ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Eager to discover Yezidis who may have survived Islamic State (ISIS) atrocities, a high-level Yezidi delegation returned with promising news from the war-torn Syria last week following the declared military defeat of the extremists .
The delegation announced they discovered 40 Yezidi women and children who will soon rejoin their relatives in the Kurdistan Region.
"The delegation consisted of six people who visited different places in Rojava and Syria to reveal the fate of 40 Yezidi women and children some of whom had been taken to hospitals to receive treatment for wounds they had sustained [while fleeing the final battles in al-Baghouz]…," Karim Sulaiman, an adviser to the Yezidi Spiritual Council, told Rudaw.
Without providing details, Sulaiman added they obtained "good information" on the fate of many other missing Yezidis.
On March 23, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) announced the territorial defeat of the Islamic State group (ISIS) in the Middle Euphrates River Valley. Tens of thousands of ISIS militants and their families as well as many Yezidis poured out of the group’s last holdout of Baghouz, Deir ez-Zor province.
In an interview with Rudaw on April 6, YPG spokesman Nouri Mahmoud said: "...many Yezidi children who are among the Daesh families at the camps are denying their identity. We are doing our best to approach them and to convince them to reveal their identity.”
Iraq and the Kurdistan Region have a shortage of psychosocial facilitators. The Yezidi community heavily relies on private donations and non-governmental organizations to fill the gap.
Mahmoud further explained "ISIS has had a great influence on educating them, threatening them, and putting them under their influence. So long as they are treated badly, that style of education still lives with them making them to deny their [own] identity.”
According to the most updated data from the Yezidi Affairs Office from the KRG Ministry Religion and Endowment, of 6,417 Yezidis kidnapped by ISIS during their brutal campaign of the takeover of Shingal in August 2014, the fate of 2,992 is still unclear whether they were killed and alive.
A large number have been rescued through smugglers paying ransoms for their release.
Abdulla Sharem, a smuggler rescuing Yezidis who has participated in dozens of rescues, explained "there are many other women and children alive in Syria excluding those who were taken to al-Hol camp” in addition to the recently discovered 40.
"They are in Raqqa and Homs," he said.
Reporting by Nasir Ali