IRAQ Sexual and gender-based crimes against the Yazidi Community: the role of ISIL foreign fighters October 2018 / N° 723a October F Cover photo: A picture taken on October 6, 2014 shows in a mirror the reflection of an Iraqi Yazidi woman as she visits Lalish Temple during the»Feast of the Assembly» in the mountain village of Lalish near Dohuk, 430 km (260 miles) northwest of Baghdad. The congregation, which lasts for seven days, includes three old rituals: the visit, the blessing and the baptism. The main ritual is the sacrifice in which an ox is slaughtered amid religions hymns. © SAFIN HAMED / AFP TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................4 • Objectives of this report ...........................................................................................................................6 • Methodology ..............................................................................................................................................7 CONTEXT ................................................................................................................................9 • The rise and fall of Islamic State in Iraq ................................................................................................9 • Who are the Yazidis ................................................................................................................................ 10 • The attack on Sinjar ............................................................................................................................... 13 I. SYSTEMATIC ENSLAVEMENT OF AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE AGAINST YAZIDI WOMEN & GIRLS ..14 1. ISIL ideology & institutionalisation ....................................................................................14 • Reviving the practice of Al-Sabi ........................................................................................................... 15 • Mushrikeen vs. murtaddeen ................................................................................................................. 15 • Al-sabi: the legitimisation and institutionalisation of captivity and enslavement ..................... 16 • Al-sabi: from ideology to practice ........................................................................................................ 17 2. Yazidis held captive ........................................................................................................... 19 • Women and girls captured while trying to flee ................................................................................. 20 • Selecting women and girls from various holding points ................................................................ 21 • Separating families in April-May 2015 ................................................................................................ 22 3. Yazidis sold and enslaved ..................................................................................................22 • The Sabaya markets ............................................................................................................................... 23 • Sales online and through phone applications ................................................................................... 23 • Exchanges in kind ................................................................................................................................... 26 • Selling Yazidi women and children back to families ........................................................................ 27 4. Escaping ISIL: the reality facing returnees .........................................................................28 II. THE ROLE OF ISIL FOREIGN FIGHTERS ..............................................................................30 • Identifying the nationality of ISIL’s Yazidi captors ............................................................................ 30 • Identifying the roles of ISIL’s foreign fighters .................................................................................... 31 • Communities of foreign fighters within ISIL ...................................................................................... 32 • Servitude and sexual slavery at the hands of foreign fighters ...................................................... 32 III. THE NEED FOR ACCOUNTABILITY..................................................................................... 34 1. Qualification of crimes ....................................................................................................... 34 • Sexual and gender based violence amounting to genocide .......................................................... 34 • Sexual and gender based violence amounting to crimes against humanity .............................. 38 2. National & international accountability efforts ...................................................................41 • Iraq and Syria ........................................................................................................................................... 41 • International Criminal Court ................................................................................................................. 44 • United Nations ......................................................................................................................................... 45 • Foreign ISIL fighters’ countries of origin ............................................................................................ 46 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................................49 RECOMMENDATIONS ............................................................................................................50 3 FIDH/KINYAT - IRAQ- Sexual and gender-based crimes against the Yazidi Community: the role of ISIL foreign fighters INTRODUCTION The rise of extremism in Iraq and Syria that led to the creation of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (“ISIL”)1 devastated local civilian populations. After renaming itself the Islamic State (“IS”) and establishing a caliphate under their chief, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, the group used terror to govern regions under their control. This territorial expansion from Syria to Iraq came after the group was strengthened by growing numbers of fighters coming from across Russia, the Middle East and North Africa, Europe and the USA,2 as well as by its increasing control over North-Syrian territories.3 On 10 June 2014, ISIL conquered Mosul, the second largest- Sunni-city in Iraq and capital of the Nineveh province. 0 100 200 300 400 500 km With a population of two million, the Nineveh province to the north-west of Iraq became a testing ground for ISIL’s ambitions for statehood. Fiscal, administrative and legal systems were altered to reflect ISIL’s interpretation of Islamic law. As ISIL gained ground, entire Shiite communities and any opposing Sunnis were decimated. Ethnic and religious minorities, such as Christians, Yazidis, and Shabaks, whose rights to practise their own religion are protected by the Iraqi Constitution, fell victim to ISIL’s campaign to “purify” its territory by eliminating non-Islamic influences. Shiites were summarily executed. Christians’ homes were marked and they were forced to pay jizya,4 in order to continue practising their own religion. Shortly after its occupation of Mosul, ISIL started targeting the Yazidis, labelling them as “infidels” and “non-believers”. On 3 August 2014, ISIL fighters attacked Sinjar District, forcing tens of thousands of Yazidis to 1. Also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Islamic State (IS) and by its Arabic language, acronym Daesh. 2. Based on statistics published by US-based think tank The Soufan Center in October 2017: https://blogs-images.forbes.com niallmccarthy/files/2017/10/20171025_ISIS_FO.jpg. 3. Hassan Hassan, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, More Than ISIS, Iraq’s Sunni Insurgency, 17 June 2014. 4. A tax imposed on so-called “people of the book”, an Islamic term referring primarily to Jews, Christians and secondarily to Sabian Mandaeans and Majus. FIDH/KINYAT - IRAQ- Sexual and gender-based crimes against the Yazidi Community: the role of ISIL foreign fighters 4 flee for their lives. Somewhere between 35-50,000 men, women and children sought refuge on the mountain, while 130,000 fled to towns such as Duhok or Erbil in the north of Iraqi Kurdistan. The Sinjar attack marked the start of a brutal campaign to erase the Yazidi identity, including through forced conversions to Islam, the abduction of women and children subsequently sold and exchanged into slavery, and sending young boys to ISIL indoctrination and military training recruitment camps. At the core of ISIL’s strategy behind the Sinjar attack: the taking of Yazidi women and their children as sabaya (prisoners of war). According to an ISIL pamphlet on slavery, the capture and enslavement of Yazidi women and children carried several “benefits”, including gratifying its own fighters, humiliating a group of infidels – in this case, the Yazidis – who were the enemy of ISIL, spreading tawhid (Islamic monotheism) and reviving the prophetic practices of Al-sabi (the capture and enslavement of women of the non- believers), as well as bringing “mercy” on men who could not find a partner in marriage. 5 ISIL has devoted considerable effort to publicising how it seized and brutalised