The Kurds in Syria have given twelve children to their Yezidi mothers who were victims of the jihadist militia “Islamic State” (IS) and were made pregnant by them. “The children, who are between two and five years old, were all born to Yezidi mothers,” said Zeineb Sarukhan, a representative of the Kurds in Syria. The fathers were members of the IS, it said. The IS temporarily controlled large areas in Iraq and Syria.
In 2014, thousands of Yazidi women and children were abducted from Sinjar in northern Iraq. ISIS abused them as sex slaves. They were raped and forcibly married.
The Kurdish fighters in Syria, who are supported by the USA, said they saved dozens of Yezidis in the fight against IS. The women were welcomed with joy by the Yezidi community on their return to northern Iraq, but not their children.
Dozens of Yezidis survived enslavement by IS fighters in Syria and have since returned to Iraq. Many of them had to leave behind the children conceived during the enslavement. Sarukhan said the Syrian Kurdish authorities took care of these children. Now, for the first time, children have been returned to their mothers who have asked for it. The fate of numerous Yezidis remains unclear.
Yazidis were particularly exposed to persecution by IS in Iraq and Syria. The Kurdish-speaking monotheistic minority was persecuted for their beliefs, the jihadists consider them “devil worshipers”. When the IS militia conquered the Sinjar Mountains in northern Iraq, where the religious community had lived for centuries, in August 2014, they killed the men, recruited the boys as child soldiers and forced the women and girls into slavery.
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