Forced into sexual slavery by the so-called Islamic State, many Yazidi women now emerging from the ruins of the Caliphate have had children with their IS captors.  These children are rejected by the Yazidi community; their mothers are made to abandon them should they want to return home. BBC Persian reporter Nafiseh Kohnavard  traveled to Iraq and Syria to hear from the women forced to choose between their children and their community.

The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the panel made up of BBC Persian reporter Nafiseh Kohnavard and the director of the film along selected guests.

The Frontline Club will be screening a new BBC documentary,  Stacey Dooley – Face to Face with ISIS followed by a Q&A with Stacey and director Joshua Baker in conversation with Catrin Nye.

One year on from her first visit to Iraq, Stacey joins Shireen – a 23 year old Yazidi woman who was held as a sex slave for over two years by the so called Islamic State. Shireen managed to escape while she was enslaved in Mosul, but many Yazidi woman like her haven’t, and remain in ISIS captivity.

Shireen takes Stacey back to Mosul, the self-declared capital of ISIS in Iraq. She wants to revisit the places where she was held captive, in order to finally draw a line under the past. In East Mosul, they find the house where Shireen was imprisoned and sexually abused by a leading ISIS executioner for months.

But it’s the Old City of Mosul, where Shireen finally managed to escape ISIS, that means the most to her. With a military escort, the pair travel into the heart of the Old City – where ISIS only months ago made their last stand in a devastating and brutal battle. The danger is real: ISIS militants are still being hunted and unexploded bombs litter the street.

Keen to see justice is being served, Shireen and Stacey sit in on an interrogation of an ISIS suspect in court. But with the Iraqi justice system overwhelmed by the sheer number of ISIS suspects, justice isn’t as clear cut as Shireen and Stacey might have hoped.

Armed with countless unanswered questions, Shireen and Stacey finally have the chance to get answers when they come face to face with a senior ISIS commander in a maximum security facility. He has murdered hundreds of men and raped countless Yazidi women and girls. His frank answers will stay with Shireen and Stacey forever.

Run Time: 44 mins

Credits

Production: Insight TWI

Presenter: Stacey Dooley

Producer Director: Joshua Baker

Producer: Helen Spooner

On the release of his new book Holy Lands: Reviving Pluralism in the Middle East, we will be joined by writer and Jerusalem correspondent for The Economist Nicolas Pelham – and others – to discuss his optimistic and vivid reportage that spans the region, from Israel and Palestine to Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. We will discuss the roots of today’s sectarian tensions and how they have come to characterise the region as a whole – often without a full recognition of historical context, socio-economic factors, or the rich differences of the countries contained within it. We will look to the future and assess hope for a recovery from conflict and a return to religious plurality.

This event will be chaired by Iraqi-British journalist and political analyst Mina Al-Oraibi, a senior fellow at the Institute of State Effectiveness and a Yale World Fellow. She is a member of the Global Agenda Council on the Middle East and has written extensively on US and European policies in the Middle East, in addition to conducting several high profile interviews including with US President Barack Obama and Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi.

The panel:

Nicolas Pelham is The Economist’s Middle East correspondent, and a writer on Arab affairs for the New York Review of Books. He spent five years as a senior analyst for International Crisis Group, covering the growing power of regional national-religious movements in Iraq, Lebanon and Israel/Palestine, and has worked as a consultant for the United Nations in Gaza. He was The Economist’s correspondent in Iraq during the 2003 American invasion and in the Maghreb. He is the author of A New Muslim Order (2008), which maps Shia resurgence in the Arab world, and co-author of A History of the Middle East (2004).

Patrick Cockburn is an Irish journalist who has been a Middle East correspondent since 1979 for the Financial Times and, currently, for The Independent. He was awarded Foreign Commentator of the Year at the 2013 Editorial Intelligence Comment Awards, and is the author of several books on Iraq’s recent history, including The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq, Muqtada Al-Sadr and the Battle for the Future of Iraq and most recently The Jihadis Return: Isis and the New Sunni Uprising.

Safa Al Ahmad is a Saudi Arabian journalist and filmmaker, and joint winner of the 2015 Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Award for Journalism. She has been reporting on Yemen since 2010, and was one of only a handful of journalists reporting from inside the country for a Western news organisation as the crisis escalated. She has directed numerous documentaries for the BBC and PBS, including Al Qaeda in Yemen: A New Front (2012), Saudi’s Secret Uprising 2014), and more recently, Yemen Under Siege (2016).

Firas Abi Ali is a Senior Principal Analyst for IHS Country Risk, with a focus on forecasting political and violent risks in the MENA region. His expertise includes Islamic finance in Syria, Lebanon, Libya and Egypt, with a concentration on political stability and the rise of Islamist militant groups, as well as the likely evolution of conflicts and ensuing risks across the region. He makes regular appearances in the media, including interviews with Reuters, Bloomberg, the BBC, Newsweek and CNN.