Hala Safil Amo anxiously awaits news of her mother and sister’s fates as the UN excavates a Yazidi mass grave in the Sinjar region of Iraq in an attempt to identify ISIS victims.
Six years has passed since the extremist group's genocide campaign against the Yazidi people and hundreds, just like Ms Safil Amo, are now trying to find the bodies of their loved ones.
"It is very difficult to say that we will feel any comfort in finding our loved ones buried in the graves," she told The National.
"But thousands of people are missing and their families are waiting to hear confirmed news about their fate."
The UN in October began work in the villages of Solagh and Kojo in the northern province, home to the ethno-religious Yazidi minority whose members were killed in their thousands by ISIS.
On Wednesday, the UNITAD's chief forensic anthropologist told The National that his team was soon to return the remains of victims found in the mass graves to their families.
Ms Safil Amo hopes the findings will shed light on the scale of murder and torture meted out by ISIS against the religious minority.
The Yazidis were persecuted by ISIS as "devil worshippers" but descend from some of the region's most ancient roots.
For safety, the Yazidi traditionally held themselves apart in small communities mainly scattered across north-west Iraq, north-west Syria and south-east Turkey.
So far, 17 mass graves have been uncovered by the authorities in Sinjar, containing the bodies of almost 3,000 Yazidis killed by ISIS.
Between 2014 and 2016, ISIS militants shot, beheaded and burnt alive the group’s members and kidnapped thousands, especially its women, many of whom were forced into sexual slavery.
Ms Safil Amo, a survivor of unimaginable violence, lost her family to the insurgents.
She and her female family members were abducted by ISIS fighters when they occupied Sinjar on August 3, 2014.
Ms Safil Amo was forced to go to Mosul city where she was raped several times, leaving her to consider taking her own life.
“One of the most difficult situations I found myself in was when I witnessed them rape a nine-year-old girl,” she said.
There was nothing she could do to stop it.
Iraq, which declared victory over ISIS in 2017, has yet to call the group's crimes against the Yazidis genocide, despite the UN recognition.
Ms Safil Amo said that for more than six years the local government has remained silent about the suffering the group endured.
“We’ve lost our faith and trust in them,” she said.
The mass graves represent unequivocal, concrete evidence of the genocide committed against the Yazidi people, said Murad Ismael, executive director of Yazda, a global organisation supporting the Yazidi people.
"The Mothers’ Grave [which contains the remains of nearly 80 women] represented a deep and a particular importance because it held remains of Yazidi women who were treated with a cruelty not seen in modern times," Mr Ismael said.
Holding ISIS to account through DNA
Under pressure from human rights lawyer Amal Clooney and Yazidi survivors, the UN Security Council in 2017 created an investigative team to help Iraq collect and preserve evidence for future prosecution of ISIS criminals.
Many suspects have been prosecuted for membership of ISIS, rather than for the specific atrocities they committed.
"Information gathered from the excavation and interpretation of the crime scene is used to support criminal investigations and can be presented in criminal trials as expert testimony," the UN team's chief forensic expert, Caroline Barker, told The National.
The purpose of the excavation is to find forensic evidence related to ISIS crimes.
To identify each victim, investigators require DNA samples from relatives to perform kinship matching.
Living relatives are an important part in the identification process, Ms Barker said.
“DNA profiles obtained from bone and tooth samples of the mortal remains of the victims are compared with DNA profiles donated by families of victims who are still missing," she said.
A computer search is then performed to establish DNA matches and evaluate the strength of those matches between living relatives and victims whose remains were exhumed.
“DNA match reports are issued when the level of certainty of a specified family relationship reaches or exceeds the threshold of 99.95 per cent,” Ms Barker said.
But Ms Safil Amo feels that the process of exhuming graves and identifying victims is moving too slowly.
She fears that mass graves in Sinjar that are yet to found will be swept away by rain, meaning traces of human remains will be destroyed.
“I hope that … the opening of all graves in the Sinjar region will be accelerated," she said.
Yazidis are still missing after they were abducted from Sinjar by the militants.
The survivors are believed to be living among ISIS families held in detention by Syrian Kurdish forces in neighbouring Syria.
Ms Safil Amo escaped from ISIS after Iraqi and coalition forces started freeing neighbourhoods in Mosul from the insurgents.
She is now living in a displacement camp in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.
Finding joy after tragedy: Yazidi couple marry in ruins of Sinjar city
How the UAE gratuity payment is calculated now
Employees leaving an organisation are entitled to an end-of-service gratuity after completing at least one year of service.
The tenure is calculated on the number of days worked and does not include lengthy leave periods, such as a sabbatical. If you have worked for a company between one and five years, you are paid 21 days of pay based on your final basic salary. After five years, however, you are entitled to 30 days of pay. The total lump sum you receive is based on the duration of your employment.
1. For those who have worked between one and five years, on a basic salary of Dh10,000 (calculation based on 30 days):
a. Dh10,000 ÷ 30 = Dh333.33. Your daily wage is Dh333.33
b. Dh333.33 x 21 = Dh7,000. So 21 days salary equates to Dh7,000 in gratuity entitlement for each year of service. Multiply this figure for every year of service up to five years.
2. For those who have worked more than five years
c. 333.33 x 30 = Dh10,000. So 30 days’ salary is Dh10,000 in gratuity entitlement for each year of service.
Note: The maximum figure cannot exceed two years total salary figure.
How Tesla’s price correction has hit fund managers
Investing in disruptive technology can be a bumpy ride, as investors in Tesla were reminded on Friday, when its stock dropped 7.5 per cent in early trading to $575.
It recovered slightly but still ended the week 15 per cent lower and is down a third from its all-time high of $883 on January 26. The electric car maker’s market cap fell from $834 billion to about $567bn in that time, a drop of an astonishing $267bn, and a blow for those who bought Tesla stock late.
The collapse also hit fund managers that have gone big on Tesla, notably the UK-based Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust and Cathie Wood’s ARK Innovation ETF.
Tesla is the top holding in both funds, making up a hefty 10 per cent of total assets under management. Both funds have fallen by a quarter in the past month.
Matt Weller, global head of market research at GAIN Capital, recently warned that Tesla founder Elon Musk had “flown a bit too close to the sun”, after getting carried away by investing $1.5bn of the company’s money in Bitcoin.
He also predicted Tesla’s sales could struggle as traditional auto manufacturers ramp up electric car production, destroying its first mover advantage.
AJ Bell’s Russ Mould warns that many investors buy tech stocks when earnings forecasts are rising, almost regardless of valuation. “When it works, it really works. But when it goes wrong, elevated valuations leave little or no downside protection.”
A Tesla correction was probably baked in after last year’s astonishing share price surge, and many investors will see this as an opportunity to load up at a reduced price.
Dramatic swings are to be expected when investing in disruptive technology, as Ms Wood at ARK makes clear.
Every week, she sends subscribers a commentary listing “stocks in our strategies that have appreciated or dropped more than 15 per cent in a day” during the week.
Her latest commentary, issued on Friday, showed seven stocks displaying extreme volatility, led by ExOne, a leader in binder jetting 3D printing technology. It jumped 24 per cent, boosted by news that fellow 3D printing specialist Stratasys had beaten fourth-quarter revenues and earnings expectations, seen as good news for the sector.
By contrast, computational drug and material discovery company Schrödinger fell 27 per cent after quarterly and full-year results showed its core software sales and drug development pipeline slowing.
Despite that setback, Ms Wood remains positive, arguing that its “medicinal chemistry platform offers a powerful and unique view into chemical space”.
In her weekly video view, she remains bullish, stating that: “We are on the right side of change, and disruptive innovation is going to deliver exponential growth trajectories for many of our companies, in fact, most of them.”
Ms Wood remains committed to Tesla as she expects global electric car sales to compound at an average annual rate of 82 per cent for the next five years.
She said these are so “enormous that some people find them unbelievable”, and argues that this scepticism, especially among institutional investors, “festers” and creates a great opportunity for ARK.
Only you can decide whether you are a believer or a festering sceptic. If it’s the former, then buckle up.
Ordinary Virtues: Moral Order in a Divided World by Michael Ignatieff
Harvard University Press
Points tally
1. Australia 52; 2. New Zealand 44; 3. South Africa 36; 4. Sri Lanka 35; 5. UAE 27; 6. India 27; 7. England 26; 8. Singapore 8; 9. Malaysia 3
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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Indoor Cricket World Cup Dubai 2017
Venue Insportz, Dubai; Admission Free
Fixtures - Open Men 2pm: India v New Zealand, Malaysia v UAE, Singapore v South Africa, Sri Lanka v England; 8pm: Australia v Singapore, India v Sri Lanka, England v Malaysia, New Zealand v South Africa
Fixtures - Open Women Noon: New Zealand v England, UAE v Australia; 6pm: England v South Africa, New Zealand v Australia
