Category Archives: The Denise Simon Experience

The White House Charming Venezuela

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Did you consider that normalizing relations with Cuba, which blind-sided everyone was part of the demands by Iran in the nuclear talks? Uh huh…

Did you consider and additional demand for Venezuela?..Hummm

A U.S. State Department lawyer, Tom Shannon has traveled to Caracas to meet with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and there have been other clandestine meet-ups in Haiti to set the table for restoring relations between the two countries.

Strangely enough, the University of Rhode Island was also chosen along with 4 other universities to enhance relationship opportunities through student exchanges.

Barack Obama feels empowered now due to the deal with Iran and the notion that Cuba and the United States have formally opened respective embassies.

Obama is now exploiting the moment where he used Cuba as a springboard when he attended the Summit of the Americas last April. His ‘new chapter’ has been read and accepted as noted in his speech at this summit. Actually he had many secret and formal messages in his speech which sounded much like that of his outreach speech to the Muslim world in his 2009 Cairo speech.

“President Obama indicated our strong support for a peaceful dialogue between the parties within Venezuela,” said Bernadette Meehan, a spokeswoman for the White House’s National Security Council. “He reiterated that our interest is not in threatening Venezuela, but in supporting democracy, stability and prosperity in Venezuela and the region.”
Maduro later described the meeting as frank and cordial, saying the 10-minute exchange could lead the way to a meaningful dialogue between the two nations in the coming days. “I told him we’re not an enemy of the United States,” Maduro said. “We told each other the truth.”

Several charming people and words and being delivered and dispatched, Venezuela is here.

 

Obama Charm Offensive Targets Venezuela After Iranians, Cubans

The Obama administration’s charm offensive with unfriendly states has rolled through Myanmar, Iran and Cuba. Next stop: Venezuela.

Just months after the administration declared Venezuela a threat to U.S. national security, it’s working to improve relations, driven by concern that upheaval there could destabilize the region.

State Department officers have been meeting quietly with officials in the leftist government of President Nicolas Maduro since April to develop what Secretary of State John Kerry has called “a normal relationship.”

The outreach is another test of President Barack Obama’s 2009 inaugural pledge to “extend a hand” to repressive and corrupt regimes if they are “willing to unclench” their fists.

Falling oil prices, plummeting foreign reserves, a 68.5 percent inflation rate and growing political tensions are battering Venezuela. There’s enough at stake that even a Justice Department probe into the alleged drug ties of the lead Venezuelan in the talks hasn’t derailed the diplomacy.

“The U.S. has a broader goal here, no matter what they think about the Venezuelan government,” said Christopher Sabatini, a Latin American studies professor at Columbia University in New York. “The goal is to prevent a black hole that will suck in other Latin American economies.”

One frequent critic of the administration’s foreign policy has cautious praise for the effort. “I’m very glad the administration is trying to deal with them” on political repression and staging fair elections in December, said Senator Bob Corker, the Tennessee Republican who heads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Toilet Paper Queue

Corker visited Caracas last month and returned dismayed by the sight of Venezuelans queuing outside stores in the early morning hoping that toilet paper might be in stock.

“I don’t think I’ve been to a place that has more potential but is totally blowing it,” Corker said in an interview. “It’s just sad.”

Beyond the hyperinflation that burdens ordinary people and erodes the government’s spending ability, the country’s international reserves fell to a 12-year record low of $15.37 billion on July 27, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The country’s basket of crude oil and petroleum, a major source of national revenue, fell 4.2 percent last week to $45.87 per barrel, according to the Oil Ministry’s website. A year ago, a barrel of oil brought Venezuela about $96.

‘Fear of Contagion’

Venezuela and its state oil company have about $5 billion in bond payments due in the last three months of this year and about $10 billion in 2016, according to Bank of America Corp. estimates.

Harvard Professor Ricardo Hausmann is saying Venezuela will have no choice but to default on its debt next year amid shortages of staples such as medicine and milk.

“One of the fears is contagion,” said Carl Meacham, director of the Americas program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. With the world’s largest proven oil reserves, Venezuela has wielded regional clout by offering neighbors cheap energy and subsidies.

Now, with the country becoming “more and more a hub for international drug cartels,” Meacham said the U.S. effort is about preventing it from becoming a failed narco state. “The spillover won’t just affect folks inside Venezuela, it also has the potential to affect countries all over the region,” he said.

Trading Partner

There also are strategic considerations. The U.S. is Venezuela’s biggest trading partner, the country currently has a vote on the United Nations Security Council as one of 10 nonpermanent members, and it has allied itself with Cuba and other nations hostile to the U.S., sending oil to Syria’s regime despite sanctions in 2012 and last year agreeing to let Russia establish naval and military bases in its borders.

The U.S. “wants Venezuela to relax its international positions on countries like Iran, Russia, Syria and Greece,” said Carlos Romero, an international relations professor at the Central University of Venezuela.

There’s concern, too, that tensions with Venezuela could damp efforts to improve relations with other Latin American nations. Kerry said on July 20 that he and Cuba’s foreign minister had discussed the U.S.-Venezuela relationship, and “our hopes that we can find a better way forward because all of the region will benefit.”

Diplomats Expelled

In the past two years, both nations have expelled diplomats from the other country, and the U.S. has sanctioned Venezuelan officials for human rights abuses.

Maduro, who embraces the socialist rhetoric of his late predecessor Hugo Chavez, called the sanctions the “most aggressive, unjust and disgraceful” action ever taken against Venezuela.

In May, the Justice Department launched its investigation into Diosdado Cabello, the president of the National Assembly, for possible cocaine trafficking and money laundering.

By then, though, there already were signs of change. In March, officials say, Maduro reached out to initiate talks.

“He was afraid of another round of sanctions, and he was afraid of losing support from the rest of Latin America,” said Romero of Venezuela’s Central University. “The majority of Latin American countries, including Ecuador and Bolivia, have been improving ties with the U.S., and Venezuela wants to be recognized as legitimate.

‘Modus Vivendi’

Maduro’s government is eager to reach some sort of ‘‘modus vivendi’’ with the U.S., Romero said. The precarious economy, coupled with the sight of other Latin American countries — particularly Cuba — warming to the U.S., was a spur for Maduro.

Maduro publicly voiced optimism for U.S.-Venezuela relations after speaking with Obama at the Summit of the Americas in Panama in April, an event where Obama and Cuban leader Raul Castro shook hands as their countries’ moved toward normalization.

‘‘There’s a real sense the U.S.-Latin American relationship had been a bit distant and now has new possibilities,” said Harold Trinkunas, director of the Latin America Initiative at the Brookings Institution. “The one thing that could spoil that is the situation in Venezuela, so the administration is looking for ways to manage that.”

So far, the talks have focused on regional issues such as the peace process in neighboring Columbia and Haiti’s elections, and on domestic issues such as jailed opposition leaders and the need to hold credible elections in December with international observers, according to a State Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss diplomatic business.

Immediate aims include finding “an exit to Venezuela’s political crisis” and preventing its “breakdown into lawlessness,” Sabatini said.

Meacham, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, is among critics who question the effectiveness of the talks.

“Is it the right approach? Up to now I’d say no,” he said. “We haven’t seen progress with the political prisoners, we haven’t seen them commit to international observers.”

Still, Meacham said, “there is something to be gained from opening the channels of communication.” If things go badly, it will help the U.S. “predict and assess the scope of the damage for the region.”

 

 

 

Shaarik, Flying Under the Radar, but Packs a Policy Punch

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Shaarik (Rik) Zafar to date has had quite the public service powerbroker trail from Texas to Washington DC. Today, he is John Kerry’s ‘go-to’ point person for Muslim outreach, at home and globally.

Zafar is a man with the keys to all the doors…appears to be the access and policy keys.

Born in Texas and gaining a law degree he moved on to being the Deputy Chief of Homeland, Cyber and Countering Violent Extremism Group for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the National Counter-terrorism Center and even the Director of Engagement on the White House National Security Staff. Add in being the Senior Policy Advisor at the DHS Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and now the State Department’s Special Representative to Muslim Communities, and we have a man on a mission, some of which are not in America’s best interest.

While at DHS, Zafar established a TSA policy for head coverings for Muslims.

He recently moderated a panel discussion of prominent Muslim women who are authors, bloggers, and Hollywood types to tell their stories where plans are in process for a well…propaganda movie or documentary it seems.

When he joined the State Department, he participated in a United Nations Displacement of Religious Minorities session where ‘government and civil society can better support members of religious minorities displaced by violent persecution around the world, including aiding in resettlement efforts, ensuring the security and rights of members of religious faiths, and promoting societal and governmental respect for religious freedom.’

Then there was the post 9/11 DHS mission by Zafar.

Zafar served as the Special Counsel for Post 9/11 National Origin Discrimination at the U.S. Department of Justice, where he led DOJ’s Initiative to Combat Post 9/11 Discriminatory Backlash. As Special Counsel, his duties included: (1) coordinating the investigation of hate crimes, employment discrimination, and other unlawful forms of national origin and religious discrimination; (2) conducting outreach to vulnerable communities to provide them information about Federal civil rights protections; and (3) advising the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights on issues affecting the American Arab, Muslim, Sikh, and South Asian communities. In September 2005, he delivered a speech on “Improving the Effectiveness of Law Enforcement in Preventing and Combating Hate Crimes” at the Second OSCE Meeting of Police Experts in Vienna, Austria.

Hillary Clinton created this position at the State Department and it has had two leaders assigned to head the division that has a multi-track mission.

WaPo in part: Zafar’s predecessor, Farah Pandith, had held the job since it was created by then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2009 and focused on building initiatives with young Muslims around the world.

But his to-do list is daunting. His goals chart for the office includes developing a plan to combat Shia-Sunni sectarian violence and trying to discourage American foreign fighters from traveling to conflict areas. This week alone, two American Muslims were reportedly killed in Syria fighting for the extremist Islamic State group.

Zafar says he will focus primarily on “pushing open doors” — on matters where cooperation is likely. Two of the State faith office’s top priorities are climate change and entrepreneurship. Another priority (which Pandith focused on as well) is promoting “the creative economy” in Muslim communities overseas, helping them powerfully tell stories through film or art that may help further U.S. foreign policy goals.

Zafar will be in Los Angeles in a few weeks to meet with filmmakers who can help storytellers abroad.

The white board in his office where he brainstorms is topped with cultural themes: “sports, Hollywood.”

 

What the Obama Admin is not Telling you About Iran

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In 2012, the U.S. Treasury Department which is responsible for maintaining the global terror list, placed the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Crops Qods Force in the terror database for violations of the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act for trafficking Afghan narcotics in exchange for weapons to the Taliban.

On July 14, 2015, the U.S. Treasury posted the sanctions relief document on their website as a result of the signed agreement known as the JPOA.

From the Daily Beast in part: The bigger, more complicated story, though, is how the deal will go down with the organization that now plays a huge role in running Iran, albeit behind the country’s clerical façade: the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), also known as the Pasdaran, some of whose internationally infamous leaders showed up on the lists in the nuclear agreement annexes as people who will have sanctions against them lifted.

Whether this was an oversight, a sleight-of-hand, or an attempt to win Pasdaran support, it has to be understood that ever since Rafsanjani (ironically, of all people) let the IRGC into the Iranian economy, allowing it to invest in the country’s leading industries, the group has grown to become Iran’s most important financial power.

The IRGC is now the biggest player in Iran’s biggest industries: energy, construction, car manufacturing and telecommunications. A Western diplomat recently told Reuters that the IRGC’s annual turnover from all of its business activities is around $10 billion to $12 billion, which, if accurate, would be around a sixth of Iranian GDP.

From the United Nations 106 page report in part:

Northern Route

There are various supply chain structures in Central Asia. Trafficking through Turkmenistan appears to feed the Balkan route through the Islamic Republic of Iran rather than the Northern route. Turkmenistan is also unique in Central Asia as a destination country for Balkan route opiates.

 Traffickers increasingly utilize Central Asian railways to transport opiates to the Russian Federation and beyond. The size of some loads detected in 2010 suggests that traffickers are operating with a heightened confidence level. Massive seizures of hashish in containers destined to North America are a confirmation that railroad trafficking is also linked to transcontinental trafficking.

 The Customs union agreement between Kazakhstan, the Russian Federation and Belarus can be misused, as traffickers may opt to re-route opiate deliveries to Europe through the Northern route, as opposed to the traditional Balkan route. There are plans to extend the Customs union agreement to other states such as Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine, and possibly Tajikistan.

 Countering the flow of drugs is complicated by difficulties in co-ordinating efforts between national agencies within Central Asia and between this region and Afghanistan. This is reflected in limited intelligence sharing along lines of supply.

 Drug trafficking and organized crime are sources of conflict in Kyrgyzstan and potentially in the region as a whole. The inter-ethnic clashes that occurred in southern Kyrgyzstan in 2010 have been used by ethnic Kyrgyz criminal groups to assume predominance over ethnic Uzbek criminal groups and to control the drug routes through this part of Kyrgyzstan.

 Rising militancy has been reported across Central Asia, but there are no observed direct connections between extremist groups and drug trafficking. The preoccupation with combating insurgents in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan does, however, hinder counternarcotics efforts by, at least partly, shifting the focus of law enforcement away from drug control.

From the United Nations report in part:

Southern Route

 

Afghan heroin is trafficked to every region of the world except Latin America. The Balkan route (trafficking route through the Islamic Republic of Iran and Turkey) has traditionally been the primary route for trafficking heroin out of Afghanistan. However, there are signs of a changing trend, with the Southern route (a collection of trafficking routes and organized criminal groups that facilitate southerly flow of heroin out of Afghanistan) encroaching, including to supply some European markets.

Unlike the northern or Balkan routes that are mostly dedicated to supplying single destinations markets, the Russian Federation and Europe respectively, the southern route serves a number of diverse destinations, including Asian, Africa and Western and Central Europe. It is therefore perhaps more accurate to talk about a vast network of rouhtes than one general flow with the same direction.

The Islamic Republic of Iran and Pakistan face a tremendous challenge in dealing with the large flows of opiates originating from Afghanistan to feed their domestic heroin markets and to supply demand in many other regions of the world. The geographic location of the Islamic Republic of Iran and Pakistan makes them a major transit point for the trafficking of Afghan opiates along the southern route.

Iran will propagandize a narcotics problem but in truth, it feeds their economy, criminal activity, weapons smuggling and terrorism.

The opium trade and smuggling routes are so successful due to the criminal network and money, females are also trafficked for slave labor and sex.

Officials of the regime in Iran are involved in the “sex trafficking of women and girls”, the U.S. State Department said in an annual report on human trafficking released this week.

“Iran is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children subjected to sex trafficking and forced labor,” the State Department said in its annual ‘Trafficking in Persons Report 2015.’

“Organized groups reportedly subject Iranian women, boys, and girls to sex trafficking in Iran, as well as in the United Arab Emirates and Europe,” the TIP report said.

“In 2013, traffickers forced Iranian women and girls into prostitution in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region. From 2009-2015, there was a reported increase in the transport of girls from and through Iran en route to the Gulf where organized groups sexually exploited or forced them into marriages. In Tehran, Tabriz, and Astara, the number of teenage girls in prostitution continues to increase.”

“Organized criminal groups force Iranian and immigrant children to work as beggars and in street vendor rings in cities, including Tehran. Physical and sexual abuse and drug addiction are the primary means of coercion. Some children are also forced to work in domestic workshops. Traffickers subject Afghan migrants, including boys, to forced labor in construction and agricultural sectors in Iran. Afghan boys are at high risk of experiencing sexual abuse by their employers and harassment or blackmailing by the Iranian security service and other government officials.”

So, back to the question, what is the real reason for the Obama administration aggressive relationship with Iran? With the sanctions lifted, the forecast of future terror activity coupled with smuggling and trafficking women, weapons, slaves and narcotics, the Obama administration has legitimized Iran as a world power forced to be equal on the global stage.

Garland Shooters, Fast and Furious, the FBI

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Still there is this operation known as Fast and Furious concocted by the ATF that lives for real….TODAY.

No one at the FBI, the ATF and DHS is really talking but some investigative reporters and a Senator are asking the right questions.

Assailant in Garland, Texas, attack bought gun in 2010 under Fast and Furious operation

by Richard Serranno

Five years before he was shot to death in the failed terrorist attack in Garland, Texas, Nadir Soofi walked into a suburban Phoenix gun shop to buy a 9-millimeter pistol.

At the time, Lone Wolf Trading Co. was known among gun smugglers for selling illegal firearms. And with Soofi’s history of misdemeanor drug and assault charges, there was a chance his purchase might raise red flags in the federal screening process.

Inside the store, he fudged some facts on the form required of would-be gun buyers.

What Soofi could not have known was that Lone Wolf was at the center of a federal sting operation known as Fast and Furious, targeting Mexican drug lords and traffickers. The idea of the secret program was to allow Lone Wolf to sell illegal weapons to criminals and straw purchasers, and track the guns back to large smuggling networks and drug cartels.

Instead, federal agents lost track of the weapons and the operation became a fiasco, particularly after several of the missing guns were linked to shootings in Mexico and the 2010 killing of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in Arizona.

Soofi’s attempt to buy a gun caught the attention of authorities, who slapped a seven-day hold on the transaction, according to his Feb. 24, 2010, firearms transaction record, which was reviewed by the Los Angeles Times. Then, for reasons that remain unclear, the hold was lifted after 24 hours, and Soofi got the 9-millimeter.

As the owner of a small pizzeria, the Dallas-born Soofi, son of a Pakistani American engineer and American nurse, would not have been the primary focus of federal authorities, who back then were looking for smugglers and drug lords.

He is now.

In May, Soofi and his roommate, Elton Simpson, burst upon the site of a Garland cartoon convention that was offering a prize for the best depiction of the prophet Muhammad, something offensive to many Muslims. Dressed in body armor and armed with three pistols, three rifles and 1,500 rounds of ammunition, the pair wounded a security officer before they were killed by local police.

A day after the attack, the Department of Justice sent an “urgent firearms disposition request” to Lone Wolf, seeking more information about Soofi and the pistol he bought in 2010, according to a June 1 letter from Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, to U.S. Atty. Gen. Loretta Lynch.

Though the request did not specify whether the gun was used in the Garland attack, Justice Department officials said the information was needed “to assist in a criminal investigation,” according to Johnson’s letter, also reviewed by The Times.

The FBI so far has refused to release any details, including serial numbers, about the weapons used in Garland by Soofi and Simpson. Senate investigators are now pressing law enforcement agencies for answers, raising the chilling possibility that a gun sold during the botched Fast and Furious operation ended up being used in a terrorist attack against Americans.

Among other things, Johnson is demanding to know whether federal authorities have recovered the gun Soofi bought in 2010, where it was recovered and whether it had been discharged, according to the letter. He also demanded an explanation about why the initial seven-day hold was placed on the 2010 pistol purchase and why it was lifted after 24 hours.

Asked recently for an update on the Garland shooting, FBI Director James B. Comey earlier this month declined to comment. “We’re still sorting that out,” he said.

Officials at the Justice Department and the FBI declined to answer questions about whether the 9-millimeter pistol was one of the guns used in the Garland attack or seized at Soofi’s apartment.

It remains unclear whether Soofi’s 2010 visit to Lone Wolf is a bizarre coincidence or a missed opportunity for federal agents to put Soofi on their radar years before his contacts with Islamic extremists brought him to their attention.

Though Islamic State militants have claimed to have helped organize the Garland attack, U.S. officials are still investigating whether Soofi and Simpson received direct support from the group or were merely inspired by its calls for violence against the West.

Comey suggested that the attack fits the pattern of foreign terrorist groups indoctrinating American citizens through the Internet. He referred to it as the “crowdsourcing of terrorism.”

In a handwritten letter apparently mailed hours before the attack, Soofi said he was inspired by the writings of Islamic cleric Anwar Awlaki, an American citizen killed in a 2011 U.S. drone strike in Yemen.

“I love you,” Soofi wrote to his mother, Sharon Soofi, “and hope to see you in eternity.” In a telephone interview, Sharon Soofi described the letter and said her son had been shot twice in the head and once in the chest, according to autopsy findings she received.

At the time of the 2010 gun purchase, Soofi ran a Phoenix pizza parlor. His mother said that was about the same time he met Simpson, who worked for Soofi at the restaurant. They later shared an apartment, a short drive from the Lone Wolf store.

Reached by telephone, Andre Howard, owner of Lone Wolf, denied that his store sold the gun to Soofi. “Not here,” Howard said before hanging up.

Sharon Soofi said her son had told her he wanted the pistol for protection because his restaurant was in a “rough area.” She said he also acquired an AK-47 assault rifle at the end of last year or early this year, when authorities believe he and Simpson were plotting an attack on the Super Bowl in Arizona.

“I tried to convince him that, what in the world do you need an AK-47 for?” she said in a telephone interview. Soofi told her they practiced target shooting in the desert. Her younger son, Ali Soofi, was living with his brother and Simpson at the time, she said, but left after becoming frightened by the weapons, ammunition and militant Islamist literature.

She blamed Simpson for radicalizing her son, who she said had no history of religious extremism. A month before Soofi bought the pistol, Simpson was indicted on charges of lying to the FBI about his plans to travel to Somalia and engage in “violent jihad,” according to federal court documents.

Simpson was jailed until March 2011 and convicted of making false statements. But the judge ruled there was insufficient evidence to prove the false statements were connected to international terrorism. Simpson was released and placed on probation.

After the Garland attack, the FBI arrested a third man, Abdul Malik Abdul Kareem, and charged him with planning the Garland attack. At a detention hearing on June 16, prosecutors and an FBI agent provided details about the plot, but avoided discussing the history of the firearms.

Sharon Soofi said she found her son’s letter in her post office box. It was dated the Saturday before the attack, and postmarked in Dallas on Monday, the day after the assault, suggesting he dropped it in the mailbox before he and Simpson arrived in Garland. “In the name of Allah,” the letter began, “I am sorry for the grief I have caused.”

He referred to “those Muslims who are being killed, slandered, imprisoned, etc. for their religion,” and concluded, “I truly love you, Mom, but this life is nothing but shade under the tree and a journey. The reality is the eternal existence in the hereafter.”

 

World Leaders and the UN Allows Sex Slaves

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There is not a world leader or any member of the United Nations much anyone in the National Security Council, the State Department or the White House that is not current on the plight of Christians and Yzidis in the Middle East.

We are in an era when each diplomatic communication or meeting by anyone in the Obama administration with Middle Eastern country governments, the topic of human rights is not discussed and pressure taken to cure, however, the words and threats are shallow at best.

We witnessing a modern day holocaust and no one has a strategy or a war plan to stop the death, the human trafficking or the slavery.

The Islamic State’s Christian and Yizidi Sex Slaves
by Nina Shea:

Unlike Muslims, who can conform and wait out ISIS until the day it is defeated, Christians, along with “polytheist” Yizidis, can don veils and give up cigarettes and alcohol, but, as non-Muslims, their very presence is an intolerable offense to the year-old “caliphate.” These minority religious groups in Iraq and Syria, lacking protecting armies or militias of their own, find themselves in unique peril. During his Bolivian trip this month, Pope Francis called it “genocide.”

ISIS demands nothing less than the conversion of all Christians and Yizidis to Islam under penalty of death for men and enslavement for women and children. (Another frequently cited option for Christian “People of the Book”, the payment of jizya, is a ruse, for the tax is raised until it becomes unpayable and property and lives are taken after all. Hence, last summer, Mosul’s bishops chose exile for their communities, rather than attend an ISIS meeting to learn of its jizya terms.)

The beheadings, crucifixions, and other means ISIS uses to slaughter unarmed Christian and Yizidi men—from priests and bishops to destitute migrant workers—have been proudly displayed by the ultra violent group on social media and have drawn condemnations worldwide. But the Islamic State’s “revival” of the institution of chattel slavery—sex slavery of Christian and Yizidi women and girls no less—has faded from public attention.

Over the past decade, thousands of Iraqi and Syrian Christians—including, in 2013, an entire convent of Syrian Orthodox nuns—have been taken captive for ransom. Last August, shortly after ISIS established its caliphate, it began something new. After capturing non-Sunni women and girls, ISIS began awarding and selling them as sex slaves. The vast majority were Yizidis but some, according to UN reports, were Christians.

On August 5, 2014, two days after ISIS invaded Sinjar, Yizidi MP Vian Dakhil made a riveting emotional speech about the genocide facing Yizidis on the floor of the Iraqi Parliament. She choked out before collapsing, “Our women are taken as slaves and sold in a slave market.””Our women are taken as slaves and sold in a slave market.” A week later, two prominent UN experts expressed grave concern about “sexual violence against women and teenage girls and boys belonging to Iraqi minorities.” Their report stated that “some 1,500 Yazidi and Christian persons may have been forced into sexual slavery,” which they condemned as “barbaric.”

Throughout the fall, lurid reports emerged of the enslaved Yizidis, up to 4,000 in all. As ISIS boasted in its propaganda magazine Dabiq: “This large-scale enslavement of polytheist families is probably the first since the abandonment of Sharia law.”

The Fatwa Department of the Islamic State made clear that the females of the “People of the Book,” including Christians, can be enslaved for sex as well, though Muslim “apostates” cannot. The number of Christian sex slaves is unknown. Three—Rana, Rita, and Christina—are publicly known. In March, 135 women and children were among those taken captive, from 35 Christian villages along Syria’s Khabour River. Their families, unable to afford the $23 million ransom demand, were told by ISIS, “They belong to us now.” The older women were released; the younger ones may be enslaved, though this has not been confirmed.

Cell phone calls from still enslaved girls last September and October disclosed the shocking details of their captivity. A young Yizidi woman in a phone call with activists from Compassion4Kurdistan pleaded: “I’ve been raped thirty times and it’s not even lunchtime. I can’t go to the toilet. Please bomb us.”

On September 7, a 17 year-old, with the pseudonym Mayat, told a journalist that she was being held with forty others females and that everyone, including a 12 year-old and other young girls, some of whom had stopped talking, were sexually abused daily. She told Italy’s La Republica:

They treat us as if we are their slaves. The men hit us and threaten us when we try to resist…. We’ve asked our jailers to shoot us dead, to kill us, but we are too valuable for them. They keep telling us that we are unbelievers because we are non-Muslims and that we are their property, like war booty. They say we are like goats bought at a market.

A 14-year-old Yizidi girl who had escaped said that she and her close friend Shayma were beaten and kicked after being given away as gifts: “Shayma was awarded to Abu Hussein, who was a cleric. I was given to an overweight, dark-bearded man about fifty years-old who seemed to have some high rank. He went by the nickname Abu Ahmed.”

In May 2015, a Yizidi girl was found enslaved by ISIS financier Abu Sayyaf and freed when the U.S. Delta Force invaded his Syrian home and killed him. Nothing further has been reported on her.

After their initial capture by jihadis, the women and girls are held in detention centers. Mosul’s Badoush prison is one “makeshift prison” for “the sexual enslavement of children,” according to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. A Yazidi teenager Du’a told former Congressman Frank Wolf, who interviewed refugees in Kurdistan last January, that she was held in Mosul with 700 other Yizidi girls. She related that the girls were separated by eye color, and members of ISIS were allowed to choose for themselves among the young women.She related that the girls were separated by eye color, and members of ISIS were allowed to choose for themselves among the young women. The rest, she said, were then separated into “pretty” and “ugly” groups, with the most beautiful given away to high ranking ISIS members.

This month, an ISIS flyer was discovered on Twitter by SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremists’ online postings. It announced that girls captured in battle were to be the top three prizes in Quran recitation contests held in two Syrian mosques during the month of Ramadan. Accounts that the flyers said these were Yizidi slaves were erroneous; the girls’ religion was not specified and could have included Christians. Coverage of this was limited to Internet postings.

Sex slaves are also sold. Under rules for “The Revival of Slavery Before the Hour [of Judgment],” Dabiq gives a theological justification for selling women as war booty: “The enslaved Yizidi families are now sold by the Islamic State soldiers as the polytheists were sold by the [Prophet’s] companions.” It also cites more recent precedents: namely, the “enslavement of Christian women and children in the Philippines and Nigeria by the Mujahidin there.”

The article argues that sex slavery benefits both the Muslim community, by enlarging it, and the slave by “making heaven accessible.” The formerly enslaved girls report being consistently pressured, including by beatings, to convert to Islam. (Rules for proper beatings are included.) If they become Muslim, they can then be sold as brides to jihadis.

On October 15, ISIS published pricing guidelines for slaves based on age. Under the heading “Merchandise,” the listing starts with “200,000 dinars for a woman aged 1-9 / Yizidi/Christian” and ends with “75,000 dinars for a woman aged 30-40 / Yizidi/Christian.”

In practice, the pricing appears to be market driven. An Australian jihadist for the Islamic State, Mohamed Elomar, tweeted that he was selling seven Yizidi sex slaves for $2,500 each and posted a photo of one. In June 2015, the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that ISIS militants were selling slaves for $500 to $2,000.In June 2015, the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that ISIS militants were selling slaves for $500 to $2,000. The UN representative Bangura said that captured women and girls are often forced to strip naked and are judged by ISIS militants who gauge how much they are to be sold for in a slave auction.

A father listened helplessly as his distraught enslaved daughter told him in a cell phone call that she was being sold for $10 that same afternoon. Du’a told Wolf she was sold for $2 after being put in the “ugly” group.
Theology aside, Bangura reported that in order for ISIS to recruit more foreign fighters to join its military ranks, the caliphate continues to capture more girls and women in each newly conquered territory and then sells them for “as little as a pack of cigarettes.” The Islamic State’s goal is to make them affordable to men of all means, especially the young jihadis on whom the caliphate depends for its military success. Bangura observes, “This is a war that is being fought on the bodies of women.”

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child reports that, in the Mosul markets where ISIS sells abducted children and women, “attaching price tags to them,” it found that the buyers were local youths who were being recruited as jihadis. Amnesty International’s December report confirms that buyers are largely local Iraqi and Syrian men. The involvement of their former neighbors is a factor driving many Iraqi Christians and Yizidis to emigrate from the region.

No female is considered too young; only women over forty are let go or released for ransom. Amnesty reported that some slaves were “just babies.” Du’a said one of the girls penned up with her was seven months-old. Another 21-year-old escaped slave said that, while detained for sale, a guard took another younger captive into the bathroom and raped her; she was nine years-old. ISIS guidelines price Christian and Yizidi 9 year-olds at $172.ISIS guidelines price Christian and Yizidi 9 year-olds at $172.

A toddler brings equal value. A Christian woman, whose family could not flee Qaraqosh when ISIS invaded because her husband is blind, told Wolf that they came to her house, shouting, “Convert or we will kill you.” An ISIS militant snatched from her lap Christina, her three-year-old daughter. The mother later learned during a furtive cell phone call from Rana, an enslaved Christian woman, that she had cared for Christiana while they were detained with other enslaved women until the baby was taken away.

A Dabiq article asserts that from Sinjar in Iraq “one fifth of the slaves were transferred to the Islamic State’s authority.” ISIS uses the slaves in caliphate bordellos run by British women—members of the al Khanssaa Brigade, an all-women religious police. Farah Ispahani, a Reagan Fascell Democracy Fellow of the National Endowment for Democracy and a former Member of Parliament in Pakistan, studies ISIS women volunteers. One of the few of these to mention the sex slavery is “Umm Sumayyah al-Muhajirah,” who argues that taking slaves through war is a “great prophetic Sunnah containing many divine wisdoms and religious benefits.” Dabiq identifies one such benefit: it saves men “who cannot afford marriage to a free woman [who] finds himself surrounded by temptation towards sin.” It explains that “the desertion of slavery had led to an increase in adultery/fornication because the sharia alternative to marriage is not available.”

Over 600 Yizidi girls, one by one, have been redeemed by private efforts with KRG help, according to a July 7 interview with Vian Dakhil. Two more Yizidi girls were freed from enslavement in Mosul, on July 14. Conspicuously absent in the rescue operation, Dakhil notes, was the Iraqi government.

After a spate of reporting on the Yizidis last fall, the Islamic State’s slave practice has received scant attention. The Wilson Center’s Middle East director Halleh Isfandiari observes that “Arab and Muslim governments, though loud in their condemnation of ISIS as a terrorist organization, have been silent on its treatment of women.” The reaction of the White House and Congress has been muted as well. The State Department’s 2015 Sex Trafficking report, released on July 27, devotes barely two paragraphs out of 380 pages to the Islamic State’s institutionalization of sex slavery in the past year.

Uncharacteristically, ISIS, too, seems a bit self-restrained about broadcasting this particular abomination, which may account for some of the world’s silence. ISIS issued rules last December regulating—though not banning—sexual relations with another’s slaves, with slaves who are sisters, and with pre-pubescent slave girls. It hasn’t produced any slick videos of its slave auctions or bordellos. After YouTube showed jihadis joking about trading their Glocks for sex slaves, and of a British schoolboy-turned-ISIS-militant leering about the hundreds of women slaves in Syria, ISIS ordered a stop to tweeting slave photos.

Once legal, chattel slavery has been abolished worldwide as a matter of law. To the extent that it exists in the world’s darkest corners, it does so as a criminal activity and, as such, is condemned by society at large. As the tribute vice pays to virtue, that remains true even where governments allow slavery to continue with impunity. The Islamic State’s revival of what it purports to be state-institutionalized slavery against Yizidi and Christian women needs to be vigorously condemned, both as a component of religious genocide every bit as horrifying as beheadings, and in its own right.