Earlier this month, Kurdish forces retook the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar from the Daesh fighters that had held the territory since 2014. They found two mass graves in and near the town that was once home to the Yazidis, an ancient religious minority. In one of the graves there were 78 elderly women. The other grave held between 50 and 60 men, women and children. Seven more mass graves had been found earlier this year in a nearby town retaken from the Daesh.
According to an August 2015 report in the New York Times,
The Islamic State’s formal introduction of systematic sexual slavery dates to Aug. 3, 2014, when its fighters invaded the villages on the southern flank of Mount Sinjar, a craggy massif of dun-colored rock in northern Iraq.
Its valleys and ravines are home to the Yazidis, a tiny religious minority who represent less than 1.5 percent of Iraq’s estimated population of 34 million.
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Survivors say that men and women were separated within the first hour of their capture. Adolescent boys were told to lift up their shirts, and if they had armpit hair, they were directed to join their older brothers and fathers. In village after village, the men and older boys were driven or marched to nearby fields, where they were forced to lie down in the dirt and sprayed with automatic fire.
The women, girls and children, however, were hauled off in open-bed trucks.
Apparently not all of the women and children were hauled away. The elderly women were not needed by the new regime.
Of the 5,270 Yazidis that were captured in 2014, at least 3,144 were still being held this past August, according to the report. That the Daesh planned this in advance is demonstrated by the detailed travel arrangements that were made for the women as they were bused from one stop to the next in preparation for their sale as slaves. The busses had curtains over the windows because the heads of the Yazidi women were not covered in burkas, scarves or veils. The Daesh had printed, notarized contracts of sale, as well as manuals for the proper treatment of slaves and pamphlets for FAQs.
The strict enforcement of the Sharia law practiced by the Daesh calls for women to become guards of the Yazidi slaves until their sale. That is one of the jobs that fall to the Khansaa Brigades.