NPR

Freed From ISIS, Few Yazidis Return To Suffering Families, Many Remain Missing

As ISIS loses territory and captives are rescued, broken Yazidi families hold out hope that their loved ones could still return.
Mazen (right), 13, and his brother Mezban in a camp for displaced Yazidis in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. Mazen was freed recently, five years after being kidnapped by ISIS. He was found in Baghouz, the last ISIS stronghold in Syria. His brother was also kidnapped and, 2-1/2 years ago, was rescued with their mother. The boys' father is still missing.

Mazen looks like he wants to disappear into his gray hoody as he sits in the corner of a tent in a camp for displaced Yazidis in Iraq. The 13-year-old boy's eyes are haunted and huge in a face still gaunt from not getting enough to eat.

After almost five years held captive by ISIS, Mazen says he wants to talk about what happened to him but he doesn't have the words.

"How do I feel?" he says as if bewildered by the question. "Really I don't know how to feel."

Wrenched from his mother at age 8 after they were captured in 2014, Mazen says he and other boys were taught by ISIS in Iraq and Syria to shoot Kalashnikov assault rifles. He was being trained to kill his own people — members of the ancient Yazidi community.

Mazen is one of the survivors of ISIS' campaign of genocide against the . ISIS considers the

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