Women who are captured by Isis and kept as slaves endure more than just sexual violence

On August 3 2014, Isis attacked the town of Sinjar in northern Iraq, as part of their campaign to eradicate the Yazidi people and “purify” the region of non-Islamic influences.

That same day, Prince Tahseen Said, leader of the Yazidi people, issued an “urgent distress call” to the international community to “to assume their humanitarian and nationalistic responsibilities” and help the 40,000 Yazidis who had fled their homes in the district.

But it was already too late for Nadia Murad. Aged 19, she lived in the quiet farming village of Kocho, within the area around Sinjar ISIS had selected for “purification”. Before the Isis militants arrived, she lived with her large family of brothers and sisters and was studying at high school, harbouring dreams of becoming a history teacher and perhaps a make-up artist.

But Nadia's dreams were shattered as war ravaged Sinjar. Now she was simply an Isis sex slave.

Isis offered the Yazidi villagers a choice: convert to Islam or be executed on the spot. To young girls and women a third path was presented: slavery. Nadia's mother was considered too old to be enslaved, and so was executed. Nadia and her two sisters joined thousands of other women to become chattels of Isis.

Last month, Nadia and another young Yazidi woman, Lamiya Aji Bashar, were jointly named recipients of the European Parliament Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought for speaking out at the ordeal they suffered.

Three months after her capture and sexual enslavement, Nadia managed to escape her captors thanks to a neighbouring family who smuggled her out of the area. She had by this point lost 18 members of her family.

Lamiya tried to escape several times before finally managing to flee with the help of people smugglers who were paid by her family, but not before a landmine exploded leaving her injured and almost blind.

Before they escaped and were brought to the West, both women had suffered unspeakable brutality at the hands of their captors, who routinely kidnap women and children to “give” to the faithful Isis soldiers and trade in modern slavery markets in Isis-controlled territories.

Indeed, the phrase “Isis sex slaves” has passed into common currency... and therein lies something of a problem in the way we, the West, perceive this abhorrent situation in the Middle East.

Could it be there's something of an unseemly salaciousness with which we devour stories of sexual enslavement in far off lands? “Sex slave” has an almost exotic ring to it, as though we are talking about harems of perfumed and ultimately compliant women wrapped in bright silks in the desert tent of some brooding nomadic chieftain. It has a 1970s News of the World vibe, edging into almost Carry On-esque imagery.

“The terminology reduces the trauma that these women have gone through,” says Dr Katherine E Brown, lecturer in Islamic Studies at the University of Birmingham. “It oversexualises what they are going through.”

Because while the Yazidi women seized by Isis are indeed slaves, bartered and sold in markets to the highest bidder, and while they are the victims of relentless sexual violence, the impact is even more wide-ranging than that.

“It is not only the fact that they are being raped,” says Dr Brown. She has to choose her words carefully so as not to lessen the impact of this brutality while at the same time bringing in the bigger picture. “The women have had all their human rights removed, and the rape is a big part of that. They have been removed from their communities and their communities have effectively been destroyed. Whole ethnic groups are being eradicated.”

In other words, it is genocide – as US Secretary of State John Kerry asserted at a press conference in March, saying in unvarnished terms that Isis “is responsible for genocide against groups in areas under its control including Yazidis, Christians and Shiia Muslims”.

It is a stated aim of Isis to “ethnically cleanse” the region of non-Muslims, and the Yazidi – whose religion is an amalgamation of aspects of Christianity, Zoroastrianism and Islam, thought to have been founded in the 11th Century – are in the group's sights. And it isn’t the first time they have suffered. Under Ottoman rule in the 18th and 19th centuries, the Yazidi were subjected to no fewer than 72 individual massacres, killing thousands.

Is there a difference between ethnic cleansing and genocide? The Encyclopaedia Britannica suggests there is, in that ethnic cleansing aims to create an ethnically homogenous territory, while genocide goes a step further and achieves that aim by the systematic destruction of a particular group of people.

Yet, even in the face of an ethnic group facing proposed extinction, we still focus on one aspect: the fact the women are becoming sex slaves. Perhaps part of this is due to Isis going out of its way to make a point of publicising their campaign of sexual violence against Yazidi women.

Rape as a weapon of war is nothing new, and was widely utilised in the Balkan conflicts, especially in Bosnia, in the 1990s. But the Serb forces who (predominantly) used it seemed to do so as part of the overall assault on other ethnic groups, a side effect, perhaps, of the conflict, merely one weapon in their arsenal.

With Isis, rape is part of their propaganda campaign in their bid to wipe out the Yazidi. And perhaps there is a method in their brutality above control, subjugation and violence for its own sake; the Yazidi culture dictates that women who form relationships with non-Yazidis automatically take on the religion of their partner. Isis is effectively raping the Yazidis out of existence, one horrific assault at a time.

Dr Brown says, ”The women are enslaved partly as a reward for Isis soldiers, partly as a weapon against non-Muslim groups. With Bosnia it seemed that rape was a byproduct of genocide; for Isis it is something to be publicly celebrated.“

It is perhaps by focusing on the rapes we are imposing a narrative of our own on the situation – that of the rapacious, brutal enemy – that is supported by the Iraqi Peshmerga Kurds who are also fighting Isis and whose interest it is in to be seen by the West as the polar opposite of the Isis terror brigade.

The presentation of the Sakharov Prize to Nadia Murad and Lamiya Aji Bashar does focus attention on the plight of the Yazidi, perhaps going some way to cutting through the fog of war that obscures fact and truth. But still, says Dr Brown, ultimately “one of the biggest problems is that women's voices are still not considered legitimate”. The propaganda comes from men fighting the war, on all sides, and women’s experience is reduced to their sexual treatment.

It's a similar story on the flip-side of the Isis sex slaves narrative – that of the “Jihadi Brides”. Whereas the Yazidi are forced into subjugation, Western women are freely going to join Isis... but with the same outcome.

Dr Brown says, ”The language is related, everything is reduced down to sex. Why would women give up what could be considered a relatively amazing life in the West to go to a horrific life with Isis? Using terminology such as ‘Jihadi Bride’ suggests it is because they are naive, emotional and want sex. But it’s much more complex than that.”

With the estimate of women captured by Isis in the thousands, what will happen when – or if – the war is won against the terror group? Dr Brown takes as a reference point the situation in Afghanistan, when there was a lot of talk of prioritising women's rights in the aftermath of Western intervention.

She says, “In the instance of the Iraqi state defeating Isis we’ll probably see a lot of nice words about women's rights, but they will probably be just that: nice words. Even with the UN Security Council Resolution 1325 insisting that women are included in peace building, the international communities’ track record isn't exactly stunning.

“What we see is that in the aftermath, a lot of the concerns about the communities directly affected and what can be done for them end up being bargained away.”