Since 2014, thousands of Yazidi women and children have been enslaved by the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria. Nine years later, efforts are still being made to rescue these people from the horrors they endured, in which, in addition to forced labor, girls and women are repeatedly raped, assaulted and traded among terrorists.
This is the case of Bahar and their three children who were already sold for the 5th time in November 2015. Another son and his husband were taken away and slaughtered and buried in a mass grave.
A Yazidi woman from the religious and ethnic minority, branded an “infidel” by IS, was taken from the village of Sinjar in Iraq.
“I had to pretend to be their wife whenever they wanted. They beat me when they wanted,” she tells the BBC. Children as young as 10 were also brutally beaten.
They were ‘owned’ by a Tunisian who lent them to others to carry out clean-up work at IS sites. “I went to clean, but they raped me. There were airstrikes all day long. They ran to get weapons or hide. It was chaotic, worse than any nightmare,” he says.
While they were at the house of the Tunisian who had bought them, one day a car with tinted windows arrived by the driver. Bahar asked to be killed because she was going to be sold again, perhaps to someone worse.
In fact, the driver put her in touch with Abu Shujah, one of the coordinators of the rescue of these women and children, who gave them the code to say after they were taken to Syria.
They were picked up on a motorcycle by another man who asked them to be quiet so that IS elements would not suspect anything and believe that they were a family.
Finally, after a series of routes through terrorist checkpoints, they arrived at Abu Shuja’s house. Now they are recovering from the scars, emotional and physical, of years and years of abuse.
Another coordinator of rescue operations is businessman Bahzad Fahran, who reveals that the group he founded, Kinyad, managed to infiltrate the Islamic State to create a rescue network.
He reports that he has access to social networking groups where women and children are sold and shows posted ads. “Slave for sale: she is 12 years old, not a virgin, but she is very beautiful. In Raqqa, 11 thousand euros”, reads a publication.
In order to rescue these victims, the groups must pay the amount the terrorists demand, and do everything they can to keep the plot unsuspected.
In total, more than 6,400 Yazidi women and children were reportedly sold into slavery after the Islamic State captured Sinjar. More than 5,000 people belonging to this minority were massacred.
With nowhere to return, more than 300 people rescued by these groups are in camps in the Kurdish region of Iraq.
“I have to keep fighting. But now, as things stand, we are like the living dead,” Bahar concludes.
“Hardcore explorer. Extreme communicator. Professional writer. General music practitioner. Prone to fits of apathy.”