U.S.-backed Syrian forces battling Islamic State militants in their last hideout in eastern Syria said they have rescued dozens of Yazidi children held by the militant group for years. 

Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish-led alliance, said last week that they had successfully freed more than a dozen Yazidi children from IS as they evacuated civilians from the Syrian town of Baghuz. 

“Among many children saved from [IS] territory today, a group of Yazidi children also arrived to safe areas,” SDF spokesman Mustafa Bali said in a tweet. 

Yazidis, a Kurdish-speaking religious minority, are viewed as infidels by IS extremists.

In August 2014, IS militants made a massive attack on Sinjar, once home to the largest Yazidi community in the world. At least 5,000 Yazidis, mostly men and boys, were killed during the attack on the Iraqi city. 

Sex slaves, soldiers

IS then kidnapped thousands of Yazidi children and women, who were subsequently used as sex slaves and child soldiers. 

The 12 children recently freed by IS in Baghuz are now in a special residence near Hasaka, a Kurdish-held area in northeast Syria. 

“I was held for more than four years,” said Mazin Salim, 14, a former captive.

“When they first took me from my village [near Sinjar], they kept me in Mosul for several weeks,” he told VOA in a phone interview this week. 

Salim added that “along with many other Yazidi children, I was then taken to a location in Syria. I believe it was Aleppo. After staying there for a few months, they transferred us to Raqqa.”

Raqqa, the de facto capital of IS, was liberated by the SDF with support from the U.S.-led coalition in October 2017. 

“When fighting intensified in Raqqa, they moved us to an area near Baghuz,” Salim said. 

The Yazidi teenager said that while he was in custody, IS indoctrinated him with its extremist ideology. 

“In the beginning, they would beat me every day because I didn’t know Arabic and didn’t know anything about Islam,” Salim explained. “But slowly, they taught me how to read verses from the Quran.”

‘Cubs of the Caliphate’

During its brutal reign in Syria and Iraq, IS recruited child soldiers to be part of what it called “Cubs of the Caliphate,” a unit made up of brainwashed and abused children who would carry out suicide attacks, execute civilians and perform other cruel acts. 

“I checked up on all of these children,” said Shahin Hossein, a Kurdish doctor who has been providing medical care to the Yazidi children since their arrival. “All of them have varying degrees of psychological problems.”

Hossein said some of the children have been suffering from physical illnesses for a long time without receiving any treatment. 

Since the battle to capture Baghuz began this month, it has been easier for SDF fighters to find Yazidi children and women. 

“Before this final battle in Baghuz, we had contacts in Daesh territory who would provide us with information about Yazidi captives,” SDF spokesman Bali told VOA, using an Arabic word for IS. “So, we would carry out special operations to rescue them. But since all civilians are leaving Baghuz, it is easier to identify Yazidis as they come out of the town.” 

Once they are identified, Yazidi children and women are taken to a different location, separate from camps hosting other civilians fleeing IS.  

“Our job is to receive them, give them medical treatment and then facilitate their return to Sinjar,” said Mahmoud Resho, a coordinator at the Yazidi House Council, a local organization that supports Yazidi refugees and captives. 

“So far, we have a total of 25 children and a woman who are waiting to go to their families in Sinjar,” Resho told VOA. 

A child who refused to be named for security reasons said that he was able to communicate with his family in Sinjar through the Yazidi House Council and that “he can’t wait to see them again.” 

Resho said the Iraqi government has recently closed its border with Syria. “That’s why these people have been waiting for a while,” he added. 

Uncertainty about families

Another problem facing Yazidi children rescued from IS in Syria is that many don’t know the whereabouts or statuses of their families, Resho said.

“These kids have been kidnapped for almost five years. Some of their families are either killed or have migrated to Europe,” he said.   

Salim said he doesn’t know what awaits him in Sinjar. 

“I miss my family so much, but I don’t know whether they’re alive or dead,” he said.
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Hundreds of people boarded trucks leaving the last scrap of the Islamic State group’s “caliphate” in eastern Syria on Wednesday as U.S.-backed forces prepared to deliver the final blow to holdout jihadists.

Several thousand people — fighters and their relatives — are believed to be cornered in the last pocket of IS-held territory, barely half a square kilometer near the Iraqi border.

Nearly five years since IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi ascended a pulpit in a Mosul mosque to urge Muslims to join the newly proclaimed “caliphate,” the proto-state is only days away from dying in a tiny village that until recently few even in Syria had known existed.

Thousands of its last denizens, many of them women and children, have been pouring out of the riverside hamlet of Baghuz in recent days, posing a huge humanitarian challenge for the Kurdish fighters leading the operation.

On Wednesday alone, 15 trucks rumbled out of Baghuz, the fifth such evacuation in a week.

After being screened, the evacuees are sent on to the Al-Hol camp farther north.

The International Rescue Committee said that “the large numbers of arrivals mean there are estimated to be around 2,000 people currently sleeping rough at the arrivals area despite the poor weather conditions.”

Survivors of the months-old siege who spill out of the double-trailer trucks tell harrowing tales of starvation. Many need immediate medical attention.

Lines of black-veiled women holding scruffy children and carrying their scant belongings in bags can be seen walking down from a hill near Baghuz and across the arid plain.

Save the Children said many of the surviving children have witnessed horrifying events in recent months and are “showing signs of psychological distress.”

Human shields

An AFP reporter saw that the latest trucks to leave were not as full as in previous days.

It was not clear how far this was because fewer people are trapped in the IS-held pocket or because those who remain either cannot leave or want to stay and fight.

The men who leave are carefully screened by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), who have spearheaded the battle against IS in Syria, with support from a U.S.-led coalition.

Suleiman Mohammad Terbu, a Syrian who walked on crutches because of an injury, said he had been a teacher at an IS-run school.

The jihadist group ran schools throughout the territories it controlled, indoctrinating boys into its ideology, but Terbu insisted he only taught the Quran, math and sport.

“My family were smuggled out before me, but I couldn’t do that because [IS fighters] don’t let anyone leave,” he said.

The remaining diehard jihadists — many of them foreigners — have also been using civilians as human shields.

Footage captured by the BBC from positions held by Iraqi paramilitary forces across the Euphrates River shows an improvised camp where an apparent jihadist can be seen running among makeshift tents.

As warplanes fly overhead, a woman is seen collecting water from the river in a plastic jerrycan while men move stealthily among the jumble of minivans and civilian shelters that make any direct airstrike impossible.

The SDF launched its final offensive against IS-held territory in September 2018.

The operation has been deadly and slow, and one top French officer even published stinging criticism of the coalition’s reluctance to fully involve its ground forces.

U.S. President Donald Trump late last year announced a complete troop pullout from Syria, leaving the SDF exposed to Turkish military threats.

A security vacuum could also see a quick resurgence of IS, which has lost all its strongholds in Syria and Iraq but remains a potent guerrilla force.

Even the U.S. military warned that the jihadists could potentially re-establish territorial control in some areas within six months if there were no “sustained counterterrorism pressure.”

Almost eight years into a multi-faceted conflict that has killed more than 360,000 people, Syria’s humanitarian emergency shows no sign of relenting.

Traumatized children

With aid agencies struggling to provide basic relief to famished civilians evacuated from the remote Baghuz area, Save the Children highlighted the trauma the youngest among them had suffered.

The children who fled IS-held areas were “likely to have witnessed acts of brutality and lived under intense bombardment and deprivation,” it said.

In a statement, it quoted an 11-year-old saying: “I always tried not to look when there were beheadings. I would hide behind my mum.”

It called for much greater efforts to help the children.

“That includes funding and access for case management and protective services, and for foreign children repatriation to their countries of origin,” said Save the Children’s Syria response director, Sonia Khush.

The local Kurdish administration is struggling to cope with the humanitarian burden and has repeatedly urged the world to step up its aid effort.

Detained jihadists’ countries of origin are reluctant to repatriate them, fearing a public backlash and security threats.
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The Taliban says negotiations with the United States continued Wednesday in Qatar for a second day amid hopes of making further progress toward ending the conflict in Afghanistan.

A spokesman for the insurgent group noted that “technical groups” focused for a day-and-a-half until Wednesday afternoon on the withdrawal of U.S.-led international forces when they took up the issue of the Taliban guarantees to prevent Afghan soil from being used for terrorist attacks against America and its allies.

“Talks about preventing Afghanistan from harming others are currently under discussion,” said Zabihullah Mujahid.

The two sides announced after their last meeting in Doha a month ago they had agreed “in principle” on a “framework” of discussions on the two key issues.

U.S. representative for Afghanistan reconciliation, Zalmay Khalilzad, is leading the American team, while Sher Muhammad Abbas Stanekzai is heading an “authoritative” team of Taliban negotiators.

‘Paving the ground’

The ongoing meeting is expected to last for several days and is the fifth round of talks since late last summer when Washington directly engaged the Taliban in a dialogue that U.S. officials say is primarily aimed at paving the ground for a sustainable intra-Afghan peace process.

Khalilzad repeatedly clarified, however, that any final U.S. troop withdrawal plan would be linked to a Taliban cease-fire and the rebel group’s direct talks with the government in Kabul. The insurgent group refuses to engage in talks with the Afghan government, though, insisting any discussions on internal Afghan matters must be decided by Afghans themselves.

At an informal session Monday hosted by Qatari officials prior to the formal negotiations, Taliban delegates were introduced to American interlocutors by Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the newly appointed Taliban’s deputy chief of political affairs and head of its Qatar-based office.

Baradar arrived in Doha a day before the two sides reconvened for the meeting, and his presence is seen as key to sustaining a productive dialogue with the U.S., according to insurgent officials.

The Taliban leader had been in detention in Pakistan since 2010 when a joint operation by local and U.S. intelligence operatives captured him in the city of Karachi while he was traveling through the neighboring country. He was released last October at the request of Khalilzad, meeting a key insurgent demand.

Baradar is known as a co-founder of the Taliban, and he is considered a highly respected figure in the rebel group. He is credited for organizing the insurgent campaign after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan 17 years ago ousted the Taliban from power. Baradar continues to maintain influence over Taliban battlefield commanders, particularly in southern Afghan provinces, observers say.
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Israel’s prime minister vowed to prevent Iran from securing a lasting presence in Syria as he visited Moscow on Wednesday for talks focusing on regional security.

For Benjamin Netanyahu, it’s the first trip to Moscow since September’s downing of a Russian warplane by Syrian forces that were responding to an Israeli airstrike. The incident left 15 Russian crew dead and threatened to derail close security ties between Russia and Israel.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said at the start of Wednesday’s talks that “it’s very important to discuss the situation in the region and security issues.”

He added that the high-level consultations are essential in view of the evolving situation.

Netanyahu began the talks by reaffirming Israel’s strong determination to block attempts by Iran to establish a foothold in Syria.

“The greatest threat to stability and security in the region comes from Iran and its satellites,” he said. “We are determined to continue with our aggressive action against the efforts of Iran, which calls for our destruction, and against its attempts to entrench militarily in Syria.”

Moscow has played a delicate diplomatic game of maintaining friendly ties with both Israel and Iran. Last summer, Moscow struck a deal with Tehran to keep its fighters away from the Golan Heights to accommodate Israeli concerns about the Iranian presence in Syria.

Netanyahu noted that he and Putin had 11 meetings since September 2015 and hailed “the direct, open and true way in which we maintain the relationship between Russia and Israel.”

“The direct connection between us has been an essential element that has prevented risks and conflicts between our militaries, and that has contributed to regional security and stability,” the Israeli leader said.

Netanyahu congratulated Putin on the military holiday Russia marked last weekend and invited him to visit Israel to attend the opening of a monument to the Nazi siege of Leningrad during World War II.

“We will never forget the role of Russia and the Red Army in the victory over the Nazis,” he said.

Putin, a native of the city, accepted the offer.

Netanyahu praised “excellent bilateral relations,” noting “more than one million Russian speakers who have made a great contribution to Israel, have turned into a part of us, and have made Russian culture a part of Israeli culture.”
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