AL-HOL, Syria — With his slender frame and gentle smile, Diya Hamad seems an unlikely self-appointed rescuer of Yazidis from the barbarous Islamic State (IS). But that is precisely what the 16-year-old from the Iraqi city of Samarra is. “He is a hero,” declared Nabil Hassan, the manager of the al-Hol camp in northeastern Syria where tens of thousands of Iraqis fleeing IS have been sheltering ever since the jihadis killed and plundered their way through Iraq in 2014.
Today, al-Hol is home to many more thousands of refugees, the wives and children of IS fighters who made their last unsuccessful stand in the small village of Baghouz. Among them remain an unknown number of Yazidi women they enslaved and abused until they were finally vanquished by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on March 22.
Until a month ago, Hamad was among them, hanging on in Baghouz to help a Yazidi woman escape, knowing that he might not be so lucky. But he was. He survived and his mission to rescue the woman called Salwa has been accomplished. She is back with her community.
Hamad’s tale of bravery extends back to 2014, when he, his mother, two brothers and two sisters took refuge in the town of Qaim when IS struck. The jihadis quickly caught up with them. “When we tried to return to Samarra, they said ‘we will kill you’ so we were forced to stay,” Hamad told Al-Monitor on a recent afternoon in al-Hol. That is where he met Salwa.
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