A group of Yazidi women and children were on Saturday reunited with their families in Iraq after five years of captivity at the hands of the Islamic State (IS) group, hugging and kissing relatives in emotional scenes that underscored their years-long ordeal and that of their devastated community.
Elated families met their loved ones at a rural truck stop on the road between Sinjar and Dohuk, tossing candy in the air like confetti, the women ululating with joy.
The 18 returning children, aged 10 to 15, appeared weary and at times uneasy with the attention of the media and officials.
Photo: Reuters
One teenage boy collapsed in his aunt’s arms and broke down in tears. Few parents were there to receive their children — many are still missing in territory held by the IS or have been confirmed killed.
Other parents have already sought asylum in Western nations in the hopes that their children would be able to follow them.
Still, the children could not hide their joy at being hugged and kissed once more by their relatives after the long and traumatic separation.
They included 11 boys that many feared were trained in military camps by the IS, although they all denied it. Only days after escaping the extremist group, the children were struggling to come to terms with their ordeal.
“They treated us well,” 13-year-old Milad Hussein Khalaf said.
He said that the militants separated him from his family when they were abducted in 2014 and sent the then-eight-year-old to be raised by an IS family.
About 3,000 Yazidis are still missing after IS militants stormed their communities in the Sinjar region in northwest Iraq in 2014, and enslaved, raped and killed thousands of worshippers of the esoteric Yazidi faith.
The militant group considers the Kurdish-speaking religious minority to be heretics.
The group of three Yazidi women and 18 children who reunited with their families are among thousands of civilians who have over the past few days emerged from the last speck of territory held by the IS in the village of Baghouz, eastern Syria. They crossed into Iraq from Syria on Friday.
Khalaf said that his IS family put him in a religious school and he has learned to recite passages from the Koran, which he studied every day.
Khalaf’s older cousin, Siri Ali, used a video chat app on her smartphone so that her sisters in Canada could see him arrive.
Khalaf doesn’t know that his parents are still missing, she said.
“Thank God, they have returned and they are among us. This child does not have a mother or a father. We are going to be his parents,” said Noura Ali, Khalaf’s other cousin.
“We thank all the sides that worked together to rescue them and we hope that the rest of the missing people will return,” she said.
Khalaf said that there are still children in Baghouz, but he did not know how many.
Also among the arrivals was Dilbar Ali Ravu, 10, who looked slightly stunned, but also could not hide his joy.
His uncle Jihad Ravu said that Dilbar developed lesions on his face while he was being held in a cell in Tal Afar in the early days of his captivity, after he was abducted five years ago.
Dilbar has not had proper medical treatment since then, he said.
Susan Fahmy, a coordinator for the non-governmental organization Khalsa Aid, said she was certain that all the boys were sent to training and that they need years of rehabilitation.
Some Yazidi boys have been caught communicating with the IS a year after they returned, she said, adding that women are being pressured to give up their children fathered by IS men and she was alarmed that one of the women arrived without her kids.
Hosni Murad, the brother of Yazidi campaigner Nadia Murad, who received the Nobel Peace Prize for her advocacy on behalf of victims of wartime sexual violence, was there to welcome home his 10-year-old nephew, Khashman Samir.
Samir’s four siblings and his parents were all killed by the IS, Murad said.
“They were all victims of Daesh,” he said, using the Arabic acronym for the group. “He’s the first and the last one to return from the family.”
Murad said he is certain that his nephew and all other the boys were given military training by the IS, and he believes that many young men are returning to the community harboring sympathies for the extremists.
“Yes, in truth, we’re afraid they’ll do something. Their mindset is Daesh. I mean it’s been five years they’ve been training with them,” he said.
Another nephew of his, aged 16, spurned his pleas to come home, choosing to stay with the IS until the end, he said.
“He replied: ‘You are all infidels,’” Murad said, adding that he had not heard from him in months.
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