After over a decade of Islamic State (ISIS) terrorism on Iraq’s Yazidi minority, a global network of activists, survivors, and volunteers continue their efforts to locate and rescue thousands of missing women and girls, the New York Times reported.
In August 2014, ISIS terrorists committed a genocide in the Sinjar area of Iraq, home to the Yazidi community. More than 3,000 Yazidis were killed, and over 6,800 were abducted during that time, according to estimates from multiple sources, including the United Nations and Yazidi advocacy organizations.
Today, despite the territorial defeat of ISIS, nearly 3,000 Yazidis are still unaccounted for, according to the Free Yazidi Foundation. Many are believed to still be held in captivity across the Middle East or to have been trafficked to families associated with ISIS fighters.
Pari Ibrahim, a Yazidi activist and the executive director of the Free Yazidi Foundation based in Maryland, has been working to identify missing women and girls through photographs submitted by families. The foundation provides support services to Yazidi survivors and works to document ongoing cases of captivity.
“Ten years brings a lot of change into someone’s face and appearance,” said Ibrahim, who compares photos of girls taken before their abduction with images of women found in recent years, often shared via encrypted messaging platforms.
Search efforts rely on networking
The search efforts rely on a network of informants and local contacts in Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and other parts of the region. Some members of the network, like Iraqi-based Abduallah Abbas Khalaf, have used false identities to infiltrate ISIS communication channels and gather intelligence on captive locations.
Khalaf, a Yazidi himself, has impersonated militants on encrypted apps to locate enslaved women and children. He said these tactics have allowed him to help secure the release of multiple captives. Screenshots from now-defunct forums, which circulated among the network, appeared to show people bargaining over Yazidi women and children.
In some cases, Yazidi captives have surfaced far from Iraq and Syria. According to US officials, one woman kidnapped at age 11 was later found in Gaza, where she had reportedly been sold and forced to marry a Hamas fighter.
Others remain in detention camps such as Al Hol in eastern Syria, where thousands of former ISIS affiliates and their families are being held. Yazidi women hidden within the camp may not identify themselves out of fear of retribution or because they were taken as young children and do not remember their origins.
Al Hol camp director Jihan Hanan has worked with Yazidi activists to identify and discreetly extract women. According to Hanan, at least seven Yazidi women and girls have been rescued from Al Hol in the past two years.
However, the process remains difficult. Some survivors who have had children with their captors worry about being rejected by the Yazidi community upon return. Others fear retaliation or are uncertain about their heritage.
The United Nations Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Da’esh/ISIL (UNITAD), which had collected evidence of ISIS atrocities, officially ceased operations in 2023. With no formal international body currently tasked with tracking and recovering missing Yazidis, grassroots efforts remain the primary response.
Organizations like the Free Yezidi Foundation and Nadia’s Initiative continue to advocate for justice and provide services to survivors. To date, approximately 3,600 Yazidi captives have been reunited with their families.
One of them, Marwa Nawaf Abas, was abducted and held for three months in Syria before escaping with the help of smugglers. She now lives in Germany and works at a hair transplant clinic.
“I am very happy now in Germany,” Abas said in an interview.
As regional instability continues, including in Syria and Iraq, advocates warn that rescue and recovery operations may face additional obstacles. Yet, the network of activists, informants, and families remains active in its efforts to account for the missing and support survivors.
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