Global society
all articles
Media sits on a mattress in the living container of a refugee camp in northern Iraq and holds a doll in her arms. Media has been safe for four years. The ten-year-old does not have to fear kidnapping, shelling, war or hunger here in the autonomous region of Kurdistan.
She escaped with her family when the Islamic State (IS) raided her village in August 2014. Nobody knows exactly what caused her shock in the following days, what caused her to have a seizure for the first time and finally fainted again and again. But the family fled through the mountains for ten days, without water and food and fear that their pursuers would catch up with them.
Media's seizures continue - even months after arriving at the camp. While the siblings are playing outside, she remains alone. When she gets stressed, she passes out, has seizures. This can take ten minutes or half an hour. If Media speaks, then only to her doll.
Katharina Adick
Therapist Jan Ilhan Kizilhan with Media
A doctor in Dohuk diagnoses schizophrenia. A psychology student who wants to help Media asks her professor for advice, and he is skeptical: Jan Ilhan Kizilhan teaches at the Baden-Württemberg Cooperative State University in Villingen-Schwenningen. From March 2015 to January 2016, he brought more than a thousand Yazidi women and girls, who had been kidnapped and brutally abused by ISIS, to Germany for treatment.
Kizilhan knows seizures like this. They are a kind of survival strategy: The impotence protects Media from facing the fear that she experienced in the mountains, explains the therapist. He detects a post-traumatic stress disorder with dissociative attacks at Media.
Dirk Gilson
22-year-old Yasa Ismail is a prospective psychotherapist
The IS terror was directed particularly against Yazidis, where the militia committed genocide. While the men of the religious minority were assassinated on the spot in the raids on their villages, the IS terrorists abducted, abused, raped and sold women and children as slaves or child soldiers.
Children have seen people's heads cut or have been forced to commit terrible acts of violence and are constantly afraid of being killed for a little thing.
Years of horror have increased the number of mentally ill people in a society that has been suffering from war and terror for several generations.
The German-Kurdish trauma expert Jan Ilhan Kizilhan, with support from Germany, founded the Institute for Psychotherapy and Psychotraumatology at the University of Dohuk in the Kurdish autonomy area in northern Iraq. The first 25 students finished this autumn. You are now a trained psychotherapist and most of them have already received good job offers in the region.
Dirk Gilson
Trauma expert Jan Ilhan Kizilhan
Kizilhan's big goal: That psychotherapy should move from Dohuk to the Middle East. "We need to be able to give people know-how in this regard, and to be culturally sensitive - that means that we adapt the good techniques that have been medically tested to this culture," says Kizilhan.
Again and again he fights against reservations: "If anything, people go to a psychiatrist - more to a doctor than to a therapist. And if they have a mental illness, they should give them medication that will make it disappear quickly," he says Kizilhan. In addition, psychological problems are generally stigmatized. This applies particularly to experiences of violence, particularly sexual violence.
At the University of Dohuk, students will learn the basics of cognitive behavioral therapy based on the German model in three years. For this purpose, luminaries from abroad fly in, who give lectures for a few weeks, take exams or support the students with diagnoses.
Katharina Adick
Painting courses of the organization "Springs of Hope" are often the first step for therapy in the camp. The NGO also pays the therapists
There is an elaborate application process for the master's program, the central element of which is a letter of motivation. Above all, the young men and women have to prove their personal suitability. Not everyone is able to endure descriptions of atrocities every day. Also or precisely because most of the applicants from the region have personal experiences with war and violence.
Media is one of the first to benefit from the work of the institute: after a while, one of the students talks about painting together, which slowly develops into therapy.
Media takes a long time to gain trust. But when Kizilhan visits her a few months later, he finds a cheerful, open-minded girl. Media's seizures have become rare, she has made friends to play with at the camp, and is even among the best in her class.
Katharina Adick
Suad with her children: nothing is what it was
From the beginning, Kizilhan's students have been working with patients and have reached their limits. The 29-year-old Noori looks after a young mother in autumn 2018: Suad lives with her husband and three of their children in Camp Sharia near Dohuk. Her two older daughters have been kidnapped. She has been tormented by uncertainty for more than four years - since terror came to her village early in the morning.
"When ISIS came, we fled the house at eight in the morning," she says. "My daughters, my uncles, a total of seven family members were captured. We have been here in Kurdistan for four years and have no knowledge of the missing family members. Nothing."
Suad hopes for Noori's help - too often, she says, her three other children suffer because she is aggressive towards them. Noori tries to teach her techniques to deal with her feelings better. But the student cannot change the terrible basic situation.
Katharina Adick
Hadia (left) was imprisoned for five years
In the evening of April 2019, Suad will receive a call on her cell phone. Her daughter Hadia had been released in Syria and she would soon be able to see her. "I was crying for joy. I didn't believe it. We could then talk to her via video chat. When I saw and heard her, I screamed so loud that all the neighbors came to me," says the mother. Hadia's older sister Kristina comes back a month later.
The two girls were four and seven years old when they were abducted. Now, five years later, they are sitting in front of a tent with siblings whom they first have to get to know. Both children show traces of abuse. Noori wants to keep an eye on them. "Kristina is very calm and self-contained. She is very, very sad. Hadia, on the other hand, is aggressive, irritable and contentious."
photo gallery
14 pictures
Iraq: Escaped IS, trappedSuad asks Hadia to open her braid and bend her head forward. At the back of her head you can see a place where hair is no longer growing. Hadia was repeatedly beaten there. Hadia and her sister will get help when they need it.
But many others cannot be treated - there are simply too many. The suicide rate in Iraq is already extremely high. Kizilhan also sees a risk potential in some untreated people - for example in former child soldiers who come back with high aggression potential and impulse control disorders.
more on the subject
"You don't have to be a prophet to realize that we are already raising the next generation of terrorists who will eventually wreak havoc on this society," he says.
Since Turkey's entry into northern Syria in October 2019, more than 12,000 other refugees have arrived in northern Iraq. "The release of IS fighters leads to increased fears and nightmares," says Kizilhan of some patients in the camps. There is great concern that the IS will become stronger again and the murder continues.
This contribution is part of the Global Society project, for which our reporters report from four continents. The project is long-term and is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
What is the Global Society project?
Reporters from Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe will report under the title Global Society - about injustices in a globalized world, sociopolitical challenges and sustainable development. The reports, analyzes, photo series, videos and podcasts appear in the SPIEGEL policy department. The project is long-term and has been supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) for over three years.
Is the journalistic content independent of the foundation?
Yes. The editorial content is created by the Gates Foundation without influence.
Do other media have similar projects?
Yes. Major European media such as "The Guardian" and "El País" have developed similar sections with "Global Development" and "Planeta Futuro" on their news pages with the support of the Gates Foundation.
Have there already been similar projects at SPIEGEL ONLINE?
In recent years, SPIEGEL ONLINE has already implemented two projects with the European Journalism Center (EJC) and the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: The "Expedition Tomorrow" about global sustainability goals and the journalistic refugee project "The New Arrivals" several award-winning multimedia reports on migration and flight have emerged.
Where can I find all publications on global society?
The pieces can be found at SPIEGEL ONLINE on the topic page Global Society.