Rape and sex slavery by ISIS — A strategic weapon that airstrikes cannot stop
[Sourced from NPR, CNN, the Washington Post, the US State Department, and others, as underlined below.]
ISIS is kidnapping, enslaving, and raping thousands of the young girls of Iraq, employing sexual violence as a strategic weapon of terror and war. Fear of ethnic cleansing by ISIS has more power to displace people from their homes, lands, and culture than any fear of U.S. airstrikes or death by gunshot. Countless Iraqis are now refugees. And ISIS continues to gain control of land across Iraq, largely unopposed. The strategy behind these atrocities has a track record of success, according Amnesty International and Unicef.
The U.S. State department recently reported “forced conversions, torture, rape and sexual assault, using women and children as human shields, and people being burned or buried alive. Women and girls as young as 12 or 13 have been taken captive, to be sold as sex slaves or put into forced marriages with ISIS fighters.”
Daughters are being ripped from their parents. They are kidnapped and brought to harems and brothels where they are raped, tortured, converted to their version of Islam under threat of death, and then sold as wives to ISIS militants. Sometimes they escape or are released, returning to find members their families were killed. Ali’s story of kidnap, rape and beatings after they killed her husband in front of her is not uncommon.
Fifteen year old Aria’s tragic story of rape, murder, and survival reminds us how real this is. Her fourteen year old sister in law, who was given as a gift to an ISIS commander tells her compelling story of escape alongside Aria. These brave girls told their stories in spite of their culture where this trauma carries so much shame.
A fourteen year old Yazidi girl named “Shaker” reported she and over 70 girls were kidnapped from their village. Some were raped first by the ISIS commander, who “had the privilege of taking their virginity,” and they were then passed around and gang raped by other militants before being sold into marriage for as little as ten dollars.
Even more shocking, female citizens of the UK who have travelled to join a ISIS police force to guard over 3,000 captured Iraqi girls, have established brothels of Yazidis and other Iraqis for consumption by ISIS fighters. At a prison for women who are not sold into slavery, daily rape is their lot.
From calls made from secret phones hidden by the women or forced calls by ISIS, women have reported giving birth in the hellish conditions, only to have their babies ripped away never to be seen again. They say the militants who come to rape them are from all over the world, including Russian, Dutch, and British men. One report also states this atrocious “Weapon of Jihad” has included young boys as victims too.
“The strategic aims of these mass rapes are twofold. The first is to instill terror in the civilian population, with the intent to forcibly dislocate them from their property. The second is to reduce the likelihood of return and reconstitution by inflicting humiliation and shame on the targeted population.”
Sadly, even if these women and girls escape with their lives, and even if their families are still alive and located, they will not likely be able to return to them. Given the cultural context and shame from the rape they experienced, they will be outcasts from their remaining families and villages. And that is a successful ISIS strategy of destroying families and culture, that must be stopped.
ISIS rules much of northern Iraq and eastern Syria unopposed and the ethnic cleansing continues. Months of airstrikes have been largely ineffective against ISIS. Who will stop ISIS from continuing these atrocities?
The enslaved girls of Iraq dare us to ask.
