By Anas al-Bar | 2024-02-26

Al-Arabiya's exclusive interviews with the wives and daughter of slain ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi opened old wounds for many Iraqis, especially members of the Yazidi community who suffered devastation at his hands.

Iraqis who spoke to Al-Fassel after the interviews aired on February 15 expressed their anger with the extremist group and its legacy of violence, and called on the Iraqi forces and international coalition to eradicate its remnants.

In the interviews, al-Baghdadi's first wife, Asmaa Mohammed al-Kubaisi, his third wife, Nour Ibrahim, and his daughter, Umaima al-Baghdadi, revealed previously unknown details about the ISIS leader's personal life.

They discussed his personality and his marriages, his relationships with close associates, and his declaration of a self-described "caliphate" in June 2014.

They described al-Baghdadi's last moments before his death in a US Special Forces raid on his hideout in Syria's Idlib province in October 2019.

And they shed fresh light on ISIS's most heinous crimes, carried out under al-Baghdadi's leadership, including the capture of Yazidi women into sexual slavery.

The three women are currently in the custody of the Iraqi judiciary, along with other members of al-Baghdadi's family, after being repatriated from Türkiye, where they had been detained for close to five years.

They were transferred to Iraq as part of a plan to repatriate and prosecute all terrorists who fled outside the country, said the Supreme Judicial Council of Iraq.

But many Iraqis shared mixed feelings about having them back.

Paranoia and sexual obsession

The al-Baghdadi women's revelations confirmed the ISIS leader's "narcissistic personality and superiority complex" and his paranoia over his safety, terror group expert Fadel Abu Ragheef told Al-Fassel.

According to his first wife, Asmaa ("Umm Hudhayfah"), al-Baghdadi was fearful of moving from one place to another or owning a mobile phone lest he be killed by a US drone or have his location discovered by intelligence services.

Abu Ragheef said this reflects "the extent of the paranoia that gripped the most dangerous terrorist in the world, and how he was concerned only with his personal security."

Al-Baghdadi's first wife indicated he did not participate in any battle, as no injury appeared on his body, refuting his claims to have led ISIS fighters into the fray and revealing that he misled his followers and sent them to their death.

Abu Ragheef said the women's revelations unmasked the ISIS leader's lust for women and his endeavor to satisfy his sexual urges via multiple marriages and the enslavement of a number of Yazidi women.

Meanwhile, al-Baghdadi forced his own daughter, Umaima, to marry a man much older than her when she was just 12 years old, Abu Ragheef said.

Yazidi community's anger

The Al-Arabiya interviews sparked fierce anger in Iraq's Yazidi community.

In a televised interview, Iraqi MP Vian Dakhil accused al-Baghdadi's first wife, Asmaa, of taking part in violence against Yazidi sabaya (women captured into sexual slavery).

ISIS fighters attacked Yazidi villages in northern Iraq in August 2014 and took Yazidi women as slaves, passing them around among themselves and trafficking them around the region.

The fate of about 2,600 Yazidis, most of them women, remains unknown. Even the survivors have had their lives ripped apart by the trauma of the experience.

A Yazidi survivor, now 37 years old, described her memories of the 2014 terrorist attack on her village, Kojo, in the Sinjar district of Ninawa province. ISIS elements killed hundreds of men in cold blood in Kojo after separating them from their wives and daughters.

The survivor told Al-Fassel she was taken with thousands of women from Sinjar to several areas and put up for sale, eventually ending up in Mosul.

She was able to escape from her captors in early 2017, when Iraqi forces were fighting to regain control of that city with the help of the international coalition.

The survivor said the massacres and other crimes committed by ISIS "will not be erased from the memory of the Yazidis."

"Many innocent people lost their lives, families were displaced, and we experienced unparalleled calamities," she said.

According to the Yazidi organization Yazda, ISIS's attacks against the community left 1,268 people dead and orphaned about 2,745 children.

A further 6,417 were abducted, including 3,548 women and girls who were subjected to sexual slavery and forced labor, the organization said, while close to 400,000 others were displaced and forced to live in camps.

Between 2014 and 2017, when ISIS controlled swathes of Iraq and Syria, the group buried the remains of thousands of its victims in dozens of mass graves.

Need to eradicate ISIS

Iraqis who spoke with Al-Fassel said the al-Baghdadi family interviews were a reminder of the need to "complete the journey" with the international coalition until all remnants of ISIS are crushed.

The women's revelations were important but not shocking, said Baghdad resident Raad al-Dulaimi, as everyone knows who al-Baghdadi was and the truth about his ideology and the criminal group he headed.

"The most important thing now, from my point of view, is to continue to kill off the remnants of terrorism and end their presence, with the help of US forces and the coalition," al-Dulaimi said.

"It's impossible for the group to regain its previous strength," Baghdad resident Hassan Sami told Al-Fassel.

ISIS "has become a thing of the past," he said.

But he warned that the group's ability to "mislead and brainwash is still the same, and combating it requires proactive action to target the hotbeds of extremism and Iraqi-international cooperation in this regard."