Zehra Doğan – JINHA

SHENGAL –The women of Shengal, the target of the August 3 Daesh massacre in which over 7,000 women and girls were captured, have founded their own self-defense forces and democratic self-government in the mountains of the area.Among them are many Êzîdî women who have escaped Daesh captivity.While women organize to care for and defend one another, solidarity workers across Kurdistan have been working to secure professional psychological treatment for Êzîdî women.

Images of Êzîdî women in the media have largely portrayedthem as voiceless victims, but the stories of the hundreds of women who have escaped or resisted Daesh attacks remain less widely told. This series explores the experiences and struggles of Êzîdî women who have escaped Daesh's hands, living in the Iraqi city of Duhok; Dêrik, in Rojava; and in Shengal itself.

The best figures indicate that 7,000 Êzîdî women, 150 Turkmens, hundreds of Assyrians and Syriacs and thousands of children have been captured by Daesh to date.According to Êvar Îbrahîm, chair of the Committee for the Protection of Women's Rights in the Iraqi Kurdish Parliament, most escaped Êzîdî women are livingin Duhok and its surrounding villages. Hundreds of the escaped women, however, have made their way back to their homeland: the mountains of Shengal.

From the city of Dêrik, we set out for Shengal, in Iraq's Nineveh province. We have heard that the security corridor between Rojava and Shengal, originally opened by YPG/YPJ forces in August to transport the Êzîdîs to safety, has become risky lately. Still, we want to see the road Êzîdîs themselves had to travel. Finally, the YPG agrees to provide us with a two-car escort.

As we ascend the two and a half hour road into the mountains, we are aware that under the verdant plants growing up in the early spring rain, the road is littered with the bones of hundreds of children who died from thirst in the rushed summer flight from Shengal. This is not to mention the women who died after giving the last of their water to their children.Ruined houses line the road.

When we arrive at the tent city in the mountains, which houses around 10,500 displaced Shengal residents, we find itin a state of disarray more extreme than we originally expected. The children playing in the road, upon seeing our YPG escort,briefly abandon their game to raise the victory sign symbolic of Kurdish resistance.

"Bijî serok Apo!" say the children—"long live President Apo," a slogan referring to imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan. PKK and YPG fightersled the early responseto Daesh's August attack on Shengal. Now, Êzîdîs have founded their own defense force—the Yekîneyên Berxwedana Şingal, or Shengal Resistance Units.

Êzîdî women here have founded a women's assembly with three major goals: to rehabilitate women who have escaped Daesh, to work against the social alienation and so-called "honor killings" of escaped women and to arm themselves against Daesh.

Sêvê Reşo, a mother of two, serves on the 27-person executive body of the Shengal Women's Assembly. She lost her father and brothers in the attack seven months ago. Sêvê, who was abducted along with her mother, was in Daesh captivity for six months in the Iraqi city of Kirkuk.

Sêvê was living in the village of Şehabî with her husband and two children, one three years old and the othera seven-month-old infant, when the Daesh attacks began.

"One day without warning, they attacked the village," says Sêvê. "They took my husband away from me. I don't know what happened to him, but from what I've heard I imagine he was beheaded."

As Daesh members drove Sêvê away, she could hear the sound of her children crying falling away behind her. She was taken to Kocho, Tal Afar and Mosul, where she was imprisoned alongside thousands of other women to be sold.

"They raped the young women and children, and had older ones like me do the cooking and cleaning." Sêvê says there was a constant turnover of women and children in the houses where she was kept. In the six months she was in Daesh captivity, she nearly went insane.

"Some of the children they raped were as young as three.I was losing my mind, thinking constantly about whether my children being raped at that very moment. I looked after the children there as best I could, but it didn't amount to much. They were in bad shape.

"One day they put us in a car. On the way, the car flipped over. Because my front teeth were broken, my face was covered in blood. I realized this was an opportunity and played dead. When they came up to me, I held my breath."

When she was certain that Daesh had left her for dead, she started running for the Shengal Mountains with all the strength she could muster, hoping to hide in the backcountry until the danger subsided.

"When I got here and saw that a lot of other people had made their way here too, I was so happy. The [YPG/YPJ] fighters had come and taken care of my children." Now, Sêvê says, she too plans to volunteer in the armed struggle.

Şîrîn Salih is one of thefounders of the women's assembly. Currently, she's working on organizing a celebration of March 8, International Women's Day, in the mountains.

"Men disappointed us. We thought they would protect us, but we were wrong," says Şîrîn. She says the women here then realized they needed to form their own body to resist the 73^rd edict, as Êzîdîs call the events of August. The term refers to the history of 72 imperial edicts to massacre the Êzîdîs, issued by the various powers that have ruled this territory over the centuries.

"We’re forming self-defense units to fight the patriarchy," explains Şîrîn. Both women and men have joined self-defense units in the mountains here, including Şîrîn's own children."We're not mad at the ones who left. They had to save their own lives. But they need to come back and take control over their lives.

"We will get our revenge on the ones who sold us in the markets," she adds.

Şîrîn says after they've spentmore than half a yearstarving in the mountains, it's time for the world to do something for the people of Shengal.

Currently, Duhok is the only city in Iraq with a rehabilitation center for Êzîdî women, says Kejal Hadi Faqê, an MP from the Yekgirto Islamic Party. She says that when it comes to the prospect of rescuing the thousands of women still in Daesh's hands, Kurdish women need to be prepared for the worst. She is working to increase the capacity of the center, which is staffed by volunteers.

In the northern part of Kurdistan, inTurkey, a group of mostly Kurdish women are also working to promote the rescue and rehabilitation of captured Êzîdî women.Many of the women were civil society activists concerned by the reports they heard in August from across the border. They began researching the situation of the abducted Êzîdî women soon after the attacks began.

The group was deeply affected by their interviews withÊzîdî women in Shengal, Hewler (Erbil), Duhok and Rojava, says Feleknaz Uca, a member of the executive board of the civil society umbrella organization Democratic Society Congress (DTK).Meeting with the Shengal Women's Assembly and seeing women organize to care for one another with what resources they had, says Feleknaz, hardened their resolve to secure professional support for escaped Êzîdî women.

Several weeks ago, Feleknaz and her colleagues founded the platform "Struggle for Women Detained by Daesh." Under the banner of the platform, they have sought support from the Iraqi Kurdish Parliament and Rojava canton administration in founding rehabilitation centers for Êzîdî women in all four parts of Kurdistan (Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and the Rojava cantons.) They also hope to work with international women's organizations.

The platform is currently invitingÊzîdî women to come to the northern Kurdish city of Diyarbakır, where the first of their rehabilitationcenters will open and a significant number of Êzîdîs currently live in exile. Feleknaz, who criticizes the relocating of many Êzîdî refugees to Europe, says the center operates ona clear guarantee:they will secure a woman's return to Shengal at any time, on her request.

(fk/cm)