Leaders beg Kurds to bomb captives
Nerwon camp, Turkey – Thousands of captured women from the Iraqi Yazidi sect are being held as domestic slaves or sold to traffickers to work in brothels across the Middle East, according to Kurdish intelligence sources. Others, they say, have been forced to marry Isis fighters.
It is thought that at least 1200 women were kidnapped from the city of Sinjar alone by fighters from the militant group, which is also known as Islamic State. Thousands more were taken hostage from other towns and villages in the early hours of August 3.
Two schools in Tel Afar and Mosul city are being used as makeshift prisons for the women – and some Yazidi leaders have begged Kurdish fighters to bomb the prisons, believing that it is better that the women have an honourable death than face a life of captivity, rape and enduring humiliation.
‘‘A well-known Yazidi leader
‘‘There is kidnapping and killing everywhere. Nowhere is safe any more.’’ Hamid Karim
called us up and begged us to call in airstrikes on the schools,’’ said a Kurdish intelligence source. ‘‘They asked us to help them kill their women. They would rather they die than face a future as slaves.’’
Intelligence officers say they have received information that some of the women are being sold to human traffickers for between US$500 and US$3000. Traffickers will then sell on the older women as domestic slaves and the younger women as sex workers in brothels around the Middle East.
Some of the women are also believed to have been forced into marriages with fighters from Isis, which enforces a harsh interpretation of Islamic teachings. Yazidis are viewed as heretics.
At the Iraqi-Turkish border, Yazidi men who fled the group’s onslaught are desperate for any news of their missing female relatives and friends. Nadum Basi Murad managed to cross the border into Turkey, where he is now living alongside hundreds of others in the makeshift Nerwon camp. He has not heard from his daughter and granddaughters since Isis entered their home in the village of Borruk 10 days ago.
‘‘A neighbour called me to say that he had seen them being taken away by the extremists,’’ he said. ‘‘They put them in pickup trucks. I try to call her every hour, but I can’t reach her.’’
In the stifling daytime heat of the camp, the men of Sinjar gather in patches of shade to share their fears. They can do nothing but talk and worry about the women they left behind as they fled the advancing Isis fighters.
Hamid Karim could barely lift his head as he spoke of his elderly mother, left on her own in her house in Sinjar as the younger and more able-bodied fled. He is still in contact with her, and she has reassured him that she is safe, for now, but he fears the day when she will no longer pick up her phone.
A total of 40,000 Yazidi people used to live in Deugry but just one other family has made it to Nerwon camp. Khadida Ali and his wife Baseya have marked out their space in the tent next to Aliyas and Fatima. The two families didn’t know each other before they came to Nerwon, but their shared and terrible knowledge of what has happened in their home town has bound them together.
‘‘We could only run, be kidnapped, or die,’’ Khadida said.