"The situation is
horrific for women in Mosul," says the president of
the Baghdad-based Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq.
Women "are being kidnapped from their house by the ISIS
warriors and forced into what they call into a 'jihad marriage.'"
Iraqi
woman watches from the gates of her home in Mosul.
The U.S. army on Flickr under Creative Commons
(WOMENSENEWS)--Amid worsening armed violence
in Iraq, the Baghdad-based
Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq
is working to help women who have been harmed and driven out of their homes.
The group is reaching out to cities with the largest numbers of women displaced
by the fighting.
"Kerbala
is our target place to go to because this is a city where a big population of
displaced have gone and where there are families without men, which are very
vulnerable," Yanar Mohammed, the group's president, said in a phone
interview on Wednesday.
Located
southwest of Bagdad, the city holds a holy site of Shia
Islam: the shrine of Imam Hussain, the second grandson of the prophet Mohammed.
The city is now itself under threat from insurgents.
While men
on both sides of the conflict in Iraq
are being shot by militants or taken by force and sent to the front lines with
the army, women are being kidnapped and raped, Mohammed said. She is also
concerned about the situation in the northern city of Mosul,
where atrocities against women have been concentrated. The city was seized on
June 10 by Sunni fundamentalists with the Islamic State in Iraq
and Syria, or ISIS.
Women
"are being kidnapped from their house by the ISIS warriors
and forced into what they call into a 'jihad marriage.'"
Jihad
marriage, also known as "sexual jihad," is a term for women who
willingly offer sexual comfort to fighters to assist the cause of establishing
Islamic rule. In the cases to which Mohammed refers, however, the women are not
volunteers. They are forced.
Over the past week, 18 women were taken from their houses and raped by ISIS
in Mosul, according to the latest
news obtained by Mohammed.
Suicides Follow Rape
Large
media outlets have reported that four women who were raped have committed
suicide. "In one of the cases, the woman's brother committed suicide also
because he was unable to prevent the warriors from taking his sister,"
Mohammed said. "In the Iraqi culture when a woman cannot be protected by
her family and she is taken and raped, it becomes a source of a huge stigma and
dishonor to the family."
To counter
the insurgency, men are now being taken and sent by force to fight on the front
lines with Shiite militias, Mohammed said. This means women who are left alone
with child care are becoming more vulnerable to violence.
The
Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq provides shelter to women "who are
being targeted for exercising their human rights," Yifat Susskind,
executive director of the New York-based women's advocacy group MADRE, a
partner organization, said in a phone interview earlier this week. Commonly the
women are threatened by "gender-based violence, by honor killing, by
domestic violence or have been forced into prostitution and have escaped."
Now they are victims of the armed conflict.
MADRE's
staff has been exchanging daily phone calls with it partner group in Baghdad
since the news broke earlier last week that ISIS had seized Mosul.
Thousands of displaced, particularly children, were sheltered in schools,
hospitals and mosques outside Mosul,
many of them without adequate water, sanitation, or shelter, according to the
U.N. children's agency, UNICEF.
Many fled with little more than the clothing on their backs and arrive without
money.
Longstanding Problems in Mosul
Mosul,
Iraq's second-largest
city, is mostly Sunni and many residents have long complained of discrimination
and mistreatment by the Shiite-dominated central government. Sunni
fundamentalist fighters have vowed to capture Baghdad and Shia holy cities further south
after overrunning Mosul and driving the army out of northern provinces.
ISIS
already captured the city of Fallujah
in January. Mosul, located at the strategically vital
intersection of routes linking Iraq to
Turkey and Syria,
is considered a more major victory.
More than
500,000 of Mosul residents have
fled since the surprise of the attack, according to U.N. agencies. Although
there is no figure available on the number of women at risk, "in any
conflict, women and children make up between 75 and 90 percent of the
displaced," said Susskind.
When asked
about the consequences of the establishment of an Islamic state by the ISIS,
Susskind pointed to parts of Syria
where ISIS has been associated with the restriction of
movement by women, rape, abductions, forced prostitutions and increase in
forced and child marriages. "We just have to look at what happens in
eastern Syria where ISIS
is also governing huge pieces of territory," she said. "What you see
is very clear, which is widespread and systematic violations of women's
rights."
Iraq's
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has so far been unable to form a coherent
response the al-Qaeda-inspired group. Last week he failed to get parliament to
declare a state of emergency and asked President Barack Obama for help to
combat the growing insurgency.
"There
is not a military solution to this crisis," said Susskind. She said the
current insurgency is the result of social, economic and political problems.
"These problems cannot be resolved at gunpoint . . . what needs to happen
is an end to the sectarian politics in Iraq
and that's not a short term proposition, that's a process."
Susskind
criticizes the sectarian policies of the Iraqi government and blames the United
States for staying silent about them.
"What's happening in Iraq right
now is not the result of the withdrawal of the U.S.
troops from Iraq,"
she said. "It is the result of invasion and occupation by the United
States."
Earlier
this week, the United Nations accused ISIS of "systematic" executions
in and around the north-central city of Tikrit.
Reports of mass killings committed by Sunni fundamentalists have been emerging
as Shia government forces attempt to recover from their humiliating rout a week
ago.