The concepts of ‘silence’ and ‘voice’ have often been viewed as opposing terms, with silence associated with powerlessness and victimhood and voice connected to agency, empowerment and survival
When silence exists, voice is often believed to be absent and vice versa. In the context of violence, females who experience any form of violence have been expected to speak out about their ordeal with the purpose of reclaiming their agency and demonstrating their ability to ‘move forward’ and make autonomous choices about their lives. However, ‘voice’ as a form of power may not be an effective strategy in some cases, such as for Yazidi women under the regime of the so-called Islamic State.
The Yazidis are a religious minority group that has lived in the Kurdistan region of Iraq for centuries. Many people heard of the Yazidis when they were attacked by terrorists in 2014 and subjected to gender-based violence. While the Islamic State terrorist group has lost all the territories they once occupied, and is therefore no longer in the Western media spotlight, Yazidi women continue to live with the consequences of the violence they endured, including but not limited to forced conversion, murder, forced marriage and sexual violence.
One might wonder how these women managed to survive. Yazidi women had to make calculated decisions to ensure that they stayed alive until they could escape. Silence was one of the strategies they employed under their captivity. Silence has multiple meanings and, in this context, does not simply mean not speaking; it means obeying and not resisting the perpetrators verbally. It was strategically employed as a security strategy because if Yazidi women were to use their voice to resist their captors, they would have been punished in different ways. Rukon* shared her experience:
“Daesh [Islamic State] tortured and humiliated us. When they called me, I resisted and was saying, ‘I am not coming. Don’t come close to me’, but they would beat me. I had to go when they called me, but I always hoped that I would be free one day.”
Another woman, Zaynah, used her voice to resist the perpetrator, but it only led to her being assaulted:
“Every single day, we were exposed to beatings, swearing, harsh treatment and assault. One day, a Daesh fighter came to me, and he asked me to go with him. I refused and he assaulted me. I slapped him in the face, and he got so angry and brutally beat me. My hand was broken.”
The use of silence may not be seen as a deliberate decision by many, especially Westerners. However, Yazidi women were aware of their circumstances, and they strategically decided to remain silent until opportunities arose for them to escape. The calculated use of silence was also illustrated by Mina who realised that if she had resisted her captor by voicing her dissent, she would not be alive today:
“I used silent strategy because if you speak against them, if you say something they don’t like, they sell you, torture you or even kill you. So, I was silent, I did whatever they asked me to do, and this is how I survived.”
In addition to using silence as a coping strategy, Yazidi women used it as a liberation-enabling device. This involved waiting stoically until conflict began between the terrorists and their enemies, namely the US-backed forces, and then making plans with other Yazidi women to escape. These women saw the conflict as an opportunity to escape because they knew that the group would take them away after the conflict settled. The women interviewed also mentioned that they decided not to escape alone as the chances of being caught were higher than if they were with other Yazidi women and girls. For instance, Sabra and five other Yazidi women decided to escape after the group members were distracted:
“It was dinner time. We closed the door of the bathroom and kept the tap running to make a noise. They were having dinner at their headquarters. We all escaped from the window of the bathroom between 7 pm and 2 am.”
As illustrated by Sabra, many Yazidi women interviewed found strength through collective action. While they could perhaps have fled individually, they made a deliberate choice to come together, analyse their shared experiences of injustice and organise an escape plan.
Yazidi women’s strategic use of silence – refraining from verbal resistance – played a crucial role in their survival and liberation. For these women, the use of voice or verbal resistance would not have been an effective strategy in navigating the violence they experienced. Their use of silence indeed challenges the dichotomic understanding of voice versus silence. Employing a binary understanding undermines women’s deliberate silent strategy and overlooks their remarkable agency during their captivity.
Busra Nisa Sarac is a lecturer in terrorism studies at the Criminology and Criminal Justice in the University of Portsmouth, UK. Her research interest is situated within international relations and centres on security, gender and terrorism, with a focus on the so-called ‘Global South’
*Names have been changed to protect identities.
Silence as agency: Yazidi women’s security strategies during ISIS rule by Busra Nisa Sarac for the European Journal of Politics and Gender is available on the Bristol University Press website here.
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