ISIS uses Hamas tactic: Yazidi children serve as human shields in Iraqi prison town

ISIS uses Hamas tactic: 

Yazidi children serve as 

human shields in Iraqi 

prison town

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Rosalinda, 4, with her uncle

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The Sunday Times, Nicola Smith, Dohuk Published: 14 September 2014

DRESSED in her best blue dress, Rosalinda, 4, snuggles in her uncle’s lap, smiling shyly for the camera.

The photograph, taken several months ago at a family wedding, was one of the last before the Islamist fanatics of Isis, or Islamic State, invaded the girl’s home town of Sinjar, in northern Iraq.

Now Rosalinda’s uncle, Mirze Ezdin, is terrified for her future and that of 45 of his other relatives.

Precious photographs on his mobile phone show the smiling faces of babies, toddlers and older children enduring severe food shortages and terrorised on a daily basis through mental and physical abuse.

Rosalinda is among an estimated 3,000 children and women believed to be held hostage as “human shields” in Tal’Afar, a strategic town close to the Syrian border, now under the control of Isis.

Precious photographs on his mobile phone show the smiling faces of babies, toddlers and older children enduring severe food shortages and terrorised on a daily basis through mental and physical abuse.

Rosalinda is among an estimated 3,000 children and women believed to be held hostage as “human shields” in Tal’Afar, a strategic town close to the Syrian border, now under the control of Isis.

Ezdin, 31, a lawyer, and other male relatives — many of whom have escaped massacres — wait in agony for snatched updates from their loved ones on concealed phones, but such conversations bring little comfort.

Rosalinda, 4, is one of 3,000 women and children though to have been seized by Isis.

Last week Ezdin’s family told The Sunday Times of the horrors inflicted on their children and wives, who live under 24-hour house arrest in a town that has been turned into an open prison.

They described the terror of rape, of young girls being sold into sex slavery, of little boys being taught to kill and of babies dying from malnutrition.

“We just want to die because our women and children are being controlled by Isis. If we had good weapons we would go to fight them,” said Ezdin.

The precise numbers of hostages claimed by eyewitnesses are hard to verify. But they were supported by a report by Amnesty International published this month that said “hundreds, possibly thousands, of women and children are currently held in and around Tal’Afar”.

Donatella Rovera, Amnesty’s senior crisis response adviser, said many of the victims, from Iraq’s Yazidi minority, were taken out of revenge when their communities tried to resist the Isis invasion of Sinjar, their ancient homeland.

Ezdin and other fathers believe their children are being held as human shields in the town, used by Isis as a staging post to advance from its Syrian heartland across northern Iraq.

Rosalinda and her three young brothers are imprisoned with other families in the empty homes of Turkmen Shi’ites, who fled the town under mortar fire when it was seized by militants in June.

“When they hear the air force they make the women and children walk and play in the streets,” said Ezdin.

“Two days ago they took all the women and children and made them sit outside on a school playing field all day in the sun with no food or water because 13 women had run away. Little babies were not even given any water.”

Ezdin was speaking as he and other male relatives gathered in a shabby hotel in Dohuk, the Kurdish city where many displaced Yazidis have taken shelter.

The men told how their women and children had been kidnapped as they tried to flee to Mount Sinjar when Isis forces overwhelmed the town and nearby villages on August 2.

As families ran from their homes under heavy bombardment, an Isis convoy overtook them.

The women and children were bundled into vehicles. The men were marched off to be executed.

Shuja, 3, was recovering from surgery when Isis struck in Tal’Afar

Ezdin’s cousin, Mohsen Elias, still bears a gunshot wound on his left arm after he survived a massacre of 85-90 men near the village of Qiniyeh.

The dead included his brother Nusrat, 13, who was in tears as he and three of his male siblings were gunned down.

Now Elias must endure the torture of knowing that his 10 young sisters are in the hands of the extremists.

“One of my sisters, Manal, is only 12 but she is very beautiful.” he said.

“The Isis commander took her to sleep with her.

“My other sister Nasreen, who is 16, tried to kill herself by jumping from a building,” he added, showing a photograph of a pretty teenager with long brown hair and a smattering of bright make-up.

“Every day they come to choose who is beautiful and young,” he said.

“They leave the little girls with their mothers but they also see whose body is good for using. They don’t care about their age.”

Scrolling through the photographs of lost children, Elias stopped at the image of a toddler with a cheeky smile dressed in a chequered grey cardigan.

“This is Shuja, the three-year-old son of my brother Ahmed,” he said.

“We are very worried about him as he had just had bowel surgery before Isis attacked and he is very sick.”

The screen flickered to another chubby toddler in a red jacket, with tiny pigtails and a dummy hanging from her neck.

“This is Alina, who is three, and whose sister, Alma, is seven months old. They are with their mother Munna, who was married to my brother Faisal. He was killed in the massacre,” said Elias.

“Munna does not know her husband is dead. She says that Alma is very sick as there is no powdered milk.”

In another photograph Sherwan, 11, Rosalinda’s elder brother, strikes a confident pose in a short-sleeved denim shirt.

His relatives believe that he and other young boys are now being indoctrinated in Islamic extremism at an Isis school.

Many of the children were initially separated from their mothers for 15 days. When they returned they looked as if they had “come back from the grave”.

Elias said: “Every day they teach the little boys how to kill people with AK-47s.”

Unicef, the United Nations children’s charity, has described the scope of violations against children in Iraq as “one of the worst seen in this century”.

Lieutenant Colonel Dlshad Ali Miraudali, from the Kurdish peshmerga forces fighting Isis, believes the number of captives is closer to 1,000.

Martin, 8, in the red jumper, had to undergo surgery

He confirmed the forces could not retake Tal’Afar for fear of civilian casualties.

“This same human shield tactic was previously used by al-Qaeda in Tal’Afar and Mosul. If we attack Isis inside the town they may kill everyone,” he said.

Afzal Ashraf, a counterinsurgency expert from the Royal United Services Institute, said the “shock and terror value” of the abductions was part of Isis’s strategy

“That is what terrorism is all about — to get the maximum impact from your actions,” he said.

The tactic of instilling fear could explain the abduction of Christina, a Christian girl aged three who was wrenched screaming from her mother’s arms by an Isis commander as her family was forced out of Qaraqosh village on August 22.

Last week her mother, Aida Hannah, wept over the only photograph she has of her daughter, a crumpled piece of paper printed from a website.

She and her husband, Khider Aso, are now living on four thin mattresses in a church hall with three of their older children, barely sleeping because of worry.

They do not understand why she was taken or know where she is. As her mother pleaded with the militants to release her daughter, they threatened to shoot her.

Christina’s father, who is partially blind, hangs his head in sorrow.

“She always took my hand to lead me to church. When I woke up in the morning at 6am, she would wake up and chat with me,” he said.

“She was so lovely with us that I wanted to open up my heart and put her inside.”

 by

k.jagadeesh