Yazidi girls as young as 11 being sold on private ISIS messaging app

By Geoffrey Clarfield, POST MILLENNIAL

Since America became a world power after WWII, its policies in the middle east have ignored some of the worst practices, such as slavery, which occur almost daily.

In war-torn Syria and Iraq, there has been a dramatic upsurge.

We are talking about the systematic rape and enslavement of Yazidi women by ISIS fighters and the colluding citizens of this trade, all who have been living under the everchanging regimes of Iraq and Syria.

I have in my possession screenshots of cell phone communications on a Kurdish phone company’s network, Korek, that happens to be owned by the Kurdish Prime Minister Nechervan Barazani whose family has ruled half of Kurdistan for about a century.

These screenshots are taken from a Whatsapp like application posted during the last year.

They are advertisements for the sale of female slaves, most probably Yazidi and in one case certainly so. I have translated them with the help of a Yazidi friend and an Arabic scholar.

Here is one. It starts out with a message that this user group has 199 members. It’s group name is based on a quotation from the Quran: “But Allah has permitted trade and has forbidden interest.” (Qur’an – 2:275). The man, Abu Osama  posts an ad for a “Dirty Yazidi.” She is a female prisoner (“sabiye”) in Arabic and the starting price is 4,000 US dollars.

Then there is a post by one Abu Suleiman advertising the sale of another “sabiye”, the formal Arabic term used to describe a woman captured in battle, during a Jihad.

She is a virgin with short hair. She is a nine-year-old beauty, a “khadima,” a servant. The starting price is 9,000 US dollars.

Then there is a 24-year-old woman for sale. She has two children, she is calm and polite (ISIS is notorious for drugging its captives), she speaks good Arabic and the starting price is 8,300 US dollars.

The man posting, whose name is Badr, warns that any buyer must be serious. So, Abu Omar who has already sent Badr ten messages, offers to buy her with an in kindpayment of a car from Germany, an Opal.

Another girl for sale is 17. She is described as beautiful, obedient and clean. She is a cook and speaks fluent Arabic. Her asking price is 14,000 US dollars. She is listed as a Muslim, meaning she was probably forcibly converted.

No doubt, American and other coalition forces in the never ending wars of Syria and Iraq have been monitoring these kinds of calls for a few years now (or maybe they have ignored them which is most likely), but news of this cell phone based slave trade never seems to make it to the front pages of our newspapers and magazines.

There are still 3,000, possibly as many as 7,000 Yazidi women missing in Iraq and Syria. Those still alive are most likely still slaves of so called “former ISIS combatants.”

America and its allies fighting in Iraq and Syria are there to reduce and ultimately destroy the power of ISIS.

President Trump believes he has done this, in the same way that President Bush once declared victory in Iraq before a major upsurge in terror there.

Today, allies in the coalition surprisingly include Canada, which has earmarked just under four hundred million dollars for this campaign over the next 18 months.

Muslim Arab and Kurdish society has a different value system than does that of the average American.

There, society is dominated by the values of honour and shame. It is a society where your family, lineage and tribe come first. It is a society that honours the strong horse, the big man, the war lord. It sees secular democracy as a kind of unmanly weakness.

It is a society that says that if you go to war, you can kill the men, old women andchildren, rape the women, enslave them, forcibly convert them to Islam and make of them concubines and wives.

There is no such thing as a “win/win” conflict in the middle east. Only win/lose.

Coalition forces have done nothing to free Yazidi slaves and to hold their captors accountable.

If there is any moral lesson to be gained from the American Civil War, it should be that wherever American troops serve, slavery should not be tolerated and the slave trade there should be stopped.

Certainly, the victims should be liberated from their captors. There is no evidence that Coalition forces have made this a priority.

If America pulls its troops from Syria, every strategic thinking Muslim Arab and Kurd in the middle east will conclude that Americans are cowards, that America is on the run, that America cannot be trusted and that worse sin of all, America is weak.

They will conclude that Trump is not “a real man.”

Therefore, their allegiance will now be given to a true strong horse, Saudi Arabia, Russia or perhaps Iran.

Those who fought for ISIS will be encouraged to hold on to their Yazidi slaves and they just may decide to seize more as the Iraqi state does not protect them.

A country whose national history is informed by a civil war about slavery should not be abandoning the slaves of Iraq and Syria. But there is another lesson  of American history that is being missed, the fight against the Nazis during WWII.

Then, when Jewish leaders came to American and British politicians telling them about the Holocaust and asking them to bomb the camps, the allies said they were too busy fighting Hitler to save the Jews, who were not only murdered but also used as Nazi slave labour.

Well, the coalition has been too busy fighting ISIS to save the enslaved Yazidi victims of ISIS. As Mark Twain once quipped, history is rhyming.

Pulling troops out of Syria will only encourage more slavery in Iraq and Syria and it will show the world that the West has learned nothing from the Genocide of the Jews during WWII.

It will also show the Iraqis and Syrians, including the Kurds that slavery goes unchallenged in their lands.

Finally, it will be interpreted by all players in the region that President Trump has abandoned Israel and that it is time to turn up the heat on the only democracy in the Middle East or, perhaps go to war against it once again. Then what will the President do? Tweet?

Members of the now reconfigured ISIS network who are no longer a territory holdingstate, would still like to do to the Jews of Israel what they have been doing to the Yazidi.  As one Yazidi friend of mine said, “they cannot because Israel has the IDF.”

But it has been America and its allies, not Israel that have been fighting in Iraq and Syria. Israel may well have to pay the military price for the President’s withdrawal if it is soon attacked.

No doubt, as I write these words John Brown is turning over in his grave.