Cooking in her simple, rural kitchen, 14-year-old Kovan froze as she heard panic breaking out all around her.
The peaceful life of the schoolgirl, who had grown up in a loving family as part of the Yazidi community in Sinjar, northern Iraq, was to brutally change on that day in 2014 – as they learned ISIS terrorists were heading towards them.
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With little time to act, the family and their neighbours grabbed whatever they could and headed for the barren Sinjar mountains.
Her family split up with the older and the younger ones going in a car and the fitter members, like her, walking.
“Suddenly they appeared and seized us in the middle of the road,” she says. “They took us to the Syrian border where they kept us in a school for nine days.
“We were terrified. Then they separated us from our relatives, forcing the girls onto a bus that took us to a house guarded by ISIS militants where men would arrive, choose girls and rape them.”
It was the start of years of horrific abuse that saw her bought as a slave, repeatedly raped and beaten – even after ISIS had been defeated.
Kovan and other young girls were put up for auction and she was ‘bought’ by a senior figure within ISIS and made to be the family slave.
“I served and did everything for them. They told me you are a ‘sabaya’ (slave). He kept me and raped and beat me. When ISIS gathered in the guestroom, he wanted me to serve them, to bring food and drinks and to appear in revealing clothes. This went on for two years.”
Kovan’s story and others who were enslaved and abused by ISIS is told in the harrowing documentary, 10 Years of Darkness: ISIS & The Yazidis airing on Sky this Friday, which chronicles the systematic slaughter of the Yazidi people in Sinjar in 2014, the mass abductions of women and children and how their suffering continues today.
In an exclusive interview, journalist and filmmaker, Alex Crawford who has reported on the horrors faced by the Yazidis for over a decade, tells us: “Seven years after the world saw that the Islamic State had been crushed and the last bit of territory had been taken from them, there are still women being rescued from captivity. And there are thousands more still in captivity, who continue to be abused. That is shocking.”
In a further torturous twist, even the lucky ones rescued who, like Kovan, are now mothers, are told they will have to give up their children in return for safety.
The story of ISIS and the Yazidis begins in 2011 when many countries in the Middle East were experiencing uprisings against usually dictatorial regimes that had been in power for years. Syria was one of them.
“At the beginning it was a rebellious civilian uprising,” says Alex. “That went on for at least a couple of years. The first time I saw a lot of men clad in black was at the end of 2013, flying the flag of Jihad or Holy War.
“Groups like that were the beginning of a new form of extremism. And as they grew and merged with other groups, they got stronger and very little stood in their way.”
Sharia law
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By 2014 the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) had been firmly established. There were an estimated 30,000 fighters dedicated to their strict interpretation of Islamic law which they ruthlessly imposed on society.
Public amputation of legs and arms for stealing and other crimes took place and persecution of homosexuals saw them being thrown off buildings and stoned.
ISIS expanded to the area of Sinjar where more than 400,000 Yazidis lived. Confronted with the threat – convert or die – they fled into the desert.
Executions and shootings of the men and the enslaving of Yazidi women and children followed.
In the years following their rise, ISIS expanded its operations beyond the Middle East, carrying out a series of devastating attacks in Europe which created a huge political momentum in the West to go in and topple ISIS.
Abused in detention camp
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When it was defeated in 2019, most of the men were imprisoned while their families were sent to a detention facility in Northern Syria. But they took thousands of their Yazidi ‘slaves’ with them.
“The camp is full of ISIS sympathisers and people who are connected to them,” says Alex.
“The troops trying to keep control regularly carry out raids to stop the build-up of arms and weapons. Here, Yazidi women are still being held captive but identifying them has been a mammoth task.
“The Kurdish-led Syrian democratic forces control the sprawling Al-Hawl camp and the other camps in that area, supported by the coalition, but they are basically left to their own devices to run the show.
The women would prepare us, put makeup on us, for the men to violate. They all knew that their men were raping us.
“Al-Hawl is bigger than some British cities and at one stage it had 70,000 people in it. It’s a huge place where you can secrete contraband and even bombs and hide captives.
“The camp leaders know there are Yazidis hidden in the camp but they don’t know exactly who they are and how to get them out.
“Kovan was found there with her young son and daughter during a night raid searching for guns last year.
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“Her abuse had been continuing here because the children of ISIS men are growing up and male teenagers are encouraged and coerced by the extremist factions in there to rape and have sexual relations with the women, to impregnate them.
“It’s a continuation of the abuse. Kovan was forced to link up with a guy there just to fend off all the others.
“The first thing that struck me when I first met Kovan, given that she was ten years on from being a teenager when she was first captured, was just how much of a child she still looked.
“She was very matter of fact, in many ways with a disturbing lack of emotion over the most horrendous things that the men were doing to her. But she got really angry when I asked her about the women – the wives of the ISIS fighters.”
Cruel wives
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“Their wives behaved just like their ISIS husbands,” says Kovan.
“They always hit and insulted us. They would prepare us, put makeup on us, for the men to violate. They all knew that their men were raping us. I hated my life for the way they treated me.
“They were so cruel. They wore us down mentally and emotionally until we hated and were disgusted with ourselves.”
Since being rescued, Kovan has been living in a safe house but, just when she thought she was free from suffering, she has faced the most appalling of choices.
“Every Yazidi woman who is rescued, faces this most extraordinarily difficult Hobson’s Choice – to ensure your own survival, you are probably going to have to give up your children,” says Alex.
“The Yazidi community doesn’t admit Muslims,” explains Kovan, whose son and daughter were fathered by two ISIS men as a result of rape.
“They are my children, but no one will welcome them, because they are ISIS children and Muslim. This is the reality. What can I do? I go back to my family and they go back to theirs.
“This is very difficult, but I don’t have any other option. This is the reality we are forced to accept.”
No end in sight
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Kovan made the heartbreaking decision to say goodbye to her two young children and return home by herself while they went back to the families of her two ISIS rapists. But ‘home’ is another huge camp settlement for the Yazidis.
“There’s no end game in sight,” says Alex. “They’ve exchanged internment camps for refugee camps and are still living in tents. There’s no sort of village being created. There’s nothing.
“No one knows what happened to Kovan’s parents but we can probably presume they were killed. One of her brothers and sisters is still missing, and others are back in the community or have found asylum in another country.
EXCLUSIVE: ISIS plotting wave of terror from camps, warns general who defeated cult
By Henry Holloway, Deputy Foreign Editor
ISIS could unleash a new wave of terror by springing fighters from camps like the one holding Shamima Begum, a top general who helped defeat the death cult has revealed.
General Mazloum Abdi, who leads the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – a Kurdish-led US-backed militia, sounded the alarm over the resurgent terror group.
Speaking to The Sun in an interview with documentarian and ex-soldier Alan Duncan, Abdi said there are currently 10,000 male fighters in prisons ready to bring devastation back to the Middle East.
General Abdi revealed SDF believe that ISIS forces – which were bravely driven back by his troops – are currently organising a prisonbreak of fighters still held in Syria.
He also warned the threat of ISIS continues in the West.
General Abdi said: “The threat of jihadist groups – not just ISIS – will exist until the fundamentals they were founded on are destroyed.
“We must continue our struggle.”
He also called on the West to do more to bring these fighters to justice – and to support trials and convictions for the atrocities they committed in the Middle East.
General Abdi told The Sun: “The threat of ISIS in detention centres and camps is increasing and there is an increase in the movement of ISIS in general.
“There is a need to intensify efforts to continue to fight against ISIS if we don’t want to see a resurgence.”
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“The suffering of the Yazidis is far from over. They still don’t feel safe. Their homeland remains in ruins, there are no reparations and there is very little, if any, justice.
“And for those lucky enough to be freed, ISIS has somehow perpetuated the pain of their genocide by leaving mothers with a decision that no woman would ever want to be faced with.
“But despite all of this, some Yazidi survivors have really led from the front, refused to be beaten by ISIS, spoken at international arenas, demanded justice, refused to be forgotten by the world. And they are some of the most resilient, determined, courageous women that I’ve ever met.”
- 10 Years of Darkness: ISIS and the Yazidis. goes out on May 2 at 8pm on Sky Documentaries and at 9pm on Sky News