The Daily - The Daily Presents “Caliphate,” Chapter 9, Part 2

Episode Date: June 16, 2018

The New York Times has introduced a documentary audio series that follows Rukmini Callimachi, who covers terrorism for The Times, on her quest to understand ISIS. Today, as a special episode of “The Daily,” we offer Chapter 9, Part 2 of “Caliphate,” in which a young Yazidi girl returns to her family after three years in ISIS captivity, and Rukmini is there to witness it. For more information about the series, visit nytimes.com/caliphate.This episode includes disturbing language and scenes of graphic violence.

Chapter 9, Prisoners, Part 2. So, can we start at the camp? Will you just describe what is this place and why are we there? So about a week after Mosul was liberated, you and I drove north to these refugee camps where the remnants of the Yazidi community are now living. These camps are basically cities of tents where entire families are living under a plastic or a canvas roof.

Hi, how are you? Nice to meet you. And we had come to this camp in particular because we had heard that two young Yazidi women, who had managed to survive three years in ISIS's hands, had just that morning been reunited with their families. Let's go to see them. We met my friend Fulon, who had agreed to translate for us. And he walked us to the specific tent where the two women had just been brought. And as we reached the tent, Are they coming to welcome them or to...

Yes, I see. We noticed that there was a crowd gathering. I saw somebody with a tray of soft drinks, I saw somebody else with a basket of clothes, somebody else was bringing food. He's crying, this man. Why is he crying, do you think? Because it's very sad, Three years have passed. It was essentially the community coming to rally and to welcome back two members that they surely thought were lost.

We were led to the tent, and I realized right away that we had no business being there. Oh, my God. They look very sick. The women who had just arrived, they look really bad. They were completely out. One of them was facing upward and I could see that her eyelids

were literally fluttering. People around them were crying and weeping. But the girls, they looked catatonic. I think that's when I turned to you and said, we've got to go. The woman who was weeping inside, that was the mother of the girls? Oh my God. Okay. Yeah. So we stepped outside a tent. So we stepped outside a tent. And one of the uncles of the young women stepped out behind us.

I saw him crying as he was coming out. Can he say why? It's okay. It's okay. It's okay. And he just broke down. It's okay. And he just broke down. It's okay. It's okay. And for a few minutes we just stood next to him. Thank you. So eventually we got to sit down with one of the men who helped to reconnect these girls with their families.

He's well-known in Yazidi community. Everybody that you ask him. He's actually a famous Yazidi figure. Remind me, how many girls did he rescue? Three hundred? Twenty-nine. My God. Remind me, how many girls did he rescue? Three hundred?

Twenty-nine. My God. He has, by some accounts, rescued over 300 Yazidi women and girls from ISIS captivity. He said that when he picked up these women, which was basically the day before, that they weren't comatose at all. They were awake, they were animated, they were not acting sick. But even more strangely, they were acting like they were members of the Islamic State.

They were refusing to take off the full niqab, which is the face-covering veil. They were praising the Islamic State. They were referring to the men who had raped them as their husbands and as martyrs. They were telling us, right, everybody became Muslim. They thought that everybody had become Muslim. That there was no more Yazidis. Yeah, yes.

Oh, my God. Wow. So they thought there were no more Yazidis. Wow. So they thought there were no more refugees? Even they thought that if they told to the military leader that they are Yazidi, they may put them in the jail. And is that because they spent so much time with ISIS? Of don't care about your country, Islam is the only one. Of course, three years have been passed, and they were like making their brain to be washed. And also they were telling them

that all the world became an Islamic state. Are you serious? They're saying this now? It's new, it's new. It's new, it's new. It's new, it's new. Yes. He said that he began to argue with them, and he explained to them that the caliphate was on its last legs, that ISIS had lost an enormous amount of territory.

But he said that the more he tried to explain these things to them, the quieter they became. And suddenly what seemed to be happening was that they were falling into some sort of state of shock. What was that like for you? I mean, that was really sad. This is a really delicate thing right now, you know, because obviously the journalist in me wants to push as hard as I can to get these interviews. But it's obvious that that would be just, in this particular moment, that would be really rude and unkind. These are people that are really wounded right now.

What I really wanted to do was to hear from the women themselves. But it was clear that it was inappropriate for us to continue staying here. They were sick. We needed to go. So we said goodbye. We headed back to our hotel. And I was actually packing my bags. We were getting ready to leave. When we got a phone call from another family. We don't know where it is. Another girl had just returned after three years of ISIS captivity.

And in this instance, it was the family contacting us and wanting us to come to interview them. And so we drove to another camp that was just a few miles away. And as we pulled up, the uncle of the young woman that we were to meet was actually waiting for us. Yes, and this is Andy? Rukmini. He led us into the tent. And once again, it was the same thing all over again.

There was a young woman. She was lying bundled in a fuzzy blanket. And mind you, it was, I think, 114 degrees outside. She was so weak that she couldn't even hold up her own head. So tired. About four days, I received hair from Mosul. The difference here was that her family, specifically her uncle and her mom, were really adamant that her story needed to get out. Can I just ask, is it okay if we use her name? Should we just say a 16-year-old girl?

How does he want her to be identified? It's okay. It's our matter. We want the people to know the reality. Even if the photo is used, there is no problem. We asked her as well. But is she okay also? It's okay.

She was able to whisper answers back to us. And she affirmed this. Her uncle was basically cradling her in his arms. The whole interview was conducted with him leaning over her and putting his ear essentially just a couple of inches from her mouth. Whispering a question to her, she whispering an answer back. It was an incredibly tender scene. Her name is Suheila.

She is 16. She's 16, which means that she was just 13 when she was kidnapped by ISIS. That was her. He showed us a picture on his phone of what she looked like the year that she was taken. She was happy and she was laughing

before ISIS came. And she just looks like a chubby and cheerful elementary school girl. How many sisters does she have? She's one of six sisters. Three of the girls were kidnapped in 2014 when ISIS came. One of them was older than Suheila, and the family hasn't heard anything from her since she was taken years ago.

From the first week of captivity, 2014, till now, we don't know anything about her. The other one, her name was Seyma, was just 11 when she was taken. She spent a very short amount of time with Suheila in the same location, and then she was separated from her sister. And the last the family heard, she had been moved to Syria by the men who were holding her. That's a recent picture of her or old picture? They showed us the most recent image that they have of her.

There is a market for selling girls. It's an image in a catalog of girls. They're trying to beautify them. She's wearing eyeshadow and lipstick. How many times was she sold? Sohaila told us that she was bought and sold by nine different men.

Sorry, this is so personal. Did they give her birth control? All of them gave her birth control. The first rape, they injected her, the first one. The first one injected her? Yeah, she don't know what was the injection. And the others used the pills. Excuse me for asking this question. When they raped her, did the men who did this, would they pray before they raped her?

Yes. At one point, Suhaila pointed to her wrist and explained to us that she had tried to kill herself. She told him, if you touch me, I will suicide. And really, she tried to suicide, and she has the trauma on her. Her wrist was scarred in the spot that she was touching from the place where she had tried to cut her vein to end her life because of the pain she was in. So this is something that I've heard time and again. Many of the Yazidi women and girls who escaped ISIS captivity told me that there came a point in their captivity

when they just didn't want to live anymore. It was so prevalent that ISIS started to take away razor blades. They took away the women's scarves because so many of them were attempting to kill themselves in captivity. Now, this is just an insufferable way to live. But compounding that is the fact that the Yazidi culture, historically, has always had a very strong honor code. So strong that, in fact, Yazidi women and girls, they're not even allowed to date outside of their own community. If they do, they're literally not considered Yazidi anymore. And the story that everyone tells is the story of a Yazidi girl who allegedly fell in love with a Muslim neighbor. When they were found out, she was publicly stoned to death. And ISIS, they knew this and they exploited this.

They repeatedly told these girls and the women they were holding, listen, even if you manage to escape, there's nowhere for you to go. Your own community will turn their backs on you. Your only option is to now accept your life, convert to Islam, and basically become an integrated member of the Islamic State. So Suhaila says that she was moved from place to place. With each new buyer came a new location. Eventually she was moved to Mosul, first to eastern Mosul.

And then as the group lost eastern Mosul, they moved her to western Mosul, which was where ISIS ended up making its last stand. And it was there that she became trapped as the airstrikes intensified around her. So they tried to change her style, like cutting the hair, putting the trousers in order to hide her. One of the disturbing things she described is that a couple of weeks before she escaped, ISIS cut off her hair. In an effort to make her look like a boy, their plan was to try to escape as refugees, and they were going to try to pass her off as one of their sons.

And they were going to try to pass her off as one of their sons. And as far as how she got out, the details are still a little fuzzy. What we've been able to figure out is that her captor was killed in an airstrike. And at some point after he was killed, she was able to clamber out of the rubble and make her way to Iraqi forces, who then brought her to safety. Can you tell him the girls that we met this morning, when they came to the camp, they were telling the camp administrator that they're Muslim, that their ISIS captor was their husband, that he was a Shaheed.

So at this point in the interview, I just started to wonder about these two types of abnormal behavior that you and I had seen in these young women. Both the apparent buying in to ISIS's propaganda. Can he explain why they're speaking like this, these Yazidi girls? And this weakness. these Yazidi girls? And this weakness. Now, both Suheila's family and the families of the two women that we saw earlier

told us that yes, doctors had come to see them and that there was nothing medically wrong with them that could explain the severity of these symptoms. And it was then that the uncle explained to me

that through his communications with Suheyla, he had come up with pretty much the same theory as the man we'd spoken to earlier that day, the man who had helped save the other two women. He explained to me that these girls had been so indoctrinated, so brainwashed after three years of captivity at the Hans of ISIS.

They don't believe what is going on on the ground because they're brainwashed. But when they see the truth, everything is changing. They had no TV, no internet, no contact at all with the outside world. And living in that bubble, they just began to believe what these men were telling them. They were thinking that even Kurdistan, Shangh believe what these men were telling them. They were thinking that even Kurdistan, Shingal, and everywhere became Islamic state. That ISIS had essentially taken over the world. Yeah. And when she came here and saw the television and these things, she's surprised. And I started to wonder if that could explain what we saw earlier with these two women.

I mean, if you think that ISIS is everywhere, then perhaps they were doing that out of fear. Because they thought that ISIS was watching them even here, even in this camp. Because until now, she doesn't believe that our hair house is liberated. So at this point, I pulled out my phone. Because as it happens... This is the Peshmerga? Peshmerga? Peshmerga.

Okay. In Sinjar. I was in Sinjar the day that it was liberated, almost two years earlier. On Sinjar Mountain. Yeah. In November of 2015. And so I flipped through my phone.

Does she recognize this? This is on top of Sinjar Mountain. And I began showing her images of me standing uncovered, not wearing a veil, not wearing anything that a nicest woman would have worn, on the top of Sinjar Mountain, which they call Shingal.

This is where the PKK was staying. This is Shingal. On the very entry of Shingal. Yeah. I showed her pictures of me with Kurdish troops. And I noticed that as you were doing this, she slowly started to try and lift herself up. Yeah.

She was being cradled in her uncle's arms. And with one hand, she reached for this metal railing on the side of the tent, and she used it to try to pull herself up, really with all her strength, as her uncle from behind was trying to push her into a sitting position. Her mood has changed. They took my phone, and they were flipping through the pictures. And he was saying, see this, see that.

Look at this image, look at that one. I mean, she was clearly intrigued. Just like this, yeah. And then when she had finished flipping through my images, I asked her, Suheila, after seeing all of these images, do you believe me? Do you believe that Sinjar Mountain is now free?

She's smiling. And she smiled. And then she said... She says, I don't believe until I see it by my eyes. I want to see it for myself. So that was July of 2017. Yeah. Where do things stand with the Yazidi people now?

The future for the Yazidi people is really uncertain. Because Sindar Mountain, the ancestral homeland of this community, is now the scene of a turf battle between various armed groups. That means that the majority of the Yazidi community has not been able to leave the very camps that you and I met them in. One of the great wounds that they are walking around with is the fact that over 3,000 Yazidi people, women, girls, children, men, still remain missing. People don't know if they are alive or dead. Yeah. The situation is so dire that some Yazidi leaders have begun to wonder if this is the end of Yazidi culture. As this culture fights for survival, it is changing. The honor norms that had been there for as long as anybody can remember have loosened.

And they have loosened because of the activism of young Yazidi men in particular, among them Fullah, our own translator, who personally lobbied the Yazidi religious leadership, asking them to come out and make a declaration saying that these girls are not tainted, they're not to be ashamed. And in fact, they're using the word holy. These girls, because of what they went through, are holier than you and I. And what about Suheila? And what about Suheyla? So, Suheyla.

As you know, about a week after we left, we published a story about Suheyla. Yeah. And there was an unbelievable response. Readers from really all over the world contacted you and I and wanted to know, what can I do to help her? These readers ended up forming a Facebook group, and in that Facebook group, I was able to connect them to Falah, our translator, as well as to Khalid, Suheila's uncle. They began actively fundraising, and were able, in a short amount of time,

to send what turned out to be thousands of dollars to Suheyla, both for her initial recovery and to pay for the ongoing search for her little sister. A few weeks after the Facebook group started, Falah sent us a series of images, and it was Suheyla and her family on Sinjar Mountain, and they were doing exactly what she had told us that she needed to do. She was there to see it with her own eyes. She was in her village, and in the pictures, she's wearing a long white dress. Her hair is growing back. Her cheeks are flushed.

She looks not only healthy, but radiant. And a couple of months ago, I was at my desk one morning, and I saw that I had a Facebook message from Falah. When I opened it, I saw that there was a video link. I clicked on it, and I saw a car pull up in a refugee camp. A crowd is gathering around it, and a little girl steps out. The message says, Shema has come home. This is Suheila's little sister, who was just 11 years old when she was

kidnapped by ISIS and held for more than three years in Iraq and Syria. And this video is the moment when she has finally returned to her family. And all you see is her community mobbing her. Relatives coming and hugging her and kissing her. You see Khalid, her uncle, who buries his head in her collarbone. And then you see a woman who's wearing a white shroud, an older woman. It's Shema's mother. And she takes her in her arms.

She holds her and you hear her break down and start weeping. And then finally you see Suheyla. She's standing. She looks healthy. And at first they just hold each other's faces in each other's hands. And then Suheyla wipes away Seema's tear. And kisses her.

And the two of them smile. Next Saturday, June 23rd, we'll bring you the 10th and final chapter of Caliphate here on The Daily. We've also released Caliphate as a standalone series and we'll publish the final episode on Thursday, two days before you'll hear it on The Daily. So if you want to listen to the final chapter early, you can subscribe to the series by searching for Caliphate on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you listen. you