Kidnapped, drugged and forced to fight: the forgotten child victims of Isis

One keeps doves; another writes poetry and a third spends hours on a PlayStation. They smoke and have tattoos and boy-band haircuts.

They also have sleepless nights and broken dreams and photos on their phones of themselves in very different garb to the T-shirts, skinny jeans and sneakers they now wear.

Just a few years ago they were fighters for Islamic State – the so-called Cubs of the Caliphate captured when they were just 10 or 12 and forced to learn the Quran and use Kalashnikovs, then sent into battle, often drugged with amphetamines. Some watched their fathers be executed, lost friends or were wounded themselves in airstrikes, others have mothers or sisters still missing.

But compared with the Yazidi girls taken as sex slaves whose horrific plight jolted the world, and whose spokeswoman Nadia Murad won a Nobel peace prize, the boys’ ordeal is little known.

“What happened to the girls happened to us,” shrugged Farhad, 20, who once dreamt of being a football player but now can only watch, having lost his right foot in a bombing during his four years in captivity. “But we don’t get invited to conferences or taken in by other countries.”

 “These are the forgotten victims of Isis,” said Nicolette Waldman, a human rights lawyer who works on children in conflict for Amnesty International. “These former child soldiers have endured unimaginable trauma and are facing so many challenges, yet eight years on they are still not getting the help they need.”

“They face all the difficulties like the girls but were also brainwashed, forced to fight in battles — yet no one knows their story,” said Qassim Omer. He managed to evade capture because he was in a different car and now represents a group of 18 boys at Kabarto camp in northern Iraq, including his younger brother Alo, captured at the age of 12. “They are deeply traumatised but neglected by government and NGOs, just sitting in their tents day and night.”

With growing reports of Isis regrouping, some fear the boys might feel they have no option but go back. “If they are not helped it could be very bad,” said Murad Ismael, co-founder of Yazda, the Yazidi activist group. “I don’t think Yazidi boys would go back to Isis, but obviously there is a risk,” he said.

It will be eight years next month since Isis fighters swept into the Yazidi homeland of Sinjar, killing thousands of men and capturing thousands of boys and girls.

At least 3,000 Yazidis were killed and 7,000 abducted in what the United Nations and the British parliament termed a genocide against the ancient religious minority. About 3,000 are still missing, including the father of Qassim and Alo, and one of their sisters.

Among those taken was a then 12-year-old boy called Saddam Hussain from the village of Dugori, north of the Sinjar Mountains, where he was woken on August 3, 2014, by screaming. “I ran to the roof and saw chaos,” he recalled.

He and his parents were captured and taken to a school building, in the town of Tal Afar, where boys and girls were separated. “They killed my father because he refused to renounce his religion,” he said.

Also there were Alo and Farhad. “It was one of the worst moments in my life,” said Alo. “They had long beards and short trousers and weapons, I’d never seen such people.”

The boys were then moved to Mosul, where they were forced to learn the Quran. “They told us, ‘We will kill you if you don’t convert to Islam,’ ” said Alo. “They beat us with sticks and rubber hose and often starved us.”

After three months of indoctrination, they were taken to an Isis training camp in Syria, where they were taught to use Kalashnikovs and RPGs, then taken to the front line.

About 300,000 Yazidis — the majority of the population — remain displaced. More than half live in 15 camps in the Iraqi desert where last week the temperature reached 46C

 “We were enslaved by them and they made us fight,” said Alo. “Every battle I fought, I thought I would not survive.”

“They told us the people we loved were infidels and we should kill them,” said Saddam. “I was so frightened as it was my first time using weapons and we were far from our families and didn’t know if they were alive.”

Eventually he was wounded in an airstrike. His right leg was so badly injured that he could not walk for six months, so he was moved to work at a checkpoint.

As Isis started to lose territory, Alo managed to contact his brother Qassim, who paid a smuggler $10,000 to get him out.

Saddam, however, was there till the final battle of Baghuz in 2019,in which Isis was defeated. “When Isis let some of their own families escape, I wrapped a scarf round my head and went with them.”

He found a checkpoint manned by Kurdish forces and told them he was Yazidi. “They gave me food and water and contacted my family but couldn’t find anyone.”

Now he lives with cousins — 13 of them in two tents.

Eventually, to his joy, he discovered his mother was still alive but had gone to Canada with his brothers and sisters. So far he has been unable to get a visa to join them.

“My dream is to meet my mother again,” he said. “I miss her.”

Like most of the boys, when he came back he no longer spoke his native Kermanji, and was initially ostracised because the community correctly believed he had been brainwashed.

“We didn’t want to wear jeans or visit Lalish [the Yazidi spiritual centre] as we thought it was a bad place,” said Alo. “I lived four years under Isis, so just wanted to read the Quran. Sometimes I couldn’t sleep because I was worried I was not following the rules of Islam.”

Even though now they have been accepted, all say they struggle.

“We see many organisations working with the girls, helping them with counselling and projects, and feel very angry no one cares about us,” said Haitam, who was captured aged 11.

“I have no work, no school,” said Saddam. “We were taken just after primary school, so if we went back now we would be with 12-year-olds.”

All still suffer flashbacks. Although Farhad recently got a prosthetic foot, he urgently needs medical treatment and is in such pain it is hard to sleep.

Another of the boys, Vian, writes poetry. Haitam’s brother Barzan keeps a few doves. Farhad spends hours on a PlayStation. “In the tent it’s not really living, it’s just passing time,” he shrugged.

“We feel very angry no one cares about us and we don’t understand why,” he added. “Maybe they think we are Isis, but we hate Isis for what they did to us — they took away our childhood and our sisters.”

It’s not just the boys who feel forgotten. About 300,000 Yazidis — the majority of the population — remain displaced, more than half still living in 15 camps in the Iraqi desert where last week the temperature reached 46C.

They cannot go home as not only is much of Sinjar in ruins but the area is still insecure — the territory disputed between the Iraqi federal government in Baghdad and the Kurdish regional government as well as Yazidi forces and Iranian-backed militias. Turkey is also vying for control over the area as it seeks to eliminate the PKK.

Fierce clashes in May between the Iraqi army and local fighters forced another 10,000 to flee.

“We never thought it would be so long,” said Fardos, 40, whose name means Heaven and has now been living in a tent in Khanke camp for eight years with her husband and four children aged eight to 14. Before the war they were prosperous, with a farm and a car mechanic’s shop. They lost it all.

“It’s really hard but we try not to think about it,” she added. “We are six in a tent and there are tents right next to us, so whatever they do or say, we hear.”

Since earlier this year she has been working in the Sweet as Sugar bakery and café at the Enterprise Training Institute in Khanke run by the Free Yezidi Foundation.

It’s a job which she says has changed her life. “Not only is the money [$150 a month] a godsend, as it means we can buy water as what we get is not enough for cooking or washing clothes, and also pay for electricity for a fan, but also it gets me out of the tent and away from all the stress. Baking cakes and chatting with colleagues really helps.”

“This job has given me a sense of existence. I come here and laugh and talk with other women,” said Amira, 34, who works at the centre knitting stuffed rabbits and is breadwinner for her mother and three sisters. “I feel as if the outside world has forgotten about us.”

The few women with jobs are the lucky ones. Apart from water and power shortages, aid has also been cut. The World Food Programme now provides cash only to the most vulnerable families — the others get food aid — and the camp clinic opens once a week for three hours.

The white nylon tents are like ovens in summer and freezing in winter, and there have been frequent fires, usually caused by people overloading the electricity supply. One fire last June destroyed 400 tents in Shariya camp.

Fardos and her family lost everything again when their tent recently caught fire. “Everything we owned became ashes,” she said. Farhad narrowly escaped with his life when his tent caught fire and he could not walk.

Last year the Iraqi government passed a Survivors’ Law under which Yazidi victims of Isis are supposed to get compensation, but so far it has yet to be allocated a budget or office.

While the international community has been quick to act in Ukraine, where the first war rape case is already under way less than five months into the war, there has so far been only one prosecution for what happened to the Yazidis.