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At a camp in the Kurdish regional capital of Irbil, Yazidis tell harrowing tales of torture, mass killings and abduction of women as sex slaves before they fled in August â first to Mount Sinjar and later to Iraqi Kurdistan. âThey (the extremists) took 50 of our neighbors and buried them alive,â said Elias Shingal, a former Iraqi army sergeant and construction worker who arrived in Irbil after two days on Mount Sinjar with his wife and four sons, aged four through 14. The family made a white-knuckle drive through Islamic State lines to escape in the night, he said.
Displaced Yazidi women watch a courtyard in the school where they've been given shelter in the Ankawa district of Irbil, Iraq
Still, Shingal, who said he worked for the U.S. Army in Mosul in 2004, and his family were the lucky ones. His neighborâs sister was taken as a sex slave, he said. âI will cry if I keep talking about this,â he added. An estimated 50,000 to 80,000 Yazidis fled to Mount Sinjar, where many were trapped for days without food or water until the U.S. began air dropping supplies. Kurdish forces, aided by U.S. air strikes, managed to help most of the trapped Yazidis to escape either to Syria or Kurdistan. âWe didnât know anything about Daash until they came to our village,â Shingal said, referring to the Islamic State by the groupâs Arabic acronym. âWhy they hate us, we donât know.â
Much of that hatred likely stems from what Islamic extremists consider heretical Yazidi religious beliefs. Yazidis, ethnically related to the Kurds, believe in one God who created the world. According to Yazidi beliefs, God then turned the Earth over to seven âholy beings,â similar to angels in Judeo-Christian traditions. Chief among them was the âPeacock Angel,â who is responsible for both good and evil.
The dual role of the âPeacock Angelâ in promoting both good and evil has given the Yazidis an undeserved reputation as âdevil worshippers,â which has been responsible for waves of genocidal crackdowns against them over the centuries, most recently by the Islamic State. The arrival of the Islamic state appeared to awaken old prejudices among other Sunni Muslims.
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In northern Iraq, where Kurdish forces are rapidly regaining territory held by the Islamic State, thatâs becoming real risk for the extremists. There are plenty of female Kurdish soldiers on the front lines. Theyâre smaller than their male comrades, but they talk just as tough as they prowl the battlefield clutching automatic rifles and vowing vengeance for those victimized by the Islamic State. âWe are equal with the men,â said Zekia Karhan, 26, a female guerrilla from Turkey who is with the Kurdistan Workersâ Party, known as the PKK. âEvery responsibility for a man is the same for a woman. We are treated equally, and that is why we are fighting.â
The female PKK troops accessorize their olive drab uniforms with colorful scarfs, but theyâre as thirsty for battle as anyone. âI fired on this position from the mountain,â said Felice Budak, 24, another PKK fighter from Turkey, as she stood next to a window pierced by several bullet holes in Makhmur, a town that the PKK helped recapture from the Islamic State this month. Budak said she wasnât scared during the battle. Islamic State fighters âare very scared of death because they are only here to kill people,â she said. âI donât mind doing it over and over again. Iâve already fought in Turkey, Iran and Syria.â
Zekia Karhan, 26, a female Kurdistan Workers' Party guerrilla from Turkey says that she is treated as an equal by her male counterparts. Karhan and other members of the PKK are in northern Iraq, helping the peshmerga fight Islamic State militants.
The leftist PKK has been fighting the Turkish government for decades and is classed as a terrorist organization by the U.S. But its fighters have been going into battle alongside Kurdish peshmerga in recent weeks and are credited by some locals with turning the tide of battle in Iraq. The female PKK troops get fired up when they talk about the mass rapes and sex slavery that has been a hallmark of the Islamic State. âEverywhere they go they kill and do bad things in the name of Islam,â Karhan said. âThey captured a lot of women and they are selling them in Syria for $100. They rape women and behead them in the name of Islam.â
Karhan said sheâd heard stories about the extremistsâ fear of being killed by the opposite sex. In northern Iraq, it is said that the Islamic State fighters, who are exclusively male, believe that they wonât be admitted to heaven if they are killed by a woman. At Makhmur, that may have been the fate of several Sunni extremists gunned down by the PKK. âNobody knows if there is heaven or hell,â Karhan said. âHow can they know they will get 27 virgins? To me Kurdistan is heaven and Kurdish women are angels. Heaven is no place for terrorists.â Budak said that she would could go shopping, wear makeup and buy nice clothes if she stayed in Turkey, but then she wouldnât have her freedom. âI am happy here with my freedom in my own country,â she said.
The PKK commander in Makhmur, Tekosher Zagros, praised his female troops but got upset when a linguist confused his group with the peshmerga â Kurdish government forces. âNot peshmerga,â Zagros grumbled in broken English. âGuerrillas⌠partisans.â Zagros was also upset that the PKK hadnât received support from the Iraqi government. He noted the terrorist designation by the U.S. and NATO. âWe understand it is because of Turkey,â he said. âTurkey is your friend. But you can see now that we are fighting the terrorists. It is clear now who are the terrorists.â
Female fighters of the PKK may be the Islamic State s worst nightmare - News - Stripes
The 15-year-old is now with what is left of her family - two of her brothers and some more distant relatives - living in a makeshift roadside shelter in this tiny village in northern Iraq, along with other families shattered by the onslaught from the Islamic State militant group. Her two sisters remain in the militants' hands, and her father, other brothers and other male relatives have vanished, their fates unknown. The girl was among hundreds of women and girls from the Yazidi religious minority captured by Islamic State fighters in early August when the militants overran her hometown of Sinjar in northwestern Iraq. Hundreds were killed in the attack, and tens of thousands fled for their lives, most to the Kurdish-held parts of northern Iraq.
Iraq's Human Rights Ministry said at the time that hundreds of women were abducted by the militants, who consider the Yazidis a heretical sect. The Associated Press spoke to the girl and several other young women who escaped captivity by the Islamic State group. While specifics of their stories could not be independently confirmed, they reflected circumstances reported by the United Nations last month. They each independently painted a similar picture of how the militants scattered them around the broad swath of territory controlled by the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq and sold the girls to the group's foreign fighters or other supporters for "marriage."
A 15-year-old Yazidi girl captured by the Islamic State group and forcibly married to a militant in Syria sits on the floor of a one-room house she now shares with her family after escaping in early August, while speaking in an interview with The Associated Press in Maqluba, a hamlet near the Kurdish city of Dahuk, 260 miles (430 kilometers) northwest of Baghdad, Iraq. The girl was among hundreds of women and girls from the Yazidi religious minority captured by Islamic State fighters in early August when the militants overran their hometown of Sinjar in northwestern Iraq. Hundreds were killed in the attack, and tens of thousands fled for their lives, most to Kurdish-held parts of the north
For weeks after being snatched from Sinjar, the 15-year-old girl and two of her sisters were shifted from one place to another, she said. The AP does not identify victims of abuse, and the girl also did not want to be named for fear of reprisals against her relatives still being held by the militants. As she told her story, the girl rubbed her hands and avoided eye contact. But she spoke decisively and clearly, never hesitating when asked questions. She asked her relatives to leave the room, saying she was more comfortable speaking alone.
First, she said, she and other girls were taken to the nearby town of Tal Afar, where she was kept in the Badosh Prison. When U.S. airstrikes began around the town, the militants took her and many other girls with them to the Islamic State group's biggest stronghold, Mosul, in northern Iraq. From the city of Mosul, she and her sisters were taken to the militants' de facto capital, the Syrian city of Raqqa. There they were held in a house with other abducted girls. "They took girls to Syria to sell them," she said, her body shyly hunched over as she spoke. "I was sold in Syria. I stayed about five days with my two sisters, then one of my sisters was sold and taken (back) to Mosul, and I remained in Syria."
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âHundreds of Yazidi women and girls have had their lives shattered by the horrors of sexual violence and sexual slavery in IS [Islamic State] captivity,â said Donatella Rovera, Amnesty Internationalâs Senior Crisis Response Advisor. In August 2014, IS fighters abducted âhundreds, possibly thousands, of Yazidi men, women and childrenâ from the Sinjar region in northwestern Iraq. âYounger women and girls, some as young as 12, were âŚsold, given as gifts or forced to marry IS fighters and supporters. Many have been subjected to torture and ill-treatment, including rape and other forms of sexual violence, and have likewise been pressured into converting to Islam.â
Iraqi Yazidi women who fled the violence in the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar.
Between September and November 2014, the watchdog interviewed 42 Yazidi women and girls who had managed to escape from the Islamic State extremists. âMany of those held as sexual slaves are children â girls aged 14, 15 or even younger. IS fighters are using rape as a weapon in attacks amounting to war crimes and crimes against humanity.â The trauma suffered by the women and girls in captivity could drive them to suicide, says Amnesty, drawing the example of Jilan,19, who took her own life while being held captive in Mosul, as she feared she would be raped. âOne day we were given clothes that looked like dance costumes and were told to bathe and wear those clothes. Jilan killed herself in the bathroom. She cut her wrists and hanged herself. She was very beautiful,â Luna, one of the girls who were locked in a room with Jilan, told the organization. âI think she knew she was going to be taken away by a man and that is why she killed herself,â added Luna, who later escaped the militants.
Another IS victim, Wafa, 27, and her sister tried to kill themselves to escape forced marriage. âThe man who was holding us said that either we marry him and his brother or he would sell us,â she told Amnesty. âAt night we tried to strangle ourselves with our scarves. We tied the scarves around our necks and pulled away from each other as hard as we could, until I faintedâŚ.I could not speak for several days after that.â Amnesty says that after their escape from IS militants, former sex slaves may kill themselves.
The grandfather of a 16-year-old girl who was raped by the militants says that she âis very sad and quiet all the time.â âShe does not smile anymore and seems not to care about anything. I worry that she may try to kill herself, I donât let her out of my sight,â he added. âThe physical and psychological toll of the horrifying sexual violence these women have endured is catastrophic. Many of them have been tortured and treated as chattel. Even those who have managed to escape remain deeply traumatized,â said Rovera. The Islamic State has bragged about reviving slavery and claims it is empowered to enslave Yazidis, whom its members consider to be devil worshippers. Yazidis are a Kurdish minority, which practices a religion linked to Zoroastrianism, influenced by Sufi Islam.
Horrors of sexual violence Yazidi women forced into slavery commit suicide Amnesty says RT News
It's also the Islamo-Fascism that right-wing Christians, and Atheists like Christopher Hitchens warned about.Here's the war on women, you progressive dumbfucks.
And not a single one of you has commented on this thread.Here's the war on women, you progressive dumbfucks.
Iraq official: Militants hold 100s of Yazidi women
Hundreds of Yazidi women taken captive by ISIS militants with ?vicious plans,? Iraqi official says | National Post
Hundreds of sources I just picked two at random.
What did he do?Good thing Obama saved them..
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