Iraqi Yazidis still await relatives captured by Daesh
After paying nearly $100,000 in ransom to free 10 family members, Khaled Taalou, a member of Iraq's Yazidi minority, is still working to free other missing relatives kidnapped by Daesh terrorists.
Despite his efforts, five more relatives, along with thousands of other Yazidis, remain missing after being abducted by the terrorist group.
"We are still looking. We do not lose hope," the 49-year-old said.
In August 2014, Daesh swept over Mount Sinjar, the Kurdish-speaking minority's historic home in northern Iraq. They massacred thousands of Yazidi men, enlisted children, and took thousands of women as prisoners to be sold as its militants’ "wives" or reduced to sexual slavery.
Daesh considered the Yazidis, who follow a non-Muslim monotheistic faith, as heretics.
U.N. investigators have described the atrocities carried out by Daesh as genocide.
Nineteen members of Taalou's family were abducted, including his brother and sister, along with their spouses and children.
"We borrowed money as we could, here and there, to get them out," the journalist and writer said.
Now displaced and living in Sharya, a village in Iraqi Kurdistan, after fleeing his home in Sinjar, Taalou has managed to free 10 relatives over seven years.
Expensive releases are negotiated "via networks of traffickers in Iraq and abroad," he said.
The latest was his brother's granddaughter in February 2022, located in a Syrian camp. He has learned that along with five relatives who remain missing, two family members were killed in aerial bombardments in the fight against Daesh.
'Eyes on the road'
After Daesh's rapid rise in 2014, Iraq declared victory over the terrorist group in 2017 and the group's last Syrian stronghold was retaken in 2019.
But the toll left behind by their self-proclaimed caliphate is still being counted. Mass graves in Sinjar continue to be exhumed and the International Organization for Migration says more than 2,700 Yazidis remain missing, with some still in Daesh captivity while "the whereabouts of others is uncertain."
Bahar Elias was separated from her husband Jassem and their son Ahmed, who was barely 19 when the family was kidnapped when Daesh seized Sinjar.
Relatives paid intermediaries $22,000 to secure the release of Bahar and her three younger sisters.
Now living in a camp for displaced people near Sharya, the 40-year-old said she has her "eyes glued to the road" hoping her husband and son will return.
She appealed for international assistance to "help us find a trace of our families, to find out if they are dead or alive."
Knowing their fate, she added, would allow her "to be free from pain."
'Nothing left in Sinjar'
Hussein Qaidi, head of a public office in Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region working to rescue kidnapped Yazidis, said Daesh abducted 6,417 Yazidis from Sinjar.
More than 3,500 have been rescued in Iraq or from neighboring Syria and Türkiye.
He estimated 2,855 Yazidis remain missing and said his team works tirelessly to "gather the available information and free all the kidnapped."
Hayam was 17 when Daesh abducted her on Aug. 3, 2014, along with her parents, five sisters and two brothers.
Now living in Sharya, she has managed to rebuild her life after a journey across the territory once controlled by Daesh.
In a Daesh prison, she met Leila, a fellow Yazidi. In May 2015, Hayam was sold to a Syrian and Leila to an Iraqi.
Four months later, Hayam was given to a man from Dagestan before escaping her ordeal and reaching Iraqi Kurdistan, after a year and a half in captivity.
She has since married Leila's brother, Marwan, and the couple and their two children have sought asylum in Australia, where Hayam has family awaiting them.
She has the word "huriya" (freedom) tattooed on her wrist and has no intention of returning to her former home.
"Nothing awaits us in Sinjar," she said, adding that her family and friends are no longer there.
"Some were killed, others are still captives of Daesh, and others have emigrated. Everything has changed."
PKK invasion
Daesh is not the only organization terrorizing and displacing the Yazidi community in the region. The PKK terrorist group managed to establish a foothold in Sinjar in mid-2014 under the pretext of protecting the local Yazidi community from Daesh. Since then, it has reportedly established a new base in Sinjar for its logistical and command-and-control activities.
The Sinjar agreement signed under the auspices of the United Nations between the central government in Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) on Oct. 9, 2020, envisaged clearing the region of PKK terrorists. However, it never took effect, allowing the PKK to roam free in the territory to this day. The group is reportedly trying to turn the district into a "second Qandil."
The Yazidi community leaders have been calling on the Iraqi government, the KRG, and the international community for the implementation of a U.N.-mediated deal for displaced Yazidis to be able to return home, which is prevented by the PKK presence still constituting a significant threat to the region.
