ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Rescuing women and girls held captive by ISIS in Iraq is much more difficult than getting them out of Syria, says an activist involved in helping captives escape the militants from the Iraqi city of Mosul.
Khalid Aldakby says that is because the militants in Mosul are far more ideologically committed and not as amenable to cash payments to let the prisoners go than their counterparts in Syria, where money talks.
“In Iraq, they never sell women,” Aldakby told Rudaw English. “That’s why not many women survive ISIS in Iraq. Most of the women survivors are coming from Syria, because it is just about money there,” he explained.
In ISIS-held territories in Syria, there is a much more direct market for buying and selling girls or women who have been captured by ISIS, because ransoms are negotiated directly, according to Aldakby.
“In Syria, smugglers are talking to ISIS directly, giving them money and getting the girls back,” he explained.
But in Mosul, he said, ISIS fighters or affiliates are much more ideologically driven, so paying ransoms is not an easy option.
Aldakby, a Yezidi himself, is part of a group working to rescue fellow Yezidis captured by ISIS. He has been personally involved in rescuing 200 Yezidi girls from ISIS, or Daesh as they group is known in Arabic.
Aldakby says that he works with a group comprised of old friends and colleagues, mostly from university or work, who are both in and outside Mosul. They coordinate to evacuate kidnapped girls and women who are forced into sexual slavery or held as prisoners by ISIS. Since 2014, seven members of the group have been killed and several others have been taken prisoner, he said.
“Many of those people who are helping us have been hurt by ISIS themselves. ISIS killed their people or did other things to them,” Aldakby explained. “This is what they can do to hurt ISIS back.”
Brett McGurk, the US special envoy for the war against ISIS, told reporters early last month that, “We think most of the Yezidi slaves who were taken by Daesh two years ago, the vast majority of them, are in Mosul.”
The number of Yezidi women and girls who have not escaped or been freed from ISIS is 3,735, Khairi Bozani, head of Yezidi affairs in the Kurdistan Regional Government’s religious affairs ministry, told Rudaw in September.
Aldakby’s network operates similarly to the “Underground Railroad” that operated in the United States during its Civil War, with operatives waiting at different points to receive rescued prisoners and help get them to the next checkpoint and eventually to freedom.
Aldakby explained that once a captive Yezidi girl or woman has been located, someone from the network goes to check and make contact with her. The next step is to prepare a safe house as well as a car for her escape. While these preparations are ongoing, a person assigned to rescue her stays nearby the house she is kept in, monitoring the situation until they can escort her to safety.
“This group is inside, so they are working until they put her in a safe house. Then there is another group outside the city to come and get her and take her to another safe house,” Aldakby explained.
This phase usually involves mapping out an escape route to outside the city and creating an alias for the prisoner in case she is stopped by ISIS.
“Sometimes they just send someone to wait, and they will just walk together until a car picks them up to take them to the safe house,” Aldakby said. The situation often depends on whether or not her “husband” – the ISIS member or associate she was given or sold to – is home.
“She has to help us during this process,” Aldakby added. “She has to come up with a cover – she has to go to the hospital or do something -- anything to get her out of the house.”
According to Aldakby, since 2014, rescuing girls and women from Mosul has become increasingly more difficult due to further isolation.
During the first year of their capture in August 2014, when ISIS stormed into the Yezidi town of Shingal, most of them had their cell phones, so they could call for help. Now, it is very difficult because contact is very limited, due to very little Internet access or access to phones, which are monitored by ISIS.
In rescuing captives in Mosul, the money is spent primarily on logistics, Aldakby said.
“The money will go for the car or something like that, or the safe house,” he explained. “It’s for her clothes, for the phones, for the gas. Sometimes they are buying new cars,” he said.
“Sometimes we are spending lots of money and not getting anywhere,” he added. “Sometimes, they are trying 10 times and still not succeeding.”
Soon after being imprisoned by ISIS, families were completely separated. Children were taken from their mothers. As for the men, no one knows their whereabouts. Most of the girls and women were sent to be slaves for ISIS members or associated. It is widely speculated that some of the men and most of the boys were taken to be brainwashed and radicalized and trained to fight for the caliphate. Most of the men were just executed.
Many of the women and girls rescued now have more psychological and physical problems than those who were rescued earlier.
According to Aldakby, many Yezidi girls say they were raped, even while ill or menstruating.
“Many of the women now are rescued while pregnant or caring for a baby. Many have been sold to different men multiple times,” Aldakby said.
