As per news reports, hundreds of Iraqi Yazidi girls and women are being held by the Islamic State (IS) militants and these are being sold and bought as war bounty. Torture, rape and killings are part of treatment meted out to these unfortunate souls. At the same time there is no trace of more than 200 Nigerian school girls earlier kidnapped by Boko Haram (BH). Sad that all this is being done in the name of religion. But for sure, we all know what IS and BH are doing is not new in the history of mankind. Every group and empire had been doing the same in medieval times, regardless they belonged to East or West. But today, world has forgotten that ruthless treatment of the captured and enslaved people as a horrible nightmare; perhaps IS and BH are here to wake us from the dream that the world has moved forward on human rights and equality. For them, it’s the same course of history, ruler and the ruled, religion, sect, ethnicity don’t matter.
Though West and regional powers have taken a serious note of these ruthless murderers who are no else than an army of thugs, kidnappers and extortionists, we need boots on the ground to chase them out. They have captured large swaths of land, towns and cities, are running their own finances from loot, selling oil and committing extortion. Therefore, getting them out of civilian areas may not be a task for the air force only. Pakistan has done this experiment for long but was ultimately forced to send troops in North Waziristan.
Time is running out, we have to save these poor Yazidi girls and women from the wicked enslavement of IS as no one of us want to go back to dark medieval times.
MASOOD KHAN
Jubail, Saudi Arabia