Probe of Islamic State sex crimes reaches top UN body

UNITED NATIONS, New York - The crimes are among the most odious imaginable: fighters of the Islamic State (IS) group capturing women and girls as young as nine, keeping them as sex slaves and justifying wartime lust with a chauvinistic interpretation of Islam.

 

Zainab Bangura, the UN envoy on sexual violence in conflict, told Middle East Eye about the group’s wholesale rape industry after visiting the region in April. On Tuesday, after much foot-dragging by diplomats, she gave her evidence to the UN Security Council.

 

After the closed-door meeting, Gerard van Bohemen, New Zealand’s ambassador to the UN, expressed “strong concern” that sexual atrocities had become a “deliberate tactic” in Syria’s civil war – but added that the UN body was taking no action this week.

 

“We need to find some way to address this,” he told MEE.

 

Bangura’s testimony was delayed by Russia, a veto-wielding member that objected to the meeting. While members agree on the need to tackle IS, Moscow and the council’s Western states are often deadlocked on tackling the Syrian crisis.

 

Jacqueline Isaac, vice president of the Roads of Success charity, which provides counselling and English-language lessons to some 70 former captives in northern Iraq, said fine words in New York were little comfort to those still being held.

 

“We commend the UN Security Council for meeting on an important issue that touches all of humanity, while also calling on the body to prepare a task force to help rescue the girls who are still in captivity,” she told MEE.

 

“The council represents the most powerful countries in the world. If they come together, this can be achieved.”

 

Baroness Emma Nicholson, chairwoman of Amar, a UK-based charity that helps Iraqis, said the UN lacked the know-how to support IS victims and should turn its attention to ending the group’s war of “genocidal cruelty” against non-believers.

 

“The UN should focus instead on the genocide being waged against the Yazidis, Christians and Muslims and they should fast-forward a religious tolerance programme globally to ensure this vicious death cult will be the last the world ever sees once they are conquered,” she told MEE.

 

Last August, the world watched in awe as the radical militia continued its blitzkrieg offensive through Yazidi areas in northwest Iraq and sent members of the religious sect fleeing from their centuries-old villages for refuge up the slopes of Mt. Sinjar.

 

At the time, it looked like IS was purging its growing proto-state of Yazidis, an ancient, predominantly Kurdish people who follow principles of Islam, Christianity and Zoroastrianism which – according to IS – amounts to devil-worship.

 

But, according to studies from Bangura and such pressure groups as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW), IS had also methodically planned to enslave thousands of women to satiate its army and lure Muslim men from overseas to come join its ranks.

 

As fighters overran villages, they executed Yazidi men and adolescent boys and shunted women and girls into a fleet of buses, driving them to wedding halls, schools and other big buildings in Mosul and other IS-held cities.

 

Former captives describe warehouse-style rooms filled with mattresses, tableware and food and water for hundreds of people. Militiamen strolled around with registers, asking women about their ages, family backgrounds and other details.

 

Youth, fairness and virginity were the most prized assets they could offer. The youngest and prettiest were quickly bussed away to the homes of sheikhs, generals and fighters across Iraq and Syria. The elite went to Raqqa, the IS stronghold. 

 

Some mothers and older women spent months under lock and key before they were traded in slave auctions. During her research trip, Bangura received a slave price list, which valued under-10 girls at $165 and teenagers at $124. Prices decrease with the captive’s age.

 

Horrors continued in the captives’ new lives among IS fighters, sheikhs and other bigwigs of the self-styled caliphate. Victims described repeated rapes until owners lost interest, when they were sent to auctions. One was traded 22 times, Bangura said.

 

In an interview that was produced by Amar, which runs 16 camps in northern Iraq, a former slave described her life at the hands of an IS member: rape, cigarette burns across her body and demands that she lick honey off his big toe.

 

Scholars argue that IS enslaves Yazidis because, as adherents of a non-Abrahamic faith, they receive less protection than others under the group’s austere ideology. Victims describe being told that having sex with a Muslim IS fighter would bring them closer to God.

 

Some committed suicide. Some fled, some died trying. Others told relatives of their location and were purchased out of slavery by middlemen. According to community leaders, 5,270 Yazidis were abducted last year; more than 3,000 are still held.

 

Earlier this month, Said Mimousini, a Kurdish official in northern Iraq, told IraqiNews.com that IS had executed 19 women in Mosul because they had refused to get into bed with IS militiamen under the provisos of their “sexual jihad”.

 

Bangura first spoke with MEE after her April 16-29 trip to Syria, Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and relief hubs in the Kurdish zone of northern Iraq – the first in a series of interviews on what has been dubbed an IS “war on women”.

 

After a similar study from Dohuk, Iraq, in January and February, Liesl Gerntholtz, an expert in women’s rights for HRW, described the “unimaginable trauma” endured by Yazidi slaves and called for more counselling and emotional support for survivors. 

 

Amnesty’s crisis expert Donatella Rovera spoke with 40 former captives at the end of last year and described “lives shattered by the horrors of sexual violence" in forced marriages and slave auctions, part of the group’s report, "Escape from Hell".

 

 

“Rape itself has become an instrument of Syrian regime policy in regime-run prisons and detention facilities, as well as in regime checkpoints,” he said. “Much like barrel bombs, siege-tactics and chlorine gas, sexual violence is used by Syrian regime forces to spread fear among civilians.”