Slaves to Ideology, Not Profit- The Trafficking of Yazidi Girls by IS
It has been nearly 8 months since more than 500 Yazidi women and girls were captured in the town of Sinjar, Iraq. Lately there has been little to no media coverage, which begs the question, what happened to those girls?
The harrowing truth is that many of those women have been beaten, raped, and used as human currency. The UN reports that about 150 of the women were sent to Syria to be sold or used as rewards for Islamic State fighters.
There have also been reports that Islamic State opened a new office in Mosul to use as a place to sell the captured women. The UN report indicates that girls were raped over 30 times a day, often by different men.
In February, the world received a glimpse inside the life of a Yazidi girl captured by the Islamic State. Nineteen year-old Farida described being sold to three different men and making seven attempts to commit suicide. Because she initially refused to cooperate she was beaten badly, and on one occasion her punishment was so harsh that she was unable to walk for three days.
A report compiled by Amnesty International documents interviews with 42 Yazidi women who had been captured and sold or married off to Islamic State men. The report reveals that all but a few women are being sold and gifted to men within the caliphate.
Rather than being sold for high profits, the girls are used as rewards for ISIS fighters and as a way to entice new recruits. Join the Islamic State and in return, they will give you an enslaved young girl. The profit that the Islamic State could yield from exporting the Yazidi girls is far greater than the alleged 10 dollars the girls are reportedly being sold for. The average price for a virgin teenage girl from Iraq in 2011, prior to the Islamic State’s seizure of territory was approximately $5,000, and $2,500 dollars for non-virgin girls.
While it appears the Islamic State has chosen not to monetarily profit from selling the girls, they are benefitting by using them to grow their membership and solidify current fighters’ loyalty.
Although making a profit may not be of great importance to the Islamic State, ideology certainly is. According to The Ordinances of Government, a 10th century manual of Islamic law and governance written by Islamic jurist Abu al-Hasan Al-Mawardi, women and children captured during jihad are considered spoils of war, which means that there are specific rules about the way spoils are divided and how they can be used.
According to classic Islamic jurisprudence of the kind revered by Islamic State , women and children are to be taken as slaves and viewed as property. One fifth of the women and children were given to the Islamic State authority, and then the rest “were then divided according to the Sharī’ah amongst the fighters of the Islamic State who participated in the Sinjar operations.”
The Amnesty International report includes only two cases of girls being given or sold to men that were not fighters for the Islamic State. A resident of Mosul revealed that he knew of two businessmen who where not Islamic State fighters that received or bought Yazidi girls from ISIS. While the reasons behind this are unclear it could be to cement local relationships and foster support for the Islamic State.
The Amnesty International case report on the 42 women suggests that Islamic State is indeed attempting to follow classical Islamic law when it comes to matters of dividing war spoils and distributing he captive women and children.
Yet again, the action of the Islamic State is being motivated by their ideological interpretations rather than an economic gain.
