Guarded by Kurdish forces, 73,000 Daesh (ISIS) supporters are locked up in the Al-Hol Camp in north-eastern Syria. Considered the most dangerous camp in the Middle East, it is situated amidst a volatile political and military reality where Daesh is still omnipresent. Five years ago, Daesh killed thousands of Yazidis in the Sinjar province of Iraq and abducted many Yazidi women and girls to be held and sold as sex slaves – called Sabaya. With just a mobile phone and a gun Mahmud, Ziyad and their group risk their lives trying to save as many Yazidi women and children as possible being held in the camp as Sabaya. Under the care of Mahmud’s wife, Siham, and his mother, Zahra, it might take a long time for the young women to heal, but perhaps one day the traumatized girls will also be strong enough to become female infiltrators themselves, helping to rescue Yazidi Sabaya from an ideology that tolerates nothing but itself.

Notes by David O Mahony