Though ISIS Caliphate collapsed the Yazidis' plight still trudges

Lazghine Atteh

The 4 th of February marked a year since the first remains of Yazidis murdered by ISIS in August 2014 were laid to final rest in the Shingal village of Kocho.

On 23 March 2019, and, after the liberation by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) supported by the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS of the last bastion of Baghuz on the Syro-Iraqi border, ISIS was declared defeated, at least territorially.

However, when the ISIS proclaimed Caliphate came to an end many believed the scars made by the extremist group were going to be healed soon. But the search for ISIS victims and the process of holding accountable those perpetrated the most of heinous crimes substantiates to be a very slow one.

In May 2019 the United Nations Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Da'esh (UNITAD) found 'clear and compelling evidence' that ISIS 'committed' genocide against the Yazidi community in 2014.

One of the main tasks assigned to UNITAD is the exhumation of mass graves where Yazidis en masse dumped in the Yazidi ancestral homeland and elsewhere in Iraq. 

In the process, all remains after being exhumed are sent to the Iraqi capital Baghdad to receive DNA identification to be matched with surviving family members to receive a honorable reburial ceremonies appropriately and according to traditions. The process that implies a lot of difficulties.

In February 2021, 104 Yazidis, killed by ISIS in August 2014 along with thousands of Yazidis, received a decent reburial ceremonies according to Yazidi religious and cultural rituals in the village of Kocho at the foot on Mount Shingal, some 23 kilometers to the northwestern Beled.

Of the 104 remains 103 ones were from Kocho except Said Jardo Mato, who descends from the village of Dahola.

Most of those killed en masse by ISIS militants in Shingal were men who seemingly refused to convert to Islam and women deemed to be past childbearing, while boys and girls were saved; the former to be recruited as future militants and the latter for sex slavery.

In March 2021, the Iraqi parliament passed the Yazidi Survivors Law which among others provides for a monthly salary, a plot of land or housing unit, as well as other essential assistance covering women and girls who were subjected to sexual violence, as well as child survivors who were abducted before the age of 18 to have a decent life. And though the law is welcomed by many yet it is faced with many hardships and obstructions.

In December 2021, remains of another 41 Yazidis -26 men and 15 women - were laid to final rest in Kocho village.

In Syria, many women still live in the milieu of ISIS ideology as is the case of the al-Hol Camp some 45 kilometers to the east of the city of Hasaka where large number of Yazidi girls are said to be living in tents but fearful of disclosing their identities.

The al-Hol Camp that is dubbed as one of the most dangerous world wide witnesses from time to another murders mostly against those suspected of defection or contacting security guards.

Many others still remain in Idlib and other areas formerly under the Caliphate. Last summer Sipan Khalil was brought by the Yazidi House of the Hasaka Region from Daraa in southern Syria and was delivered to her family in Shingal. Sipan was on her way alongside her Lebanese ISIS affiliate husband when the car hit a landmine in Daraa. Though Sipan incurred severe injuries but she succeeded in taking refuge to a family after the husband lost his life.

Sipan was assumed dead, as she stood at the her supposed headstone in the ISIS victims cemetery created in the village of Kocho.

Undoubtedly, Sipan is not an isolated case; there are many whose stories remain to be disclosed, one day may be. 

Contacting and bringing these isolated girls is a difficult task both logistically and financially, according to the Yazidi House in the Jazira Region. In the case of Sipan the house paid a 1000 USD, though this is not a regular rule.

But the most remarkable step in the long process, it should be remembered, came in November 2021, when Taha al- Jumaily, an Iraqi ISIS affiliate, was sentence to life imprisonment by a German court marking the first ever conviction for community genocide against members of the group.

Al-Jumaily, 29, who is alleged to have held many positions in the Islamic Caliphate reign was found guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, aiding and abetting war crimes and bodily harm resulting in death.

Prosecutors at a Frankfurt court said al-Jumaily and his wife enslaved a Yazidi woman and child. Radda, 5, that was renamed Rania died of thirst after being left chained to a window grate under the heat of the Fallujah province of Anbar then part of the ISIS caliphate.

Radda's mother whose identity is kept secret on security grounds, descends from the village of Kocho, then home to 1700 Yazidis, was abducted early in August 2014.

Earlier in October 2021, al-Jumaily's wife, Jennifer Wenisch, a German Muslim convert, was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment after being found guilty of two crimes against humanity in the form of enslavement, as well as aiding and abetting the child’s death by failing to offer help.

AL-Jumaily who was caught in Greece in 2019, was extradited to Germany in conformity with the legal principle of universal jurisdiction that allows for the trial of international crimes committed by anybody, anywhere in the world regardless of the location of the crime and the nationality of the perpetrator or the victim.

It is true that the land mark ruling gives a ray of hope to the victims but Yazidis hope other countries will follow suit Germany and put on trial ISIS members for the genocidal crimes they committed. However, still this is one step in the long and shaky process of doing justice and holding accountable all those perpetrators of crimes that were classified a genocide.

Though the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR) said in a report in March 2015 that the persecution of the Yazidi people, that included among others forced religious conversion and sexual slavery, was classified as a genocide, and the bid was followed suit by many international human rights bodies and countries all over the world all classifying the barbaric acts of 2014 as a genocide, however, the actual reality on the ground reveal that much more efforts still need to be exerted.

ANHA