Yazidi survivor and Nobel winner Nadia Murad condemns the international community for abandoning Kurdish forces in Syria who led the fight against Islamic State.
BEIRUT: Nobel Peace Prize laureate Nadia Murad has accused the world of abandoning Kurdish forces in Syria.
The Yazidi survivor of Islamic State sexual slavery made the statement in a social media post on Tuesday.
She highlighted the crucial role Kurdish fighters played in defeating the jihadist group with US-led coalition support.
“Now, at a critical moment, those who stood on the front lines against evil are being abandoned,” Murad wrote.
She warned that international actions in Syria are creating chaos where innocent people will suffer.
Murad is a prominent rights activist from the Yazidi community targeted by IS in 2014.
UN investigators and several countries later condemned the IS campaign against Yazidis as a genocide.
Jihadists killed Yazidi men en masse and abducted thousands of women and girls during the offensive.
Murad escaped captivity in 2016 and founded an initiative supporting survivors of sexual violence.
She jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018 with Congolese doctor Denis Mukwege.
Her advocacy brought global attention to the plight of women under IS rule.
The jihadist group was later defeated in Iraq and Syria, though residual cells remain.
In Syria, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces established an autonomous region.
The SDF has faced major setbacks this month from Syrian military advances.
Syria’s army is deploying reinforcements to northern flashpoint areas to assert Damascus’s control.
