“What we are seeing today under ISIS is genocide. We should not be afraid of using that word. Politicians worldwide, unfortunately, are afraid of this because genocide has legal implications for governments, for all of us. But we should call a spade a spade. When genocide is committed we are obliged to take steps to prevent it. We are obliged to help the victims and the survivors.”
These words came from Ms. Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman, Kurdistan regional government representative to the United States, during a recent event at The Heritage Foundation on “Women as Victims of Terrorism.” Following the airing of the PBS Frontline documentary “Escaping ISIS,” which highlights ISIS atrocities against the minority Yazidi community, Rahman urged the world to consider ISIS’ brutality, especially against women, and take action.
Rahman joined Ms. Nina Shea, director for the Center for Religious Freedom at the Hudson Institute, and Lisa Curtis, senior fellow for South Asia at The Heritage Foundation, to highlight the need for greater attention to female victims of terrorism.
Genocide, as defined by the U.N., constitutes “any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy in whole or in part a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.” Among the “acts” that constitute genocide are killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, attempting to destroy an entire people group, and transferring children from one group to another. All of these acts have been carried out by ISIS against religious minority groups, especially women and girls.
The speakers highlighted the plight of female members of religious minorities, including Yazidis, Christians, and Shabaks. Recent media reports have detailed how ISIS fighters systematically rape and abuse Yazidi women and girls—as young as nine and ten years old—even profiting from their sale into sexual slavery. ISIS fighters justify their practice of sexual exploitation of religious minorities by citing portions of the Koran in support of their perverse interpretation of Islam. Rahman estimated that 4,000 Yazidi women and girls have been taken by ISIS.
Shea corroborated this testimony, citing reports that girls were given as gifts during Ramadan and recounting the story of a 14-year-old Yazidi girl held captive by Abu Sayyaf—who formerly controlled ISIS’ oil and gas operations until he was killed in a U.S.-led raid in May 2015. Shea also spoke of American aid worker, Kayla Mueller, who was serially raped by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the alleged head of ISIS, and Abu Sayyaf, until ISIS alleges she was killed during a Jordanian air strike.
Persecution of women is a part of broader ISIS strategy to instill fear in the population and elicit compliance, noted Curtis. She compared ISIS’ treatment of women to the methods employed by the Taliban when they held power in Afghanistan in the 1990s, noting, however, that the Taliban were not known to hold sexual slaves. Many women bore the brunt of the Taliban’s push to gain power, she said, just as women are bearing the brunt of ISIS’ rise. Understanding how ISIS atrocities against the Yazidi women is part of their long-term plan to establish power should inspire the international community to come together to develop its own strategy to defeat the organization, argued Curtis.
ISIS’ persecution of religious minorities has led some in Washington to act. Last week, Representative Jeff Fortenberry (R-Nebr.) introduced a resolution to condemn religious persecution and label ISIS’ brutal targeting of religious minorities genocide. Rahman noted that a resolution, while a good first step, is only the beginning of what needs to be done.
Steve Bucci, director of the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy at The Heritage Foundation, noted, “ISIS is the clearest example of genocide since the Nazis. ISIS is not just a threat to Iraq and Syria, or to the Middle East—it is a threat to the whole world.”
