An Iraqi official has reported that members of the Islamic State, IS, have taken hundreds of women from the Yazidi community in northern Iraq as their prisoners, most likely with the intention of selling them into forced marriages and/or sex slavery.
An anonymous US official has corroborated the story but opted to stay anonymous as the information “came from classified intelligence reports.” Iraq Human Rights Ministry spokesman Kamil Amin has stated that the women have been taken to schools in Mosul:
“We think that the terrorists by now consider them slaves and they have vicious plans for them,” Amin told The Associated Press. “We think that these women are going to be used in demeaning ways by those terrorists to satisfy their animalistic urges in a way that contradicts all the human and Islamic values.”
The Yazidis are a widely misunderstood and marginalized ethnoreligious minority in northern Iraq. They are ethnic Kurds, but have been labeled Arabs (and forced to speak it), persecuted as devil worshipers (they’re not, but they do have a complicated religion), and ousted from their homes and forced to live in “cinderblock villages in poorly resourced areas.”
The Islamic State has been persecuting them along with Shiite Muslims and Christians as part of their bloody campaign. Their most recent attack on the Yazidi town of Sinjar forced tens of thousands to flee to the mountains nearby, where they are stranded and are running out of resources—the US military has airdropped meals and freshwater.
While some claim that the number of women captured is around 400, there is no solid estimate. Really puts those Tumblr mujahida into perspective.
Meanwhile, US surveillance flights over Nigeria has apparently discovered “large groups of girls held together in remote locations” which could very well be some of girls kidnapped from Boko Haram, another Al-Qaeda affiliate.