RUTHFULLY YOURS

“Some of those women and girls have had to watch 7-, 8-, and 9-year-old children bleed to death before their eyes, after being raped by ISIS militia multiple times a day.” — Mirza Ismail, chairman of the Yazidi Human Rights Organization-International.

“An office has been established by ISIS members in Antep [Turkey]; and at that office, women and children kidnapped by ISIS are sold for high amounts of money. Where are the ministers and law enforcement officers of this county who are talking about stability?” — Reyhan Yalcindag, prominent Kurdish human rights lawyer.

“Five thousand people have been taken as captives. Women and children are raped, and then sold. These must be considered crimes.” — Leyla Ferman, Co-President of the Yazidi Federation of Europe.

“Turkey has signed several international treaties, but it is the number one country when it comes to professional non-compliance with human rights treaties.” — Reyhan Yalcindag.

This month, the German television station, ARD (Consortium of Public Broadcasters in Germany), produced footage documenting the slave trade being conducted by the Islamic State (ISIS) through a liaison office in the province of Gaziantep (also known as Antep) in Turkey, near the border with Syria.

In August 2014, Islamic State jihadists attacked Sinjar, home to over 400,000 Yazidis. The United Nations confirmed that 5,000 men were executed, and as many as 7,000 women and girls made sex slaves.

While some have escaped or been ransomed back, thousands of Yazidis remain missing.

This month marks the first anniversary of President Obama’s unilateral rapprochement with Cuba. Upon making the Dec. 17 announcement, the Obama administration immediately moved to ease restrictions on American travel to the island and, by extension, boost revenues for the owners of its tourist industry: the Cuban military.

In May the U.S. removed Cuba from its list of state sponsors of terrorism, even though the dictator Gen. Raúl Castro harbors known terrorists, including the U.S. fugitive Joanne Chesimard, once a member of the now defunct Black Liberation Army and a convicted cop-killer.

In August the U.S. reopened an embassy in Havana. Last week it announced a bilateral agreement to restore direct flights between the U.S. and Cuba.

Cuba’s dissidents have been hard hit. Days after the new U.S. policy was announced, Danilo Maldonado, the Cuban performance artist known as El Sexto, was arrested for mocking the Castros. He spent 10 months in jail, and Amnesty International named him a prisoner of conscience.

The terrorist threat posed by Islamic State morphed from an uncertain menace confined largely to the Middle East into one of the biggest global security challenges since the end of the Cold War.

For the first time the militant group launched major terror attacks from its strongholds against distant targets, including the deadliest-ever on French soil. A couple killed 14 people in San Bernardino, Calif., in the worst attack in the U.S. since Sept. 11, 2001; the wife had pledged allegiance to Islamic State.

Islamic State consistently urged sympathizers to strike the West, but until recently the group devoted its energy to seizing territory in Syria and Iraq for a so-called caliphate to be ruled according to its puritanical version of Islam.

“It was clear the group was calling for attacks,” said Raffaello Pantucci, a counterterrorism expert at the Royal United Services Institute, a think tank in London. “But it wasn’t clear there was anything strategic to it. It was more about throwing sand in our eyes.”

That changed with a string of lethal attacks directed at some of the group’s main enemies, including Turkey, Hezbollah and possibly Russia as well as the West.