The thought of selling human beings as slaves is abhorrent to most people, and selling someone as a sex slave is unspeakably terrible, but the Islamic State, in its twisted ideology, thinks nothing of doing exactly that.
The list circulated by ISIS is for the pleasure of their own fighters, as well as the rich from the Middle East. While the “prices” listed are accurate, the actual cost of an individual slave is often a lot more because outsiders can bid on an individual, and this can amount to thousands of dollars.
For the Islamic State fighters, the price in Iraqi dinars for boys and girls aged one to nine are equal to about $165. An adolescent girl fetches $124, and women over 20 years of age are even cheaper. But outsiders have first choice, simply because they will pay more hard cash.
Zainab Bangura, the UN’s Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Sexual Violence in Conflict, says she had seen the list put out by the terrorist group in April, and it reflects genuine transactions.
“The girls get peddled like barrels of petrol. One girl can be sold and bought by five or six different men. Sometimes these fighters sell the girls back to their families for thousands of dollars of ransom,” she told Bloomberg.
Sadly, this is not the first time ISIS has spoken about the use of women as slaves. In 2014, the group distributed a pamphlet on female slaves, and how they were treated while at the same time using the Koran to justify the women’s treatment as well as other crimes, according to the Independent.
