DAHUK, Iraqi Kurdistan — In a barren roadside expanse under a clear winter sky, young boys dream of being the next Messi as they kick a soccer ball around. The girls beguile visitors, cupping their thumbs and index fingers to make heart signs and sharing their hopes of becoming doctors and lawyers one day. Yet there are few such prospects for these children at the Sharya camp for Yazidis, the ethnic Kurdish minority whose men were butchered and women and girls raped and enslaved by the Islamic State (IS) when it swept across their ancestral homeland of Sinjar in 2014.

Hazi, 13, says she has lived here with her six brothers and five sisters for eight years. “Life is very difficult,” she told Al-Monitor. “Our tents keep getting damaged. In summer it is like hell and in winter the tents are wet and cold." 

"We are afraid Daesh will return,” chimed in Hayo, 12, using the Arabic language acronym for IS. She wants to be a dentist, she said.

At least 450,000 Yazidis were displaced, not counting those who were killed or kidnapped when IS unleashed its reign of terror in August 2014. More than 300,000 of them live in urban areas or in some 15 displacement camps in Iraqi Kurdistan’s Dahuk region amid the stench of open sewage and piles of rubbish. Water is scarce. Fires triggered by electrical short circuits or propane gas bottles used for cooking sweep through the flimsy tents.