Pregnant 9-year-old among traumatized Yazidi kidnap victims
200 captives released this week after eight months with ISIS include many who are elderly and bear signs of abuse, neglect
When they were torn from their families by Islamic State militants last summer, thousands of Yazidi girls and women were raped, tortured, forcibly married and enslaved.
But after eight months in hell, some have struggled back to their surviving relatives in Iraqi Kurdistan: sick, broken, traumatized — and pregnant.
The youngest of these is 9, according to volunteers working in the refugee camps and abandoned buildings where they are sheltering.
“This girl is so young she could die if she delivers a baby,” said Yousif Daoud, a Canadian aid worker recently returned from the region. “Even a caesarian section is dangerous. The abuse she has suffered left her mentally and physically traumatized.”
This week Islamic State released more than 200 Yazidi captives, including 40 children. The others were mostly elderly, and all bore signs of abuse and neglect, according to a report from Associated Press.
Up to 500 girls and women had already found their way back to their devastated homeland in Kurdistan, where about 40,000 Yazidis were attacked and besieged in August, as the militants made a lightning assault on a minority they condemn as heretics. Hundreds were killed; about 4,000 more are believed captive.
But the futures of those who return are dark in a community that highly values chastity and honour.
The plight is worst for those pregnant after repeated assault, as many as 200. Although some Yazidi men have announced they would marry women who return from the Islamic State, that is less likely if they are carrying their tormentors’ children.
“Sending back those girls and women is a way of shaming the whole community,” said Daoud, who used a pseudonym to avoid losing the trust of the secretive religious sect.
That includes the children they are carrying against their will.
The Yazidis, a close-knit, conservative minority with roots in several ancient religions, believe in the purity of their line. Many of the pregnant women seek abortions to avoid stigma. But finding medical care is difficult for destitute displaced people, and some could not terminate pregnancies in time. Others have resorted to suicide.
“I don’t know what the future would be for their babies,” Daoud said. “The girls and women don’t want them. They have suffered so much they just want to forget. If they are married, their husbands won’t take them back if they are pregnant. And it’s clear that the babies will never be accepted.”
The kidnapped 9-year-old girl, he said, “was sexually abused by no fewer than 10 men. Most of them were front-line fighters or suicide bombers who are given girls as a reward. She was in very bad shape.”
This week, a Kurdish aid group took her to Germany, where a medical charity is looking after her.
If she survives , her outlook will be better than that of dozens of other pregnant, traumatized Yazidi wom- en. Unless Canada or other western countries accept them as refugees — and allow their babies to be adopted — aid workers say, the militants’ jihad will reach another generation.
In Toronto on Sunday, at 7.30 p.m., three Yazidis living in Canada will talk about the attacks by Islamic State militants. Mirza Ismail, chairman of the Yezidi Human Rights Organization-International, will speak. The event is at B’nai Brith at 15 Hove St. in North York.