Cleaning Up the Mess !

Islamic State is now reduced to a last few fighters holed up in a village and still using hostages as a human shield.  It has come a long way from when it ruled whole cities and vast stretches of both Syria and Iraq.  Its claim to be the ruler of the entire Islamic world now rings hollow.

The way IS ruled the subjects it captured has upended the virtue that was the way of life for women in the Middle East.   In particular, captured women were assessed for their " beauty " value and disposed off accordingly.  The old and ugly were sold off as slaves in servitude, but good looking women brought a much higher value for their sex appeal.  Many were forced into what was really a mock marriage with freedom fighters, until they tired of them.  Others simply disappeared into the harems that still exist in that part of the world,.

A British based not-for-profit named " Lotus Flower " is seeking compensation to reimburse those women and try to restore their shattered lives.  It is in the first stages of pressing a compensation claim in a New South Wales court.  Its aim is to seek financial redress in those countries from which fighters were attracted by IS propaganda.

Most western countries - including Australia - made it a crime to solicit money to fund Islamic State. Money in transit was confiscated when discovered and there is a  trove of such money in government custody that Lotus Flower believes should be used for war reparation.  This is money that will otherwise just disappear into that murky entity known as " consolidated revenue ".

This confiscated money is really the proceeds of crime and it can be put to no better use then aiding the victims of that crime.  The amount available is finite and the number of women displaced by Islamic State is huge, but even a small amount in the hands of women who have owned nothing can start the first step back to a more normal life.

At most, the distribution seems likely to be a mere token to each woman but it would allow them to improve their appearance with better clothing and perhaps fund the start of some sort of village industry that brings in a small income.  These women are widely scattered and the way of life they lived has been obliterated by the maelstrom of war.

The first stage of this reparation is to convince the government to part with the seized money and that can best be achieved through the courts.  What will then be necessary is to avoid   a huge and costly bureaucracy to distribute the funds to victims of IS rule.  That would be best achieved by the use of a simple charity able to judge where a few dollars would do the most good.

This is probably the most practical idea to emerge in cleaning up the mess Islamic State left in a wide swathe of the Middle East.