Page 63 - Time_International_2019

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ISIS along with her daughter and sons.
Torn by the memory of the abandoned
child, her husband said, she chose late
last year to leave her family and go back
to find her baby.
The familial trauma has been made
worse by a quirk of the Iraqi constitution.
Under that document, children born
of ISIS fathers, or an unknown father,
are automatically registered as Muslim.
That registration in turn automatically
switches the mother’s religion to Islam
as well. Yezidi elders call this genocide
by constitution and have appealed to
Iraqi officials in Baghdad to change it.
Yezidi elder Hadi Babashekhi, son of
the Yezidi religious leader Baba Shekh,
claims that his community is finding
a place for children like Shalal’s half-
sibling. But other Yezidi community
RANSOMED AND STILL DIVIDED
Khayri Abdullah Massi ransomed family
members, but his wife went back to raise
the child she had by her ÒISIS husbandÓ
leaders, and former Yezidi slaves, say the
community rejects such children, so an
unknown number of former ISIS slaves
like Shalal’s mother are forced to choose
between their faith and family, or exile
with their child born in captivity.
Shalal’s father is angry and resentful,
frequently bringing up what he says is
his wife’s betrayal, when asked about
his son, one more emotional weight for
Shalal to bear.
WheN The fighT against ISIS was on
the battlefield, there was no shortage of
resources: through fiscal year 2019, the
U.S. military has committed $54 billion to
the war effort, according to a Brown Uni-
versity estimate. But it’s a different story
now that the contest has moved into the
personal space, where funding for social
services and counseling is hard to come by.
The Yezidi boys have a certain
amount of help from their faith. The
religion’s leadership passed a decree in
2014 that forgave their people for the
sin of being forced to convert, or for
being raped, or for being forced to kill
and maim for ISIS. With that came the
offer of a ritual of return that includes
a rebaptism ceremony for men, women
and children to cleanse them of the sin
of whatever they were forced to do.
“We will slowly, step by step,
convince those children ... to put the
Yezidi community’s humanity back
into their heart, because there is no
more peaceful religion than Yezidi,”
says Babashekhi. The “rebaptism” takes
place at the Yezidi holy site of Lalish,
tucked within a valley north of Duhok,
a scenic city encircled by mountains
in Iraqi Kurdistan. All members must
visit at least once in their lifetime to
submerge themselves in the 4-to-5-ft.-
deep well inside a small, worn stone
shrine, sacred to Yezidis.
Adult survivors say the ceremony
helps, but others say it is not enough
to stop the nightmares or flashbacks or
to purge the guilt a child feels, which
can be channeled inward into depres-
sion and outward to rage. Duhok also
happens to be the home of one of Iraq’s
only child and adolescent mental-health
centers. But counselors there explained
they don’t have the funding or the staff
to seek out the children and treat them
on a regular basis—the kind of treatment
that’s needed to undo how these chil-
dren were conditioned to kill.
“Calling it brainwashing is to
underestimate what has happened to
the kids,” said one of the only other
child psychologists there, Galavej
Jafaar. Another psychologist, Araz Adil
with the Kurdish nonprofit SEED, said,
“When they arrive, everyone gives them
so much attention. After a while when
they stop getting that attention, their
symptoms start to appear, and you see
PTSD, depression and anxiety, and that’s
when they have a longing to go back.”
The boys’ recovery from trauma has
immense implications not only for the
individuals but also for international
security. Yet the matter is muddled
by conflicting agendas. Yezidi elders
downplay the risk, while Baghdad,
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