk, just cry. She's finally agreed to go to school, thanks to your help," she told Hasan.

A displaced man called out to Hasan, asking her to look at his infant's deformed arm.

After patiently listening, she promised to return for a proper examination.

Hasan is recognised by children, who wrap their thin arms around her legs, and even camp authorities say a warm hello.

She emerges from the camp visibly worn down, but determined: "I didn't think it would last this long, or that I would be doing this for years.

https://www.france24.com/en/20190313-ya ... le-against