DOHUK, Kurdistan Region — The German state of Brandenburg has so far offered around 700 war-scarred Kurdish Yezidi women medical treatment and is planning to take in another 1,100 in the coming months.
The province has allocated 95 million euro (about $ 110 million) to help the traumatized women who were rescued from ISIS captivity.
In an interview with Rudaw TV, the medical supervisor of the aid project said they were hopeful that most of the affected women would receive necessary treatments in two-years time.
“These women have gone through unbearable experiences at the hands of their captors and need professional psychiatric support to go on with their lives,” said Professor Ilhan Qizilhan, a German-Kurdish supervisor, about many of the women he had interviewed.
Qizilhan said he had so far been able to see 1,403 Yezidi women, but the project also included other groups, including Christians and Muslims.
“We have also taken 24 Christian women, 12 Arab women and three Feyli Kurds for treatment in Germany,” he added.
According to Qizilhan, any woman can seek assistance from Brandenburg on the condition that she was harmed by the militants, developed mental distress while in captivity and if the treatment is available in Germany.
“I have heard stories from these brave women that are absolutely heartbreaking, with the ISIS militants perpetrating mass crimes not heard of anywhere,” the professor said, adding that the torture of children while their parents were forced to watch has taken place on more than one occasion with ISIS.
“I think these women should be helped, it’s everybody’s moral and humanitarian duty since many of them are suicidal because of the extraordinary atrocities they have been subjected too,” he said.
According to the office of Yezidi affairs in the Kurdistan region—which was set up to help locate abducted Yezidi women following the ISIS offensive—some 6,000 people, mostly women and children, have been kidnapped and sold into slavery by Islamic State militants since August 2014 when Yezidi areas fell to ISIS.
Since then, more than 2,000 women have been rescued either through ransoms or mediation by local Arab tribal leaders.
Germany has the largest Yezidi diaspora community in the world, with over 400,000 Yezidi people living in the country.
According to the Iraqi migration office in Erbil, some 10,000 Yezidis have left Iraq and Kurdistan since fighting began last year, hoping for asylum in Europe and especially in Germany.
Peshmerga forces supported by US airstrikes recaptured the main Yezidi town of Shingal earlier in November. Authorities now hope thousands of refugees can now return to their areas after residing in camps across the Kurdish region since last year.
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