Iraq's female citizens: prisoners of war

On the second day of the Nobel Women’s
Initiative conference
on building global support for women human rights defenders, the 100
participants delivered a sobering and urgent message: history is still repeating itself. Watching the
military-industrial complex wreak havoc in the Middle East, reflected Shirin
Ebadi, holder of the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize, is like ‘rewinding a movie’. Women
human rights defenders from across the globe were in agreement: the
incalculable suffering of the people of Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria have taught
us, once and for all, that bombs lead to suffering, and never peace.

In her keynote speech, Shirin reflected on what
a different world might have looked like if, in response to the atrocities of
September 11th, the United States and its allies had built schools
in Afghanistan in memory of the victims instead of retaliating with war and
occupation. ‘You can’t fight an ideology by bombing it’, she told us, speaking
of the heinous war crimes currently being committed by the Islamic State. ‘If a
terrorist is taken out, his children will replace him. We must throw books not
bombs’.

One participant who knows first-hand the horrors
that come from forgetting history, and from erasing women from history in
particular, is Yanar Mohammed, co-founder and Director of the Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq. I
spoke to hear about the situation in her country 12 years after I first marched
for peace in London, and 12 years since the war on terror began.

Yanar leading a women's rally in Baghdad’s Firdos Square. Photo: Roj Women's Assoc.

Jennifer Allsopp: Yanar, what is the
situation of women’s human rights in Iraq right now?

Yanar Mohammed: The new update of 2014-2015 is,
of course, the attack
of ISIS. But this is rooted in recent history. It is the direct result of
all the politics that came into Iraq with the occupation. The US empowered the
Shi’a Islamic political groups and marginalised a big part of the country who
were recognised as Sunni people. It was only to be expected that the next step
would be for the sectarian religious dynamics to surface, for one religious
group to be fighting another religious group. The leading members of ISIS were
either tortured in US military prisons or in the prisons of the Shi’a
government which the Americans put in place. When you torture a person for long
periods you might get a very passionate human rights defender but most probably
you will get a beast whose only concern is to seek his revenge in the best way
possible. And that’s what happened with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
who was in Bucca prison,
being tortured by the Americans and being prepared for his next role in life,
head of ISIS. Before 2003, none of us knew which part of the country was Sunni
and which part was Shi’a. This was something new to Iraq and we are reaping the
results at this point. Women’s wellbeing has paid the price.

As well as the crisis of ISIS we’re dealing with
other fallout from the last war, like the ongoing crisis of Iraqi orphans.
There are 5
million Iraqi orphans of war, and tens of thousands of them have been
trafficked in the last decade. Five million orphans growing into teenagers is a
very big difficulty for any society. Young women growing into situations with
no parents are usually material for exploitation in the brothels. Many do not
have proper identification papers. Although the law is not against giving them
papers, whenever they go to any governmental establishment and ask for them
they are asked to bring their father or their brother, when they don’t have
anybody. They reside in the worst houses in Iraq and they are exploited on a
daily basis because they do not have access to citizenship. It’s been more than
10 years since this started. The exploited female teenager’s right to citizenship is a major, major issue.

JA: Before the emergence of ISIS, were things
improving at all for women in Iraq?

YM: We saw some relative peace in the previous
years, relative in the sense that the capital was in control and the major
cities had peace, but the religious parties always held the upper hand. They
didn’t let a single year pass without surprising us. The last time was in 2013
when the Ministry of Justice announced their intention to introduce the Al
Jaafari law, which is the Shi’a Islamist law for personal status that rules
family life. This law would allow the marriage of a 9 year old girl, the
humiliating treatment of women in matters of marriage and divorce, and
generally to treat women like objects, not as human beings. This law is
hundreds of years old and they wanted to make it a reality for us now; they
want to abort hundreds of years of improvement in Iraq.

JA: How did the women’s movement respond?

YM: We demonstrated. We spoke over our radio. We
have a community radio in Baghdad called Al Musawat, which means Equality
radio. We spoke out very strongly. We had slogans that said ‘we will not
allow you to rape our young daughters’. We explained to the public what the law
means and we were able to gather quite some opposition against it so that the
government eventually had to announce that it will not be passed “at this
point”. They say it needs to be amended, but this is an excuse for them to hide
the draft of the law. Eventually we were ordered to close the radio on the
pretext that our “registration was not complete”. So yes, even before ISIS, the
government’s attack on women’s rights and women’s status in law kept us busy.

JA: How has the women’s human rights movement
in Iraq evolved in response to ISIS?

YM: When ISIS took over the Northern city of Mosul
in June last year, which is the second biggest city in the country, that was a
landmark for us all, that really was a landmark. We felt: the government is not
the only oppressor of women, there is a new group which has emerged and which
has turned gigantic, which is claiming a big part of the country. We were aware
that the political situation was not secure and that our safety was not
guaranteed. Many of us have our families in the parts of Iraq which ISIS has
taken over. My father’s family is from the city of Telafar, which was taken by
ISIS, and I have thousands of relatives who are homeless now.

And what has ISIS done to the women in the
cities they have conquered? Direct enslavement, humiliation and turning women
into concubines to be bought and sold. This was something nobody expected to
see in Iraq. In the beginning, in 2003, there was the Iraqi resistance, which didn’t want
the US occupation, then they developed Al Qaeda, but even then it was
never this monstrous, this inhumane and as misogynistic as what we’re seeing
now under ISIS.

We began immediately contacting the women in
Mosul and in the other cities that were occupied. We set up a network of women
in that city to whom we speak continuously. We try to be in touch with their
difficulties and to be of use to those who face direct attacks. We also set up
a coalition for ending the trafficking of Iraqi women and we came up with two
recommendations. The first one was to gain legal status for our shelters for
women and the second recommendation was that the Iraqi government recognise the
Yazidi women’s enslavement and their status as prisoners of war who have been
tortured by the enemy, and to give them benefits as such. We have had many wars
with other countries and when a prisoner comes back they get many benefits,
they get a house, they get a salary and we want the Iraqi government to do this
for the Yazidi women so that they can have the social status that would allow a
good future, a good family and a good status in society.

The women of Yazidi faith in my country have
witnessed the most horrific practices, things that not many women in modern
times have seen. A few months ago, I made a trip to the Kurdish part of the
county, to where the women who were enslaved
by ISIS had run away. I sat down with women in the Kadhiya camp and asked
them about their experiences. A girl as young as 15 had been bought and sold
more than ten times, from one ISIS fighter to another. She was raped by all
those men. I asked her, “what was your most difficult moment during those two
months that you were detained there?” She said, “it was the moments when one
man would be selling me to the other and they would stand around me and look at
me as a piece of meat on which they would be jumping the next day”. She told me
that one of the fighters who had bought her would pray daily; after he finished
prayer he would come and rape her. She told me stories that I would never expect
to hear in a country where people were used to living peacefully with each
other. We did have dictators, we did have times of war but it never reached the
point where one person, or a group, would be attacking another group and would
be enslaving all the women of that group.

JA: Are your recommendations being
recognised, is the coalition having an impact?

YP: We’re still working on it. We started the
coalition in its embryonic shape last September but in January and March the
campaign picked up and we are beginning to see some results. The campaign has
many aspects but the shelter is the most important one. At the very start of
the war on Iraq our organisation made it known that we intended to start a
shelter for women at risk, but the government did not allow us to do that, they
said it was illegal. But from that time until now, with the support of our
sisters in the international community and with the support of some actors like
the Dutch government and the EU, we have been able to do it anyway. We’ve set
up three women’s shelters in Baghdad and two in Karbala for the refugee women
who are escaping ISIS, in addition to one LGBT shelter in Baghdad. So although
they try to illegalise our sheltering activity, in practice we’ve persevered
and we’ve been able to multiply them. This is crucial. It means that, at this
moment, when a woman feels threatened by honour killing, by domestic abuse and
political oppression, they are knocking on our doors and they know there is the
network that will protect them and be there for them.

We see different kinds of things. Two months ago
a woman came to me, her name is Zainab. She was in charge of a meeting hall in
Baghdad and she’s extremely good looking. She was accused of being corrupt and
of taking bribes by some officials who wanted to have sex with her. So they put
her in prison, they made her go through very humiliating treatment, and when
she left prison she felt she was threatened. She came and knocked on our doors
and asked if we could protect her. So she is staying with us in one of our
shelters and her daughter comes to visit her from time to time.

JA: And what’s the next step for you? What
would you like to see happen in the next year?

YM: In the next year I would like to see a law
legalising women’s shelters in Iraq. I would like to see our radio being opened
again as a result of the pressure that we’re putting on the governmental body
that could allow this. I would like to see the Iraqi government guarantee social insurance for the Yazidi women who were enslaved and
to recognise their status as prisoners of war.

Jennifer Allsopp is reporting for 50.50 from the Nobel Women's Initiative conference: 'Defending the Defenders' , April 24-26. Read articles by participants and speakers framing and addressing the discussions. Read previous years' coverage.