Fadil Murat Shamo, 22, is still struggling to rebuild his life after ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, also known as Daesh) militants killed most of his family when they took over the predominantly Yazidi district of Sinjar in northern Iraq more than a decade ago. As a child, he spent five years in ISIS captivity and was indoctrinated to become a soldier.

It was a fate that befell thousands of Yazidi, a long-persecuted group whose faith is rooted in Zoroastrianism and who were declared infidels by ISIS. About a decade after the United States invaded Iraq, sparking a sectarian civil war and creating conditions for what was then al-Qaeda in Iraq to flourish, ISIS invaded Sinjar on August 3, 2014, prompting most Yazidi to flee their homes.

The Yazidi who became trapped in Sinjar endured ineffable horrors. Within days, nearly 10,000 people were killed, with almost half of them executed — either shot, beheaded or burned alive — while the rest died from starvation, dehydration or injuries during the ISIS siege of Mount Sinjar, to where scores of Yazidi fled during the onslaught. Nearly 7,000 Yazidi were kidnapped. Young women and girls taken captive were sold as sex slaves, while boys like Shamo were forced to fight as child soldiers.

Nearly 2,800 of these women and children are still missing today. Some are known to be in ISIS captivity, while the whereabouts of others are uncertain. Some villages in Sinjar are mass graveyards — yet to be exhumed.

More than a decade after what the United Nations declared a genocide, traumatized Yazidi continue to trickle back to their ancestral lands in Sinjar — finding both hope and sorrow waiting for them there.

According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), more than 100,000 Yazidi have so far returned to Sinjar, but the majority remain displaced. Those returning are battling serious physical and mental trauma — exacerbated by perpetual feelings of insecurity — while infrastructure and job opportunities are still severely lacking. Across the district, buildings and homes remain damaged or destroyed.

“Returning for those of us who lost loved ones is very hard,” Shamo tells Truthout, sitting on the floor of the home he constructed in the northern part of Sinjar after he returned in 2020. “We will never be the same again after ISIS.”

“But it brings me some happiness when I see Yazidi families coming back home. Returning will not heal us, but it is a nice feeling to see Sinjar coming back to life.”

Shamo was 12 years old when he was abducted by ISIS, along with his parents and siblings, including his sisters. First, the militants separated Shamo and his sisters from their parents and elder brother. Then, Shamo says, his small sisters were collected and sold into slavery, while he was transported to Mosul with 33 other boys.

“They kept us at a private house in Mosul where we were forced to learn the Quran, their ideologies and how to fight,” Shamo remembers. “We stayed there for one year. It was like a prison. We weren’t allowed outside and we never saw the sunlight. There was just one small window in the building.”

The old city remains in complete ruins — with bullet-riddled buildings and collapsed roofs and walls.

Once the militants thought the boys were ready, they transported them to Raqqa, the capital of the Islamic State in Syria, to join their ranks as ISIS fighters. Only 10 of these boys survived, Shamo says.

“They killed our whole families so all of us just wanted to die,” Shamo recounts, fiddling with his thumbs. “The most unimaginable things became everyday life. We witnessed beheadings so often that they became normal. But we never actually believed that when we died, we would become martyrs and go to heaven. Everyone blew themselves up or died in battle because they hated this life — not because they wanted heaven in the next life.”

After three years of fighting as a soldier, Shamo was able to get smuggled out of ISIS territory, ending up in al-Hol camp (Kempa Holê) in Kurdish-controlled northern Syria, which continues to hold tens of thousands of women and children from former ISIS territory.

He was eventually repatriated to Iraq, where he stayed at one of numerous internally displaced people (IDP) camps in Iraqi Kurdistan. His sisters were also smuggled out of ISIS territory two years prior and are now living in the camps. His parents and brother, however, are still missing — assumed to have been killed.

In 2020, Shamo decided he would return to Sinjar. According to the IOM, which assists Yazidis to voluntarily........

© Truthout