The Yazidi Doctor Healing Survivors of Islamic State Captivity

The Day Sinjar Fell: Shireen's Capture

On 3 August 2014, Shireen was preparing for a high school examination in her family home in Sinjar when Islamic State group militants entered the house and took her away. At 19 years old she was transported to Tal Afar and sold as a sex slave to an Islamic State fighter. Three months later she was sold again, this time to Abu Omar in Mosul, where she became his third wife. Abu Omar already had two Iraqi wives who lived separately but who beat Shireen during family gatherings. He told her he loved her, yet subjected her to repeated rape. Shireen later described how the declaration of love meant nothing when accompanied by violence that destroyed her previous life.

(Middle East Eye)

Daily Realities of Captivity and Forced Conversion

Shireen remained confined to Abu Omar's house in Mosul for more than two years. Two guards stood at the entrance, and she was forbidden from stepping into the garden for fresh air. Her daily tasks consisted of cooking, washing dishes and cleaning. Islamic State fighters told her that Melek Tawwus, the Peacock Angel central to Yazidi belief in Yasdan, was the devil, and they compelled her to convert to Islam. In time Abu Omar brought two additional Yazidi girls into the household: one aged six who was made to clean and another aged ten who was raped. Shireen attempted to intervene but her protests were ignored.

Release and Immediate Aftermath

Iraqi forces freed Shireen in 2016 during the operation to retake Mosul. By then her uncle and several friends had been killed by Islamic State; her father and one sister remained missing after being taken in 2014. She returned suffering from depression and recurring nightmares that made sleep impossible. The physical skeletons of murdered relatives lay buried in the ground, a reality she could not escape. Upon release she sought medical attention from Dr Nagham Nawzat, a Yazidi gynaecologist based in Duhok.

Dr Nagham Nawzat's Background and Medical Commitment

Dr Nagham Nawzat was born in Mosul in 1976 to a Yazidi family. She graduated from Mosul Medical College with a degree in gynaecology in 2002, driven by a desire to address women's health issues and provide practical support. In 2014, when Islamic State seized nearly a third of Iraq and killed or kidnapped at least 12,000 Yazidis in what the United Nations has termed an ongoing genocide, Nawzat chose to focus her skills on survivors. She joined the Duhok Survivors' Centre in 2015, where she volunteers to deliver both physical healthcare and psychological support to women who endured Islamic State captivity.

Methods of Care at the Duhok Survivors' Centre

The Duhok Survivors' Centre, funded by the United Nations Population Fund, remains the only facility in Iraq specialising in gender-based violence. Nawzat begins with a post-traumatic medical approach used in Iraq, followed by a full physical examination. She then listens to each woman's account of her fears and experiences, offering steady encouragement in the manner of an older sister. When depression, post-traumatic stress disorder or suicide risk appear, she refers patients to the psychiatric department of Duhok's Azadi hospital. Hussein al-Qaidi, director of the Kidnapped Affairs department at the Kurdistan Regional Government in Duhok, reports that 2,023 Yazidi women had been liberated from Islamic State territory as of July 2018. Nawzat has assisted an estimated 1,200 of them.

Recognition, Risks and Continued Captivity

In March 2016, Nawzat received the International Women of Courage Award from then-US Secretary of State John Kerry for her psychological support to traumatised Yazidi survivors and her work against gender-based violence. Her engagement with the community has brought repeated death threats from Islamic State sympathisers through phone calls and social media. Although Iraqi forces declared victory over Islamic State in December 2017, al-Qaidi states that 1,500 Yazidi women remain captive in Iraq, Syria and Turkey. Four years after the initial mass abductions, survivors continue to be released in exchange for ransom payments.

Reintegration, Community Leadership and Nawzat's Ongoing Vow

In 2014, Khurto Hajji Ismail, the supreme Yazidi leader known as Baba Sheikh, declared that women enslaved by Islamic State remained welcome within the community. This statement eased reintegration efforts and supported Nawzat's daily work. Shireen now lives alone in a tent at the Khanke Internally Displaced Population camp in Duhok. She has declined to return to Sinjar, where most of her surviving family members have obtained asylum in Germany. Sinjar itself stays in ruins. Nawzat continues to state that she dedicates her life to the Yazidis and will remain available to help heal the wounds inflicted by captivity.