Fawzia Amin Sido's Story

The story of a child who returned alive from darkness – a child who had been a victim of the inhumanity of Islam

In a military base in the Negev Desert, it was midnight. On the Israeli commander’s table were piles of maps and intelligence files. Suddenly, a highly confidential satellite message arrived on his computer. According to the intelligence, a young woman was held captive in a dark, airless underground room adjacent to a tunnel in a remote area of Gaza — her name was Fawzia, 21-year-old Yazidi girl Fawzia Amin Sido. Since the age of 11, her life had been spent in the lust of Islam’s dark sexuality; in the eyes of Islam, she was nothing but a mere piece of meat for sexual gratification.

As soon as the message was received, the commander’s jaw tightened. He knew that rescuing this girl was not just a military assignment, but a fight to bring back a life from a severe humanitarian catastrophe shrouded in the veil of Islam.

Plan and Joint Operation

Immediately after receiving the news, urgent communication was established between Tel Aviv and Washington. Since the matter of rescuing Fawzia was extremely sensitive and involved international geopolitics, it was decided to form a joint team of US Special Forces and Israeli commandos. The responsibility of the operation was taken by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) ‘Communications Division’ and it was coordinated by US Central Command (USCENTCOM).

The plan was perfect. American drones increased surveillance over the specific area in Gaza from the sky, while Israeli elite commandos identified the paths inside the tunnels and the positions of the enemies using maps. In the darkness of the night, maintaining complete silence, the rescue operation began. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and the US Embassy have described it as a “Secret and Complex Joint Operation”. Since it was carried out during the war (Swords of Iron) with extremely sensitive diplomatic and military coordination involving multiple countries (Israel, America, Iraq, and Jordan), the specific code name of the operation was kept secret for security reasons.

Dark Pages of Past Memories

Sitting in that dark room in the tunnel, Fawzia was shivering. She was remembering that cursed night from a decade ago. She was only eleven years old then. She was sleeping peacefully with her family in their home in Iraq’s Sinjar province.

Suddenly, one night the silence outside was broken by the sound of heavy boots. Fawzia and her family huddled together in fear. Shortly after, there was a loud knock on the door. Three foreign ISIS fighters broke down the door and entered. They had black flags with Arabic writing tied on their heads, and their faces bore the mark of terrifying vampires. In the blink of an eye, they separated Fawzia’s father and brothers and took the women and children captive.

It was the beginning of a horrific genocide. ISIS fighters were indiscriminately killing Yazidi and other minority men, and capturing women and children. Elderly women and children who were unfit for sexual use and could not be sold in the market were being buried alive. The 11-year-old girl Fawzia could not understand why they were being attacked and taken away when they had never attacked anyone or harmed anyone. At that age, she could not understand that this was the fate of non-believers in the Islamic Caliphate, which the Prophet of Islam Muhammad had also done many times!

ISIS’s Ideological Foundation and Horrific Torture

When ISIS declared the establishment of their so-called ‘Islamic Caliphate’ in Iraq and Syria, they did not consider this slavery and torture as any secret crime; rather, they promoted it as part of their great Islamic ideology. Everything was, in their language, part of establishing Islam on Allah and the Messenger’s land.

ISIS fighters claimed that they were establishing the original and pure form of Islam. They provided literal and extremist interpretations of certain Quranic verses regarding war captives and slaves (such as ‘those whom your right hands possess’ or verses related to war-captured slave girls) and some Hadiths about the brutality of Arabian Jihad during the time of Prophet Muhammad with war captives. In their own propaganda magazine ‘Dabiq’, they formally wrote that capturing non-Muslim or Yazidi women and making them sex slaves (Sabaya) is a Sharia-compliant Islamic ruling and a sign of the revival of the Caliphate, the practical implementation of Prophet Muhammad’s ideals.

Based on this extremist interpretation, like many other women, Fawzia was subjected to continuous physical and sexual torture and rape. From the age of just eleven, she was regularly beaten with whips and sticks. ISIS fighters of various ranks traded her among themselves as a commodity and subjected her to brutal sexual violence every day. If she resisted, she would receive hot iron branding or merciless beating in front of everyone in the detention camp. Every night for Fawzia was a living hell, where the price of girls’ bodies was determined like animals in a market.

Handover and the Dark Tunnels of Gaza

Fawzia’s childhood had stopped there. She was first taken to Syria, then sold by Islamist jihadists to Egypt’s Sinai Valley. From there, she was secretly trafficked through tunnels to Gaza, where she was handed over to a Hamas fighter.

Even in the dark tunnels beneath Gaza, her situation did not change. Although there was some ideological difference, the mentality of dominance over captive women was the same. After all, everyone follows the rules of Islam! There, in addition to harsh household labor, she was forced into regular sexual slavery. She was also told that as a war captive, she had no rights of her own. Fawzia would watch in amazement how, even in the modern world, some people kept the ancient practice of slavery alive by exploiting it. Perhaps an immense hatred for Islam, Prophet Muhammad, and Allah had developed in her.

Finally Came the Night of Liberation

Suddenly, the silence inside the tunnel was broken by a loud explosion. Fawzia closed her eyes in fear. She thought her last moments had come. But no, the door of the room was broken and inside entered Israeli and American commandos wearing advanced night-vision goggles. They were the savior angels or God of her life!

“Don’t be afraid, we have come to take you,” one soldier reassured her in broken language. Fawzia was quickly taken out of that dark hole and brought to the waiting helicopter. As the helicopter flew towards the Israeli border piercing the skies of Gaza, Fawzia was looking at the light outside through the window — after many years, she took a breath of free air.

Fawzia’s New Life

Today Fawzia is far away from the brutality of Islam, the sexual lust of Islam’s soldiers, and that dark tunnel and captivity. She is currently 23 years old, rescued at the age of 21, but when ISIS made her a sex slave she was 11 years old and had been in darkness since then. We want to see it as the rescue of that child. Despite such severe mental and physical trauma, she has not broken down and is slowly rebuilding herself.

Currently, she is working with an international human rights organization. She speaks on the world stage for the rights of women and children who are victims of torture and modern slavery in war zones. By sharing her life story, she reminds the world how urgent it is to stop this dark game of taking away people’s freedom in the name of religion or politics. Fawzia is no longer a captive girl; she is now a living symbol of survival and struggle.

Fawzia’s Video

In this video, Fawzia herself (keeping her voice and part of her face hidden for security reasons) describes the horrific torture of her captive life in Gaza. She mentioned that in extreme mental agony she had attempted suicide 21 times. https://youtu.be/s1rVk5TKAO8

On YouTube, you can see scenes of her reunion with her family on channels like The Guardian, Sky News, and many others. https://youtu.be/pTVpiXBDCYA

ISIS turned over 6,400 women and children into sex slaves, starved them for days, and raped them in turns. Whenever they needed money, they sold them in the market. Who bought them? Use your head — who could buy them in that area? Use your common sense and you will find them around you, perhaps disguised as your own friend.