It is often said that war is a racket, but one of the most overlooked parts of the racket are the sex crimes that so often occur in the context of war. While the infamous “Rape of Nanking” by Japanese troops during the 1930s may hold the world record for sexual sadism, the phenomenon is so prevalent that the United Nations employs a person whose title is Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict.

Not surprisingly, of the many crimes of ISIS are those involving sex. As the UN’s aforementioned Special Representative explains:

“ISIL have institutionalized sexual violence and the brutalization of women as a central aspect of their ideology and operations, using it as a tactic of terrorism to advance their key strategic objectives.”^[1]

The most frequent victims of ISIS sex slavery are the Yazidis. If you don’t know who the Yazidis are, here are a few facts about them, courtesy of Petr Kubalek of Charles University in Prague:

• The Yazidis are a socio-religious group that is traditionally rural — namely farmers or shepherds and whose members are primarily native Kurdish speakers.
• Most Yazidis live in Iraq, where their numbers are estimated to be between 500,000 and 700,000.
• Yazidis believe that they were conceived from Adam’s semen and that, unlike the rest of humanity, they have no relation to Eve.
• Persecution of the Yazidis dates back to the community’s earliest years, when they were attacked by the local rulers of Mosul and the nearby Kurdish principalities on suspicion that they were Islamic heretics. These attacks between 1254 and 1415 solidified the development of Yazidism as a religion separate from Islam and led to the militarization of the Yazidis.
• In modern times, the weakened Yazidi community became ensnared in fighting between Kurdish liberation groups and government forces. In Turkey, this led to virtually all of the country’s Yazidis to seek refuge in Germany.
• After the fall of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, the Yazidis were increasingly targeted by Islamic militants.
• Yazidi culture has featured numerous bans related to speech, behavior and food. The most universal of these is a ban on pronouncing the name of Satan.^[2]

In areas abandoned by ISIS, sinister-looking dungeons have been discovered, providing evidence of their sex crimes against Yazidis. (See photo.)

Testimony of victims is also abundant. Survivors testify that ISIS captured girls as young as 7 years old, holding them for up to a year. One Yazidi woman said she was told that being raped by ten ISIS fighters would make her Muslim. Another said that ISIS employed gynecologists to inspect captive women for virginity and pregnancy, sometimes resulting in surgery to “restore” virginity or abortions to terminate pregnancy.

In addition, a mass grave was recently discovered by Kurdish forces, containing some 80 Yazidi women considered too old to be sexually profitable.^[3]

Sources used:

[1] UN.org

[2] RFERL.org

[3] Breitbart.com