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Raised in noRTheRn iRaq’s small
Yezidi religious minority, S. was 9 years
old when the so-called Islamic State
killed his father and brother, kidnapped
him and turned him into a child soldier.
He witnessed unspeakable violence, saw
friends tortured and was beaten by the
“teachers” who indoctrinated him into
the group’s severe version of Islam.
Three years later, when his mother
ransomed him back from ISIS for
$10,000, he was returned against his
will to a family he barely remembered.
He tried repeatedly to run back to his
former captors. He threatened his sisters
with a knife, calling them infidels; hit
his mother, saying he wasn’t really hers;
and more than once tried to set fire to
his uncle’s house. Brainwashed by ISIS
with a combination of savage cruelty
and lionizing praise, S. was wracked
by interior conflict, a lonely pariah in a
family alien to him, lashing out violently
at the slightest provocation.
What to call the war on ISIS now
that the group has lost the last of its
territory in Iraq and Syria? President
Donald Trump’s declaration of “victory”
appears premature, given how much of
the conflict exists not on battlefields but
THE MUKHTAR’S GRANDSON in the minds and souls of individuals.
Thikran Kamiran, now 19, was In wars between countries, the los-
deemed too young to be executed ing side retreats to its borders. But since
with the men of his village the late 1990s, the U.S. has been locked
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