For many of Iraq's Yazidis, going home is not an option
Although Sinjar has mostly been liberated from the Islamic State, the traumatized Yazidi community remains largely displaced and reluctant to return home to where the suffering began.
DAHUK, Iraqi Kurdistan — When Nadine refused to marry the 25-year-old Islamic State fighter from Yemen, he took her daughter Ronia instead. Right in front of Nadine’s eyes, he tore the clothes from her daughter’s body. Then he raped the 10-year-old girl.
“Mommy, help me, my little girl cried. Ronia was so young that she didn’t even know what sex was," said Nadine, who belongs to the ethno-religious Yazidi minority, sitting in a tent she built herself in the countryside of Dahuk.
It is just one of the countless cruel memories the 32-year-old mother recalls from two years in IS captivity. After Nadine and her four children were kidnapped by IS in August 2014, they stayed with the Yemeni fighter for seven months. He "married" Nadine and her daughter and repeatedly raped both of them. Finally, he sold Nadine, but sadly he decided to keep Ronia.
Nadine and her three other children were repeatedly sold to other IS fighters until they were smuggled out of IS-held territory eight months ago. Now they live in tents in an unofficial camp for the internally displaced near the village of Khanke, 20 miles (32 kilometers) southwest of Dahuk, as the official camps nearby in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq were all overcrowded.
