Yezidi man with arm amputated, other crippled by ISIS pleads for help

by Karwan Ali

 

DUHOK, Kurdistan Region — Barzan Ido and seven family members were captured by ISIS from Doumiz in Shingal. ISIS extremists then transferred him from nearby Mosul to Raqqa in Syria during the three-year ISIS conflict. 

"They cut [off] my right hand because I didn't join in the war and they destroyed my other hand," he told Rudaw.

Ido now lives with his uncle and their family in Chamshko camp in Duhok province, Kurdistan Region, after Sheikh Pasha Mahmoud, a volunteer, helped to get Ido reconnected with his kin.

"I hope Yezidi youth in Europe can help him more," Mahmoud pleaded.

Sometimes he needs assistance with basic tasks like getting dressed or eating.

"He cannot wash his hands or eat with his hands," Khalaf Barakat, the uncle, told Rudaw. Will he stay like this until he is 100? This is not right."

Ido's left hand is also crippled. He hopes a prosthetic and treatments abroad would allow him to live more independently.

"I am in a bad state. If nobody cared for me, I would starve," he told Rudaw. "I cannot move my hands. My right hand was amputated."

His uncle their family cannot afford the costs associated for a surgery, so they are asking local charity organizations to step up.

Of the seven immediate family members captured by ISIS, Ido is the only survivor.

Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani established an office in 2014 to help rescue the Yezidis kidnapped by ISIS. More than 3,000 Yezidis have been rescued, according to the KRG.

There were numerous cases of Yezidis being rescued as Iraqi forces retook Mosul city and its surroundings. Additionally in Raqqa, the mostly-Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) facilitated rescues.

More than 6,000 members of the religious minority were taken captive by ISIS when they swept through northern Iraq, committing genocide against the Yezidis. Nearly half of the abductees remain unaccounted for.

Around 200,000 or about half of the Yezidi population in Iraq fled into the Kurdistan Region or Syria in 2014. Many still remain in camps in the Duhok province.

The Yezidi homeland of Shingal remains unstable and the IDPs say they fear returning. The Iraqi Army and Yezidi Peshmerga were in a standoff on March 28 when the army insisted on entering a Yezidi holy shrine.