‘They wanted all of us to blow ourselves up’
IRAQI BOYS TELL OF ISIL CAPTIVITY
They made the captive children, malnourished and weak from hunger, fight over a single tomato. Then Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant militants told them, “In paradise, you’ll be able to eat whatever you want. But first you have to get to paradise, and you do that by blowing yourself up.”
The lesson was part of the indoctrination inflicted by the militants on boys from Iraq’s Yazidi religious minority after the extremist group overran the community’s towns and villages in northern Iraq. The group forced hundreds of boys, some as young as seven or eight, into training to become fighters and suicide bombers, infusing them with its murderous ideology.
Now boys who escaped captivity are struggling to regain some normalcy, living in camps for the displaced along with what is left of their families. After surviving beatings, watching horrific atrocities, being held for months or years apart from their parents, losing loved ones and narrowly escaping death themselves, they are plagued by nightmares, anxiety and outbursts of violence.
“Even here I’m still very afraid,” said 17-year-old Ahmed Ameen Koro, who spoke in the sprawling Esyan Camp in northern Iraq, where he now lives with his mother, sister and a brother, the only surviving members of his family. “I can’t sleep properly because I see them in my dreams.”
Ahmed was 14 when the militants stormed into the Yazidi heartland around the northern town of Sinjar in the summer of 2014.
Tens of thousands of Yazidis were killed in the assault on Sinjar and neighbouring towns and the militants kidnapped thousands of women and girls as sex slaves.
The Yazidi minority, whose ancient faith combines aspects of Islam, Christianity, Zoroastrianism and Judaism, is considered heretical by the Islamic extremists. U.S.-backed Kurdish forces drove ISIL out of Sinjar in November 2015, but few Yazidis have returned, and an estimated 3,500 remain in ISIL captivity, scattered around its territory in Iraq and Syria, according to Human Rights Watch.
‘THEY LOOKED LIKE MONSTERS’
It was the morning of Aug. 3, 2014, when the ISIL fighters descended on Ahmed’s village of Hardan. The family tried to flee, but their car couldn’t hold everyone. So Ahmed, his 13-year-old brother Amin, and four cousins set off on foot while his father drove the others to the nearby village of Khader Amin. The boys were to wait for Ahmed’s father to pick them up at a roadway intersection outside of Hardan.
But his father never came: The militants seized him and the rest of the family, and his father was never seen again. ISIL fighters then captured Ahmed and the other boys at the intersection.
The boys were taken to the ISIL-held town of Tal Afar, some 50 kilometres away, where they were kept in a boys’ school along with dozens of other boys and teens. The adult men were taken away, leaving the women and girls.
“They chose and took the girls they liked,” Ahmed recalled. “I remember the girls were crying, as well as the mothers. They were dragging these girls from the arms of their mothers.”
“I was very scared. I’ve never seen such a thing. They were all very big bearded men, they looked like monsters,” he said. “My parents weren’t with me and I was thinking about them, wondering what happened to them.”
Ahmed and the other boys were then moved to Badoush Prison outside the ISIL stronghold of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, where they were kept for 15 days.
The militants taught the boys Islamic prayers, instructed them in their hardline interpretation of the Qur’an and forced them to say they had become Muslims.
“We were scared of saying that we were not Muslims because they would kill us.”
Ahmed was among some 200 Yazidi boys sent to a two-month training camp in Tal Afar. Their days began with early morning prayer and military training exercises, followed by study of the Qur’an. They learned to shoot Kalashnikovs and pistols. They watched videos on how to use a suicide belt, throw a grenade, or behead a person.
“They were telling us if we were in a fight against the infidels … we had to blow ourselves up and kill them all,” he said.
‘YOU WILL BLOW YOURSELF UP’
Akram Rasho Khalaf was only seven when his town of Khidir Sheikh Sipa was overrun by the militants on Aug. 23, 2014. His family tried to flee, but the militants opened fire and Akram suffered shrapnel and bullet wounds to his abdomen and hand.
“They started to shoot at us. My mother fell and I was hit. These are the bullet marks,” he said, raising his T-shirt to show two large scars on his stomach. Akram was taken by ambulance to Mosul, seized earlier that summer by ISIL, where he underwent surgery.
He never heard from his parents again.
Eventually, he was brought to Raqqa, ISIL’s self-declared capital in Syria. There the militants would throw balls at the children’s heads, said Akram, now 10. If anyone cried, they were beaten. Those who didn’t cry were praised for being tough and told they would one day be suicide bombers.
“They were telling us, ‘When you grow up, you will blow yourself up, God willing,’ and some of the kids said, ‘We will not blow ourselves up,’ ” Akram said. “Then they asked us, ‘Which one of you wants to go to paradise?’ And the kids didn’t know what to say. But they wanted all of us to blow ourselves up. ”
ESCAPE
Two years after Akram was taken captive, the boy’s uncle, Hasar Haji Hasan, received a photo on his Facebook page of his nephew dressed in black Islamic garb, along with an offer to smuggle him out of Raqqa for US$10,500 — an increasingly common practice as ISIL militants seek to earn cash by returning the youngest of their captives for a price. The family borrowed the money from a relative in Germany, where there is a large Yazidi refugee community. Eventually the boy was smuggled out and taken by motorcycle to a Kurdish peshmerga checkpoint. He was reunited with what remains of his family on Nov. 29 — two years and three months after he was seized by the militants.
For Ahmed, escape came sooner. On May 4, 2015, nine months after their capture, Ahmed, his brother Amin and a cousin managed to slip from the militants’ sight at the military training camp in Tal Afar. Their cousin was soon recaptured, but the brothers hid in a mosque until nightfall, then fled with a small group of other escapees on foot.
“We ran out of everything. We were almost dying.”
But fear of ISIL kept them going, and after a nineday 90-kilometre trek they reached the Sinjar mountains, where Kurdish peshmerga forces rescued them.
‘NOT NORMAL’
Akram’s uncle says his nephew has been deeply affected by his time in captivity, suffering nightmares and anxiety. The boy’s brother, Raiid, 8, and five-year-old sister Jumana, rescued separately after ransom was paid, have similar problems.
“Sometimes they become very aggressive and they beat up other children or our children. They are not like other normal children. Their mental health is very bad,” he said.
Asked about his dreams for the future, Ahmed answers immediately. “When I grow up I will take my revenge against Daesh, against those infidels,” he said.
Akram also has a ready response. Asked what he wants to do when he grows up, he declared: “Fight Daesh.”