Yazidi Girls Seized by ISIS Speak Out After Escape

[oberliner]

KHANKE, Iraq — The 15-year-old girl, crying and terrified, refused to release her grip on her sister’s hand. Days earlier, Islamic State fighters had torn the girls from their family, and now were trying to split them up and distribute them as spoils of war.

The jihadist who had selected the 15-year-old as his prize pressed a pistol to her head, promising to pull the trigger. But it was only when the man put a knife to her 19-year-old sister’s neck that she finally relented, taking her next step in a dark odyssey of abduction and abuse at the hands of the Islamic State.

The sisters were among several thousand girls and young women from the minority Yazidi religion who were seized by the Islamic State in northern Iraq in early August.

The 15-year-old is also among a small number of kidnapping victims who have managed to escape, bringing with them stories of a coldly systemized industry of slavery.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/15/world/middleeast/yazidi-girls-seized-by-isis-speak-out-after-escape.html?_r=0

[pampango]

1. A Jew escaping from Germany would have had a similarly horrific story. Different in details but

on some level equally 'unbelievable'. The problem is how do you know that the story that the Jew from Germany or the girl from Iraq in the OP are telling the truth. That's especially true if you don't know or don't like the policy implications of their stories being true.

[cali]

2. there is ample evidence that these stories are factual.

[pampango]

3. I agree but I think others are more suspicious. Or perhaps just uncomfortable with

the policy implications of accepting them as factual. That would be another similarity with the attitudes of many Americans about what was happening in Germany in the mid- to late-1930's and early 1940's prior to December 1941.

[oberliner]

4. Did you watch the video?

Did you see the quotes from ISIS militants acknowledging marrying off Yazidi girls?

You think these young girls may have just invented these stories?

You really think it could be all fake?

[pampango]

5. Yes. Yes. Yes. No.

I have seen much evidence of what IS is doing to young girls, women in general and anyone who opposes them.

My point, poorly expressed obviously, is that some will be suspicious because the evidence leads to policy implications that are uncomfortable. That is similar to our tea-party types with respect to climate change and to many Americans attitudes to events in Germany in the mid-30's to early-40's.

"We care. We should do something about it but there is nothing we can do.'
"We care. We should do something about it and will. The questions is what."
"We care but we should not do anything about it because it is none of our business. The girls (Jews) are not Americans."
"We care but we should not do anything about it because it is none of our business. Even if the girls (Jews) were Americans, it happened in another country."
"We don't care because the girls (Jews) are not Americans."
"We don't care because it happened outside the US."
"We just don't care. It did not happen to me."

[oberliner]

7. Understood

That makes sense - thanks for clarifying.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

6. But Saddam didn't have babies thrown out of incubators, so clearly this didn't happen either.

And we can just go on comfortably believing that the alternative to Western interventionism is not all that bad.

[coldbeer]

8. How many girls?

What about our school shootings?
It's about our backyards too. Why don't
we spend as much time and money
on our problems as opposed to
their problems.

Oh, I say we should spend more money
fighting ISIS. Do not think I do not feel
for these girls.

BTW, I am coldbeer today and I had disappeared
(unintentionally) ... strange! I showed up as Erlewyne
a couple weeks ago. Erlewyne disappeared six years
ago. These computers are strange.