See The orphans of ISIL

The armed group's rampage across northern Iraq has left many children struggling to cope with the loss of their parents. 

Thirteen-year-old Dunya can neither speak nor hear, but she has learned to narrate through sign language how her father was killed by fighters with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group.

She points to her stomach, tracing the route of the bullet with her finger - in through the abdomen and out through the back. Then she touches her leg: A second bullet to his calf stopped her father in his tracks, and he crumpled to the floor.

Dunya draws a moustache on her face using her thumb and index finger to indicate "Dad", explained her mother, Muntaha Ali. She believes her husband was killed in June 2014 because he was a Shabak, an ethnoreligious minority, most of whom are Shia Muslims. 

 

Ali, a lively mother of four with an easy laugh, left her native Mosul a month after the murder of her husband and relocated with her children to northern Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region.

"My children saw the killing. They were in shock," Ali told Al Jazeera. Her husband, Sulaiman Abbas, was a taxi driver from Mosul.

Today, the family lives in a small porta-cabin in Erbil's Baharka camp, along with more than 4,000 other displaced Iraqis. Most of them fled Mosul following the rise of ISIL.
Dunya and her three siblings are just a handful of the thousands of Iraqi children who have lost parents to ISIL.

Although there are no comprehensive statistics on the number of children who have been orphaned since the fall of Mosul in June 2014, CNS Foundation, a local NGO, has identified 712 orphans - defined as children who have lost one or both parents - living outside of official camps. The group did not have numbers for orphans living within the camps.

Meanwhile, UNICEF has documented 588 cases this year of "unaccompanied" children, referring to children whose parents are either dead or missing. Restricted humanitarian access to much of the country means that these figures are likely underestimates.

These children are at great risk, said UNICEF communications specialist Karim Elkorany. "If they're alone, they're much more vulnerable to other dangers, such as recruitment and sexual violence," he told Al Jazeera.

Despite Dunya's tragic circumstances, she and her siblings are fortunate to have a resilient mother.
"I work hard to raise them well, [but now], I have no choice but to raise them alone," Ali said.

"Before, my husband would provide for us, but now, we ask God for help," she added, holding her youngest child, seven-year-old Eisa, in her lap.

Like his older sister Dunya, Eisa was also born deaf and mute and communicates through hand gestures. Unable to use words to recount the trauma of losing his father, Eisa draws his hands together to imitate the shape of a gun. "He cries when he asks about his father," Ali said.

Ali said she and her children have yet to receive support from the government. A few months ago, the Kurdish regional government approved extra financial support for families missing a parent, but it has not yet been implemented.

In the meantime, displaced families rely on aid organisations to provide food and clothing. Though the porta-cabin that the family has come to call home is warm and inviting, water from recent heavy rainfall leaks through the ceiling.

Nazar Amin, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Sulaimani, told Al Jazeera that the orphans of Iraq's war will likely experience "behavioural disorders, conduct disorders and even emotional disorders, including depression and probably anxiety". CONTINUE READING

ALJAZEERA