Iraqi legislator Vian Dahkil is seen by many as the last and only hope for Yazidis, an ancient religious minority reviled by ISIS and driven from their historic homeland on Mount Sinjar in August 2014.
ISIS has captured thousands of women and children, around 2,500 of whom are still in the militants' hands, Dakhil told NBC News.
The 42-year-old regularly fields calls from captured women and girls begging for help, then she works with Kurdish security forces and an underground network of activists to try and rescue them. The activists are often forced to pay smugglers to help hostages escape.
"Sometimes I hear some things I can't imagine — girls, maybe 15 years old, with two or three ISIS men raping [them]," said Dahkil. "The Yazidi girls those terrorist [are] buying and selling, Yazidi girls sometimes [for] $100, sometimes one cigarette — they sell the girls and nobody does anything."
Her international campaign, which includes efforts to help the nearly half-a-million families living in camps, has put her on the extremists' hit list so she travels with an armed guard.
