Iraqi Refugees Turn To Prostitution
(CBS News) It's after midnight, and the action on the Jermana strip on the edge of Damascus is just picking up. CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer reports that this might seem an unlikely place to look for war refugees from Iraq, but inside — beyond the musicians and the floor show — they are there.
These refugees are selling the only thing they have left of any value: their bodies. In the clubs, the waiters act as dealmakers between clients and the Iraqi prostitutes.
This is the Arab world, where a woman's honor means everything. The fact that so many Iraqi women refugees are turning to prostitution is a mark of their desperation.
Suad fled the war Damascus two years ago with a son to support.
"For me, it is like being raped. There is no desire. It's something I have to do for the money," she says.
They need money because refugees aren't allowed to hold down legitimate jobs in Syria.
Some prostitutes — unwilling to be seen in clubs — work discreetly out of apartments in the cramped Iraqi refugee ghettos of Damascus.
They have no choice, explains May Barazi of the United Nations, because they've lost their husbands or fathers in the war.
Many women "are the only income providers to the family," Barazi says. "They had to become prostitutes."
Farah left her family behind in Baghdad and dreads the day they find out where she is and what she is doing.
"I would commit suicide if they found out, or my family would kill me. But there's no other solution. We are practically dead," she says.
The younger the flesh, the higher the price. Some of the Iraqi refugee prostitutes are still in their early teens.
"This isn't any life for a 15-year old. She should be playing. I'm sure she feels dead inside. Thee is nobody to help these girls," Farah says.
There is no one to help, but a growing stream of men from all over the Middle East is eager to prey on the most desperate refugees from the war.
Iraqi Refugees Turn To Prostitution
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Iraqi Refugees Turn To Prostitution
by sam » Sat Feb 10, 2007 2:12 pm
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by oneangrygirl » Mon Jun 11, 2007 10:55 am
Desperate Iraqi Refugees Turn to Sex Trade in Syria
By KATHERINE ZOEPF
MARABA, Syria — Back home in Iraq, Umm Hiba’s daughter was a devout schoolgirl,
modest in her dress and serious about her studies. Hiba, who is now 16, wore the
hijab, or Islamic head scarf, and rose early each day to say the dawn prayer before
classes.
But that was before militias began threatening their Baghdad neighborhood
and Umm Hiba and her daughter fled to Syria last spring. There were no jobs, and Umm
Hiba’s elderly father developed complications related to his diabetes.
Desperate, Umm Hiba followed the advice of an Iraqi acquaintance and took her
daughter to work at a nightclub along a highway known for prostitution. “We Iraqis
used to be a proud people,” she said over the frantic blare of the club’s speakers.
She pointed out her daughter, dancing among about two dozen other girls on the
stage, wearing a pink silk dress with spaghetti straps, her frail shoulders bathed
in colored light.
As Umm Hiba watched, a middle-aged man climbed onto the platform and began to dance
jerkily, arms flailing, among the girls.
“During the war we lost everything,” she said. “We even lost our honor.” She
insisted on being identified by only part of her name — Umm Hiba means mother of
Hiba.
For anyone living in Damascus these days, the fact that some Iraqi refugees are
selling sex or working in sex clubs is difficult to ignore.
Even in central Damascus, men freely talk of being approached by pimps trawling for
customers outside juice shops and shawarma sandwich stalls, and of women walking up
to passing men, an act unthinkable in Arab culture, and asking in Iraqi-accented
Arabic if the men would like to “have a cup of tea.”
By day the road that leads from Damascus to the historic convent at Saidnaya is
often choked with Christian and Muslim pilgrims hoping for one of the miracles
attributed to a portrait of the Virgin Mary at the convent. But as any Damascene
taxi driver can tell you, the Maraba section of this fabled pilgrim road is fast
becoming better known for its brisk trade in Iraqi prostitutes.
Many of these women and girls,
including some barely in their teens, are recent refugees. Some are tricked or
forced into prostitution, but most say they have no other means of supporting their
families. As a group they represent one of the most visible symptoms of an Iraqi
refugee crisis that has exploded in Syria in recent months.
According to the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, about 1.2 million
Iraqi refugees now live in Syria; the Syrian government puts the figure even higher.
Given the deteriorating economic situation of those refugees, a United Nations
report found last year, many girls and women in “severe need” turn to prostitution,
in secret or even with the knowledge or involvement of family members. In many
cases, the report added, “the head of the family brings clients to the house.”
Aid workers say thousands of Iraqi women work as prostitutes in Syria, and point out
that as violence in Iraq has increased, the refugee population has come to include
more female-headed households and unaccompanied women.
“So many of the Iraqi women arriving now are living on their own with their children
because the men in their families were killed or kidnapped,” said Sister
Marie-Claude Naddaf, a Syrian nun at the Good Shepherd convent in Damascus, which
helps Iraqi refugees.
She said the convent had surveyed Iraqi refugees living in Masaken Barzeh, on the
outskirts of Damascus, and found 119 female-headed households in one small
neighborhood. Some of the women, seeking work outside the home for the first time
and living in a country with high unemployment, find that their only marketable
asset is their bodies.
“I met three sisters-in-law recently who were living together and all prostituting
themselves,” Sister Marie-Claude said. “They would go
out on alternate nights — each woman took her turn — and then divide the money to
feed all the children.”
For more than three years after the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Iraqi
prostitution in Syria, like any prostitution, was a forbidden topic for Syria’s
government. Like drug abuse, the sex trade tends to be referred to in the local news
media as acts against public decency. But Dietrun Günther, an official at the United
Nations refugee agency’s Damascus office, said the government was finally breaking
its silence.
“We’re especially concerned that there are young girls involved, and that they’re
being forced, even smuggled into Syria in some cases,” Ms. Günther said. “We’ve had
special talks with the Syrian government about prostitution.” She called the
officials’ new openness “a great step.”
Mouna Asaad, a Syrian women’s rights lawyer, said the
government had been blindsided by the scale of the arriving Iraqi refugee
population. Syria does not require visas for citizens of Arab countries, and its
government had pledged to assist needy Iraqis. But this country of 19 million was
ill equipped to cope with the sudden arrival of hundreds of thousands of them, Ms.
Asaad said.
“Sometimes you see whole families living this way, the girls pimped by the mother or
aunt,” she said. “But prostitution isn’t the only problem. Our schools are
overcrowded, and the prices of services, food and transportation have all risen. We
don’t have the proper infrastructure to deal with this. We don’t have shelters or
health centers that these women can go to. And because of the situation in Iraq,
Syria is careful not to deport these women.”
Most of the semi-organized prostitution takes place on the outskirts of the capital,
in nightclubs
known as casinos — a local euphemism, because no gambling occurs.
At Al Rawabi, an expensive nightclub in Al Hami, there is even a floor show with an
Iraqi theme. One recent evening, waiters brought out trays of snacks: French fries
and grilled chicken hearts wrapped in foil folded into diamond shapes. A 10-piece
band warmed up, and an M.C. gave the traditionally overwrought introduction in
Arabic: “I give you the honey of all stages, the stealer of all hearts, the most
golden throat, the glamorous artist: Maria!”
Maria, a buxom young woman, climbed onto the stage and began an anguished-sounding
ballad. “After Iraq I have no homeland,” she sang. “I’m ready to go crawling on my
knees back to Iraq.” Four other women, all wearing variations on leopard print,
gyrated on stage, swinging their hair in wild circles. The stage lights had been
fitted with colored gel filters that
lent the women’s skin a greenish cast.
Al Rawabi’s customers watched Maria calmly, leaning back in their chairs and
drinking Johnnie Walker Black. The large room smelled strongly of sweat mingled with
the apple tobacco from scores of water pipes. When Maria finished singing, no one
clapped.
She picked up the microphone again and began what she called a salute to Iraq,
naming many of the Iraqi women in the club and, indicating one of the women in
leopard print who had danced with her, “most especially my best friend, Sahar.”
After the dancers filed offstage and scattered around the room to talk to customers,
Sahar told a visitor she was from the Dora district of Baghdad but had left “because
of the troubles.” Now, she said she would leave the club with him for $200.
Aid workers say $50 to $70 is considered a good night’s wage for an Iraqi prostitute
working in
Damascus. And some of the Iraqi dancers in the crowded casinos of Damascus suburbs
earn much less.
In Maraba, Umm Hiba would not say how much money her daughter took home at the end
of a night. Noticing her reluctance, the club’s manager, who introduced himself as
Hassan, broke in proudly.
“We make sure that each girl has a minimum of 500 lira at the end of each night, no
matter how bad business is,” he said, mentioning a sum of about $10. “We are
sympathetic to the situation of the Iraqi people. And we try to give some extra help
to the girls whose families are in special difficulties.”
Umm Hiba shook her head. “It’s true that the managers here are good, that they’re
helping us and not stealing the girls’ money,” she said. “But I’m so angry.
“Do you think we’re happy that these men from the gulf are seeing our daughters’
naked bodies?”
Most so-called
casinos do not appear to directly broker arrangements between prostitutes and their
customers. Zafer, a waiter at the club where Hiba works, said that the club earned
money through sales of food and alcohol and that the dancers were encouraged to sit
with male customers and order drinks to increase revenues.
Zafer, who spoke on condition that only his first name be used, refused to discuss
specific women and girls at the club, but said that most of them did sell sexual
favors. “They have an hourly rate,” he said. “And they have regular customers.”
Inexpensive Iraqi prostitutes have helped to make Syria a popular destination for
sex tourists from wealthier countries in the Middle East. In the club’s parking lot,
nearly half of the cars had Saudi license plates.
From Damascus it is only about six hours by car, passing through Jordan, to the
Saudi border. Syria, where
it is relatively easy to buy alcohol and dance with women, is popular as a low-cost
weekend destination for groups of Saudi men.
And though some women of other nationalities, including Russians and Moroccans,
still work as prostitutes in Damascus, Abeer, a 23-year-old from Baghdad working at
the same club as Hiba, explained that the arriving Iraqis had pushed many of them
out of business.
“From what I’ve seen, 70 percent to 80 percent of the girls working this business in
Damascus today are Iraqis,” she said. “The rents here in Syria are too expensive for
their families. If they go back to Iraq they’ll be slaughtered, and this is the only
work available.”
By KATHERINE ZOEPF
MARABA, Syria — Back home in Iraq, Umm Hiba’s daughter was a devout schoolgirl,
modest in her dress and serious about her studies. Hiba, who is now 16, wore the
hijab, or Islamic head scarf, and rose early each day to say the dawn prayer before
classes.
But that was before militias began threatening their Baghdad neighborhood
and Umm Hiba and her daughter fled to Syria last spring. There were no jobs, and Umm
Hiba’s elderly father developed complications related to his diabetes.
Desperate, Umm Hiba followed the advice of an Iraqi acquaintance and took her
daughter to work at a nightclub along a highway known for prostitution. “We Iraqis
used to be a proud people,” she said over the frantic blare of the club’s speakers.
She pointed out her daughter, dancing among about two dozen other girls on the
stage, wearing a pink silk dress with spaghetti straps, her frail shoulders bathed
in colored light.
As Umm Hiba watched, a middle-aged man climbed onto the platform and began to dance
jerkily, arms flailing, among the girls.
“During the war we lost everything,” she said. “We even lost our honor.” She
insisted on being identified by only part of her name — Umm Hiba means mother of
Hiba.
For anyone living in Damascus these days, the fact that some Iraqi refugees are
selling sex or working in sex clubs is difficult to ignore.
Even in central Damascus, men freely talk of being approached by pimps trawling for
customers outside juice shops and shawarma sandwich stalls, and of women walking up
to passing men, an act unthinkable in Arab culture, and asking in Iraqi-accented
Arabic if the men would like to “have a cup of tea.”
By day the road that leads from Damascus to the historic convent at Saidnaya is
often choked with Christian and Muslim pilgrims hoping for one of the miracles
attributed to a portrait of the Virgin Mary at the convent. But as any Damascene
taxi driver can tell you, the Maraba section of this fabled pilgrim road is fast
becoming better known for its brisk trade in Iraqi prostitutes.
Many of these women and girls,
including some barely in their teens, are recent refugees. Some are tricked or
forced into prostitution, but most say they have no other means of supporting their
families. As a group they represent one of the most visible symptoms of an Iraqi
refugee crisis that has exploded in Syria in recent months.
According to the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, about 1.2 million
Iraqi refugees now live in Syria; the Syrian government puts the figure even higher.
Given the deteriorating economic situation of those refugees, a United Nations
report found last year, many girls and women in “severe need” turn to prostitution,
in secret or even with the knowledge or involvement of family members. In many
cases, the report added, “the head of the family brings clients to the house.”
Aid workers say thousands of Iraqi women work as prostitutes in Syria, and point out
that as violence in Iraq has increased, the refugee population has come to include
more female-headed households and unaccompanied women.
“So many of the Iraqi women arriving now are living on their own with their children
because the men in their families were killed or kidnapped,” said Sister
Marie-Claude Naddaf, a Syrian nun at the Good Shepherd convent in Damascus, which
helps Iraqi refugees.
She said the convent had surveyed Iraqi refugees living in Masaken Barzeh, on the
outskirts of Damascus, and found 119 female-headed households in one small
neighborhood. Some of the women, seeking work outside the home for the first time
and living in a country with high unemployment, find that their only marketable
asset is their bodies.
“I met three sisters-in-law recently who were living together and all prostituting
themselves,” Sister Marie-Claude said. “They would go
out on alternate nights — each woman took her turn — and then divide the money to
feed all the children.”
For more than three years after the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Iraqi
prostitution in Syria, like any prostitution, was a forbidden topic for Syria’s
government. Like drug abuse, the sex trade tends to be referred to in the local news
media as acts against public decency. But Dietrun Günther, an official at the United
Nations refugee agency’s Damascus office, said the government was finally breaking
its silence.
“We’re especially concerned that there are young girls involved, and that they’re
being forced, even smuggled into Syria in some cases,” Ms. Günther said. “We’ve had
special talks with the Syrian government about prostitution.” She called the
officials’ new openness “a great step.”
Mouna Asaad, a Syrian women’s rights lawyer, said the
government had been blindsided by the scale of the arriving Iraqi refugee
population. Syria does not require visas for citizens of Arab countries, and its
government had pledged to assist needy Iraqis. But this country of 19 million was
ill equipped to cope with the sudden arrival of hundreds of thousands of them, Ms.
Asaad said.
“Sometimes you see whole families living this way, the girls pimped by the mother or
aunt,” she said. “But prostitution isn’t the only problem. Our schools are
overcrowded, and the prices of services, food and transportation have all risen. We
don’t have the proper infrastructure to deal with this. We don’t have shelters or
health centers that these women can go to. And because of the situation in Iraq,
Syria is careful not to deport these women.”
Most of the semi-organized prostitution takes place on the outskirts of the capital,
in nightclubs
known as casinos — a local euphemism, because no gambling occurs.
At Al Rawabi, an expensive nightclub in Al Hami, there is even a floor show with an
Iraqi theme. One recent evening, waiters brought out trays of snacks: French fries
and grilled chicken hearts wrapped in foil folded into diamond shapes. A 10-piece
band warmed up, and an M.C. gave the traditionally overwrought introduction in
Arabic: “I give you the honey of all stages, the stealer of all hearts, the most
golden throat, the glamorous artist: Maria!”
Maria, a buxom young woman, climbed onto the stage and began an anguished-sounding
ballad. “After Iraq I have no homeland,” she sang. “I’m ready to go crawling on my
knees back to Iraq.” Four other women, all wearing variations on leopard print,
gyrated on stage, swinging their hair in wild circles. The stage lights had been
fitted with colored gel filters that
lent the women’s skin a greenish cast.
Al Rawabi’s customers watched Maria calmly, leaning back in their chairs and
drinking Johnnie Walker Black. The large room smelled strongly of sweat mingled with
the apple tobacco from scores of water pipes. When Maria finished singing, no one
clapped.
She picked up the microphone again and began what she called a salute to Iraq,
naming many of the Iraqi women in the club and, indicating one of the women in
leopard print who had danced with her, “most especially my best friend, Sahar.”
After the dancers filed offstage and scattered around the room to talk to customers,
Sahar told a visitor she was from the Dora district of Baghdad but had left “because
of the troubles.” Now, she said she would leave the club with him for $200.
Aid workers say $50 to $70 is considered a good night’s wage for an Iraqi prostitute
working in
Damascus. And some of the Iraqi dancers in the crowded casinos of Damascus suburbs
earn much less.
In Maraba, Umm Hiba would not say how much money her daughter took home at the end
of a night. Noticing her reluctance, the club’s manager, who introduced himself as
Hassan, broke in proudly.
“We make sure that each girl has a minimum of 500 lira at the end of each night, no
matter how bad business is,” he said, mentioning a sum of about $10. “We are
sympathetic to the situation of the Iraqi people. And we try to give some extra help
to the girls whose families are in special difficulties.”
Umm Hiba shook her head. “It’s true that the managers here are good, that they’re
helping us and not stealing the girls’ money,” she said. “But I’m so angry.
“Do you think we’re happy that these men from the gulf are seeing our daughters’
naked bodies?”
Most so-called
casinos do not appear to directly broker arrangements between prostitutes and their
customers. Zafer, a waiter at the club where Hiba works, said that the club earned
money through sales of food and alcohol and that the dancers were encouraged to sit
with male customers and order drinks to increase revenues.
Zafer, who spoke on condition that only his first name be used, refused to discuss
specific women and girls at the club, but said that most of them did sell sexual
favors. “They have an hourly rate,” he said. “And they have regular customers.”
Inexpensive Iraqi prostitutes have helped to make Syria a popular destination for
sex tourists from wealthier countries in the Middle East. In the club’s parking lot,
nearly half of the cars had Saudi license plates.
From Damascus it is only about six hours by car, passing through Jordan, to the
Saudi border. Syria, where
it is relatively easy to buy alcohol and dance with women, is popular as a low-cost
weekend destination for groups of Saudi men.
And though some women of other nationalities, including Russians and Moroccans,
still work as prostitutes in Damascus, Abeer, a 23-year-old from Baghdad working at
the same club as Hiba, explained that the arriving Iraqis had pushed many of them
out of business.
“From what I’ve seen, 70 percent to 80 percent of the girls working this business in
Damascus today are Iraqis,” she said. “The rents here in Syria are too expensive for
their families. If they go back to Iraq they’ll be slaughtered, and this is the only
work available.”
I guess some slavery feels like freedom.
-Wembley Fraggle
-Wembley Fraggle
- oneangrygirl
- antiporn star
- Posts: 1815
- Joined: Thu Jan 20, 2005 7:37 pm
- Location: Land of Soccer Moms
by bluecoat28 » Wed Oct 17, 2007 3:03 pm
I don't like how CNN titled the video "the shame of survival" (instead of holding men accountable)
"Iraqi Women: Prostituting Ourselves to Feed Our Children"
By Arwa Damon
CNN http://www .cnn. com/2007/WORLD/meast/08/15/iraq.prostitution/index.html
Friday 17 August 2007
Baghdad, Iraq - The women are too afraid and ashamed to show their faces or have their real names used. They have been driven to sell their bodies to put food on the table for their children - for as little as $8 a day.
"People shouldn't criticize women, or talk badly about them," says 37-year-old Suha as she adjusts the light colored scarf she wears these days to avoid extremists who insist women cover themselves. "They all say we have lost our way, but they never ask why we had to take this path."
A mother of three, she wears light makeup, a gold pendant of Iraq around her neck, and an unexpected air of elegance about her.
"I don't have money to take my kid to the doctor. I have to do anything that I can to preserve my child, because I am a mother," she says, explaining why she prostitutes herself.
Anger and frustration rise in her voice as she speaks.
"No matter what else I may be, no matter how off the path I may be, I am a mother!"
Her clasped hands clench and unclench nervously. Suha's husband thinks that she is cleaning houses when she goes away.
So does Karima's family.
"At the start I was cleaning homes, but I wasn't making much. No matter how hard I worked it just wasn't enough," she says.
Karima, clad in all black, adds, "My husband died of lung cancer nine months ago and left me with nothing."
She has five children, ages 8 to 17. Her eldest son could work, but she's too afraid for his life to let him go into the streets, preferring to sacrifice herself than risk her child.
She was solicited the first time when she was cleaning an office.
"They took advantage of me," she says softly. "At first I rejected it, but then I realized I have to do it."
Both Suha and Karima have clients that call them a couple times a week. Other women resort to trips to the market to find potential clients. Or they flag down vehicles.
Prostitution is a choice more and more Iraqi women are making just to survive.
"It's increasing," Suha says. "I found this 'thing' through my friend, and I have another friend in the same predicament as mine. Because of the circumstance, she is forced to do such things."
Violence, increased cost of living, and lack of any sort of government aid leave women like these with few other options, according to humanitarian workers.
"At this point there is a population of women who have to sell their bodies in order to keep their children alive," says Yanar Mohammed, head and founder of the Organization for Women's Freedom in Iraq. "It's a taboo that no one is speaking about."
She adds, "There is a huge population of women who were the victims of war who had to sell their bodies, their souls and they lost it all. It crushes us to see them, but we have to work on it and that's why we started our team of women activists."
Her team pounds the streets of Baghdad looking for these victims often too humiliated to come forward.
"Most of the women that we find at hospitals [who] have tried to commit suicide" have been involved in prostitution, said Basma Rahim, a member of Mohammed's team.
The team's aim is to compile information on specific cases and present it to Iraq's political parties - to have them, as Mohammed puts it, "come tell us what [they] are ... going to do about this."
Rahim tells the heartbreaking story of one woman they found who lives in a room with three of her children: "She has sex while her three children are in the room, but she makes them stand in separate corners."
According to Rahim and Mohammed, most of the women they encounter say they are driven to prostitution by a desperate desire for survival in the dangerously violent and unforgiving circumstances in Iraq.
"They took this path but they are not pleased," Rahim says.
Karima says when she sees her children with food on the table, she is able to convince herself that it's worth it. "Everything is for the children. They are the beauty in life and, without them, we cannot live."
But she says, "I would never allow my daughter to do this. I would rather marry her off at 13 than have her go through this."
Karima's last happy memory is of her late husband, when they were a family and able to shoulder the hardships of life in today's Iraq together.
Suha says as a young girl she dreamed of being a doctor, with her mom boasting about her potential in that career. Life couldn't have taken her further from that dream.
"It's not like we were born into this, nor was it ever in my blood," she says.
What she does for her family to survive now eats away at her. "I lay on my pillow and my brain is spinning, and it all comes back to me as if I am watching a movie."
"Iraqi Women: Prostituting Ourselves to Feed Our Children"
By Arwa Damon
CNN http://www .cnn. com/2007/WORLD/meast/08/15/iraq.prostitution/index.html
Friday 17 August 2007
Baghdad, Iraq - The women are too afraid and ashamed to show their faces or have their real names used. They have been driven to sell their bodies to put food on the table for their children - for as little as $8 a day.
"People shouldn't criticize women, or talk badly about them," says 37-year-old Suha as she adjusts the light colored scarf she wears these days to avoid extremists who insist women cover themselves. "They all say we have lost our way, but they never ask why we had to take this path."
A mother of three, she wears light makeup, a gold pendant of Iraq around her neck, and an unexpected air of elegance about her.
"I don't have money to take my kid to the doctor. I have to do anything that I can to preserve my child, because I am a mother," she says, explaining why she prostitutes herself.
Anger and frustration rise in her voice as she speaks.
"No matter what else I may be, no matter how off the path I may be, I am a mother!"
Her clasped hands clench and unclench nervously. Suha's husband thinks that she is cleaning houses when she goes away.
So does Karima's family.
"At the start I was cleaning homes, but I wasn't making much. No matter how hard I worked it just wasn't enough," she says.
Karima, clad in all black, adds, "My husband died of lung cancer nine months ago and left me with nothing."
She has five children, ages 8 to 17. Her eldest son could work, but she's too afraid for his life to let him go into the streets, preferring to sacrifice herself than risk her child.
She was solicited the first time when she was cleaning an office.
"They took advantage of me," she says softly. "At first I rejected it, but then I realized I have to do it."
Both Suha and Karima have clients that call them a couple times a week. Other women resort to trips to the market to find potential clients. Or they flag down vehicles.
Prostitution is a choice more and more Iraqi women are making just to survive.
"It's increasing," Suha says. "I found this 'thing' through my friend, and I have another friend in the same predicament as mine. Because of the circumstance, she is forced to do such things."
Violence, increased cost of living, and lack of any sort of government aid leave women like these with few other options, according to humanitarian workers.
"At this point there is a population of women who have to sell their bodies in order to keep their children alive," says Yanar Mohammed, head and founder of the Organization for Women's Freedom in Iraq. "It's a taboo that no one is speaking about."
She adds, "There is a huge population of women who were the victims of war who had to sell their bodies, their souls and they lost it all. It crushes us to see them, but we have to work on it and that's why we started our team of women activists."
Her team pounds the streets of Baghdad looking for these victims often too humiliated to come forward.
"Most of the women that we find at hospitals [who] have tried to commit suicide" have been involved in prostitution, said Basma Rahim, a member of Mohammed's team.
The team's aim is to compile information on specific cases and present it to Iraq's political parties - to have them, as Mohammed puts it, "come tell us what [they] are ... going to do about this."
Rahim tells the heartbreaking story of one woman they found who lives in a room with three of her children: "She has sex while her three children are in the room, but she makes them stand in separate corners."
According to Rahim and Mohammed, most of the women they encounter say they are driven to prostitution by a desperate desire for survival in the dangerously violent and unforgiving circumstances in Iraq.
"They took this path but they are not pleased," Rahim says.
Karima says when she sees her children with food on the table, she is able to convince herself that it's worth it. "Everything is for the children. They are the beauty in life and, without them, we cannot live."
But she says, "I would never allow my daughter to do this. I would rather marry her off at 13 than have her go through this."
Karima's last happy memory is of her late husband, when they were a family and able to shoulder the hardships of life in today's Iraq together.
Suha says as a young girl she dreamed of being a doctor, with her mom boasting about her potential in that career. Life couldn't have taken her further from that dream.
"It's not like we were born into this, nor was it ever in my blood," she says.
What she does for her family to survive now eats away at her. "I lay on my pillow and my brain is spinning, and it all comes back to me as if I am watching a movie."
- bluecoat28
- antiporn star
- Posts: 1108
- Joined: Thu May 31, 2007 7:35 am
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