[wvns] Sex for survival in Iraq

Sex for survival
Afif Sarhan in Baghdad
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/36B04283-E43F-4367-90BB-E6C60CB88F76.htm

When Rana Jalil, 38, lost her husband in an explosion in Baghdad last
year, she could never have imagined becoming a prostitute in order to
feed her children.

A mother of four, Jalil sought out employment, but job opportunities
for women had decreased since the US invasion.

She begged shop owners, office workers and companies to hire her but
was treated with what she calls chauvinistic discrimination.

Within weeks of her husband's death, a doctor diagnosed her children
with malnutrition.

Fighting tears, she recalled the desperation which led her to the
oldest profession: "In the beginning these were the worst days in my
life. My husband was the first man I met and slept with, but I didn't
have another option … my children were starving."

She left the house in a daze, she recalled, and walked to the nearest
market to find someone who would pay her for sex.

She said: "I'm a nice-looking woman and it wasn't difficult to find a
client. When we got to the bed I tried to run away … I just couldn't
do it, but he hit and raped me. When he paid me afterwards, it was
finished for me.

"When I came home with some food I had bought from that money and saw
my children screaming of happiness, I discovered that honour is
insignificant compared to the hunger of my children."

Iraqi widows desperate

Prior to the US invasion, Iraqi widows, particularly those who lost
husbands during the Iran-Iraq war, were provided with compensation and
free education for their children. In some cases, they were provided
with free homes.

However, no such safety nets currently exist and widows have few
resources at their disposal.

According to the non-governmental organisation Women's Freedom in Iraq
(OWFI), 15 per cent of Iraqi women widowed by the war have been
desperately searching for temporary marriages or prostitution, either
for financial support or protection in the midst of sectarian war.

Nuha Salim, the spokesperson for OWFI, told Al Jazeera: "Widows are
one of our priorities but their situation is worsening and we are
feeling ineffective to cope with this significant problem. Hundreds of
women are searching for an easy way to support their loved ones as
employers refuse to hire them for fear of extremists' reprisals."

She said the NGO has documented the disappearance of some 4000 women,
20 per cent of whom are under 18, since the March 2003 invasion.

OWFI believes most of the missing women were kidnapped and sold into
prostitution outside Iraq.

Although few reliable statistics are available on the total number of
widows in Iraq, the ministry of women's affairs says that there are at
least 350,000 in Baghdad alone, with more than eight million
throughout the country.

Bitter trade

As Iraqi families continue to fall on hard times, some have been
forced to make the most painful of decisions – selling their daughters.

Abu Ahmed, a handicapped father of five who is himself a widower, sold
his daughter Lina to an Iraqi man who came to Iraq to "shop" for sex
workers. Abu Ahmed said he could not afford to buy food for his other
children.

He told Al Jazeera: "I'm sure that whatever she is, at least she is
having food to eat. I have three other girls and a son and what they
paid me for Lina is enough to raise the remaining ones."

Abu Ahmed had been initially approached by Shada, the alias of a woman
living in Baghdad, who sought young women for Iraqi gangs running
prostitution rackets in neighbouring Arab countries.

She told Al Jazeera that her role was to convince young women from
impoverished families that a better life awaited them beyond the
country's borders.

She said: "Families don't want them and we are helping the girls to
survive. We offer them food and housing and about $10 a day if they
have had at least two clients."

"Our priority is virgin girls; they can be sold at very expensive
prices to Arab millionaires."

Shada said she sleeps in a different house every few nights as armed
groups have marked her for trial and assassination.

Escape from Jordan

OWFI's Salim says cases like Lina's have become very common as poverty
is increasing in Iraq and desperate families sometimes sell their
daughters for less than $500 to traffickers.

But increasingly, young Iraqi women arrive in neighbouring capitals to
find that prostitution carries a heavy and dangerous price.

Suha Muhammad, 17, was sold to an Iraqi gang by her mother, herself a
prostitute, after her father was killed.

When she arrived in Jordan, she was gang-raped by four men who told
her they were teaching her the tricks of the trade.

She told Al Jazeera she had been sold to a gang that caters to VIPs in
Syria and was often shuttled to Amman, the Jordanian capital, for
high-profile clients.

After six months, she escaped: "I ran away and an Iraqi family helped
me by driving me to the immigration department where they helped me
get a passport to return to Iraq.

"My aunt is now taking care of me in Baghdad. She never imagined that
my mother could sell me, but unfortunately women in Iraq are not
important and respected."

Traffic

Mayada Zuhair, a spokesperson for the Baghdad-based Women's Rights
Association (WRA), said Iraqi and Arab NGOs are trying to monitor the
trafficking of young women from the war-ravaged country to
neighbouring destinations.

She told Al Jazeera: "We are trying to find out the fate of many
widows and teenager girls who were trafficked. Unfortunately it is not
an easy process and without international support, funding, and
resources, we fear more young Iraqi women will be taken abroad to work
in the sex trade."

In the meantime, however, prostitution remains the only option for
Nirmeen Lattif, a 27-year-old widow who lost her husband in an attack
on Shia pilgrims south of Baghdad.

When she turned to her husband's relatives for financial support, they
could not afford to help her.

She says she tries not to think of the gravity of what she does or the
dishonour it carries in conservative Muslim society.

"I think of my children, only my children; without money we starve in
the streets."

===

None Dare Call It Genocide
By Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/none-dare-call-genocide.html

How comfy we are all in the United States, as we engage in living-room
debates about the US occupation of Iraq, whether "we" are bringing
them freedom and whether their freedom is really worth the sacrifice
of so many of our men and women. We talk about whether war aims have
really been achieved, how to exit gracefully, or whether we need a
hyper-surge to finish this whole business once and for all.

But there's one thing Americans don't talk about: the lives of Iraqis,
or, rather, the deaths of Iraqis. It's interesting because we live in
an age of extreme multiculturalism and global concern. We adore
international aid workers, go on mission trips abroad, weep for the
plight of those suffering from hunger and disease, volunteer in
efforts to bring plumbing to Ecuador, mosquito nets to Rwanda, clean
water to Malawi, human rights to Togo, and medicine to Bangladesh.

But when "we" cause the calamity, suddenly there is silence. There is
something odd, suspicious, even disloyal about a person who would harp
on the deaths of Iraqis since the US invasion in 2003. Maybe a person
who would weep for Iraq is really a terrorist sympathizer. After all,
most of the deaths resulted from "sectarian violence," and who can
stop crazed Islamic sects from killing each other. Better each other
than us, right?

Well, it's about time that we think about the numbers, even though the
US military has decided that body counts are not worth their time.
Opinion Research Business, a highly reputable polling firm in the UK,
has just completed a detailed and rigorous survey of Iraqis. In the
past, the company's results have been touted by the Bush
administration whenever the data looks favorable to the US cause. But
their latest report received virtually no attention in the US.

Here is the grisly bottom line: more than one million people have been
murdered in Iraq since the US invasion, according to the ORB. Yes,
other estimates are lower, but you have to be impressed by what they
have found. It seems very credible.

In Baghdad, where the US presence is most pronounced, nearly half of
households report having lost a family member to a killing of some
sort. Half the deaths are from gunshot wounds, one-fifth from car
bombs, and one-tenth from aerial bombs. The total number of dead
exceeds the hugely well-publicized Rwandan genocide in 1994.

You are welcome to inspect the detailed data.

Aside from the astonishing detail, what jumps out at me is the number
of dead who are neither Sunni nor Shia. It is also striking how the
further geographically you move from US troop activity, the more
peaceful the area is. Americans think they are bringing freedom to
Iraq, but the data indicate that we are only bringing suffering and death.

If you have ever lost a family member, you know that life is never the
same again. It causes every manner of religious, social, and marital
trauma. It's bad enough to lose a family member to some disease. But
to a cold-blooded killing or a car bomb or an airplane bomb? That
instills a sense of fury and motivation to retribution.

So we are speaking of some 1.2 million people who have been killed in
this way, and that does not count the numbers that were killed during
the invasion itself for the crime of having attempted to oppose
invading foreign troops, or the 500,000 children and old people killed
by the US-UN anti-civilian sanctions in the 10 previous years.

And let's not flatter ourselves into thinking that these are nothing
but ragheads killing each other for no good reason. Just this past
weekend, there is an example in point. Some of the legendary
contractors for the State Department were driving through the Sunni
neighborhood of Mansour in Baghdad. They were driving their SUVs when
witnesses reported an explosion of fire that lasted 20 minutes. The
SUVs drove off, leaving at least nine people dead on the road.

Why? No one knows. Sure there will be investigations. There have
already been apologies. The company in question has had its license to
practice occupation revoked by the Iraqi government. For how long, no
one knows. But these are merely symbolic gestures. There will be no
justice, and no forgetting.

To the extent anyone pays attention to this stuff, they only hear the
words of the State Department spokesman: "The bottom line is that the
secretary wants to make sure that we do everything we possibly can to
avoid the loss of innocent life."

In light of the one million plus figure, such statements come off as
evil jokes. The US has unleashed bloodshed in Iraq that is rarely
known even in countries we think of as violent and torn by civil
strife. It is amazing to think that this has occurred in what was only
recently a liberal and civilized country by the region's standards.
This was a country that had a problem with immigration, particularly
among the well-educated and talented classes. They went to Iraq
because it was the closest Arab proxy to Western-style society that
one could find in the area.

It was the US that turned this country into a killing field. Why won't
we face this? Why won't we take responsibility? The reason has to do
with this mysterious thing called nationalism, which makes an
ideological religion of the nation's wars. We are god-like liberators.
They are devil-like terrorists. No amount of data or contrary
information seems to make a dent in this irreligious faith. So it is
in every country and in all times. Here is the intellectual blindness
that war generates.

Such blindness is always inexcusable, but perhaps more understandable
in a time when information was severely restricted, when technological
limits actually prohibited us from knowing the whole truth at the
time. What excuse do we have today? Our blindness is not technological
but ideological. We are the good guys, right? Every nation believes
that about itself, but freedom is well served by the few who dare to
think critically.

An essential postulate of the Western idea, or so we tell ourselves,
is the universal and ultimate value of human life. And indeed it is
true. No person or group of people is without value – not even those
whom our own government chooses to label the enemy.

Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. is president of the Ludwig von Mises
Institute in Auburn, Alabama, editor of LewRockwell.com, and author of
Speaking of Liberty.

===

Abu Ghraib prisoners accuse US companies of torture by Fanny Carrier
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071002/pl_afp/usiraqmilitaryjustice

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Two US Army subcontractors accused of torturing
prisoners at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib jail go to court Wednesday in a case
that highlights the murky legal status of private US companies in Iraq.

Titan and CACI International were hired by the Army to provide
interrogators and interpreters at the notorious prison, the scene of
well-documented abuses of detainees following the US-led invasion of
Iraq in 2003.

One former Iraqi prisoner now living in Sweden says that under the
companies' watch, he was sodomized, nearly strangled with a belt, tied
by his genitals to other detainees, and given repeated electric shocks.

"This is probably the most important case still standing against Abu
Ghraib because the cases against the government have essentially
failed so far," said Michael Ratner, president of the Center for
Constitutional Rights.

"This case represents our last hope for getting some accountability
for the torture in Iraq and getting any compensation for the victims,"
said Ratner, whose group has fielded lawyers to assist in the lawsuit.

The case was filed in 2004 by a dozen former prisoners and the family
of a man who died in detention, accusing Titan and CACI of conspiring
with US officials "to humiliate, torture and abuse persons" at Abu Ghraib.

But US security companies in Iraq occupy a legal gray area, as
highlighted by the case of Blackwater USA, which according to a new
Congress report has been involved in nearly 200 shootings in Iraq
since 2005.

The report was issued by a House of Representatives committee as
congressmen convened hearings following a September 16 shooting in a
crowded Baghdad square involving Blackwater guards that killed at
least 10 Iraqis.

Under an order passed by the US occupation authority in 2004, security
contractors hired by the Pentagon and State Department enjoy immunity
from arrest under Iraqi law for acts related to their contracts.

After the Baghdad shootings, the Iraqi government said it was
preparing a new law to control the operations of the private
companies, but has backed off initial demands for Blackwater to be
thrown out of Iraq.

At Wednesday's hearing, Titan and CACI were to ask Washington federal
judge James Robertson to dismiss the case.

The companies argue that they cannot be tried as they were under the
control of the Army, which in turn says it can only prosecute its own
personnel, not civilians.

Other US judges have refused to hear cases brought by former Iraqi
prisoners, arguing that they have no jurisdiction over alleged crimes
committed against foreigners in a third country.

But in one case brought by a federal prosecutor in North Carolina,
former CIA agent David Passaro was jailed for more than eight years in
February for beating an Afghan prisoner who died of his injuries in 2003.

Detroit-based lawyer Shereef Akeel, who is representing some of the
Abu Ghraib plaintiffs, is confident that the case will proceed.

"This is for the sake of who we are (as Americans). And if we don't
understand the principals at stake here -- if we let them lay low --
we have done a disservice to our founding fathers," he said.

"I have this vision of the Iraqis coming here... of putting them in a
hotel in Washington, DC right across the street from the people who
make the decisions... so they can have their day in court," Akeel added.

The sole US officer charged over the Abu Ghraib abuses, Lieutenant
Colonel Steven Jordan, escaped with just a reprimand at his court
martial in late August.

Eleven junior soldiers are serving varying sentences but no senior
Pentagon official was ever charged in the scandal, which President
George W. Bush has described as the "biggest mistake" made by the
United States in Iraq.

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