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Beekeeper turned spymaster searches for Iraq's missing Yazidis
Seven years after Yazidi women and children were kidnapped by ISIS,
thousands are still missing
Margaret Evans · CBC News ·
Posted: Apr 16, 2021 4:00 AM ET
Abdullah Shrem, 46, at his home near Duhok in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. Among the tools he used to help find and rescue Yazidis captured by the Islamic State were detailed maps and a network of contacts in Iraq and Syria. (Stephanie Jenzer/CBC)
He hasn't kept bees or sold honey in years and he's no longer living in Sinjar.
But Abdullah Shrem is still known to many as the beekeeper of Sinjar, his ancestral lands in the district of Sinjar in northwest Iraq. There's even a book titled after him.
In 2014, he parlayed his honey-buying contacts in neighbouring Syria into a network of potential saviours for Yazidi women and children enslaved by ISIS when it swept across the Yazidi heartland in northwest Iraq in August of that year.
Condemned as infidels by ISIS, thousands of men, boys and older women belonging to the religious and ethnic minority were slaughtered. The United Nations declared it a genocide.
More than 6,000 women and children were taken captive, according to the Kurdish regional government. Many of them were sold into sexual slavery or given to ISIS militants as rewards.
The fierce battle to clear Sinjar of ISIS militants back in 2015 destroyed much of the city, once a large centre of Yazidi life. Only a fraction its residents have returned. (Stephane Jenzer/CBC)
"When ISIS came, 56 members of my family were captured," Shrem said in an interview with CBC News from the village of Khanke, not far from the city of Dohuk in Iraqi Kurdistan, where he now lives.
"I never had a plan to rescue people, but it was the human thing to do and God helped me."
The 46-year-old says the first person he managed to retrieve successfully was at the end of 2014. It was one of his nieces. Word quickly spread and people started coming to him for help.
Shrem's business contacts in Aleppo advised him to get in touch with cigarette smugglers already risking their lives by moving goods forbidden by ISIS in and out of the so-called caliphate.
In other words, if they were caught, their punishment was always likely going to be death, he said.
Soon he had a network of informants.
"We were like an organized intelligence agency so that we planned and implemented our activities by ourselves," Shrem said.
Many of the captured women wound up in the Syrian city of Raqqa, a former ISIS stronghold.
Shrem rented a bakery there and turned the employees delivering bread to different neighbourhoods into his eyes and ears.
He also recruited a woman who went door to door selling children's clothing. Her access to the women of a household along with her presence of mind made it possible for her to ascertain who was a servant or a slave and who wasn't.
"People say that only men can do this job, but she had the most important role because she could easily go into houses," Shrem said.
He still has his original notebook with sketches and drawings of various extraction plans. One shows a series of headstones and instructions for a woman to visit a cemetery where a contact would be waiting.
He says they used the militants' own extremism against them.
"It was a positive for us that ISIS forces all women to cover their faces," he said. "If we wanted to rescue a girl aged 16, we created an ID for her and changed the age to 70 because ISIS wasn't going to remove the face cover."
His most challenging rescues, he says, were those involving four deaf and mute women. He videotaped relatives signing messages and instructions and then got them to the used clothes seller, who played them for the women. They all made it back to Iraq.
Some operations took months, he said, because the seller couldn't return to the same houses too often.
The intense bombing campaign to root out militants left Sinjar in ruins. (Stephanie Jenzer/CBC)
All in all, Shrem says he helped liberate 399 individuals. And the job's not over. An estimated 3,000 women and children taken by ISIS remain unaccounted for.
Many may well have been killed in the battles to defeat ISIS and the airstrikes that came with them, but Shrem believes some are still alive in Syria and in need of help.
"Yes, our activities are still ongoing," he said. "But the reality is that after the liberation [of ISIS-held territory], our tasks became much harder."
Raqqa fell to the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) backed up by U.S. air power in the fall of 2017, but it was more than a year later that ISIS was finally defeated in Syria in the battle of Baghouz in the spring of 2019.
It's thought that many captive Yazidis might still be with ISIS fighters or families who escaped the final days of fighting in Syria, possibly to the city Idlib, where various Islamist groups are still fighting the Syrian regime, or to Turkey, where many ISIS fighters were recruited.
After seven long years, some of those taken as children may no longer remember who they are. Others were sent to indoctrination schools to be trained as fighters or suicide bombers.
Shrem admits that some women may have decided to hide their identities for fear of having children fathered by their ISIS captors taken from them.
The Yazidi spiritual council has issued a decree stating that women wanting to keep those children should be shunned by the community.
'The international community is not aware of us'
According to Shrem, one of the biggest problems in trying to trace missing Yazidi women is a lack of funds to pay ransoms and smugglers.
In the early days, much of it was raised through private donations. For a time, the Kurdish regional government's Office for Kidnapped Yazidis offered compensation for families who had to pay to get their loved ones back.
But that money has dried up.
"The problem is the international community is not aware of us, and up to now, the Iraqi government has not helped us or the missing Yazidi women," said Shrem.
He is both modest and matter-of-fact in demeanour. He enjoys explaining the complexity of the operations he spearheaded and is clearly proud of all the people he's managed to save.
But he also carries the weight of all those he couldn't.
Of the 56 members of his own family he sought to find and bring home, 16 are still missing.
Some of those helping in the search for the missing behind enemy lines also paid with their lives, including the woman who sold baby clothes. She was caught by ISIS and executed.
Fifty-six of Shrem's family members were missing when he began his efforts. Sixteen of them are still missing.
(Stephanie Jenzer/CBC)
Bahrain: 3 men from same family jailed for joining Daesh
Published: April 17, 2021 16:19
Tawfiq Nasrallah, Senior News Editor, Gulf News
A group of Daesh fighters. Investigators also found the first suspect, aged 52, travelled to Syria in 2013 under the pretext of taking part in a humanitarian relief mission. Image Credit: REX USA
Dubai: Three men from the same family in Bahrain have been sentenced to three years in jail after being found guilty of joining Daesh (ISIS), local media reported.
The High Criminal Court sentenced a 52-year-old man and his two relatives to three years behind bars for terrorist activities.
Court files showed the defendants distributed pro-Daesh brochures and wrote slogans on the walls venerating acts of terror.
Investigators also found the first suspect, aged 52, travelled to Syria in 2013 under the pretext of taking part in a humanitarian relief mission.
Police said that his real mission was joining the group. Later, the man also persuaded two other relatives to support Daesh from Bahrain.
Police told the court that he was seeking to recruit more men to join the terrorist organisation. The 52-year-old man also confessed during interrogation that he was attracted to jihadist doctrines since the early 1990s.
“I decided to join them once I travelled to Syria. I knew my cousins (the second and third defendants) were also trying to fight alongside jihadists, so I established links with them,” he added. The public prosecution charged the trio with attempts to harm state unity, promote terrorist operations and spread takfiri ideas.
Takfiri is accusing another Muslim of apostasy.
Bangladesh is not Pakistan though many are attempting to make it similar
Bangladesh’s Islamist Challenge Intensifies
The violent anti-Modi protests were just the latest sign that the government’s outreach to Islamist groups has backfired.
By Subir Bhaumik, The Diplomat
April 15, 2021
Two factions of protestors clash after Friday prayers at Baitul Mokarram mosque in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Friday, March 26, 2021. Credit: AP Photo/Mahmud Hossain Opu
Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has promised the “strongest possible action” against Islamist radicals responsible for violent protests over Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the country.
Fourteen supporters of the radical Hefazat-e-Islam group were killed in police shootings across the country as Hasina’s government stood by its decision to invite Modi as guest of honor for celebrations of the 50th anniversary of Bangladesh’s independence on March 26.
“We invited the Indian prime minister to express our gratitude to Indian people for their unstinted support during the 1971 Liberation War,” Hasina told the media.
She warned Hefazat radicals would face “dire consequences” if they continued their violence over Modi’s visit.
The protesters accuse Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party of anti-Muslim policies in India, ranging from a controversial citizenship law that excludes Muslim migrants to alleged incitement of violence against Indian Muslims by BJP politicians.
The Hefazat controls the thousands of Qaumi Madrassas (Islamic schools) in the country and government spokespeople have accused Hefazat leaders of mobilizing them in their vicious anti-Modi campaign.
“Your students go to India’s Deoband seminary for higher religious studies. Has India denied them visas? So why are you making such an issue out of Modi’s visit? India is our trusted friend,” said Hasina in a press conference this week.
Critics have denounced the police’s use of rubber bullets, tear gas, and even live ammunition to break up the anti-Modi protests. The government, however, scoffed at allegations of police overkill in countering the protests and justified the dozens of arrests of Hefazat leaders and activists.
“For those who lament the Hefazat arrests, let this be known: that they have given an open call to topple the Hasina government by force and violence. So should we offer them Bengali sweets and just step down?” said Awami League youth leader Sufi Farooq.
He said other Islamist opposition parties have backed this call.
Farooq said Hefazat supporters are targeting secular institutions like the Music Academy in the Brahmanbaria district, home of classical music legend Allaudin Khan, which was set ablaze along with an old public library in the area.
“The Islamist radicals, be the pro-Pakistan Jamaat-e-Islami or the Hefazat or Khelafat, are determined to create a Taliban type Islamic state, which goes against the secular values of our 1971 Liberation War. We will not allow our country to become Pakistan. We are moderate Muslims and our state is committed to protect our minorities,” said former junior Information and Telecom Minister Tarana Halim.
Stressing the importance of both Bengali identity and Islam in Bangladesh, Halim said: “We are now observing this week both the Bengali New Year and Holy Ramadan with equal enthusiasm. We are a Bengali nation with equal place for all religions and our tribal brothers of Chittagong Hill Tracts.”
Barrister Tureen Afroz was lead prosecutor in the pointed to the 1971 War Crimes Trials, designed to punish local Islamists who joined the Pakistan Army in perpetrating “unspeakable atrocities” during the Liberation War.
“The charges against these Islamist radicals range from rape, murder and forcible conversion of non-Muslims. In today’s Bangladesh, forcible conversion to Islam is an offense,” Afroz said. “For those in the West who criticize our police crackdown, let me say these are not peaceful protesters and if Guantanamo Bay waterboardings of Arab and Afghan jihadis are acceptable, our police crackdown should not raise hackles.”
There is much more on this story on The Diplomat.
Pakistan interior minister recommends ban on Islamist party
Munir Ahmd and Babar Dogar
The Associated Press
Published Wednesday, April 14, 2021 10:15AM EDT
Supporters of Tehreek-e-Labiak Pakistan, a radical Islamist political party, pray while blocking a road during a sit-in protest against the arrest of their party leader Saad Rizvi, in Lahore, Pakistan, on April 14, 2021. (K.M. Chaudary / AP)
ISLAMABAD -- Pakistan's interior minister on Wednesday recommended a ban on an Islamist political party whose supporters held violent rallies this week to condemn the arrest of their leader that left at least five people dead.
Saad Rizvi, an Islamist cleric, had threatened protests if authorities did not expel the French ambassador over depictions of Islam's Prophet Muhammad.
The announcement by Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmad came hours after Pakistani security forces -- swinging batons and firing tear gas -- moved in to clear sit-ins by the protesting Islamists in the capital Islamabad and elsewhere.
The crackdown came after five people, including two police officers, were killed Tuesday in the clashes.
Police and paramilitary rangers quickly cleared most of the sit-ins staged by the protesters in Islamabad and roads were reopened. Ahmed asked protesters who were still blocking roads and rallying in the eastern city of Lahore to peacefully disperse.
The announcement of a proposed ban on the Tehreek-e-Labiak Pakistan party came two days after supporters first began blocking highways and key roads in various parts of the country to denounce Monday's arrest of their leader.
Rizvi was taken into custody after he threatened the government with mass protests if it did not expel French envoy Marc Barety before April 20 over the publication in France of depictions of Islam's Prophet.
Rizvi had claimed the government committed to expelling the French diplomat in an agreement. However, the government of Prime Minister Imran Khan insisted it only committed to discussing the matter in Parliament.
Ahmad said police and paramilitary rangers launched a crackdown against demonstrators before dawn Wednesday and quickly cleared rallies in the capital and other cities, including the garrison city of Rawalpindi.
He said two policemen were killed and 340 police were wounded in the clashes with Islamists.
Ahmad did not say how many demonstrators died, but police earlier said at least three Islamists were killed in clashes. He said he hoped the situation would soon be under control in Lahore, where Islamists were still rallying and blocking some roads.
Rizvi emerged as the leader of the Tehreek-e-Labiak Pakistan party in November after the sudden death of his father, Khadim Hussein Rizvi. His party wants the government to boycott French products and expel the French ambassador under an agreement signed by the government with Rizvi's party in February.
Tehreek-e-Labiak and other Islamist parties have denounced French President Emmanuel Macron since October last year when they say he tried to defend caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad as freedom of expression. Macron's comments came after a young Muslim beheaded a French school teacher who had shown caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in class.
The images had been republished by the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo to mark the opening of the trial over the deadly 2015 attack against the publication for the original caricatures. That enraged many Muslims in Pakistan and elsewhere who believe those depictions were blasphemous.
Germany: Conservatives seek to isolate Islamist groups
Germany's governing conservative bloc is planning to cut all government ties with groups suspected of supporting political Islamism, according to a report in Die Welt. Large Muslim umbrella organizations may be affected.
Chairmen of the Central Council of Muslims, Aiman Mazyek, sat with German Interior Minister, Horst Seehofer (CSU)
The parliamentary group of Germany's ruling conservative bloc has called for an end to cooperation with groups suspected of supporting political Islamism, the newspaper Die Welt reported on Tuesday.
The bloc, made up of Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) and their Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), proposed cutting all subsidies, support and cooperation with Islamist groups being monitored by Germany's domestic intelligence agency: the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
Christoph de Vries, the parliamentary group's speaker on religious communities, confirmed the proposal on Twitter.
"The CDU/CSU will take up a clear position in combating political Islamism," de Vries wrote.
"No tolerance for intolerance. That is the clear message of the paper. There can be no religious discount on our core values."
Which organizations would be affected?
The paper produced by the parliamentary group was seen by Die Welt. The newspaper reported that the new measures would impact the large German Muslim umbrella organizations, the Central Council of Muslims and the Islamic Council as some of their larger member groups are under observation by domestic intelligence.
One such group is the Turkish-Islamic Union for Cultural and Social Cooperation (ATIB). The organization's affiliation with the neofascist Grey Wolves has led to the "systematic denigration of other ethnic or religious groups, especially Kurds and Jews," the Office for the Protection of the Constitution says.
ATIB is a founding organization of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany, with one of its members serving as a vice chairman, Die Welt reports.
What changes do conservatives want?
A key part of the proposal is to further research into political Islamism in Germany and the European Union by setting up university positions, conducting broad studies into such influences and establishing a group of experts to inform the Interior Ministry.
The CDU/CSU paper also put forward a call for the publication of foreign financial flows to mosque associations.
"We respect the freedom of belief without compromise, but we will not allow foreign governments or forces of political Islamism to develop a system of rule in Germany under the cover of religious freedom that subjects society, politics and culture to Islamic norms," de Vries told Die Welt.
De Vries compared the treatment of political religious groups with that of organizations on the left- and right-wing extremes.
"The enemies of our constitution ... cannot also be partners of the state," he said.
Algeria protesters at crossroads as Islamists take spotlight
BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Posted Apr 15, 2021 3:25 am
FILE - In this March 19, 2021 file photo, Algerians protesters march with posters during their weekly pro-democracy demonstration, in Algiers. Two years after it ousted Algeria’s long-serving leader, the country’s pro-democracy movement is at a crossroads. There are fears it’s been infiltrated by a group with links to an Islamist party outlawed during a dark era of strife in the 1990s. (AP Photo/Toufik Doudou, File)
ALGIERS, Algeria — Algeria’s pro-democracy movement is at a crossroads two years after it ousted the country’s long-serving leader, confronting fears it’s been infiltrated by a group with links to an Islamist party outlawed during a dark era of strife in the 1990s.
Members of the Europe-based Rachad group cannot be clearly identified, nor do they advertise their presence. But it’s widely believed that they are among the thousands of protesters of the Hirak movement marching each Friday. Algeria’s president and its powerful military have castigated Rachad, without naming it.
The Hirak movement forced President Abdelaziz Bouteflika from office in 2019 with its giant weekly protests peacefully demanding change in Algeria’s opaque power structure in which the army plays a crucial shadow role. Protesters began pouring anew into the streets of Algiers, the capital, and other cities starting on Hirak’s second anniversary, Feb. 22, after a year of virus lockdown.
But they’re now less numerous amid concerns that Rachad may be using Hirak’s “smile revolution” for an agenda of its own. Debate about Rachad focuses on whether it could reopen the door to the dark past when Algeria waged a murderous war with Islamist extremists seeking power. An estimated 200,000 people were killed, and the nation has yet to heal.
On its site, Rachad says it has taken part in Hirak marches since their inception in early 2019, and affirms that it “banishes all forms of extremism … and advocates non-violence.”
Such claims don’t convince Ahcene Khaznadji, a 65-year-old teachers’ unionist who took part in about 30 Hirak marches — and says he won’t do it again.
The marches “have reached their limit,” he said. “Above all, it increasingly appears that Islamists are trying to take over, via Rachad. I fought Islamists when in university in the 1980s and, politically, in the 1990s,” Khaznadji said. “Today, I don’t want to serve as a stepping stone to help them reach power.”
Rachad, whose origins date to 2007, is widely seen as Islamic-conservative. Two of its leaders, based in Geneva and London, were members of the Islamic Salvation Front, or FIS, party whose soaring popularity triggered the years of chaos. On the verge of winning national elections in 1991, FIS was outlawed, a military junta took over Algeria and the insurgency by extremists spiraled into all-out war.
Conspiracy theories have long abounded in Algeria. In the case of Hirak, where some see exaggeration about the role of Rachad, others see dark plots promoted by authorities. A constant slogan chanted or scrawled on posters during Friday marches has been “civilian, not military state.” For the army, that’s a deep insult to its “eternal link” with the people and a sign that Rachad is among protesters.
President Abdelmadjid Tebboune has portrayed himself as a protector of what he has called the “blessed Hirak,” but critics suspect authorities may be out to divide protesters with fear-mongering about Rachad coupled with multiple arrests of marchers during protests.
The March issue of the army’s monthly review, El Djeich, referred to Rachad, without naming the group, as “bats who prefer obscurity and darkness.” In its April issue, it denounced those who “seed doubt and lies and rumours.”
Last week Tebboune castigated what he said were “subversive activities” by “illegal movements close to terrorism … exploiting weekly marches,” a clear reference to Rachad. The statement after a meeting of the High Security Council, carried by the official APS news agency, also condemned “separatist circles,” a reference to another group seeking independence for Algeria’s Kabyle region, home of Berbers.
Tebboune demanded the “immediate and rigorous application of the law” to end such activities, saying, “The state will be intransigent.”
Authorities are seeking to arrest Rachad members to unravel what they claim is a plot to destabilize the nation.
One of the group’s founders, Mohamed Larbi Zitout, a former diplomat living in London, is among four people — all allegedly linked to Rachad — targeted in international arrest warrants issued in March by Algeria for alleged breaches of public order and the nation’s security, APS reported. A fifth person, Ahmed Mansouri, a former FIS member arrested for joining a terrorist group in the 1990s then freed, was re-arrested in February for his alleged central role in the plot, included financing “secret activities” of Rachad.
“It seems the importance given to the Rachad movement is aimed at creating discord within Hirak and raising fears about it abroad,” said political scientist Mohamed Hennad in the daily El Watan.
Many are now wondering whether they should join in the Friday marches.
“Doubt has (entered) and the demons of the 1990s are reawakening,” journalist and Hirak activist Ihsane El Kadi wrote March 23 in a blog on independent online Radio M. But he argued that Rachad supporters should not be ostracized.
A group of university professors and high-profile supporters of the pro-democracy movement marched together last Friday, at Hirak’s 112th protest, in front of a banner calling for unity.
“It’s unity that is (Hirak’s) strength,” said lawyer and human rights activist Moustapha Bouchachi.
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