Treated like cattle': Yazidi women sold, raped, enslaved by ISIS
Jana was a 19-year-old in her final year of high school, with dreams of becoming a doctor. Then, ISIS came to her village last August, and her world collapsed.
She described to me in chilling detail, how the jihadis first demanded that members of her Yazidi religious minority convert to Islam. Then they stripped villagers of their jewelry, money and cellphones. They separated the men from the women.
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A United Nations report explained what happened next. ISIS "gathered all the males older than 10 years of age at the local school, took them outside the village by pick-up trucks, and shot them."
Jana described how girls like herself were separated from older women, then bussed to the city of Mosul.
There they were put in a big three-story house with hundreds of other young women. The men of ISIS came periodically, and chose up to three and four girls at a time to take home with them.
"These women have been treated like cattle," explained Nazand Begikhani, an adviser to the Kurdistan Regional Government on gender issues.
Thousands of women remain hostage. And with ISIS successfully defending its territory from a loose coalition of Iraqi military, Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga, Syrian Kurdish militants and US-led airstrikes, it doesn't look like a white knight will charge in to rescue these poor women any time soon.
Begikhani said all of the 100 Yazidi women rescued from ISIS appeared to have been systematically raped, likely by more than one man.
The 19-year-old girl I spoke with here in Iraqi Kurdistan was deeply traumatized, and incapable of showing any joy or humor. Her mother and two brothers are still being held hostage by ISIS.
Asked what she would say if she met the 70-year-old Arab man who took her home and ordered her to convert to Islam at gunpoint, she says: "I wouldn't want to tell him anything. I just want to kill him."
Jana says she has given up her dream of becoming a doctor.
READ: Kurdish women a force to be reckoned with for ISIS
A United Nations report explained what happened next. ISIS "gathered all the males older than 10 years of age at the local school, took them outside the village by pick-up trucks, and shot them."
Jana described how girls like herself were separated from older women, then bussed to the city of Mosul.
There they were put in a big three-story house with hundreds of other young women. The men of ISIS came periodically, and chose up to three and four girls at a time to take home with them.
"These women have been treated like cattle," explained Nazand Begikhani, an adviser to the Kurdistan Regional Government on gender issues.
Thousands of women remain hostage. And with ISIS successfully defending its territory from a loose coalition of Iraqi military, Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga, Syrian Kurdish militants and US-led airstrikes, it doesn't look like a white knight will charge in to rescue these poor women any time soon.
Begikhani said all of the 100 Yazidi women rescued from ISIS appeared to have been systematically raped, likely by more than one man.
The 19-year-old girl I spoke with here in Iraqi Kurdistan was deeply traumatized, and incapable of showing any joy or humor. Her mother and two brothers are still being held hostage by ISIS.
Asked what she would say if she met the 70-year-old Arab man who took her home and ordered her to convert to Islam at gunpoint, she says: "I wouldn't want to tell him anything. I just want to kill him."
Jana says she has given up her dream of becoming a doctor.
READ: Kurdish women a force to be reckoned with for ISIS
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