JUDY WOODRUFF: But first: The American war
against ISIS was driven initially by the militants'
attack on the Yazidi religious minority of
Iraq.
The campaign of mass murder, forced displacement
and enslavement of the Yazidis shocked the
world.
Now many have returned to their ancestral
homeland around Sinjar Mountain in Iraq's
far Northwest.
But, as special correspondent Jane Ferguson
found, so much there will never be the same.
JANE FERGUSON: On Iraq's Sinjar Mountain,
this is a celebration of one of the world's
oldest religions people giving thanks to God
and the angels for who they are.
Among the graves of their ancestors, families
meet here for one of the greatest festivals
of the year in the Yazidi religion, a time
to celebrate their identity as a people.
It's called the Eid al-Jamma festival, or
the Feast of the Assembly.
The community invited us to join them in their
celebrations.
It's normally a time of spiritual rebirth
for the Yazidi people, and, right now, rebirth
is something they desperately need.
MAN (through translator): The men are not
here because they are happy.
They are here to pray and ask God for the
return of their wives and daughters.
JANE FERGUSON: When ISIS gunmen swept across
Iraq in 2014, they came here, to this peaceful
rural community, declaring the Yazidi people
infidels for their ancient religious practices.
They took away thousands of women and girls
as sex slaves, and they slaughtered many of
the men.
The road back to Sinjar is an emotional journey
for Adeeba Qasim.
Her homeland is a broken, scarred place, haunted
by memories of what the United Nations determined
was a genocide.
She is a local journalist who brought us here.
When ISIS arrived into her village, Khana
Sor, the extremists showed no mercy.
Adeeba grew up on this street surrounded by
her extended family.
When they got word ISIS was coming, her aunts
and uncles decided to stay.
Despite rumors of ISIS brutality, they could
not imagine the stories were true.
They never thought anything so terrible would
happen to them.
Adeeba's parents, alongside her and her siblings,
played it safe and drove away, she says, just
15 minutes before the Islamic State fighters
came down here.
Do you ever think about what would have happened
if you had stayed?
ADEEBA QASIM, Iraqi Yazidi: My father, the
other people who stayed, they all have been
killed.
Their bodies are in the mass graves, yes.
So we were lucky.
JANE FERGUSON: Around 70 members of her wider
family are still missing, she tells us.
Some were young women sold as sex slaves.
The men were probably killed.
Her half-brother has come back here now with
his family.
When Adeeba brings us for a visit, it's a
rare moment of joy for them.
Adeeba is now 24 years old, and, like thousands
of other Yazidi survivors, she is trying to
recover.
She moved to the nearby capital of Kurdistan,
where she works with foreign journalists and
aid workers.
Her whole family are scattered.
Some have managed to get asylum in Germany,
while others are refugees in Turkey.
And then there are those who became ISIS victims,
missing or killed.
She took us to her old home.
ADEEBA QASIM: I mean, I lost everything.
This house is full of memories of mine, beautiful
things, but not anymore.
Yes.
JANE FERGUSON: You don't want to go inside?
ADEEBA QASIM: No, never.
JANE FERGUSON: Do you think you will ever
go back to this house?
ADEEBA QASIM: No, I don't think so.
JANE FERGUSON: Helping other Yazidi women
and girls is now part of Adeeba's recovery.
She took us to visit one such family she met
through her work with charities providing
psychological support for victims.
They are one of the only Yazidi families to
return to Hardan village, and now they're
trying to move on with their lives.
Zahida was just 17 when the militants came.
They took her to Mosul city as a sex slave
for a year before she managed to escape.
Her mother, Ramzia, was held as a house slave,
cooking and cleaning for an ISIS family, until
finally being freed just a few days ago.
We have changed their names and hidden their
identities because other family members are
still being held by ISIS.
Ramzia watched as nine of their children were
taken from her, the girls sold as sex slaves,
the boys sent to militant training camps,
never returning.
Then she was sold too.
RAMZIA, Former Isis Captive (through translator):
ISIS families wanted Yazidi old women to clean
for them, but not if they came with children.
They put my picture and my name on social
media as a slave for sale, and said I come
without children.
JANE FERGUSON: She was bought by a Saudi family
in Raqqa, at the time the Islamic State's
capital in neighboring Syria.
RAMZIA (through translator): I told the woman
who bought me that I dreamed of going home,
and she said: "You will never go home.
You will die in my house."
JANE FERGUSON: She didn't die there.
Instead, as Raqqa began to fall to coalition
forces, her captors contacted her family and
sold her back, exchanging her freedom for
$13,000.
Her daughter's story is one of personal triumph.
She waited in a refugee camp after escaping,
while one by one her sisters also managed
to buy their freedom, and after so much pain,
Zahida found love.
ZAHIDA, Former ISIS Captive (through translator):
I never thought I would be happy again.
When something so terrible happens to you
when you are just a girl, just 17, it's very
hard to forget it.
In the refugee camp, life was very tough,
but eventually my sisters returned, and then
I met my husband in the camp.
We dated for a year and fell in love.
So I have experienced both great sadness and
great happiness in my life.
JANE FERGUSON: The wedding was just a month
ago.
She and her husband now live in the battered
village.
Just a few hundred yards down the road, a
mass grave, this nameless hump of scrubland,
is a cruel reminder that the men of the village
who are still missing are unlikely to be coming
home.
The old lady in that village just told you
that she saw your cousins, she heard from
them?
ADEEBA QASIM: Yes, she told me that she saw
two of them.
And, I mean, the last time I saw them they
were like 12 years old.
And she told me that they were bought and
sold.
They were, like, slaves.
And last time she saw them was last year.
And then after that, she -- she couldn't hear
from them anymore.
JANE FERGUSON: In Raqqa?
ADEEBA QASIM: Yes.
JANE FERGUSON: They were sold?
For the rest of the community, many turn to
prayer to recover from the past.
And celebrations like Eid al-Jamma are as
much about keeping their identity alive too.
Since 2014, thousands of Yazidis have left
Iraq as refugees.
The religious practices of the Yazidi community
are some of the oldest in the world, and with
so many members of the community leaving the
country, traditions like this are in danger
of dying out.
Once people enter into the temple, they take
pieces of colored cloth and they tie it on
to the walls inside here.
Each one represents a prayer or a wish.
The elders here are praying for joy to return.
MAN (through translator): In the past, people
were coming here and dancing and celebrating,
but, after the genocide, they don't dance
anymore.
JANE FERGUSON: During the ceremony's climax,
the atmosphere is triumphant.
A bright cloth, representing the colors of
life and God, is carried with elation into
the temple.
For the people here, it is a brief moment
of triumph, something to be savored at times
like these.
Standing in the way of recovery is a deep
sense of betrayal.
Many of the Yazidis we spoke with adamantly
believe their Arab Muslim neighbors welcomed
ISIS in and handed them over.
It has left a bitterness those like Adeeba
struggle to overcome, especially, she says,
because her father's friends in nearby villages
assured them they would be safe.
Do you think there can be never any healing?
ADEEBA QASIM: Never.
There is something in our hearts, and we will
never get healing for it, never.
And it will never be forgotten.
JANE FERGUSON: You can't forgive?
ADEEBA QASIM: It's difficult to forgive.
It's not easy.
JANE FERGUSON: Across Iraq, the violence of
recent years has pitted neighbor against neighbor.
Bitterness and mistrust have pulled diverse
communities apart from one another, and in
turn pulled the country apart.
For the Yazidis, the memory of this genocide
will last for many generations to come, and
forgiveness may take generations too.
For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Jane Ferguson
in Sinjar, Iraq.
