Yazidi teen describes harrowing escape from Islamic State

The testimony of a 14-year-old Yazidi girl who was taken captive by Islamic State fighters on August 3 and successfully escaped and reunited with her family was published in the Washington Post on Wednesday, offering a glimpse into the unwavering commitment of the detainees to their religion, and the captivity conditions suffered by non-Muslim women in the terror group’s clutches.

During her imprisonment, she was beaten, but not raped by the high-ranking fighter to whom she was gifted, given only one meal a day, and pondered suicide, according to her account.

The girl — who repeatedly put up a fight, and defiantly refused to convert to Islam — described her ordeal as she fled with her family from Tel Uzer to Mount Sinjar, as rumors reached the town that the jihadists were heading toward it.

En route to the mountain, the crowds were stopped by Islamic State fighters, who blocked the road, she said.

“The militants divided us by gender and age: One for young and capable men, another for girls and young women, and a third for older men and women. The jihadists stole cash and jewelry from this last group, and left them alone at the oasis. Then they placed the girls and women in trucks. As they drove us away, we heard gunshots. Later we learned that they were killing the young men, including my 19-year old brother, who had married just six months ago,” the girl said.

The captive women and girls were transported to a school west of Mosul, where other Yazidi women were housed. The detainees told the girl that all their male relatives had been slain by the jihadists, the girl said.

“Then Islamic State fighters entered. One of them recited the words to the shahada, the Muslim creed – ‘I testify that there is no God but Allah, and that Muhammad is his prophet’ – and said that if we repeated them, we would become Muslims. But we refused. They were furious. They insulted us a lot and cursed us and our beliefs.”

In the Islamic State’s further attempts to convert the Yazidi women, they kept the group locked away and gave them small food rations.

“They told us we were pagans and confined us for 20 days inside the building, where we slept on the floor and ate only once per day. Every now and then, an Islamic State man would come in and tell us to convert, but each time we refused. As faithful Yazidis, we would not abandon our religion. We wept a lot and mourned the losses suffered by our community.”

After the confinement, the girl said that she and her friend Shayma were taken to a building “like a palace” in Fallujah, where they were given to Islamic State officers.

“They wanted to make us their wives or concubines. Shayma was awarded to Abu Hussein, who was a cleric. I was given to an overweight, dark-bearded man about 50 years old who seemed to have some high rank. He went by the nickname Abu Ahmed,” she said.

“Abu Ahmed kept telling me to convert, which I ignored. He tried to rape me several times, but I did not allow him to touch me in any sexual way. Instead, he cursed me and beat me every day, punching and kicking me. He fed me only one meal per day.

“Shayma and I began to discuss killing ourselves.”

Six days later, when the two girls were left alone in the house, they broke out using meat cleavers and knives, and used a phone to contact Mahmoud, “a Sunni friend of Shayma’s cousin, who lived in Fallujah, for help.”

The two girls slept at Mahmoud’s house that night, and were transported by cab to Baghdad the next day, by a driver who said “he was afraid of Islamic State but offered to help us for God’s sake.” In Baghdad, the girl used fake documents to board a flight to Irbil, the Kurdish regional capital, where she was reunited with her family.

“After so much fear for so many days, hugging my dad again was the best moment of my life. He said he had cried for me every day since I disappeared. That evening, we went to Khanke, where my mother was staying with her relatives. We hugged and kept crying until then I fainted. My month-long ordeal was over, and I felt reborn.”

However, once rescued, the weight of the loss of her brother began to sink in.

“Now I am trying to come to terms with what happened. I can never again set foot in our little village, even if it’s freed from Islamic State, because the memory of my brother who died nearby would haunt me too much. I still have nightmares and swoon several times a day – when I remember what I saw or imagine what would have happened if Shayma and I hadn’t escaped.”

“What can I do? I want to leave this country altogether. This country is no place for me anymore. I want to go to a place where I might be able to start over, if that is even possible,” she concluded.

The Yazidis are a centuries-old religious minority viewed as apostates by the extremist Islamic State group in Iraq. Tens of thousands of Yazidis fled in August when Islamic State captured the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar, near the Syrian border.

The plight of the Yazidis, tens of thousands of whom were stranded on a desert mountaintop for days, encircled by the Islamic extremists, prompted US and Iraqi forces to launch aid drops. It also contributed to the US decision to launch airstrikes against the militants, who were advancing on Irbil.

Most of those Yazidis were eventually able to escape to Iraq’s largely autonomous Kurdish region with the help of Kurdish fighters.

AP contributed to this report.