WUNRN
Radio Free Liberty-Radio Free Europe
http://www.rferl.org/content/islamic-state-yazidi-woman-s-ordeal/27081860.html
Yazidi Iraqi
Woman’s IS Captivity Story
A file
photo of a Yazidi woman who escaped Islamic State captivity earlier this year.
By Joanna Paraszczuk - June 19,
2015
”We stayed on our feet while they looked for the ones who
were pretty, those with a nice body, or pretty eyes, or pretty hair, or a
pretty face. They would take them, rape them, and pass them on to others."
This is one of the terrifying memories that 28-year-old
Ghazala, a Yazidi woman from Sinjar in Iraq's Kurdistan region, has of her
ordeal in Islamic State captivity.
Ghazala and her younger sister Narin (their names have
been changed for security reasons) were held prisoner in the extremist group's
de facto capital, the Syrian city of Raqqa, for nine months.
Sold as slaves, the sisters were forced to work in
servitude there for an IS gunman.
After their dramatic rescue by a Yazidi activist and
businessman who helped Ghazala and Narin reach relative safety in a refugee
camp in the Kurdistan city of Duhok, Ghazala spoke to RFE/RL's Radio Free Iraq
about her experiences.
The Abductions
August 3, 2014 is a date that the Yazidi people will
never forget.
That was the day IS gunmen attacked and overran the predominantly Yazidi
town of Sinjar, slaughtering thousands of men, capturing thousands of women and
children, and forcing almost 200,000 more Yazidis to flee for their
lives.
Ghazala and her four younger siblings -- she has two
sisters and two brothers -- joined the panicked exodus to Mt. Sinjar. Orphans
whose parents died years ago, the five siblings decided to join their other
relatives in their uncle's house, next to the mountain.
But IS caught up with them.
"There were 100 of us ... our relatives,"
Ghazala recalls. "They attacked and took all of us -- men, children,
girls, all of us, even the older women."
The Prison
In those first days after the abduction, IS militants
took Ghazala and her relatives to various places in the vicinity of Sinjar.
Ghazala remembers spending one night in Tal Afar, some 52 kilometers east of
Sinjar.
After that, she and her relatives were driven to the
notorious Badush prison in the IS-held Iraqi city of Mosul.
"There were many women and children there in that
prison. They held all of us there for five days," Ghazala says.
It was in Badush that the gunmen began to systematically
separate and sort their Yazidi captives.
"First they took away the boys who were seven years
old. Then they took the older women," Ghazala says, adding that it was
unknown where they were taken. "Then they brought big buses to take the
girls. They took us back to a school in Tel Afar."
The Rapes
The IS gunmen in Badush took Ghazala, her sister and the
rest of the younger Yazidi women to Raqqa in Syria.
It was there, in IS's de facto capital, that their
captors began selling the Yazidi women and girls as sex slaves to other
militants, including foreign fighters.
Ghazala recalls how her fellow captives were sold as
chattel to IS militants who showed up in groups to haggle over the human goods.
"Every hour some IS men came -- two, three, four,
five, six, seven of them," Ghazala says. "They opened the door
carrying big sticks. They told us to stand up. They beat any of us who didn't
stand up."
When a militant chose a girl he was interested in, he
would drag her to the bathroom to "examine" her before handing over
cash to pay for her.
"They would strip her and if they liked her they
bought her," she remembers.
As with all goods offered for sale, some of the Yazidi
girls and women were considered more valuable than others.
The gunmen were particularly interested in the youngest
and prettiest girls, whom they raped and then passed them on to other gunmen,
Ghazala says.
The Gift
Then it was Ghazala's turn.
"First they took the young good-looking girls. Then
one of the guards, a Saudi man, took down my and my sister's names and that of
my cousin -- she's 13," Ghazala says.
The two sisters and their teenage cousin were sent --
"not sold, but given as a gift," Ghazala notes -- to the Wali, or IS
leader, of the Syrian city of Homs.
The Wali, it seems, travelled to Raqqa to collect "his"
women -- but not before the gunmen of Raqqa added a fourth Yazidi girl to the
group as largesse.
The four girls were informed by the Wali and his retinue
that their job was to "serve him."
"We told them that we would serve and do anything
asked of us," Ghazala recalls. "But don't marry us. We don't want
marriage."
Ghazala describes how the Wali came that night and took
her and her sister to a small, dark building.
But they stayed only one night there. At six o'clock the
next morning, the Wali and his guards took Ghazala and Narin to Homs.
"I don't know where the girls who were with us are
now," Ghazala says. "They took us to the home of Arab Bedouins who
had fled."
The Moroccan
When they got to Homs, Ghazala and Narin expected to be
forced to become the Wali's personal slaves.
But they soon found themselves confronted by a different
abuser.
"A 60-year-old IS Moroccan man came and asked us
about our parents' whereabouts," Ghazala says. "I told him they have
been dead for a long time, and that I had raised my siblings."
Ghazala begged the Moroccan to let her go. She told him
that she and her sister had not done anything wrong.
At first, the Moroccan played along.
"He said that we were safe with them and that I was
like a daughter to him and that he would be as a father to me," Ghazala
remembers.
But 15 minutes later, the Moroccan gunman told Ghazala
that she had to "go to him." Frightened, she refused.
The Moroccan did not give up.
He asked another gunman to help him grab hold of
Ghazala's sister, Narin.
But Ghazala didn't give up, either. The Yazidi woman
fought back to save her sister.
"They took my sister but I came at them from behind
and put [their] gun to my sister's head. The Moroccan said he wanted to marry
me," Ghazala says. "Then I hit him, and he hit me, and I pulled his
long beard. He then tied up my hands and I fell to the floor. I prayed to God
for help."
After she promised not to make any noise, the Moroccan
gunman finally untied Ghazala.
But five days later, he came back.
He repeated his offer of marriage to Ghazala, but the
Yazidi woman turned down his proposals.
"I said that I wouldn't marry him and that if he
came near me I would kill myself," Ghazala told Radio Free Iraq. "I
told him that he would be delivering us from our suffering if they were to kill
us."
The Sale
The Moroccan told Ghazala that he would spare her life.
But he vowed that she would never escape from IS
captivity.
"He said that he would not kill us but would keep me
and my sister imprisoned until we died," Ghazala says. "He asked if
we knew where we were and I told him that we were in Syria. He said that Syria
would be our grave."
The Moroccan was wrong about that. But neither he nor
Ghazala knew that, yet.
With Ghazala determined not to marry him, the Moroccan
ordered his men to sell her and her sister on to other militants.
The money raised from the sale of the two women would be
sent to his family in Morocco, the militant said.
Thinking fast, Ghazala came up with a plan to try to
reach the outside world.
"The pretty [girls] were expensive. I, for example,
would fetch a lower price. So I said that if they allowed me to contact my
family, they would send more money than our selling price," Ghazala said.
But the Moroccan didn't agree. Instead, he asked an IS
Shari'a judge in Raqqa who ruled that Ghazala and her sister Narin must be
sold.
"Then a man came and bought me and my sister and
took us to Raqqa," says Ghazala.
The Suicides
For four long months, Ghazala and Narin were forced to
work as slaves for an IS militant whose nom de guerre, Abu Mohammad al-Shami,
suggests that he was a Syrian.
During that time, Ghazala saw other captives attempt
suicide -- the only way they could escape IS brutality.
Ghazala contemplated taking her own life on three
occasions, she says.
"I could not tolerate the suffering at IS's
hands," Ghazala says. "But I didn't kill myself, for [my sister's]
sake. If she had not been with me I would have committed suicide.
The Escape
Ghazala and her sister were rescued from IS captivity by
Abu Shujaa, a Yazidi activist and businessman who helps Yazidi women escape IS
captivity.
But most Yazidi girls have no chance of escape, Ghazala
says.
"None of the girls ever said that they wouldn't try
to escape if there were a way to do so, but there isn't. There is no contact,
and many of the Yazidi girls don't know a word of Arabic," she says.
"There is nothing there but the desert. It is much better in Raqqa, where
the Internet is available. No phones, but the Internet is available."
The Rescuer
Ghazala describes Yazidi activist Abu Shujaa as "the
one who saved us."
"We had nobody but God and Abu Shujaa," she
says.
Yazidi activists involved in helping women escape IS
usually will not give details of how they operate, for fear of compromising
their operations.
But Abu Shujaa told Radio Free Iraq recently that he has
men in IS-controlled areas who gather intelligence about the locations of the
captive Yazidi women.
"We then draw up a plan for the operation, and then
carry it out at the appropriate time," Abu Shajaa says, adding that the
rescue operations are particularly difficult in and around Raqqa.
Those involved in the rescue risk their lives to get the
women out.
One of IS's network of informers could easily betray them
to the militants.
Abu Shajaa is frank about what happens to those who are
caught.
"The punishment is a public hanging in the town
center," Abu Shajaa explains. "No one is allowed near [the victim]
for three days, after which the body is handed over to his family."
Women who are rescued in Syria are taken to
Kurdish-controlled areas in that country and then on to Iraq's Kurdistan
region.
But, like Ghazala, Abu Shajaa makes it clear that captive
Yazidi women have very little chance of escaping IS without help.
"A few have tried to escape, but their chances of
success are very, very small," Abu Shujaa says, adding that his rescue
network has not received any assistance from armed Syrian groups fighting IS.
Hussain Qaidi from the Office of Abductee Affairs in
Duhok, which works to locate captive Yazidis and free them, told Radio Free
Iraq that an estimated 3,000 Yazidis are still in IS captivity, mostly in Raqqa
in Syria, and Mosul and Tal Afar in Iraq.
Qaidi told Radio Free Iraq in June that the Iraqi central
government has not helped with the efforts to rescue Yazidi captives, though
the Kurdistan Regional Government has assisted.
The Aftermath
Although Ghazala and Narin are now free of IS, their
traumatic and violent experiences have left them with psychological scars.
Narin is in a particularly fragile condition and has been
suffering from a mental illness after her ordeal.
"Yesterday she had a seizure, she was biting
herself," Ghazala admits. "She is in a very poor state."
Ghazala does not know the fate of two of her three brothers who were also
captured by IS.
"I don't know if they've been killed or
imprisoned," she says. "The middle brother is with us but the oldest
and youngest are not."
Despite their extreme trauma, Ghazala and Narin are the
lucky ones.
The situation for those Yazidi women who remain in IS
captivity is "going from bad to worse," according to Abu Shujaa, the
man who rescued the sisters.
"[The women] face their tragic situation every day
with all its psychological and physical suffering at the hands of the IS
men," Abu Shujaa says.
The Plea
As she tries to come to terms with her experience,
Ghazala wants to send a message to the international community from her home
for the foreseeable future -- the Duhok refugee camp.
"I want the whole world, all the countries in the
world, to rescue these girls and boys, men and women, from the grasp of
IS," Ghazala says.