Yazidis call attention to nearly 3,000 captives still missing a decade later

(RNS) — Jamileh Naso, president of the Canadian Yazidi Association, said the global Yazidi community has meticulously documented and tracked the names of those abducted, but their efforts need international support.

FILE - Mourners prepare to bury the remains of Yazidi victims in a cemetery in Sinjar, Iraq, Saturday, Feb. 6, 2021. (AP Photo/Farid Abdulwahed)
David I. Klein
March 24, 2025

ISTANBUL (RNS) — The fate of nearly 3,000 Yazidis taken captive by the Islamic State group in Iraq remains unknown, officials from Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government announced earlier this month. And with a resurgence of ethnic violence in Syria and funding cuts to U.S. international aid by President Donald Trump, rescues are becoming increasingly difficult, Yazidi leaders said.

Jamileh Naso, president of the Canadian Yazidi Association, told RNS the global Yazidi community has meticulously documented and tracked the names of those abducted — many over a decade ago when the Islamic State invaded their region — but their efforts can only go so far without international support.

The main organization active in rescuing Yazidi captives has been Iraqi Kurdistan’s Office of Rescuing Abducted Yazidis, which announced the most recent numbers in early March.

“One of the primary concerns is the lack of transparency in the process,” Naso said. “Families are often left without clear updates or information about their missing loved ones. Many have had to rely on smugglers or personal contacts to obtain any news, which should not be the case when an official government office is tasked with these efforts.”

Yazidis are an ethnic and religious minority in the Middle East, with the largest population concentrated in northern Iraq. The centuries-old monotheistic faith blends teachings and beliefs from other religions including Gnostic Christianity, Judaism, Sufi Islam and Zoroastrianism with ancient local traditions.

In 2014, the Islamic State captured the Sinjar region, a Yazidi refuge in Northern Iraq, and began massacring and enslaving residents. As a non-Muslim minority group, the Islamic State viewed Yazidis as outside the Sharia law it was imposing on the fledgling state it carved out of Iraq and Syria.

FILE – In this photo taken Saturday, Jan. 10, 2015, internally displaced Yazidi women bake bread at a refugee camp in Bamarny village in Dahuk of the Kurdistan region, 260 miles northwest of Baghdad, Iraq. (AP Photo/Seivan Salim)

During its brief but brutal rule over parts of Iraq, Yazidis faced harsh repression. Thousands were killed and thousands more kidnapped and subjected to torture, indoctrination and sexual slavery. Yazidi women and girls were particularly targeted by the Islamic State.

“The enslavement of Yazidi women by (the Islamic State group) in 2014 was not just an atrocity, it was an attempt to annihilate a people,” said Omar Mohammed, a senior research fellow on extremism at George Washington University. “When ISIS overran Sinjar, it marked the beginning of a genocide. Men were executed en masse, young boys were taken and indoctrinated as fighters, and thousands of women and girls were abducted, sold and subjected to systematic rape and abuse. They were trafficked like commodities across ISIS territories, their identities erased and their suffering normalized by a twisted ideology that justified their enslavement.”

In 2016, the United Nations ruled the atrocities committed by the Islamic State group as an act of genocide, and a decade on, Yazidi communities around the world are still hopeful loved ones will be found.

RELATED: Islamic State’s genocide was not limited to killing and enslaving Yazidis, Christians and other communities − it also erased their heritage

However, Naso noted, in several cases, rescues led by the Kurdistan Regional Government have been delayed due to political disputes and funding battles, driving families to take dangerous personal actions.

“While their work is commendable, there are significant challenges and limitations that must be acknowledged. The rescue operations outside the officials are heavily reliant on ransoms, forcing Yazidi families — many of whom live in extreme poverty — to pay thousands of dollars to retrieve their loved ones,” she said.

Bureaucracy isn’t the only thing inhibiting rescues. As of 2023, the al-Hol refugee camp in northeastern Syria was home to some nearly 50,000 people, a large portion of whom are surrendered Islamic State group fighters and their families. However, among them are believed to be hundreds to thousands of Yazidi captives.

While the camp is guarded by the Syrian Democratic Forces, within it, observers have reported former Islamic State fighters still hold significant power. And with the ouster of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria in December 2024, recent outbreaks of violence have left a vacuum of authority for coordinating rescues.

“We don’t even know who to negotiate with at this point. … But I hope we can find a way to do something,” Khairi Bozani, an adviser for Yazidi affairs to the Kurdistan Region Presidency, told Kurdish media in late February, noting no one has been rescued from al-Hol since Assad’s fall.

Though the recent outbreak of ethnic violence in Syria, which saw massacres of Alawites and some Christians, was largely focused on the western coast and far from al-Hol, there are fears the instability will create an opening for Islamic State cells to regroup.

Jamileh Naso, president of the Canadian Yazidi Association. (Courtesy photo)

“The resurgence of ISIS-linked attacks in parts of Syria means that Yazidis who returned to the region remain at risk,” Naso said. “Women and children who escaped captivity are now living in areas that are once again becoming unsafe. Many Yazidis in Syria remain displaced in refugee camps, and with ongoing conflict, they have even fewer options for return or resettlement. Food shortages, medical crises and lack of humanitarian access have made conditions worse.”

“Until Syria is fully stabilized and governed by actors committed to justice and security, Yazidis cannot safely live there, let alone expect meaningful efforts to find and rescue those still missing,” she added.

Syria isn’t the only focus point. In one highly publicized case, a 21-year-old Yazidi woman, Fawzia Amin Sido, was rescued from Gaza amid the Israel-Hamas war in Oct. 2024, more than a decade after she was captured in Sinjar as an 11-year-old.

“The case of the Yazidi woman found in Gaza should have been a wake-up call to the international community,” Naso said. “It proved what many of us have known for years — that Yazidi captives have been trafficked beyond Iraq and Syria. There is strong evidence that Yazidis have been taken to Turkey, Lebanon, Libya and even the Gulf states. Some were sold into domestic servitude, others were forced into marriage under false identities and some were simply disappeared into underground trafficking networks.”

It’s all the more reason international cooperation is need to expand the search beyond just Iraq and Syria, she added.

“Countries that have influence in these regions — including Turkey, the UAE and Qatar — must be pressured to conduct investigations and assist in rescues. There must be diplomatic consequences for countries that fail to take action against human trafficking networks that still hold Yazidis captive,” Naso said.

Alongside advocating for more resources for Yazidi refugees in Canada, Naso is also seeking more involvement from western states in the rescue of Yazidi captives and the prosecution of Islamic State war criminals. Under the Biden administration, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Yazidi leaders and reiterated American support for Iraqi Yazidis and rescuing captives. However, little effort has been made under the new Trump administration, she said.

“The shift in U.S. administrations has directly impacted efforts to assist Yazidis, both in terms of funding for rescue operations and political priorities,” Naso said. “The decline in U.S. leadership on this issue has meant that Yazidis have had to rely on grassroots efforts, NGOs and community-driven initiatives to search for missing loved ones. This is unacceptable. The U.S. played a key role in dismantling ISIS militarily, and it must play an equal role in bringing justice to the survivors.

“The world has said ‘never again’ too many times. Now, we need them to prove it,” she said.