By Joby Warrick, Washington Post, May 28, 2016
The woman is young, perhaps 18, with olive skin and dark bangs that droop onto her face. In the Facebook photo, she attempts to smile but doesn’t look at her photographer.
The caption mentions a single biographical fact: She is for sale.
“To all the bros thinking about buying a slave, this one is $8,000,” begins the May 20 Facebook posting, which was attributed to an Islamic State fighter who calls himself Abu Assad Almani. The same man posted a second image a few hours later, this one a pale young face with weepy red eyes.
“Another sabiyah [slave], also about $8,000,” the posting reads. “Yay, or nay?”
The photos were taken down within hours by Facebook, and it is unclear whether the account’s owner was doing the selling himself or commenting about women being sold by other fighters. But the unusual posting underscores what experts say is an increasingly perilous existence for the hundreds of women who are thought to be held as sex slaves by the Islamic State.
As the terrorist group comes under heightened pressure in Iraq and Syria, these female captives appear to be suffering, too–sold and traded by cash-strapped fighters, subjected to shortages of food and medicine, and put at risk daily by military strikes, according to terrorism experts and human rights groups.
Social-media sites used by Islamic State fighters in recent months have included numerous accounts of the buying and selling of sex slaves, as well as the promulgation of formal rules for dealing with them. The guidelines cover such topics as whether it’s possible to have sex with prepubescent prisoners–yes, the Islamic State’s legal experts say–and how severely a slave can be beaten.
But until the May 20 incident, there were no known instances of Islamic State fighters posting photographs of female captives being offered for sale. The photos of the two unidentified women appeared only briefly before being deleted by Facebook, but the images were captured by the Middle East Media Research Institute, a Washington nonprofit group that monitors jihadists’ social-media accounts.
“We have seen a great deal of brutality, but the content that ISIS has been disseminating over the past two years has surpassed it all for sheer evil,” said Steven Stalinsky, the institute’s executive director, using the common acronym for the Islamic State. “Sales of slave girls on social media is just one more example of this.”
Almani, the apparent owner of the Facebook account, is thought to be a German national fighting for the Islamic State in Syria, according to Stalinsky. He has previously posted to social-media accounts under that name, in the slangy, poorly rendered English used by many European fighters who can’t speak Arabic. Early postings suggest that Almani is intimately familiar with the Islamic State’s activities around Raqqa, the group’s de facto capital in Syria. He also regularly uses his accounts to solicit donations for the terrorist group.
In displaying the images of the women, Almani advised his Facebook friends to “get married” and “come to dawlah,” or the Islamic State’s territory in Iraq and Syria. Then he engaged with different commenters in an extensive discussion about whether the $8,000 asking price was a good value. Some who replied to the postings mocked the women’s looks, while others scolded Almani for posting photos of women who weren’t wearing the veil.
“What makes her worth that price? Does she have an exceptional skill?” one of his correspondents asks about woman in the second photo.
“Nope,” he replies. “Supply and demand makes her that price.”
The Facebook incident comes amid complaints from human rights groups about waning public interest in the plight of women held as prisoners by the Islamic State. The organization Human Rights Watch, citing estimates by Kurdish officials in Iraq and Syria, says the terrorist group holds about 1,800 women and girls, just from the capture of Yazidi towns in the region. After initial denials, the Islamic State last year issued statements acknowledging the use of sex slaves and defending the practice as consistent with ancient Islamic traditions, provided that the women are non-Muslims captured in battle or members of Muslim sects that the terrorist group regards as apostates.
A report last month by Human Rights Watch recounted the ordeals suffered by three dozen Iraqi and Syrian women who escaped from terrorist-held towns in recent months. Among the women were former Yazidi sex slaves who described abuses that included multiple rapes by different men as they were sold and traded.
The problems faced by such women appear to be growing worse as military and economic pressure against the Islamic State increases, the report said.
“The longer they are held by ISIS, the more horrific life becomes for Yazidi women, bought and sold, brutally raped, their children torn from them,” said Skye Wheeler, women’s rights emergencies researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Meanwhile, ISIS’s restrictions on [non-enslaved] Sunni women cut them off from normal life and services almost entirely.”
Dennis: According to G.J.O.Moshay, Nigerian expect on Muslim practices, the above article is in total agreement with the literal reading of the Quran. These fighters are following Mohammed's teachings to the letter. But these actions are the results of man's human condition, man's tendency to evil. But this behavior is not unknown to our own fighters who have abused woman and girls in their course of military duty. The communist Russian army, invading Ukraine, Poland, and Germany in WWII, were accountable for the massive raping of woman and their daughters, and the killing of their brothers and fathers who protested. It was not just the foot soldiers who participated in these acts, but the commanders, also. American and French troops were also guilty.
The sad part of today's action is it is sanctioned by the holy book of the Muslim's, the Quran. However, the so-called Christian Kings and Catholic Popes have also ordered their armies to kill in the name of God, and they may have very well raped the woman before hand, or kept them as sex hostages. As western "Christian" nations we've done equally evil acts.
So man is at his worst element in time of war. But Jesus Christ told us to love our enemies. He didn't lead any army to military battle, or instruct His disciples in terrorism. He instructed them in spiritual warfare against the spiritual powers that influence men for evil. Ultimately He defeated Satan on the cross and will come again in glory to take over the kingdom here on earth. He told us these days would come when evil men would grow worse and worse. Are we approaching the most horrible point of world history called the Great Tribulation where the true follower of Christ will be hated by all nations? Are we doing our part to stand up for the God of love and mercy and proclaim His truth even if it costs us our lives? Let's hope so. It has been said, that the only reason evil prevails is because good men do nothing. Are we doing our part to love others and lay down our lives, our reputations, and our finances for the sheep?
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