Êzîdî women’s journey of pain and resistance – Part 1

Images of the hopeless suffering of the people of Shengal made international news in August, when Daesh launched its attack on the Êzîdî city in Northern Iraq. Seven months later, the story of the captured Êzîdî women’s experience, from their suffering to their resistance, is less widely told. This series explores the experiences and struggles of Êzîdî women living in the Iraqi city of Duhok; the city of Dêrik, in Rojava; and in Shengal itself.

So far, 500 women have escaped from Daesh one by one, through their own devices. In addition, women living in Shengal are engaged in building a system of grassroots representation and self-defense forces. They say they want to ensure that they never see another attack like this, the latest in a long history of massacres of the Êzîdîs.

According to official statistics, Daesh members abducted more than 7,000 women and children in the attacks on Shengal (also known as Sinjar) that began August 3. The women continue to be sold in slave markets that have been set up in a number of towns in Syria, some in Daesh-controlled towns in Iraq and Syria, others as far afield as Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The largest market is in the Syrian city of Rakka, in Daesh-controlled territory.

The Kurdistan Regional Government has drawn criticism for leaving Shengal exposed to massacre. In summer 2014, Daesh was on the rampage, with the stated intention of killing and enslaving any religious groups like the Êzîdîs in their path. The ruling KDP, in spite of the resources of decades of U.S. financial and military support, took next to no military precautions in the area.

The only thing that stopped a larger massacre was an operation by fighters affiliated with the PKK—listed as a terrorist organization by Western countries. Now, speaking to Êzîdî women is difficult, with officials in Zaxo (Zakho), Hewler (Erbil) and Sulaymaniyah denying all requests for access.

We manage to obtain an address in Duhok and head out on a cold winter day. It rains the entire way, with the heater in our car barely keeping us warm. We find ourselves at a building under construction, where migrants from Shengal were living ten families to a floor.

We head up to the second floor, passing through the blanket hung for a door. Between unplastered walls on one side and plastic sheeting set up to block the wind on another, we sit down by a gas stove. It barely warms the air around it, let alone the freezing room.

24-year-old Z.X., 20-year-old H.X. and 17-year-old W.X. live here with their mothers and a 12-year-old brother. Their fathers, brothers, uncles and cousins have all been killed. Although the women escaped three months ago, several of their sisters are still in Daesh captivity.

The women, who say they have seen no rehabilitation and no aid efforts, sit silently. Finally Z.X. begins to speak.

“I know why you came,” she says, and begans to describe the day in August when she was taken captive.

“That day, we heard that Daesh was attacking,” says Z.X. “My father put us in the car at dawn and we headed for the Shengal mountains. On the way, we stopped at my uncle’s village. We were going to eat lunch there and then take my uncle’s family with us and flee.

“But it didn’t happen like we wanted. Before long Daesh surrounded us and started firing on the house.” Z.X.’s father tried to defend the house, but the attackers overwhelmed them. They locked the 27 men inside and brought the women and children outside, where they separated them into two groups.

The gang members herded the 23 young women and women who had been married less than three years into their vehicles. They poured gasoline over the remaining 12 small children and older women, including Z.X.’s mother and aunt.

“They were about to burn the group my mother was in when the phone rang,” says Z.X. “Someone said, ‘bring the young ones to Siba Sheykh Khidir village and come back to burn the rest.'” In the time it took Daesh to drive them to the village and return, Z.X.’s mother and the other women managed to escape. But they could not free the men locked in the house, who were beheaded. One cousin survived by hiding under his own father’s corpse.

The young women were transported to the village of Baaj, where they were imprisoned in a basement with 500 other women and girls. They had no idea what time of day it was. The women waited for two hours while Daesh members separated them into virgins and non-virgins and selected some to be taken to Mosul to sell. The gang members took away Z.X.’s sisters and cousin, but left Z.X. behind to care for her pregnant cousin.

“There were 300 of us there in Baaj. Every day was filled with beatings—whether we did what they said or not.” One day the Daesh commanders, called “amirs,” came to the village. One of the amirs picked Z.X.’s friend, Cilan, 24, for himself. Cilan locked herself in the bathroom and killed herself.

After eight days in Baaj, 27 of the women were taken to the village of Til Kasir, an exchange point for hundreds of women and children—many of them between six and nine years old. Z.X. changed hands a number of times, first cooking for a Daesh amir in Til Kasir and his women and children. Then she was sold to someone in Verdiye village, near Tel Azir, who beat her daily for three days. The amir asked for her back because he needed to cook for some girls he had bought, one of them a seven-year-old deaf girl who he frequently raped.

“I stayed with the girls for five days. After that, an amir took me. He tied my hands, covered my mouth and eyes and raped me on the way. Then he called his wife and said he’d chosen a woman and wanted to bring her home. When his wife didn’t accept it, he had to take me back.”

Z.X. stayed for a time with the six- and nine-year-old sisters of her friend Cilan, who had killed herself. Next, a man took away Z.X. and three young girls. He claimed he would take them back to Shengal, but never did. One night a man came to take away Ğali, 12 and Şaha, 14.

“They told me ‘they’re sleeping in our bed tonight.’ I didn’t accept this. So they tied my hands and feet. Two Daesh men, named Abu Kerem and Abu Abbas, beat me for hours. I still can’t walk properly,” she says. She also suffered a head wound. Over the course of the night, she had to listen to the young girls’ screams. The girls were taken away to Mosul the next morning.

“I still haven’t heard from them,” says Z.X.

“My friend Nazdar, who’s 15 years old, became mentally unstable from the rape. There was a nine-year-old girl named Şilan who they raped repeatedly, saying they were giving her Qur’an lessons. My friend didn’t want to leave her alone.” For three days, the men locked Şilan into a room, bound her hands and raped her.

“They sold her to a Syrian in Mosul. I also haven’t heard from her.

“I was sold again and I started looking after children once again.” The children she cared for were frequently raped. “In the house I was in, they raped two deaf girls, seven and eight years old. When the girls’ cousin resisted, they beat her and broke her skull in two places,” said Z.X.

“Later they took me and a 13-year-old girl to a place with other children. They were always telling us, ‘we’re going to take you to Saudi Arabia and Syria to sell you.’ I couldn’t take this and I started trying to figure out ways to escape. I don’t know how but I found a way and I tried it. I took the 13-year-old girl with me. I couldn’t take the rest. They stayed behind.

“We walked until we came to a house. The people there took us in, but in the morning they put us out on the street, saying ‘they’ll kill us.'” The two walked through the streets for two days without food or water until they reached the group led by Qasim Şeşo, commander of the Shengal Defense Units.

“I still can’t believe those days are behind me. Just think, every day they were mixing things into our water and forcing us to drink it. They tortured us with cold water.

“Recently a friend of mine called me and said they were in Tal Afar. I know very clearly that women are right now being sold in Tal Afar, Baaj, Aseyba, Rabia, Shengal, Kocho, Tel Azer, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and especially in Rakka, in Syria,” says Z.X., listing locations mainly in Nineveh Province.

She recalls that virgins went for $2,500. “A lot of women said they were pregnant and managed not to be sold. Later they stopped believing this and started giving them urine tests. But there are hundreds of pregnant women. Some of them would use their urine for other women’s tests to stop them from being sold.

“I was sold nearly 30 times, once for $700, sometimes for as little as ten dollars. It was very painful to be in their hands. My sisters are still in Syria and we can’t protect them. No matter how many times my sister escapes, they always manage to catch her. They beat her and rape her every day.

“I saw women burn themselves alive. There were three- and six-year-old children being raped. I thought about killing myself a few times but when I saw the children there, I didn’t want to leave them alone. I’m still in shock. I can’t seem to get over it.”

The room falls silent for a long time. Finally, Z.X. asks, “Do you want some tea?”

20-year-old H.X. begins to speak, rubbing her hands together and looking at the floor. We are struck by the shame of being the latest in a long line of groups to come to this place to ask her to relive this traumatic experience, while doing nothing to help. But we listen quietly.

“You understand, right? They cut off my father’s head,” says H.X. “I stayed in Baaj for 10 days with my older sister and three of my younger sisters. Then they separated us, and took me and one of my sisters away to Mosul.

“We were very scared. There were around 500 of us. They forced us to make the testimony [of Islamic faith]. They beat the ones who didn’t.” The Daesh gangs bound their hands and separated them into groups of 30 to be sold en masse. The buyer would then sell them off individually in the market.

“I can’t remember how many times I was sold. Lots of times. They sold me in Syria, Baaj, Shengal, Tal Afar and Mosul. They would sell us really cheaply,” says H.X. First she was sold to an Islamic religious leader, where she stayed for three months.

“My sister and my cousin were also sold to him and he raped us. Then he gave us to his friends. They picked which one they would get by flipping a coin to see who got to pick first.

“They were very bad days. What else could they be when they were filled with grief, beatings and rape? We were spending the days being beaten by people who owned us against our will. They addressed us as ‘infidel.’

“When we were in their hands we felt totally desperate, like we were dead. They sold me to a very old man. He died before he could rape me. Then they sold me to someone else.…

“One day there was an airstrike. The person who had bought me died in the airstrike. Thanks to this, I was able to escape. I put on a long black robe and ran barefoot as fast as I could. That was how I managed to escape.”

The only one left who hasn’t spoken is 17-year-old W.X. “She hasn’t spoken since she was rescued. She doesn’t talk,” the others explain. But suddenly W. gets up and sits down next to us.

“I want to talk too,” she says.

“They took me away from my sisters. I was really scared; I’m still scared. I was in Mosul watching sales happen in the market every day. They sold a 10-year-old girl I was with to a 50-year-old man. The child was screaming and crying. Everything was terrible.” W. falls silent and started biting her nails.

“Don’t speak if you don’t want to,” we say. But she doesn’t listen.

“They picked me by drawing lots. They took my older sister the same way. I didn’t want to go but they dragged me away, beating me. A man took me to Mosul and there was no one in the house. On the second day, they brought my older sister and a friend of mine.”

A 45-year-old man repeatedly bound her hands and raped her, she says. She stayed two months in the house, where mostly girls were kept. She could hear a 10-year-old girl being raped by an older man every night.

“I tried to escape many times, but I couldn’t succeed,” she says. “My life in Shengal was really nice. I went to school. I had dreams. I had my father. Now I don’t have him. I don’t have my dreams. I don’t have school.

“Psychologically, I don’t feel good at all. I hate all men who look like them. I have nightmares every night that I’m being raped and that they’ll come abduct me again. I’m scared just talking about them. I’m so scared.”

W.X. falls silent and bites her nails for a few moments. Then she raises her hand and starts to smile, and then to laugh.

Êzîdî women’s journey of pain and resistance – Part 2

DÊRIK – Images of the hopeless suffering of the people of Shengal made international news in August, when Daesh launched its attack on the Êzîdî city in Northern Iraq. Seven months later, the story of the captured Êzîdî women’s experience, from their suffering to their resistance, is less widely told. This series explores the experiences and struggles of Êzîdî women living in the Iraqi city of Duhok; Dêrik, in Rojava; and in Shengal itself.

For the 500 women who have so far managed to escape from Daesh captivity, the massacre continues today. Some commit suicide in order not to bear their rapists’ children. Others have been killed by their families in so-called “honor killings.” Psychological problems are severe and widespread.

After our interviews with the women in Duhok, we travel to the city of Dêrik, in Rojava. In the wake of the August 3 Daesh attacks on Shengal, the YPG/YPJ opened an emergency corridor leading across the border to Dêrik, in the easternmost Rojava canton of Cizîre. Now, more than 10,000 Êzîdîs live in the Newroz camp.

The camp, which suffers from a serious lack of doctors, is full of sick children. Women staff from the canton government are engaged in daily solidarity efforts with Êzîdî women, but there has been no rehabilitation program for the women.

We make our way among the children building small houses in the mud to meet with a group of women. None of them want to speak with us about their experiences.

“What happened to us, happened,” says Nadia Ali. “Now it’s time to make it better. We need help. We want to go home.” Two other women, Bihar and Besê, repeat that they are tired of repeating the story of their tragic experiences. All they want, they say, is to forget the tragedy, but no one is helping.

Pelda, one of the camp administrators, sits down with us to share a report they’ve prepared on the women in the camp.

20 women who reached the camp recently had been sold in cities as far away as Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Deir ez-Zor, Syrian cities and Mosul since August. She says most of the women who have escaped are very young. Pelda relates the stories of some of the women and girls who have arrived recently.

Just two days ago, eight girls between the ages of 16 and 18 reached the camp.

“They were in very bad condition. They didn’t want to stay here or talk to anyone. They wanted to leave, because they were sold in Syria, in an area very close to here,” she says. “So we didn’t want to stop them.

“The children stayed with us for a while. They were repeatedly sold and raped. They cry every day for the two friends of theirs who couldn’t make it out,” says Pelda. “They were raped by a number of people at the same time. Because they ran away barefoot, their feet are still cut and bruised. After they stayed here a while, they got a bit better and they wanted to leave. They wanted to find their families.”

After them, two more girls reached the camp, 13 and 14 years old. Rape had damaged their ability to walk. They cried constantly, repeating that there were thousands of women still in Daesh’s hands.

“The 14-year-old girl was saying ‘bismillah’ every other second. Her mental stability was gone. Daesh would beat anyone who didn’t say ‘bismillah’ nearly to death,” says Pelda. “She was really scared. She was constantly looking over her shoulder.”

Pelda says she is concerned by the reports that those who do reach their families are frequently subject to so-called “honor killings.” She says camp administration met with religious leaders to prevent the killings. “We said each of these women was a hero for the Êzîdî people. Now they’re holding meetings with residents and explaining the sacred status of women.

“We’ve seen good results from the meetings. Now we’re not getting reports of suicide anymore. The women who have been raped are experiencing some changes. They’re able to have conversations with people and they’re speaking more confidently.”

She says some of the religious leaders, however, have been saying that the women are sacred and that those who marry them are blessed.

“So these women are being married before they’ve gotten over this shock, a lot of them at a very young age. So now there have been new suicides starting up.”

Pelda says that recent reports give them cause to believe that Daesh has formed plans to use women in suicide bombings. According to recently escaped women, Daesh has been identifying women who know how to drive and keeping them in separate areas. They have been giving driving lessons to others.

“This is a disaster,” says Pelda. She said the world needed to take immediate action to get the thousands of women out of Daesh hands.

Êzîdî women’s journey of pain and resistance – Part 3

SHENGAL – The women of Shengal, the target of the August 3 Daesh massacre in which over 7,000 women and girls were captured, have founded their own self-defense forces and democratic self-government in the mountains of the area. Among them are many Êzîdî women who have escaped Daesh captivity. While women organize to care for and defend one another, solidarity workers across Kurdistan have been working to secure professional psychological treatment for Êzîdî women.

While images of Êzîdî women in the media have largely portrayed them as voiceless victims, the stories of the hundreds of women who have escaped or resisted Daesh attacks remain less widely told. This series explores the experiences and struggles of Êzîdî women who have escaped Daesh’s hands, living in the Iraqi city of Duhok; Dêrik, in Rojava; and in Shengal itself.

The best figures indicate that 7,000 Êzîdî women, 150 Turkmens, hundreds of Assyrians and Syriacs and thousands of children have been captured by Daesh to date. According to Êvar Îbrahîm, chair of the Committee for the Protection of Women’s Rights in the Iraqi Kurdish Parliament, most escaped Êzîdî women are living in Duhok and its surrounding villages. Hundreds of the escaped women, however, have made their way back to their homeland: the mountains of Shengal.

From the city of Dêrik, we set out for Shengal, in Iraq’s Nineveh province. We have heard that the security corridor between Rojava and Shengal, originally opened by YPG/YPJ forces in August to transport the Êzîdîs to safety, has become risky lately. Still, we want to see the road Êzîdîs themselves had to travel. Finally, the YPG agrees to provide us with a two-car escort.

As we ascend the two and a half hour road into the mountains, we are aware that under the verdant plants growing up in the early spring rain, the road is littered with the bones of hundreds of children who died from thirst in the rushed summer flight from Shengal. This is not to mention the women who died after giving the last of their water to their children. Ruined houses line the road.

When we arrive at the tent city in the mountains, which houses around 10,500 displaced Shengal residents, we find it in a state of disarray more extreme than we originally expected. The children playing in the road, upon seeing our YPG escort, briefly abandon their game to raise the victory sign symbolic of Kurdish resistance.

“Bijî serok Apo!” say the children—”long live President Apo,” a slogan referring to imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan. PKK and YPG fighters led the early response to Daesh’s August attack on Shengal. Now, Êzîdîs have founded their own defense force—the Yekîneyên Berxwedana Şingal, or Shengal Resistance Units.

Local Êzîdî women sit down for a meeting with us in the camp. They explain that they have founded a women’s assembly with three major goals: to rehabilitate women who have escaped Daesh, to work against the social alienation and so-called “honor killings” of escaped women and to arm themselves against Daesh.

Sêvê Reşo, a mother of two, serves on the 27-person executive body of the Shengal Women’s Assembly. She lost her father and brothers in the attack seven months ago. Sêvê, who was abducted along with her mother, was in Daesh captivity for six months in the Iraqi city of Kirkuk.

Sêvê was living in the village of Şehabî with her husband and two children, one three years old and the other a seven-month-old infant, when the Daesh attacks began.

“One day without warning, they attacked the village,” says Sêvê. “They took my husband away from me. I don’t know what happened to him, but from what I’ve heard I imagine he was beheaded.”

As Daesh members drove Sêvê away, she could hear the sound of her children crying falling away behind her. She was taken to Kocho, Tal Afar and Mosul, where she was imprisoned alongside thousands of other women to be sold.

“They raped the young women and children, and had older ones like me do the cooking and cleaning.” Sêvê says there was a constant turnover of women and children in the houses where she was kept. In the six months she was in Daesh captivity, she nearly went insane.

“Some of the children they raped were as young as three. I was losing my mind, thinking constantly about whether my children being raped at that very moment. I looked after the children there as best I could, but it didn’t amount to much. They were in bad shape.

“One day they put us in a car. On the way, the car flipped over. Because my front teeth were broken, my face was covered in blood. I realized this was an opportunity and played dead. When they came up to me, I held my breath.”

When she was certain that the Daesh members had left her for dead, she started running for the Shengal Mountains with all the strength she could muster, hoping to hide in the backcountry until the danger subsided.

“When I got here and saw that a lot of other people had made their way here too, I was so happy. The [YPG/YPJ] fighters had come and taken care of my children.” Now, Sêvê says, she too plans to volunteer in the armed struggle.

Şîrîn Salih is one of the founders of the women’s assembly. Currently, she’s working on organizing a celebration of March 8, International Women’s Day, in the mountains.

“Men disappointed us. We thought they would protect us, but we were wrong,” says Şîrîn. She says the women here then realized they needed to form their own body to resist the 73rd edict, as Êzîdîs call the events of August. The term refers to the history of 72 imperial edicts to massacre the Êzîdîs, issued by the various powers that have ruled this territory over the centuries.

“We’re forming self-defense units to fight the patriarchy,” explains Şîrîn. Both women and men have joined self-defense units in the mountains here, including Şîrîn’s own children. “We’re not mad at the ones who left. They had to save their own lives. But they need to come back and take control over their lives.

“We will get our revenge on the ones who sold us in the markets,” she adds.

Şîrîn says after they’ve spent more than half a year starving in the mountains, it’s time for the world to do something for the people of Shengal.

Currently, Duhok is the only city in Iraq with a rehabilitation center for Êzîdî women, says Kejal Hadi Faqê, an MP from the Yekgirto Islamic Party. She says that when it comes to the prospect of rescuing the thousands of women still in Daesh’s hands, Kurdish women need to be prepared for the worst. She is working to increase the capacity of the center, which is staffed by volunteers.
In the northern part of Kurdistan, in Turkey, a group of mostly Kurdish women are also working to promote the rescue and rehabilitation of captured Êzîdî women. Many of the women were civil society activists concerned by the reports they heard in August from across the border. They began researching the situation of the abducted Êzîdî women soon after the attacks began.

The group was deeply affected by their interviews with Êzîdî women in Shengal, Hewler (Erbil), Duhok and Rojava, says Feleknaz Uca, a member of the executive board of the civil society umbrella organization Democratic Society Congress (DTK). Meeting with the Shengal Women’s Assembly and seeing women organize to care for one another, says Feleknaz, hardened their resolve to secure professional support.

Several weeks ago, Feleknaz and her colleagues founded the platform “Struggle for Women Detained by Daesh.” Under the banner of the platform, they have sought support from the Iraqi Kurdish Parliament and Rojava canton administration in founding rehabilitation centers for Êzîdî women in all four parts of Kurdistan (Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and the Rojava cantons.) They also hope to work with international women’s organizations.

The platform is currently inviting Êzîdî women to come to the northern Kurdish city of Diyarbakır, where the first of their rehabilitation centers will open and a significant number of Êzîdîs currently live in exile. Feleknaz, who criticizes the relocating of many Êzîdî refugees to Europe, says the center operates on a clear guarantee: they will secure a woman’s return to Shengal at any time, on her request.

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