ISIS victim who took three bullets now a rescuer

-By Mohammad Wajihuddin
MUMBAI: Some of the visible signs of assault on Idrees Bashar Silo are bullet marks on his body and his left elbow's post-operation protrusion. What is invisible to the naked eye is the deep pain in his heart. The pain of seeing Yazidi women abducted as slave girls and raped, children maimed, many men and women buried alive in group graves.
Having survived the brutalities of the terrorist group ISIS in Kurdistan region of Iraq in 2014, Silo began locating and rescuing Yazidis, mostly women whom the ISIS had captured and used as "slave girls".Till date he has helped rescue 3330 Yazidis from the clutches of the brutal ISIS through use of social networks, bribes and in some cases buying them from their captors.
Silo will receive the Harmony Foundation's 14th annual Mother Teresa Memorial International Award for Social Justice (2018) in the city on Sunday. Nobel laureate Nadia Murad is among the nominees for the Award.
"The world protests when a European woman is kidnapped or sexually assaulted by a terrorist group anywhere but keeps quiet at the brutalities. We decided to fete some of the survivors among the Yazidis to highlight their plight," says Harmony Foundation's president Abraham Mathai.
On August 3, 2014, the ISIS captured 6417 Yazidis, including 1250 from one village, in northern Iraq. "The terrorists separated us in groups and crammed us in a secondary school building-men at the ground floor, women on the upper floor. They began killing indiscriminately," recalls 48-year-old Silo. "A jet fighter came from somewhere and began hovering over us. Due to the noise and the confusion our captors backed out briefly. I too came under a hail of bullets but escaped." He escaped with his 18-year-old son and reached the Syrian border where, he recalls, a common man nursed him and brought him to the Kurdish town of Irbil. While he survived the bullet injuries, his son didn't.
Practitioners of an ancient gnostic faith, the Yazidis believe in Tawas Malaik, a benevolent peacock angel. ISIS and other followers of extremist Islamism consider the Yazidis devil worshippers and therefore hate them. There are around 5 lakh Yazids, chiefly located in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. Having lost their homes, around four lakh of them live in 23 refugee camps.
The ISIS terrorists, says Silo, tried to first force the captured Yazidis to convert into Islam. Silo has worked to rescue the captured Yazidis, mostly women through the group Kidnapped Rescue. For this, Hussein Al-Qaidi of Kidnapped Rescue admires Silo who is now busy persuading the international community to help the Yazidis and whose sweet reward will come in the form of a Mother Teresa Award today.