Nineteen girls and women were executed in Iraq over the weekend by Da’esh (ISIS) for refusing to participate in “sexual jihad” with terrorists in Mosul, Iraq.
The execution was reported Monday by Said Mimousini, a spokesman for the Kurdish Democratic Party in Mosul in an interview with Iraqi News.
Many Yazidi and Christian girls and women were captured by the terrorists last year and sold as sex slaves. But the practice may also prove the undoing of the group: Mimousini said there have been splits in the ranks in Mosul and internal conflicts over money and the distribution of women.
Girls who have somehow managed to escape the clutches of Da’esh have told media of how they were forced to marry ISIS fighters, and how they were physically and sexually abused.
As many as 3,000 women and girls having been taken captive from the Yazidi tribe in Iraq alone. In addition, Da’esh has captured and enslaved numerous other minorities in the territories it has seized.
Last October, ISIS published a brochure showing the prices for the purchase of female slaves.
The price tariff is simple; the older they are the cheaper they are, RT Novosti reported. “All prices are quoted in Iraqi Dinars but U.S. dollar equivalent shows that radical fighters can get children aged 1 to 9 for about $165, prices for adolescent girls are $124 and it’s less for women over 20. Women over 40 cost as little as $41.”
Last year Da’esh also produced a manual containing rules about how female slaves, women and children should be treated by its fighters.
During this past Ramadan, the group launched a contest to encourage its fighters and followers to memorize Qur’an passages, using young girls as prizes for the top winners.
Zainab Bangura, a United Nations envoy for sexual violence in conflict, is investigating the group’s sex trade. Bangura said “girls are peddled like barrels of petrol,” according to the UK-based Daily Mail, adding that “one can be bought by six different men.”
There is even a marriage bureau which organizes all of these ‘marriages’ and the sale of women, Bangura said.
However, occasionally ISIS will also sell the girls back to their families as well. “Sometimes these fighters sell the girls back to their families for thousands of dollars of ransom,” Bangura said. Valerie Amos, UN undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief, added that women and girls as young as 12 are enslaved and sexually abused.
“Kurdish refugees from Kobane report the capture of young girls there for sexual purposes, girls as young as 12,” she said.
Amos added there has also been a rise in the incidence of forced marriage, due in part to the rise in family poverty.
More to the point, however, families are terrified of losing their daughters to ISIS fighters in areas under their control – a phenomenon she called a “war crime.”
“ISIS has carried out mass victimization of civilians including murder, enslavement, rape, forcible displacement and torture, and has violated its obligation towards civilians,” Amos said.
She was particularly damning of the sluggish response of the international community to enforcing Security Council Resolution 2139 which passed in February of this year. The resolution outlined a number of basic human rights demands that opposition fighters and the Syrian government are required to follow.
Obviously, no one has paid any attention to the resolution since its passage.