Five years a slave of Islamic State

Six thousand Yazidis were enslaved by IS and many of them were murdered. One family was devastated by the barbarism – and yet miraculously reunited.

By Quentin Sommerville

IRAQ. Mount Sinjar. August 12, 2014. An elderly Yazidi woman grips her son with anticipation as they wait for an Iraqi airforce rescue helicopter to land, hoping to be able to get a spot on the aircraft. The woman and her son, both Yazidis, had fled religious persecution at the hands of Islamist extremists who had taken over their hometown. In the mountains, they found safety from ISIS but risked dying of hunger and thirst. They eventually did manage to board the rescue helicopter, but it crashed into the side of the mountain shortly after takeoff. They both survived the crash, and were rescued by a second helicopter which airlifted them to Dohuk, Iraqi Kurdistan.

Like exterminations before, it began with separation and sorting. Fawzya Elias Mirdan sat in the dirt with her three children in the village of Solagh in northern Iraq, in the shadow of the great flat-topped Mount Sinjar.

The men, and boys older than 14, had already been taken away and shot, buried in mass graves and drainage ditches. The acetylene heat of the summer beat down on the women; the children cried, they were thirsty, hungry, and scared.

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