When shells began
crashing around the town of Tal Afar as Shi'ite militias brought the fight to
Islamic State in northern Iraq, Abu Faraj saw his chance to escape captivity.
He and 17 other
members of the Yazidi religious community, one of Iraq's oldest minorities,
moved to the town's outskirts while their Islamic State captors were busy with
the battle.
Four days later, in
the early evening, they fled. The group, which included women and children,
walked overnight through the desert and hours later reached Kurdish-controlled
territory -- and safety
"I remember the
exact time we decided to flee, it was 6:50 p.m.," said Abu Faraj, 23, who
had waited more than two years for that moment.
"We had to walk
in single file through the desert and follow each other's footsteps in case the
area was mined," he said, giving an alias for fear of identification by
Islamic State militants, who still hold some of his relatives.
The group, including
Abu Faraj's wife and two daughters, were captured when Islamic State overran
Sinjar in northern Iraq in August 2014.
The insurgents
systematically killed, captured and enslaved thousands of Yazidis, whose
beliefs combine elements of several ancient Middle Eastern religions and are
regarded by Islamic State as devil-worshippers.
Mass Yazidi graves
have been found since Kurdish forces retook areas north of Sinjar in December
2014, and the town itself in November 2015, but Islamic State had already
transferred many Yazidis to other areas, including Tal Afar.
Reports from the
area suggest thousands of people have fled Tal Afar in recent days as the
Shi'ite paramilitary groups -- assisting a U.S.-backed operation to drive
Islamic State out of the city of Mosul to the east -- advanced.
Most of those who
have fled are from the town's Turkmen Sunni Muslim majority, fearing sectarian
revenge by the Shi'ite fighters.
But Yazidis are also
among them, and for Abu Faraj and his fellow Yazidis, who squat for now in a
half-finished building in the northern city of Duhok, the escape has been a
huge relief.
"We left our
house when other people were also fleeing. We didn't ask who they were, whether
they were Daesh (Islamic State) families. We just used the chaos to go,"
he said, smoking a cigarette -- a practice forbidden under Islamic State rule.
"Under Daesh we
watched executions, beatings. You name it, we've seen it."
HUSBAND, DAUGHTER
TAKEN AWAY
Abu Faraj, who
worked as a slave laborer in Tal Afar, is among the few young Yazidi men to
have escaped Islamic State. He did not say how he managed to survive when
others had disappeared or been killed, also for fear of identification.
"The rest of
the group are women, children and elderly," he said.
U.N. investigators
said in a report in June that Islamic State is committing genocide against the
Yazidis in Syria and Iraq to destroy the community of 400,000 people through
killings, sexual slavery and other crimes.
One 42-year-old
woman, who gave her name only as "a member of the Meshu family" and
covered her face with a scarf, made the same journey as Abu Faraj with her
three youngest children.
"When we
finally made it to a peshmerga (Kurdish forces) position, we took our veils off
and raised our hands -- with our all-black clothes we were scared they'd think
we were Daesh and shoot us," she said.
Her husband,
16-year-old son and 20-year-old daughter had been separated from her and the
younger children when they were first taken by the militants.
"I don't know
what has happened to them, or where they are," she said.
Islamic State took
many Yazidi girls as sex slaves.
The family was moved
from town to town after their capture, spending some time in makeshift prisons
and the rest under what amounted to house arrest in Tal Afar.
"We didn't
leave the house except to get essential supplies. I avoided sending the kids to
an Islamic State school," she said.
"Daesh fighters
gave us just enough to eat, but it was often dirty food and water," she
said, sitting next to her tired and pale children.
The Office of
Kidnapped Affairs in Duhok, a department backed by the Kurdistan regional
government, said about 3,500 Yazidis were believed to remain in areas
controlled by Islamic State, many of them women and children.
But even for those
who have escaped, the ordeal is not over.
"Now, we don't
know what we'll do, if we'll be able to get home, even where we'll sleep
tonight. It's up to God," said Abu Faraj.
Reuters
Follow Solenzo Blog on
0 Comments