Small Wars Journal

Far From the Crumbling Caliphate but Haunted by ISIS in Canada

Sat, 04/13/2019 - 10:45am

Far From the Crumbling Caliphate but Haunted by ISIS in Canada by Emily Rauhala and Amanda Coletta – Washington Post

She was thousands of miles from Syria when the call came, but the voice on the line took her back.

 

The caller spoke in Arabic, addressed Melkeya by name, threatened her. “I know who you are,” he said. “Just you wait.”

 

Her first thought: ISIS.

 

In 2014, the Islamic State swept through Melkeya’s hometown in northern Iraq, killing and kidnapping thousands of Yazidis, an ancient religious minority group, in what the United Nations called a genocide. Many ended up in Syria, where the fighters claimed a capital.

 

At a time when others were closing their doors to refugees, Canada stepped in to help, offering to resettle more than 1,000 of the Islamic State’s most vulnerable victims, particularly Yazidi women and girls who, like Melkeya, survived sexual enslavement.

 

Interviews with more than two dozen people, including five Yazidi families, settlement workers, doctors, volunteers and officials, show how the Islamic State continues to haunt them, even as their caliphate crumbles, even in quiet, Canadian suburbs blanketed in snow…

Read on.