Why We Must Not Overlook The Role of ISIS Women in The Yazidi Genocide
Earlier this month, an Iraqi court sentenced Asmaa Mohamed, the widow and first wife of former ISIS caliph Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, to death. (1) Mohamed was found guilty of aiding the Islamic State in kidnapping and detaining Yazidi women. (2)
The court’s ruling comes in the aftermath of Mohamed’s controversial interview with Al-Arabiya, which was aired earlier this year. Generating millions of views on YouTube, the interview stirred controversy due to Mohamed’s attempts to deny any involvement with ISIS crimes committed within her husband’s so-called caliphate of occupied land in Iraq and Syria. Specifically, Mohamed attempted to distance herself from her husband’s crimes against Yazidi women – such as the rape and enslavement of more than ten Yazidi women, including girls as young as fourteen – claiming that she had no knowledge of their treatment under Baghdadi nor played any role in facilitating or encouraging the sex slave market which became the cornerstone of the Yazidi genocide.
However, the testimonies of Yazidi women survivors indicate that ISIS women played a key role in the genocide and other atrocity crimes perpetrated against them, and should be held accountable for their complicity in these crimes. In response to the controversial Al-Arabiya interview, Nobel Laureate and prominent Yazidi survivor Nadia Murad took to X, previously Twitter, to denounce Al-Baghdadi’s wives and call on the international community to hold them accountable for the crimes they both committed and facilitated during the genocide. Murad noted that: “Al-Baghdadi’s wives and other ISIS women are not victims [,] they must be held accountable for their crimes. Based on the testimonies of thousands of Yazidi women and girls who were taken into sexual slavery and the overwhelming evidence collected by UNITAD, ISIS built its international organization on sexual slavery and the rape of women and girls.” (3)
As Mohamed confirms in the interview, ISIS became obsessed with the sabaya – enslaved Yazidi women – capturing and enslaving girls so young that Mohamed herself refers to them as “children.” As soon as ISIS entered Sinjar on 3 August 2014, they captured thousands of Yazidi women, taking them as sex slaves (4) and subsequently provided Yazidi slaves to all ISIS emirs. (5) Almost every testimony given by Yazidi survivors demonstrate that Yazidi women were subjected to brutal levels of sexual violence, rape, and other inhuman treatment, primarily at the hands of ISIS fighters – but in many cases, also by their wives.
Indeed, the testimonies of Yazidi women suggest that the women of ISIS were often just as brutal as their male counterparts. Shortly after the interview with Al-Baghdadi’s wife went viral, Al-Arabiya gave Yazidi survivors a platform to share their experiences with ISIS women. One Yazidi survivor, who was only eight years old when she was captured by ISIS, recalls being raped when she was twelve years old. (6) She stated that the wife of her captor was the reason behind her rape (7), noting that: “The wives of ISIS were worse than ISIS […] we were under pressure from the women, we were under their beatings, under their humiliation, under their violence.” (8) Her testimony is consistent with accounts from other Yazidi survivors, who have described ISIS wives as “active participants” in genocide and other crimes committed against Yazidi captives. For example, according to one Yazidi survivor, Pari Ibrahim, the women of ISIS would “lock them up and beat them up…They would shower the girls, put them in nice clothes and put makeup on their faces to get them ready to be raped.” (9)
Since its establishment, women have played a significant part in ISIS. Women have long played various and central roles in jihadist and terrorist organizations. (10) In the case of ISIS, women were mainly viewed as wives and mothers, entrusted with domestic responsibilities.(11) Being confined to the domestic, however, does not mean that ISIS women did not play a significant part in promoting the ideology of ISIS. Indeed, their role was emphasized because they took care of bringing up their children along the teachings and ideological beliefs of ISIS.(12) Further, ISIS women have played a more active role in enforcing the laws of the so-called caliphate. For example, Al-Khansaa Brigade, an all-female police unit, was founded in 2014 with the purpose of enforcing the laws and regulations of ISIS.(13) The methods used by Al-Khansaa Brigade were extremely violent and often led to severe injuries and death. (14) Further, ISIS women were tasked with recruiting women on social media and spreading the propaganda of the Islamic State.(15) This helped ISIS recruit both male foreign fighters and foreign women.
ISIS’ warped ideology and active recruitment efforts not only attracted locals, but galvanized an international audience that migrated from abroad to join the then-burgeoning so-called caliphate. While a significant percentage of male fighters migrated to join the ranks of ISIS, women too made similar journeys. According to a report published by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization, 13% of the 41,490 individuals who migrated from 80 countries to join ISIS were women. (16)
The Western media mainly depicted these women as victims and started labelling them as “Jihadi Brides” who were lured into ISIS by false promises of happy marriages.(17) While there are indeed women who were trafficked into ISIS territory, there are many women who willingly chose to migrate and join the terror group despite the publicized violence of ISIS, including their crimes against Yazidis. For example, one of the most prominent cases is that of Shamima Begum, a British citizen who joined ISIS when she was only fifteen. 18 Despite claiming to be an innocent victim, Begum is believed to have participated in the activities of Islamic State. (19) Begum was allegedly an “enforcer” in ISIS’ morality police, enforcing strict dress codes on other women in the caliphate, and also tried to recruit other women to join the terror group.(20) Further, according to an escaped Yazidi woman, “Dila”, Begum was a close associate of a slave dealer who sold young Yazidi girls into lives of sexual servitude, including Dila’s own sister, who remains missing. (21)
Other examples highlight how ISIS women often directly perpetrated crimes against Yazidi captives. In a case before the German courts, a German citizen named Jennifer Wenisch, who left Germany to join ISIS and lived in Iraq with her ISIS fighter husband, was found guilty of crimes against humanity for assisting in the enslavement, torture, and eventual killing of an enslaved 5-year-old Yazidi girl. (22) In the Netherlands, a 31-year-old Dutch national named Hasna Aarab faces charges of slavery as a crime against humanity, accused of co-perpetrating slavery against a Yazidi woman referred to as “Z”. According to the prosecution, Aarab forced the young Yazidi woman to perform various tasks of domestic servitude.(23) These examples highlight the need to examine the role of ISIS women on a case-by-case basis, rather than making gendered assumptions regarding victimhood, and ensure that ISIS women who committed or facilitated crimes against Yazidis are not overlooked in the quest for justice and accountability.
As the Yazidi genocide nears its 10th anniversary, it is critical to reiterate the importance of holding perpetrators accountable for the crimes they committed against the Yazidi community, including women. To this day, there is no indication of investigations into the roles of the vast majority of ISIS women and no clear indicators of future legal action to hold them accountable. This lack of accountability is aggravated by the looming closure of UNITAD, the United Nations Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Da’esh/Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. As the Yazidi community has repeatedly asserted, justice matters. Indeed, justice matters not only to the Yazidi community that suffered greatly at the hands of ISIS, but also to the future global and regional security. Proper and effective accountability mechanisms that center the voices of Yazidi survivors are the only way to counter the ideology that sanctioned violence against the Yazidi community, as well as other minorities and communities.
About the Author
The author of this blog piece is a volunteer at Yazidi Legal Network. The author prefers to stay anonymous.
Sources
1 The New York Times; Iraq Sentences ISIS Leader’s Wife to Death Over Crimes Against Yazidis. Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/11/world/middleeast/isis-baghdadi-iraq-wife.html
2 Ibid.
3 Nadia Murad on X (previously known as Twitter): https://x.com/NadiaMuradBasee/status/1759192900858982683
4 Nadia’s Initiative; About the Genocide. Link: https://www.nadiasinitiative.org/the-genocide
5 AlArabiya العربية. (2024, February 15). مقابلة خاصة مع زوجة تنظيم داعش أبو بكر البغدادي[Video]. YouTube. Link: https://youtu.be/g1jbGCdgXl8?si=7xr13IjFHXLm8U0H
6 AlArabiya العربية. (2024, March 23). مقابلة خاصة | سبايا البغدادي “الجزء الثاني” [Video]. YouTube. Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xPzRZItdog
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid. 23:25.
9 Pari Ibrahim, “‘ISIS brides like Shamima are guilty of genocide,’” Spiked, Mar 1 2019 [https://www.spikedonline.com/2019/03/01/pari-ibrahim-isis-brides-like-shamima-begum-are-guilty-of-genocide/].
10 Sjoberg, L., & Gentry, C. E. (2016). It's complicated: Looking closely at women in violent extremism. Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, 23-30
11 Vale, G. (2019, October). Women in Islamic State: From caliphate to camps. International Centre for Counter- Terrorism – The Hague. https://www.icct.nl/sites/default/files/import/publication/Women-in-Islamic-State-From-Caliphate-to-Camps.pdf
12 Vale, G. (2019, October). Women in Islamic State: From caliphate to camps. International Centre for Counter-Terrorism – The Hague. https://www.icct.nl/sites/default/files/import/publication/Women-in-Islamic-State-From-Caliphate-to-Camps.pdf
13 Ruth Gan, Loo Seng Neo, Jeffery Chin & Majeed Khader (2019) Change is the Only Constant: The Evolving Role of Women in the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Women & Criminal Justice, 29:4-5, 204-220, DOI: 10.1080/08974454.2018.1547674
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid.
16 Cook, J., & Vale, G. A. (2018). From Daesh to 'Diaspora': Tracing the women and minors of Islamic State. International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation.
17 De Leede, S. (2018). Western women supporting IS/Daesh in Syria and Iraq–An exploration of their motivations. International Annals of Criminology, 56(1-2), 43-54.
18 Sabbagh, D. (2023, October 24). Shamima Begum a victim of trafficking when she left Britain for Syria, court told. The Guardian. Link: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/oct/24/shamima-begum-victim-of-trafficking-when-she-left-uk-for-syria-court-told
19 Carr, S. (2023, March 18). ISIS slave claims she saw Shamima Begum being taught how to use suicide belts and guns at terrorist training camp. Daily Mail. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11876349/ISIS-slave-claims-saw-Shamima-Begum-terrorist-training-camp.html
20 “Shamima Begum was cruel enforcer in Isil's morality police, say Syrian witnesses.” The Telegraph. 13 April 2019. Link: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/04/13/shamima-begum-cruel-enforcer-isils-morality-police-say-syrian/
21 “Begum’s reformed persona ‘fake’ – Former ISIS slave.” NPA Press. 19 March 2023.Link: https://npasyria.com/en/94981/
22 Greenall, R. (2023, March 9). Jennifer Wenisch: German IS woman faces tougher sentence for girl’s death. BBC News. Link: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64901603
23 “Netherlands to open first trial on crimes against Yazidis.” Justice Info. 22 May 2023.Link: https://www.justiceinfo.net/en/117090-netherlands-trial-crimes-against-yazidis.html
Picture Credits
Hisham Art