BBC Documentaries

Stacey on the Frontline: Girls, Guns and ISIS (2016x399)

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Stacey Dooley embeds herself on the frontline with the extraordinary all–female Yazidi battalion, who are fuelled to take revenge against the so-called Islamic State for what the UN has condemned as the ‘largest mass kidnapping this century’. As the battle to take nearby Mosul out of ISIS hands moves into its final phase in Northern Iraq, in this extraordinary film for BBC Three Stacey finds these young women’s lives have been transformed by a desire to avenge ISIS and shows what daily life is like in these war zones. In 2014 50,000 Yazidi people fled their ancestral lands in Kurdish Northern Iraq to Mount Sinjar away from the advance of ISIS. Without food and water thousands died on the mountain and the ones left behind were massacred or captured. More than 5,000 women were taken to be used as sex slaves, with an estimated 2,000 women remain in captivity. Two years after the genocide, Stacey spends a tough and moving two weeks with this battalion of brave young women. Formed by the renowned Yazidi singer Xate Shingali they have transformed into brave fighters. Many of them have escaped the incomprehensible horrors of ISIS and are determined to rescue Yazidi women still under ISIS control. These female fighters strike fear into the heart of the Jihadists as they believe if they are killed by a woman they will not make it the heavenly afterlife. Stacey meets cadets at their training camp, a former secondary school, as they prepare to join the ranks of this powerful military force. She then journeys with them in their military get up to the frontline as they prepare to fight. Along the way these women share with Stacey happy memories of their previous lives then the unimaginable trauma they have endured at the hands of ISIS. With extraordinary access, Stacey Dooley for BBC Three finds young lives transformed by a desire to avenge ISIS and shows what daily life has really become in these war zones threatened by ISIS control.