Monday, April 24, 2006 Iraqi Sex Trafficking:business is booming "Burka" pix courtesy of the amazing Portuguese photographer Nana Sousa Dias and while the photo is lovely, this article in TIME is anything but lovely: "As criminal gangs run amuck in Iraq, 100s of girls have gone missing. Are they being sold for sex? It appears so as there now exists a seldom-discussed aspect of the epidemic of kidnappings in Iraq: sex trafficking. No one knows how many females have been kidnapped and sold since the fall of Saddam in 03. The Org for Women's Freedom in Iraq in Baghdad, estimates from anecdotal evidence that 2000+ Iraqi women have gone missing in that period. A Western official in Baghdad who monitors the status of women in Iraq thinks that figure may be inflated but admits that sex trafficking, virtually nonexistent under Saddam, has become a serious issue. The collapse of law and order and the absence of a stable govt have allowed criminal gangs, alongside terrorists, to run amuck. Meanwhile, some aid workers say, bureaucrats in the ministries have either paralyzed w/ red tape or frozen the assets of charities that might have provided refuge for these girls. As a result, sex trafficking has been allowed to fester unchecked." Was sex trafficing virtually nonexistant under Saddam? Who knows. We know that during his rule that his forces used rape as a humiliating punishment (as do so many dictators) but we also know that the plight of females is universally miserable in the Middle East & that sex trafficking IS a rampant problem in Iran, as Iranian females suffer horribly under the theocratic mullahs: "Some may think a thriving sex trade in a theocracy w/ clerics acting as pimps is a contradiction in a country founded and ruled by Islamic fundamentalists. In fact, this is not a contradiction. 1st, exploitation and repression of women are closely associated. Both exist where women, individually or collectively, are denied freedom and rights. 2nd, the fundamentalists in Iran are not simply conservative Muslims. Islamic fundamentalism is a political movement w/a political ideology that considers women inherently inferior in intellectual & moral capacity. Fundamentalists hate women's minds and bodies (hmm, just like Christian Fundies, no?). Selling women and girls for prostitution is just the dehumanizing complement to forcing women and girls to cover their bodies and hair w/ the veil." How nice to see that under our occupation, we are now allowing Iraqi females to fall victim to the same treatment that so many Iranian females have to endure. Operation Iraqi Freedom indeed... unless you are born w/ a vagina. |