Life in the “caliphate”: The Islamic State’s Christian and Yizidi sex slaves

The American Interest has the story:

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After their initial capture by jihadis, the women and girls are held in detention centers. Mosul’s Badoush prison is one “makeshift prison” for “the sexual enslavement of children,” according to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. A Yazidi teenager Du’a told former Congressman Frank Wolf, who interviewed refugees in Kurdistan last January, that she was held in Mosul with 700 other Yizidi girls. She related that the girls were separated by eye color, and members of ISIS were allowed to choose for themselves among the young women. The rest, she said, were then separated into “pretty” and “ugly” groups, with the most beautiful given away to high ranking ISIS members.
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Sex slaves are also sold. Under rules for “The Revival of Slavery Before the Hour [of Judgment],” Dabiq gives a theological justification for selling women as war booty: “The enslaved Yizidi families are now sold by the Islamic State soldiers as the polytheists were sold by the [Prophet’s] companions.” It also cites more recent precedents: namely, the “enslavement of Christian women and children in the Philippines and Nigeria by the Mujahidin there.”

The article argues that sex slavery benefits both the Muslim community, by enlarging it, and the slave by “making heaven accessible.” The formerly enslaved girls report being consistently pressured, including by beatings, to convert to Islam. (Rules for proper beatings are included.) If they become Muslim, they can then be sold as brides to jihadis.

On October 15, ISIS published pricing guidelines for slaves based on age. Under the heading “Merchandise,” the listing starts with “200,000 dinars for a woman aged 1-9 / Yizidi/Christian” and ends with “75,000 dinars for a woman aged 30-40 / Yizidi/Christian.”

In practice, the pricing appears to be market driven. An Australian jihadist for the Islamic State, Mohamed Elomar, tweeted that he was selling seven Yizidi sex slaves for $2,500 each and posted a photo of one. In June 2015, the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that ISIS militants were selling slaves for $500 to $2,000.In June 2015, the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that ISIS militants were selling slaves for $500 to $2,000. The UN representative Bangura said that captured women and girls are often forced to strip naked and are judged by ISIS militants who gauge how much they are to be sold for in a slave auction.

A father listened helplessly as his distraught enslaved daughter told him in a cell phone call that she was being sold for $10 that same afternoon. Du’a told Wolf she was sold for $2 after being put in the “ugly” group.
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No female is considered too young; only women over forty are let go or released for ransom. Amnesty reported that some slaves were “just babies.” Du’a said one of the girls penned up with her was seven months-old. Another 21-year-old escaped slave said that, while detained for sale, a guard took another younger captive into the bathroom and raped her; she was nine years-old. ISIS guidelines price Christian and Yizidi 9 year-olds at $172.ISIS guidelines price Christian and Yizidi 9 year-olds at $172.

A toddler brings equal value. A Christian woman, whose family could not flee Qaraqosh when ISIS invaded because her husband is blind, told Wolf that they came to her house, shouting, “Convert or we will kill you.” An ISIS militant snatched from her lap Christina, her three-year-old daughter. The mother later learned during a furtive cell phone call from Rana, an enslaved Christian woman, that she had cared for Christiana while they were detained with other enslaved women until the baby was taken away.

A Dabiq article asserts that from Sinjar in Iraq “one fifth of the slaves were transferred to the Islamic State’s authority.” ISIS uses the slaves in caliphate bordellos run by British women—members of the al Khanssaa Brigade, an all-women religious police.
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Read it all here.