'You are not honourable anymore' Shamed and trafficked into Iraq's sex trade

(very long, very disturbing read)

‘You are not honourable anymore’

Shamed and trafficked into Iraq's sex trade
A trafficking victim in Iraq


Shahad, a trafficking victim in Iraq [People & Power/Al Jazeera]
By Simona Foltyn
Published On 22 Aug 202222 Aug 2022


Part I – The Ambush

The sedan pulled into a side street in Mansour, an upmarket area of western Baghdad. The rush-hour traffic on the main thoroughfare had thinned into a trickle, allowing the neighbourhood to settle into the mellow, late-morning rhythm of middle-class life. Rolling past the high concrete walls and manicured hedges, the car paused upon reaching a red Kia, parked by a small shop that had been agreed as the meeting point. Two girls, whom we’ll call Noor and Shahad, emerged from the backseat. They wore black abayas, full-length garments usually associated with more conservative communities. Their long, black hair was straightened and partly pinned up, the tips distinctly dyed in red and white. They glanced around nervously as a potbellied, middle-aged man, Husham (not his real name), shepherded them towards the Kia. Noor and Shahad were about to be sold for $5,000 each.

In the distance, Wissam al-Zubaidi from Iraq’s anti-trafficking unit watched the scene from his black Toyota Landcruiser. A moustachioed general in his mid-40s, Wissam wore civilian clothing and Ray Ban aviators, his pistol wedged between his seat and the centre armrest. The driver of the red sedan was one of his men, posing as a pimp who wanted to buy prostitutes to work in northern Iraq. Nearby, a handful more undercover officers stood ready to intervene.There was an air of confident routine; Wissam’s unit had staged dozens of sting operations like this before, apprehending lowly pimps as they traded women in broad daylight, in the middle of one of the capital’s wealthiest neighbourhoods. Since his appointment two years ago, Wissam had become one of the most active officers in the Ministry of Interior’s anti-trafficking department. He could claim credit for many of the sex trafficking cases the ministry had investigated last year. But the official figure – a mere 115 cases in 2021 in a country of 40 million – was likely just the tip of the iceberg.


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Brigadier General Wissam al-Zubaidi in his office at the Ministry of Interior's anti-trafficking unit [People & Power/Al Jazeera]

For more than a year, Al Jazeera investigated the sex trade in Iraq, a growing phenomenon fuelled by deeply entrenched socioeconomic factors and enabled by a tangled web of corrupt officials and armed groups, a toxic mix that has become the hallmark of the United States’s post-2003 legacy in Iraq. The practice appeared to stand in stark contrast to the tenets of Iraq’s patriarchal society, where honour and reputation are paramount and closely tied to a woman’s chastity. But beneath this veneer of conservative social norms, young girls from poor backgrounds are routinely sold into prostitution, Al Jazeera has found through interviews with more than three dozen individuals, including survivors, women’s rights activists, security officials, pimps and judges.

The victims tend to be girls and women from underprivileged backgrounds who are fleeing domestic abuse or child marriage, with traffickers often exploiting society’s preoccupation with honour to shame vulnerable women into the sex trade. Iraq’s justice system is infused with the same patriarchal norms and often convicts trafficking survivors for prostitution. There is far less accountability for those who benefit from the trade.

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Iraq's anti-trafficking unit apprehends Husham during a sting operation in Baghdad's Mansour district [People & Power/Al Jazeera]

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https://www.aljazeera.com/features/longform/2022/8/22/sex-trafficking-in-iraq