Rescue Iraq

What we build at the Refuge Initiative

Many folks have asked us what we actually build when we say we're building homes for refugees and converting tents into homes, etc.

So, we put this little video together just before another 10 families moved into the Kawlokan Village. Hope it gives everybody some perspective on what we're building and where $5,000 goes. Just as a measure of comparison. The tents that we were using cost about $750 a piece. Most camps however, are issuing now better quality tents that run closer to $1,500 - $1,750 a piece... that does not include the bathroom/shower/kitchen units which have to be built out of more permanent stuff. Also, since we are building homes, the design includes the foundation, whereas with a tent most of them, first of all, aren't placed on any foundation at all, and secondly, if they are that raises the total cost considerably as we found out last year.

Depending on which kind of tent, it will need to be replaced typically within 6 months to 2-3 years given the environment in which it's located and the wear and tear given by its occupants.

Anyway, you can see how we can do this. The living room area for you engineers out there is approximately 220 square feet or typically 3.75 meters x 5.5 meters for a total of just over 20 square meters. The kitchen is 64 square feet (6 square meters), the bathroom 26 square feet (2.4 square meters), and the shower 33 square feet. It comes out to 343 square feet or approximately 32 square meters, and at $5,000 that means no more than $15 per square foot for a permanent house hooked up to the local power and water grid, ready to go. There is also the area between the rooms that we've found many of the refugees convert into viable living space or 'mud rooms'.

Well, check it out here, comment and/or give us some advice as to how we could do this all better. The major hidden factor in all of this is that because of our relationship with the local government over the past 7 years, they trust us and have given us the land at all but one of our camps/villages. The government also provides the continued water and electrical needs of the refugees, so the major ongoing cost of water and electric is solved by the local government while we put up the capital on the front end to give the refugees a secure home free from the perils of inclement weather and/or flooding which have wreaked havoc on other camps in Iraq over the past 18 months. Also, the location of our camps are within the city limits enabling the men to easily get jobs in the local host community, not in some far flung deserted region that makes it next to impossible to re-enter society and care for one's own needs.

 

What we build at the Refuge Initiative from World Orphans on Vimeo.

- Billy Ray, Soran, Iraq

Tents to Homes Campaign Successful

Well, it's been quite awhile since I last updated my blog. It's seems to be the bane of everyone's social media existence: updating. I've been blogging here for the past 8 years now, and never before have I had such content to work with, but the time to 'tell the story' seems to be slipping away before I know it. Many people have abandoned blogging entirely in favor of easier formats like Facebook or Instagram. I'd like to keep doing this, but at the same time I'm seeing the handwriting on the wall.

Personally, I've found Instagram a great, great way to keep folks informed of the latest goings on here in Iraqi-Kurdistan. We have over 1,000 followers now, which is nothing to shake a stick at. If you are reading this and wondering what I've been up to the past 4 1/2 months, I'd love to explain, but an even easier solution would be to point you in the direction of our Instagram feed and Facebook page. Here is where the mighty worlds of fast paced social media prowess meet the demanding challenges of leading a life "worth recording".

So, before you read another sentence click on this link and follow us at https://www.instagram.com/therefugeinitiative/ and then, again at https://www.facebook.com/refugeinitiative  You'll be glad you did, and I'll begin to feel less guilty for not "updating" as often. : )  You'll be glad you did, and you'll enjoy a plethora of beautiful sights and sounds more intimately as we showcase Kurdistan in all it's glory.

Look at all those splendid photos. It was a good choice, eh?

Now that you have done that I will tell you that in response to our "Tents to Homes" campaign last fall, we received more than we asked for. We were needing $125,000 and that came in, in record time. Additional money that we received we rolled into our education fund and our winterization project where we supply kerosene to needy war widows as well as the refugees in our care.

Since I was in the States at the time, Tim Buxton, our country director and my close colleague and friend and buddy carried the day, while I was gone.

Here he is as they finished up converting the last tent into a permanent home in our Rwandz camp, now really a village:

Now, these families no longer have to worry about inclement weather turning their tents into wind socks. We've built over 100 homes now housing some 700 refugees, thanks to your support.

We landed back in Kurdistan at the end of the year, and Tim and his family returned at the end of January for a well needed break. So, we're back again working together and running on all cylinders. Thanks so much for your prayers and support... and thanks for following us on Instagram and Facebook. ; )

Windstorm Wreaks Havoc on Refugee Camps

Over the weekend, Iraqi-Kurdistan endured a crushing wind and thunderstorm that nearly flattened 3 of our camps. Fortunately, we had already upgraded the two others, and they were fine. But 55 families in our care are now in a really desperate place.

 

With winter crouching at the door we're faced with the need of upgrading the remaining 3 camps or our guests are going to have a very uncomfortable few months coming up, to say the least.

 

Some have even told us that they can no longer stay in our camps if we are unable to help them build a more permanent housing option.

 

Below you can see some of the damage that the windstorm wrought.

 

 

 

Some of the tents survived, but the confidence level in all of the refugees right now is pretty low. Honestly, they were scared to death during the storm, and I don't blame them having lived through a few of those ourselves in the Soran region, and we were in a concrete home.

 

So, we're needing to work quick here, and at the moment we're believing God for $125,000. We've already received the funds necessary to fix one of the camps, but really need your gifts to help us with the other two camps. Would you help us turn these tents into homes?

 

Click this link to go to our donor page and designate the gift as "tents into homes".

 

Thank you for giving and praying for this effort.

The Iraqi Kurds and then came ISIL: Al Jazeera Exclusive

Al Jazeera Article by Tanya Goudsouzian:

A view of Sulaimania city, northern Iraq [Tanya Goudsouzian/Al Jazeera]

It took two planes, a road trip and a rinky-dink speedboat to get me to Iraq's Kurdish region in January 2003. It was the run-up to the US-led invasion. Journalists were competing to get in. But neighbouring Iran, Turkey and Syria weren't making it easy.

After a six-day wait in Damascus, I flew in on a rickety charter plane, landing in the border town of Qamishli; the rest of the journey was by car, past the oil rigs, and into Malakia; and finally, a speedboat across the Tigris River. 

The assignment - gauge the mood in the run-up to the war.

"Nobody knows much about the Kurds," my editor had told me, flippantly. "Let's humanise them. Find out what they eat, whether they go to the cinema, what they think of the upcoming US invasion …"

I spoke to a cross section of Kurds, from shopkeepers in the bazaars, truck drivers, communists, former political prisoners, survivors of the 1991 gassing of Halabja, Peshmerga commanders to civil society activists.

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Also read: A growing identity crisis for Iraqi Kurds

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Abdullah, a fruits and vegetables vendor at the Erbil bazaar, had told me back then: "We hope Saddam will be removed. Maybe then, the local government can focus a little bit more on our plight."

Sulaimania bazaar [Tanya Goudsouzian/Al Jazeera]

The optimism was unanimous. The US had to invade, Saddam Hussein had to go, and so did the crippling sanctions that had so cruelly impeded progress in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region. For the Kurds, the war represented hope for a tantalisingly better future. 

In Erbil, I interviewed Massoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and president of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). In Sulaimania, I interviewed Jalal Talabani, leader of the rival party, Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). 

The next time I visited Iraqi Kurdistan, in the winter of 2005, it was a time to build. Fortune was flowing into the region, mostly from the Gulf countries and Turkey. Kurdish-administered northern Iraq was a blank slate; and adventurous, far-sighted businessmen from around the world were swooping in. 

"The Kurdistan region is open for business," KRG Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani told me in an interview in 2006.

There would soon be two new airports, several new housing projects, shopping malls, five-star hotels and Western fast-food chains. Still, in the midst of this investment frenzy, average Kurds endured hardships, such as regular power shortages, poor healthcare, an overstretched education system, and rents going up at a faster rate than public sector salaries.

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Also read: Iraqi Kurds: 'Losing to ISIL is not an option'

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I travelled back and forth for a few years, but I was most struck by what I noticed in 2010. It was weeks before the parliamentary elections, and the city was abuzz with rumours. Just a few months earlier, a new political party calling itself "Gorran"(Change) had emerged. It was the first significant newcomer on the Iraqi-Kurdish political scene, dominated for decades by the PUK and KDP.

Sulaimania is surrounded by mountains. We're buffered. If it weren't for the mountains, you'd probably hear the shelling. Security source

The party capitalised on the economic stagnation and general malaise over a sense that Sulaimania was lagging behind the regional capital, Erbil, which appeared to be drawing the lion's share of foreign investment. 

"Have you seen Erbil? How many skyscrapers they're building over there?" one young Sulaimania resident asked me. "They're finally building one here in Suly, but it's just one."

And so I went to visit the site of the city's first skyscraper, the upcoming Grand Millennium Hotel - a miniature replica of Dubai's signature Burj al-Arab. Proud residents of Sulaimania had already dubbed it the "Burj Sulaimania".

I followed with interest a year later, shortly after the outbreak of the Arab Spring. Demonstrations erupted on the Kurdish street, too. Some claimed these were orchestrated by Gorran, for political ends; others said the protests were a genuine expression of public dissatisfaction with the regional government's failure to ease daily hardships. 

Not much came of those protests, however. Kurds appeared unwilling to risk grappling with the post-Spring repercussions.

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Also read: The man who would be king of Kurdistan

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Last week, I got to return to Iraqi Kurdistan; my first trip back in five years. When I landed at Sulaimania Airport, security officers gave me an eye-scan and took my fingerprints on fancy machines. I remembered my first visit via speedboat, setting foot on muddy Kurdish shores in the cold of winter.

Sheikh Jaffar, commander of the Peshmerga's 70th Brigade, speaks to Al Jazeera [Lara Fatah/Al Jazeera]

A snazzy new jazz bar had just opened up at the upscale Copthorne Hotel. It was the place to see and be seen. There were also several Lebanese restaurants with sprawling gardens and outdoor seating; an Italian restaurant offering homemade gelato; and a dusty antique shop in an old Ottoman-era home that had been converted into a trendy eatery.

On the face of it, there was little to suggest that the region's revered Peshmerga were fighting yet another existential war only 60 kilometres away; not against Saddam's army, but against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

"Sulaimania is surrounded by mountains," a well-placed security source told me one evening, over tea on his porch. "We're buffered. If it weren't for the mountains, you'd probably hear the shelling."

With much of the construction nearly complete, Erbil now boasts a skyline fit for any self-respecting Gulf country. High-end housing complexes, a sushi bar, franchise fast-food restaurants, such as Hardee's and KFC, shops and international chain hotels, such as the Rotana and Divan, with the Marriott and Hilton soon to come.

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Also read: Festive spirit eludes Iraqi Kurds on Eid holidays

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But the city's spectacular skyline belies the recent regional developments that have essentially turned it into a ghost town. Its pavement cafes, restaurants and ritzy hotels were once full of foreigners and expatriates. But the ongoing war with ISIL has spoiled investor appetites. The five-star hotels now cater exclusively to the few security and NGO types who have not vacated.

"If only you had come back a year ago, and then you'd have really seen something," one local businessman, who owns a popular cafe, a shopping mall and a hotel, told me. "Things were different. Things were moving. And then ISIL happened."

In contrast to all the flashy consumerist additions to the region, Iraq's Kurds appear to be in a state of suspended animation. The hope of 2003 has been replaced with trepidation. If yesterday everything hinged on the removal of Saddam Hussein, today, everything they achieved hinges on whether or not their leadership can maintain a semblance of unity and hold the line against ISIL. Or else, all will come undone.

"We're just waiting now," the businessman told me. "Maybe it will pick up again when the war is over."

Tanya Goudsouzian

Tanya Goudsouzian is a media professional with extensive experience in post-conflict countries.

Source: Al Jazeera

Sponsor a Refugee

This month we rolled out a new campaign to help us with the ongoing costs of supporting upwards of 600 refugees that reside in one of our 5 micro camps. If this is something that grips your heart, please donate today and help us help the Iraqi people "for such a time as this."

The Refuge Initiative from World Orphans on Vimeo.

 

 

- Billy Ray, Soran, Iraq

Baylor Proud!

Baylor grads serve ISIS refugees in northern Iraq

AUGUST 26, 2015 // POSTED IN ALUMNI, EXTRAORDINARY STORIES, FAITH, SERVICE

Not many Americans would willingly uproot their family to move to one of the world’s more dangerous and remote corners. But, Billy (BA ’95) and Dawn (BSEd ’98) Ray feel their calling so deeply that they couldn’t imagine not living in northern Iraq, where they have served with World Orphans since 2008.

The Rays — Billy, Dawn, and their three sons — live in a region of northern Iraq known as Kurdistan. There, ISIS is far more than a news story about a sinister organization far away; it’s a real and present threat. That threat has chased nearly 500 refugees out of their homes, leaving everything they know behind — and into the welcoming arms of Billy and Dawn Ray and their colleagues from World Orphans.

The organization, which Billy serves as Middle East director, is a ministry built to serve orphans — individual children, dozens of families. But despite a total lack of experience running camps of this size, the Rays and World Orphans saw the need before them and acted. They now operate multiple sites housing fleeing families, working daily to meet the needs of approximately 500 refugees.

[WATCH Billy Ray’s presentation during a Baylor Chapel service last February]

Fittingly, the place they first housed the families was already known as “The Refuge.” After moving to Iraq, the Rays have worked with World Orphans to build a community center that would provide services and a place to care for the entire community, complete with event halls, meeting rooms, a playground and more. What they couldn’t have foreseen was that naming the center “The Refuge” would prove prophetic, as it became the first location that refugees fleeing ISIS found shelter. Because the center and grounds had been built and developed, World Orphans had a place to welcome the refugees the moment they heard about the need.

The Rays and their fellow workers continue to adapt to the refugees’ ever-changing needs, growing along with the people they serve. Although the challenges they face are new on a daily basis, ministering to the needs of others has been a way of life for the Rays since their days at Baylor. Fittingly, though, they didn’t actually meet on campus; they met in Turkey, where both were serving on mission trips (and where they lived for several years before moving back to the United States and then to Iraq).

In February, Billy visited Baylor to speak at chapel, where he impressed on Baylor students the importance of Jesus’ challenges to us. “Anyone who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple,” said Jesus — a charge the Rays have made the cornerstone of their ministry.

Sic ’em, Billy and Dawn Ray!

[For more information on the Rays’ work, you can follow Billy’s blog at rescue.typepad.com and visit WorldOrphans.org.]

 

Refugee School

There are over 3,500,000 IDPs alone in Iraq today... that's not even taking into account the number of refugees from Syria. This equates to hundreds of thousands of children not being able to take the next step in their educational development.

In some cases, children can join in with local schools, but language difficulties, location, and just sheer numbers prevent a viable pathway back to normal life for the majority.

The Refuge Initiative seeks to build communities of hope, and at it's very core knows that the education of the youth is in many ways the answer to their futures.

This past summer we opened the doors of The Refuge community center to over 150 school aged children who missed school almost entirely last year due to the raging conflicts in the region. These Yazidi and Shabak children are now getting a chance to reintegrate into the community and reboot their educational paths with the strong hope that it will change their futures.

Here are some of the kids at our new refugee school.

 

Please take a moment and pray for each of these kids that now attend our refugee school at the Refuge.

And pray for our teachers!

 

Also, take a moment and check out this great video on the crisis of education in the Middle East:

 

 

- Billy Ray, Soran, Iraq

 

The Refuge Initiative

When I went home in February to share of all that the Lord had been doing in Iraq since ISIS emerged, God began implanting in my heart a broader vision for our work. At that point, we had just finished the Community Center, the Refuge, and continued to house and care for 20 refugee families in a camp on our property.

 

From February till the end of May we acquired 3 large properties and built 5 separate camps on them that we've named: Project Akoyan, Rwandz Camp, and the Kawlokan Village for the 3 main areas in which they are located.

 

Our first, Project Akoyan, involved our most basic camp with about 100 Yazidis, our second hosts nearly 300 Yazidis in semi-permanent dwellings, while our third consists of actual homes for 200 Yazidis and Shabaks.

 

The speed at which all this happened was simply dizzying, defying the "slow build" of our previous 6 years in Iraq, that told us, "Maybe God is up to something here."

 

A vision was planted and took root in my heart during this time to develop micro-camps back in February, and in just a few months, the vision had become a reality.

 

The reason this vision is so important is because we are dealing with the worst humanitarian crisis since WWII. Millions upon millions are living in refugee camps today that squash individuality, encourage dependency, and harbor, even enforce indignity. What will become of these millions of children, in particular, as they grow up in such environments?

 

We've got to do something. What we've come up with is The Refuge Initiative.

 

The Refuge Initiative is a special division of World Orphans seeking to tackle the massive refugee crisis we are seeing in the Middle East today.

 

Our vision is to build micro-camps that foster autonomy, encourage dignity, and provide pathways to return to normal life. Larger camps are just unable to give refugees and IDPs that proper sense of community and belonging. By building micro-camps and allowing local leaders to govern them, we enable dignity, build autonomy, and get people back on the pathway of normal life in ways larger camps can never do.

 

Now, in addition to World Orphans vision to provide holistic care to children worldwide, we are  actually building communities of hope through The Refuge Initiative.

 

- Billy Ray, Soran, Iraq

Join with us in tackling the largest humanitarian crisis in our world today. Join: The Refuge Initiative!

Kawlokan Village - Building Pathways

The Shabaks are among some of the smallest minorities in all of Iraq. They mainly live in the Sunni areas of Northern Iraq, though historically following the Shiite branch of Islam and numbering less than 50,000 in the whole country. Because they are Shiites they were immediately in the cross-hairs of ISIS as it plowed it’s way through Mosul and the surrounding villages.

 

The Shabaks knew that they were next, and with the help of a tip off from a neighboring friend they fled into the Kurdish autonomous region not 2 hours before ISIS militants invaded their village.

 

They found their way to the mountainous region of Soran and rented a small apartment building for the 20 families from their village before realizing they’d been so close to being another casualty in the ISIS assault. Within weeks, however, they weren’t able to pull together enough money to pay for an additional month of rent. So, they reached out to the local municipality, and the mayor subsequently reached out to us.

 

We were ready to help with land that the government had already placed in our care to build the Refuge Community Center 6 years earlier. Nearly the entire complex had been completed except for one quarter of an acre that we were waiting to turn into a children’s park. Well, the children’s park would have to wait for now.

 

When we heard about these 20 Shabak families plight, we kicked into high gear on the 2nd of September 2014, levelled the land, hauled in rock and gravel, put up tents, hooked up the electricity, and by the 9th all the families moved in with smiles on their faces. Having lost nearly everything they owned, it was all a shock to us to see them express with thankful hearts their gratitude for the new “homes” we were able to provide them.

 

But, that’s not the end of the story… 8 months later, we were able to build each of these families their own permanent home in a place we’ve named the Kawlokan Village. Now, they are on the road to rebuilding their lives in a new land.

Here's a photo of the day we chose the land for the village:

... and the progress:

Building communities of hope and building pathways back to normal life is what the Refuge Initiative (a division of World Orphans) is all about.

  

If you’d like to learn more, check out our new website at: http://therefugeinitiative.org

 

The Return of the Yazidis by Richard Spencer (Telegraph)

In the last few months, a quiet project has set up rat runs for the thousands of people still held as hostages - or worse - by Isil. Gradually, the Yazidis are coming home.

By Richard Spencer, Wednesday 19 August 2015 (The Return of the Yazidis)

The column of escaping women appeared on the hillside as the sun was starting to sink in the sky. There were 21 of them, from babes in arms to the middle-aged, and they had been dodging Islamic State patrols from three o’clock that morning. 

For Ibrahim Mirza, the Iraqi police officer who was waiting for them on the mountain in his Kia Sorento car, it was a bitter-sweet moment. Among the group were his mother, one of his teenage sisters, and a baby niece. Until that afternoon, when his sister managed to get a phone call through to him, he had not known whether they were alive or dead. 

“I was so happy to see them," he said. But he was still fearful; he did not yet know what had happened to them in the weeks they had been missing. Moreover, there were just these three: there was still no sign of his father or the twenty or so other members of his immediate family who had been kidnapped by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant three weeks before. 

He piled all 21 women into and on to his Kia, and set off up the hill away from the front lines. “There are still dents in the roof,” he told me. 

Farida, 18, and her mother Zuhra, in a tent near a refugee camp in Ba'adre, Iraq, Aug. 2015. Holly Pickett 

On August 3 a year ago, Isil jihadists swept across the Nineveh plain into the towns around Mt Sinjar, in north-west Iraq, the homeland of the Yazidi people.

The Yazidis were previously known, if at all, as an exotic bunch, a minority even among the Middle East’s patchwork of sects: based on Zoroastrianism, their faith involves the worship of a “Peacock Angel”, called Malek Taus. 

To Isil, they are at best pagans, at worst, devil-worshippers, and according to its ideology, that means its men can be killed and its women seized and forced into sexual and other servitudewith impunity. This is what Isil did to tens of thousands of the Yazidis, including the Mirza clan. 

They were taking the girls to a “sorting ceremony” , to be assessed for prettiness, and sold 

But the Mirzas are fighting back. While the story of the Yazidis is one of unremitting horror, it is also one of resilience. 

In the last few months, a quiet project run by volunteers, smugglers, community leaders and the government of the Kurdistan Autonomous Region of northern Iraq has set up rat runs for the thousands of people still held as hostages - or worse - by Isil. Gradually, Yazidis like this family are coming home. 

In Mr Mirza’s case, the family reunion began with his sister, Farida*, and her charge up the mountain. 

The night before, she and the 20 other women and girls had been taken from the temporary prison where they had been held and stuffed into the back of a truck, on their way to one of Isil’s grotesque “sorting ceremonies”, a military victor’s version of a beauty pageant. The women were to be assessed for prettiness and distributed - sold - into slavery. 

 

 

Ibrahim Mirza with some of the boys he led out of captivity, in Ba'adre, Iraq, Aug. 2015. Holly Pickett

During the night, the truck came to a halt. In the silence, the women looked out, and saw nothing. Farida thought perhaps the driver had simply stopped for a rest. “Maybe he had fallen asleep,” she said. “We didn’t know, but we ran anyway.” 

They sought refuge in some nearby houses owned by Arab families - a big risk, given that in some of the surrounding Arab villages sectarian feelings run so high that the locals have sided with Isil rather than their old Yazidi neighbours. Luckily, the women found help. 

For the rest of the day, they ran from cover to cover, gradually getting closer to the looming presence of Mt Sinjar above. There lay safety. 

They lined up thousands of men by the roadsides and shot them down 

It was less than two weeks since Sinjar had become, briefly, the most famous place in Iraq. While the jihadists rounded up the residents of the surrounding villages, lining up thousands of men by the roadsides and shooting them down, many others fled up the hill. 

There, helicopter pictures beamed round the world showed tens of thousands of people clamouring for help, in some cases dying of thirst before the world’s eyes in the harsh summer heat. Temperatures at this time of year are regularly above 110F (45C). 

Yazidi people rush towards an aid helicopter, 2014. RUDAW

Eventually, a Kurdish militia from the other side of the Syrian border, which runs to the mountain’s west, came to their rescue, fighting an exit path through Isil lines and leading them down. It turned the mountain from a hell to a haven, one which Farida, her mother Zuhra, and the others were able to exploit. 

For Mr Mirza, it was three down, but many more to go. 

The treatment of Yazidi girls under Isil rule has been widely recorded - partly by Isil itself, in articles explaining how in its view rape is compatible with Islamic law, or Sharia. 

An article in Isil’s online magazine, Dabiq, said, “After capture, the Yazidi women and children were divided according to the Sharia amongst the fighters of the Islamic State who participated." The article went on to use the traditions of the early Islamic conquests to justify taking polytheist captives into sexual slavery. 

“There was nothing they did not do to us” 

The abuse is unremitting, and it started as soon as they were taken, according to Farida and one of her cousins, Marwa*. “There was nothing they did not do,” said Farida. Both girls are just 18. 

Farida does not go into detail, at least not in front of strangers and her father, Mustafa, who is present. She speaks fluently, often breaking into laughter that is betrayed as hollow only when she looks away. 

Marwa, on the other hand, shakes as she speaks. 

She was initially held in a large holding cell and “everything you can imagine” was done to her. “Many of us were beaten and hurt in many ways,” she says. “I wanted to die”. 

 

After ten days, she was taken to the Syrian town of Raqqa, Isil’s de facto capital, having been bought by a family there: an Isil fighter, his wife, and two children. 

Although young and pretty, she was not used for sex by this fighter, she says, but as a household servant, mainly cleaning. 

She was not allowed out of the house at all; but apart from the raw fact of her servitude she was not badly treated, including by the fighter, she said, and in fact owed her freedom to his wife. 

The Kurdish government paid $3,300 US to buy her back 

She eventually took pity, telling Marwa she should be with her family. She found a middle-man to sell her back and drive her to safety. The Kurdish government paid the $3,300 US and Marwa was driven to the nearby Turkish border, and then back to Iraq, arriving after four days of travel last November. 

As in Farida’s case, there were tears as well as joy in her return. She found three of her brothers. Of the fourth, and of her father, there was and remains no news. 

ISIL fighters during a parade in Raqqa, Syria, 2014. Raqqa Media Center via AP

The day the jihadists came had been a desperate one for Ibrahim Mirza and his wife, Zuhra*. Like other families, they had tried to escape as Isil swarmed into Sinjar, the biggest town in the arid foothills of the mountain that is at the centre of the Yazidis’ homeland. 

But Isil had stopped their vehicles and told them to go home. They had no choice but to obey. 

Outside the town, people were not even given that choice: it is now estimated around 5,000 men were massacred on the district’s roadside, 1,600 on that first day. 

The first mass graves are now being exhumed in liberated areas. 

Later, the family was brought to an administrative centre in Sinjar to be imprisoned, in separate rooms for men and women. Samira*, their 16-year-old, was taken away. “They saw her and said, ‘OK, give her to us’. I was crying and trying to refuse but they took her anyway,” said her mother. 

 

 

Marwa, 18, outside a tent near a refugee camp in Ba'adre, Iraq, Aug. 2015. Holly Pickett

Mr Mirza and the other men and boys were held for two months, after which he was set up in a house near the city of Tal Afar. Mr Mirza was set to work as a shepherd, and his one remaining daughter returned to him. 

It is a characteristic of Isil that, once it has murdered and raped its way across conquered territory, it tries to establish a new rule of law. Farmers in the area describe how inspectors arrived, dictating details of the practices they were to follow, down to the exact prices they were allowed to charge for their wheat and tomatoes. 

Finally, they reached the front and made a run for their lines 

This appeared to be the role they now had in mind for Mr Mirza’s decimated family, a normal life on the land, but obedient to Isil’s will. 

Tal Afar is well behind Isil lines, and until April they lived a strange, dislocated normality, not allowed to travel but otherwise just working and keeping house. 

Mr Mirza decided to organise an escape attempt. He had a phone, and was able to call a brother who served in the police in Kurdistan, who hired local smugglers as guides. 

Displaced Yazidis settle in abandoned houses in Mount Sinjar, 2014. REUTERS/Rodi Said

One night, 33 people from several families made a dash for it, with Mr Mirza and the smugglers at their head. For three days, they made their way 45 miles across country, walking by night and hiding out in abandoned houses when it was light, circumventing Isil checkpoints. 

The most difficult thing, he said, was keeping the children from making a noise when Isil fighters were nearby. The group had taken no supplies so as to travel light, but it was hard going in the thirst of an early summer heat-wave. 

Finally, they reached the front. He was still in touch with his brother, who had warned the Kurdish army, the Peshmerga, to expect them and not open fire. They made a run for their lines. 

“Life could begin again,” he said. 

The Yazidis have a reputation for honour killing 

That is true, up to a point. Most of Mr Mirza’s family is now with him. They have been given a house next to one of the sprawling refugee camps that are now dotted across the baking hills of Iraqi Kurdistan. 

There the Yazidis and Christians, driven out of the Nineveh plains at the same time, survive on small food hand-outs until they can somehow return home or find permanent asylum elsewhere. 

The Yazidis follow conservative social customs and they have a reputation for honour killing - especially for women who try to marry outside of the sect. 

Their religion, though, is generous and open, welcoming all-comers to visit its holiest place, the temple of Lalish, still under Kurdish government control in the hills near the city of Dohuk, north-east of Sinjar. 

In the cool of the temple, followers hang knotted scarves, each knot representing a wish. Yazidis have been coming here in droves since last August, seeking refuge and solace, and in some cases to wash away their pain and shame 

 

 

Lalish temple, near Shekhan, Iraq, Aug. 2015. Wishes are represented by fabric knots tied to the pillars. Holly Pickett

The spiritual head of the Yazidis is known as Baba Sheikh, and he made a key intervention on behalf of his people, one that may seem obvious to outsiders but has meant enough to his followers for several to mention it. 

He gave a speech in which he said anything that happened while under Isil oppression should be regarded as not having happened. By this, he meant both forcible conversion to Islam, and matters concerning women's "honour", allowing abused girls to be welcomed back into their families and communities without shame. 

She was being held east of Mosul with five other girls 

This is a great comfort to Zuhra, the mother of the family. But it only goes so far: it will not bring back the 12 brothers and nephews she has lost. 

Nor will it bring back her daughter Samira. 

The family know where she is. For a while, she was able to get messages out on a mobile phone that she had hidden. She was being held, she said, in a house in the once-Christian town of Qaraqosh, east of Mosul, along with five other girls. She spent much of their conversations crying. 

The Yazidi spiritual leader Baba Sheikh in Dohuk, Iraq, 2014. Emrah Yorulmaz/Getty Images

They haven’t heard from her in several weeks aside from one call three weeks ago, which she made on an Isil phone to commence the bartering process. 

The going rate is normally $3-6,000 US for the return of a girl, but she had been told to ask for 15,000; right from the start, she was singled out for her good looks, her father said. 

“She has told us she is not in good health,” Mr Mirza said. “We do not really know how she is, or what has happened to her, but she has not been well treated.” 

What is the future for the Yazidis? Some of their territory has been recovered, with the help of the Kurdish Peshmerga and the PKK, the guerrilla group, and of US-led coalition air strikes. But these forces have not been able to clear more than a quarter of Sinjar town, and the battle lines have been stuck for several months. 

 

 

Khanke refugee camp for displaced persons, including Yazidis, in Nineveh governate, Iraq, Aug. 2015. Holly Pickett

At least 400,000 Yazidis are displaced, from a total population in Iraq of 600,000. In all, there are two million refugees from the war. 

There are few social services, not least for the traumatised girls. For all her smiles, Farida, the teenager who made it up the mountain with her mother, has tried to slit her wrists. She is embarrassed as she shows the scars. 

On their hillside, with nowhere to go, the family nonetheless say there is no going back either. There is a determination, that in the middle of the horror, human values and relations come before anything else, even their land. History, in any case, has been lost behind a veil of brutality. 

“We don’t want the past back,” Marwa said. “We don’t even want our land back. We just want our prisoners back.” 

*The Mirza family agreed to be photographed for this story, but The Telegraph has changed their names. 

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