SHINGAL — A group of 13 Yezidis arrived in Shingal on Thursday after nearly five years of being held captive by the Islamic State (ISIS) and then fleeing to the safety of al-Hol camp. "They separated us from our mothers and took us to different places. Later, they took us to Raqqa and forced us to go to Aleppo to fight. Wherever we were, they trained us and taught us to learn about guns and Quran," Hazim Hussein, a 16-year-old told Rudaw. He was among the 12 other Yezidis from five villages in Shinal who were reunited with family members. Hussein was held by the extremists across Syria before ending up in their last holdout of al-Baghouz. He was then transported to al-Hol refugee camp when the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) liberated the area. "The [Islamic] state got smaller and smaller until it was pushed to Baghouz. We left there and went with the Syrian Democratic Forces," he said. Some like Yusra Mustafa have forgotten their native mother-tongue language of Kurdish and only could speak Arabic. "I haven’t seen my family yet. But thank God those who are here did their best for me. I don’t know where my family is," said Yusra Mustafa. Several member of her family are unaccounted for or no longer in Shingal. "My brother is missing; I know nothing about my father who was kidnapped in Shingal. I also know nothing of my mother. I think one of my brothers is in Shingal. He’ll come to take me today or tomorrow. One of my sisters is in Germany," she added. The Yezidi Party for Freedom and Democracy (PADE) has created 2 teams in northeast Syria, known by Kurds as Rojava. They search for missing Yezidis. Their office told Rudaw nearly 300 Yezidis are still in al-Hol. "The teams face some difficulties in convincing them to return because they don’t believe that the Yezidi community still exists," PADE leader Omer Salih said. "They have been told [by ISIS] that Yezidis have all died and they are kafirs (infidels). They don’t want to return. It may take 15-20 days to convince them that their parents are alive and to return," he added. Of the 6,417 Yezidis kidnapped by ISIS, some 3,369 have been rescued, but the fate of the remaining 2,992 is unclear, according to Yezidi Affairs Office in the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) Ministry of Religious Affairs and Endowment. Thousands more are thought to lie undiscovered, as UN, Iraqi, and local teams work to exhume mass graves in Shingal. Shingal remains a disputed territory claimed by the Iraqi federal government and Kurdistan Regional Government. The area is northwest of Mosul city in Nineveh and Duhok provinces and is alongside the border with Syria. Reporting by Tahsin Qasim
