Special to WorldTribune.com

Key to Islamic State of Iraq and Levant’s (ISIL’s) recruitment of foreign jihadists has been the kidnapping and sale of young girls, according to UN envoy on sexual violence Zainab Bangura.

Some have been offered up “for as little as a pack of cigarettes,” she said.

When ISIL fighters overrun an area in Syria or Iraq they redouble their efforts in making girls from those areas sex slaves, Bangura told AFP.

“They kidnap and abduct women when they take areas so they have – I don’t want to call it a fresh supply – but they have new girls,” Bangura said.

“This is a war that is being fought on the bodies of women.”

Bangura spoke to girls who escaped ISIL captivity and ended up in refugee camps in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.

“Some were taken, locked up in a room – over 100 of them in a small house – stripped naked and washed,” and were forced to stand in front of men so they could figure out “what (they) are worth,” Bangura said.

“This is how they attract young men – we have women waiting for you, virgins that you can marry,” Bangura said. “The foreign fighters are the backbone of the fighting.”

A recent UN report said about 25,000 foreign fighters from over 100 countries were involved in conflicts worldwide, but the largest numbers by far were in Syria and Iraq.

  Islamic state, sexual slaves, UN envoy: ISIL fighting war ‘on the bodies of women’, WorldTribune.com, Zainab Bangura