Shocking new BBC Three documentary reveals the the brave young women who’ve joined the Iraqi army to fight ISIS
Stacey Dooley visits Northern Iraq to meet those who want to fight back after extremists kidnapped, raped and tortured 5,000 women and children in 2014
A SHOCKING new BBC Three documentary reveals how brave young women in Northern Iraq have joined the army to fight ISIS after surviving rape, torture and genocide.
In August 2014 ISIS fighters kidnapped 5,000 peaceful Yazidi women and children to rape and torture while slaying their sons and husbands in northern Iraq.
An estimated 7,000 were killed in total and the UN condemned the massacre, calling it genocide.
Today 3,000 Yazidi women remain captive.
However, those women who have escaped have now formed their own battalion and are today fighting on the frontline with the Peshmerga Army to free their mothers and sisters.
They are spurred on by the knowledge that ISIS fighters fear them more than any man, because they believe being killed by a woman will stop them ascending to paradise.
New BBC Three documentary Stacey on the frontline: Girls, Guns and ISIS sees journalist Stacey Dooley travel to the Sinjar in Iraq and discovers the terrible atrocities that have encouraged girls as young as 17 to undergo gruelling army training and learn how to use machine guns at their base in a former high school.
The women have been recruited by the renowned former Yazidi singer Xate Shingali, who has transformed them into brave fighters.
On the show, Xate reveals the harrowing story that spurred her into action.
She says: "I met a woman who had been captured by ISIS.
"She told me she had been kidnapped with her one-year-old baby.
"The ISIS leader didn’t allow her to feed the baby for three days.
"The baby kept crying and crying.
"The leader said to her 'your baby is annoying me and doesn’t let me sleep'.
"The woman answered, ‘We are prisoners and we are hungry and thirsty’.
"The leader said, 'Give it to me, I will feed it'.
"He grabbed the baby from the chest, pulled up his head, and with the sword beheaded him.
"The ISIS men took the body to the kitchen and cooked it.
"Then they brought it to the mother and holding her by the sword they said to her, 'Eat the flesh of your baby.'"
Now she believes as armed women they will strike fear into the hearts of the ISIS soldiers, revealing the girls are committed to stopping them “entering paradise”.
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Another woman recalled how they were kept as sex slaves and how one woman killed herself to avoid being raped again.
The female fighter recalls: “She cut both of her wrists.
"The blood came under the toilet door. After that two ISIS members wrapped the body with a blanket and threw her outside.
"Later on we saw dogs eating her insides.”
She adds: “We all wanted to kill each other so that we couldn’t get raped but we couldn’t do it because we were handcuffed to beds.”
Some were sold as sex slaves.
One survivor recalls: “An Arab from Tal-Afar bought me for less than a dollar.
"He would often rape me.
"Even when I smile and laugh now I still remember the awful time I went through.
"Before I laugh or after I laugh these images are in front of my eyes.”