Robin Fleming
Another Yazidi woman has been found being held captive by ISIS members in North and East Syria’s al-Hol Camp. Though such a task is impossible, try and put yourself, for a moment, in her shoes – or the shoes of the nearly 3,000 other Yazidi women who remain held by members of the Islamist terror group, perhaps in Turkish-occupied regions of Syria, or else in Turkey itself.
It’s been a decade since ISIS’ onslaught on the Yazidi homeland of Sinjar, or Shengal, when even beyond the slaughter of thousands of members of the long-vilified religious minority many thousands more women and children were taken away in chains, to be subjected to extraordinarily degrading treatment, torture, rape and murder. A decade spent in abject misery, terror, and confusion, feeling yourself further each day from your homeland, faith and culture, with news from the outside world only leaking into your grim existence in the most fragmented form. Surely, news of ISIS’ defeat as a territorial force must have arrived as the Islamic State were pushed back by Kurdish-led forces, and amid the chaos and terror of shelling and airstrikes, there must have been a brief flickering of hope – could deliverance, finally, be at hand?
But no. For this woman, at least, her unimaginable ordeal is finally at a hand. But for many others, there may never be any relief. For the world has turned its back on these thousands of women, genocide survivors kept in chains, a scandal which should appal us all.
It has turned its back on al-Hol Camp, where this unnamed woman was kept, a captive among detainees. A recent sweep of the “mini-caliphate” resulted in the capture of 31 ISIS militants, as well as the identification of the captured Yazidi woman. Security forces seized several mines, improvised explosive devices and materials associated with violent activities during the operation. With greater international humanitarian, financial, medical and psychological support, to supplement the limited security assistance to the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, she could have been liberated many years before, and the camp prevented from developing into a hotbed of authoritarian, violent Islamist domination. Were Turkey prevented from isolating and bombing the region, even targeting members of the security forces during the recent operations in the camp, killing four, things would be very different.
Preventing Turkish airstrikes on the Yazidis’ homeland, and rolling back the Turkish occupation of those regions of North and East Syria which they ethnically cleansed of not only the Kurds but also the entirety of the region’s small, embattled, Yazidi minority, would further contribute to facilitating the return of not only the missing Yazidi women and children, but also the hundreds of thousands of Yazidis who remain displaced into federal Iraq. For it’s not only Turkey which is to blame. The West has turned its back on these regions too.
At a recent conference on the Yazidi issue in the European Parliament, speakers addressed the continuous threat posed by ISIS in Iraq, particularly near Sinjar, while advocating for an international tribunal to prosecute ISIS collaborators and ensure justice for the Yazidis and a broader international effort to locate and rescue those kidnapped by ISIS. They also condemned a recent intra-Iraqi agreement for disregarding Yazidi self-determination, urging its annulment for failing to consult the Yazidi populace. These are concrete, positive measures which the West could take not only to protect this minority who have suffered so much violence throughout their history, but also to strengthen the local population which will likely once again be a frontline in growing regional conflict.
The anonymous Yazidi woman will now, hopefully, be able to receive the care and treatment she needs. But there are many other brave Yazidi voices, like Turkey’s Kurdish MP Feleknas Uca and the community’s representatives in Shengal, speaking up on her behalf. Their voices are not silent, and they are not mere, passive victims, waiting for the next wave of violence to come. They have concrete demands and proposals. The West must listen to them – or find themselves complicit in genocide once again.
*Robin Fleming is an American researcher who worked with the Rojava Information Centre, and focuses on North and East Syria.
