Islamic State’s Yazidi Survivors

In August 2014, the group known as Islamic State (IS) launched an attack on the heartland of the Yazidi community at the foot of Sinjar Mountain, in northern Iraq. IS sees Yazidis as heretics and therefore a valid target for extermination, in their vision of a new caliphate ruled by Sharia law. In recent years, reports have emerged of Yazidi women and children handed out as gifts and sold as slaves in territory held by Islamic State (IS) between 2014 and the liberation of the region in 2017. In May 2020, although some 3,500 slaves had been freed, around 2,900 remained unaccounted for.