Women and Children for

Sale
A new U.N. report paints a terrifying picture of
life under the Islamic State.

BY COLUM LYNCH-OCTOBER 2, 2014

In arly August, fighters from the Islamic State swept into the
small Yazidi village of Maturat in Iraq's Sinjar district and took women to the
Badush prison in Mosul. Hundreds more women and girls were herded into
an ancient citadel in the town of Tal Afar in the northern province of
Nineveh. From Tal Afar, a group of 150 unmarried girls and women, mostly
from Christian or Yazidi families, were selected and reportedly sent to Syria
"either to be given to ISIL fighters as a reward or to be sold as sex slaves,"

according to a report released on Thursday, Oct. 2, by the United Nations'

human rights office in Iraq.
The Islamic State, also known as ISIS and ISIL, captured the world's
attention last June by declaring the creation of a caliphate in parts of both
Syria and Iraq and embarking on a ruthless military campaign marked by
mass executions, beheadings, and ethnic cleansing of ancient Christian,
Shiite, and Yazidi communities. The 26-page report -- which documents
rights abuses from July 6 through Sept. 10 -- constitutes the most detailed
U.N. account of crimes committed by the Islamic State and sheds further
light on its mass enslavement of women and girls. Evidence was compiled
by a team of U.N. human rights investigators inside Iraq. Most of the
interviews with eyewitnesses were conducted in Erbil and Dohuk, where
thousands fled the Islamic State's military offensive.

By the end of August, the U.N. documented the abduction of up to 2,500

civilians, mostly women and children, from the northern Iraqi towns and
regions of Sinjar, Tal Afar, the Nineveh Plains, and Shirkhan. Once they were
in captivity, fighters from the Islamic State sexually assaulted the teenage
boys and girls, witnesses told the United Nations. Those who refused to
convert to the groups ran the risk of execution. "[W]omen and children who
refused to convert were being allotted to ISIL fighters or were being
trafficked in markets in Mosul and to Raqqa in Syria," according to the
report. "Married women who converted were told by ISIL that their previous
marriages were not recognised in Islamic law and that they, as well as
unmarried women who converted, would be given to ISIL fighters as wives."
A market for the sale of abducted women was set up in the al-Quds
neighborhood of Mosul."Women and girls are brought with price tags for the

buyers to choose and negotiate the sale," according to the report. "The
buyers were said to be mostly youth from the local communities.
Apparently ISIL was 'selling' these Yezidi women to the youth as a means of
inducing them to join their ranks."
"The array of violations and abuses perpetrated by ISIL and associated
armed groups is staggering, and many of their acts may amount to war
crimes or crimes against humanity," the U.N. high commissioner for human
rights, Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, said in a statement accompanying the
report's release. Zeid urged the Iraqi government to consider joining the
International Criminal Court in order to provide the tribunal's prosecutor
with the authority to investigate and prosecute crimes in Iraq by
perpetrators on either side of the conflict.
The trafficking in sex slaves is only one facet of the Islamic State's violent
campaign to transform huge stretches of Iraq and Syria into an Islamic
caliphate. Forces loyal to the movement's self-styled caliph, Abu Bakr alBaghdadi, have committed multiple mass murders of ethnic and religious
minorities like the Yazidi, Iraqi Shiites, and even fellow Sunni Muslims who
refuse to "repent" and declare their belief in the Islamic State's harsh view
of Islam. On Wednesday, the movement beheaded 10 people in Syria,
including three women fighting on behalf of Kurdish forces, according to the
Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The U.N. report states: "ISIL has directly and systematically targeted Iraq's
various diverse ethnic and religious communities, subjecting them to a
range of gross human rights abuses, including murder, physical and sexual
assault, robbery, wanton destruction of property, destruction of places of
religious or cultural significance, forced conversions, denial of access to

basic humanitarian services and [a] systematic policy that aims to

suppress, permanently cleanse or expel, or in some instances, destroy
those communities within areas of its control."

All told, nearly 8,500 civilians have been killed and more than 15,700
injured in Iraq during the past year, more than 11,000 of those casualties
occurred between June and Aug. 31, a period that coincides with the Islamic
State's military campaign. As of August, more than 1.8 million Iraqis had
been displaced.

The U.N. human rights office in Iraq enumerated a long list of offenses by
the Islamic State, including "executions and other targeted killings of
civilians, abductions, rape and other forms of sexual and physical violence
perpetrated against women and children, forced recruitment of children,
destruction or desecration of places of religious or cultural significance,
wanton destruction and looting of property, and denial of fundamental
freedoms."
The Islamic State's campaign bore many of the hallmarks of ethnic
cleansing campaigns. On July 17, the group's fighters began marking the
homes of Christians in two Mosul neighborhoods with nun, or "n," the first
letter of the Arabic word "Nasara," for Nazarenes or Christians, and as
property of the Islamic State. The homes of Shiite Muslims were marked
with raa, or "r," the first letter of the word "Rafidha," the name many Sunni
extremists use to refer to Shiites. A day earlier, according to the report, ISIL
distributed leaflets ordering Christians "either to convert or to
pay jizyah (toleration/protection tax), to leave or face death."
The Islamic State has also targeted Iraqi government forces. In what is

likely the bloodiest act of the conflict, Islamic State fighters are believed to
have executed as many as 1,500 soldiers and security forces based at a
former U.S. Army base, Camp Speicher, in the northern province of
Salahuddin. Mass executions have been reported in several other Iraqi
provinces, including Nineveh, Diyala, and Kirkuk. For instance,
"Corroborated reports indicate that on 16 July, 42 soldiers captured after
clashes between ISF [Iraqi Security Forces] and armed groups were
executed in Awenat, south Tikrit in Salah al-Din," according to the U.N.
report. "According to reports, the officers were executed after being forced
to 'repent' by ISIL."

The report has few good guys. It also cites a pattern of "gross violations or
abuses of international human rights law" by Iraq's armed forces and allied
militias. Numerous airstrikes carried out by the Iraqi security forces have
"resulted in significant civilian deaths and injuries and destruction of
civilian infrastructure," prompting new Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi
to order a freeze on such strikes in civilian areas on Sept. 13.

Government airstrikes around Kirkuk resulted in the deaths of some 17

people, including two women and seven children. On the evening of Aug.
14, two airstrikes in the town of Hawija killed 15 civilians, including four
women and eight children.

In the province of Diyala, an Iranian-funded pro-government Shiite militia,

Asaib Ahl al-Haq, or AAH, has tortured and murdered suspected Islamic
State fighters and loyalists, destroyed homes, and blown up mosques in
Sunni neighborhoods.

On July 31, militants from the group allegedly rounded up 15 men

suspected of being members of the Islamic State, executed them, and hung
them from lampposts in the city of Baquba. Iraqi forces or allied militias
were also suspected of vandalizing the tomb of Iraq's former ruler, Saddam
Hussein, and his two sons in the al-Oja village in Salahuddin.
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