Iraqi Refugees Turn to the Sex Trade in Syria
MARABA, Syria — Back home in Iraq, Umm Hiba’s daughter was a devout schoolgirl, modest in her dress and serious about her studies. Hiba, who is now 16, wore the hijab, or Islamic head scarf, and rose early each day to say the dawn prayer before classes. But that was before militias began threatening their Baghdad neighborhood and Umm Hiba and her daughter fled to Syria last spring. There were no jobs, and Umm Hiba’s elderly father developed complications related to his diabetes. Desperate, Umm Hiba followed the advice of an Iraqi acquaintance and took her daughter to work at a nightclub along a highway known for prostitution. “We Iraqis used to be a proud people,” she said over the frantic blare of the club’s speakers. She pointed out her daughter, dancing among about two dozen other girls on the stage, wearing a pink silk dress with spaghetti straps, her frail shoulders bathed in colored light. As Umm Hiba watched, a middle-aged man climbed onto the platform and began to dance jerkily, arms flailing, among the girls. “During the war we lost everything,” she said. “We even lost our honor.” She insisted on being identified by only part of her name — Umm Hiba means mother of Hiba. For anyone living in Damascus these days, the fact that some Iraqi refugees are selling sex or working in sex clubs is difficult to ignore. (Read the entire report)
Al,
I know you never went to Iraq, but if you had, you’d have seen the multitude of prostitutes and whores along the streets and slums of Baghdad. Sure, this is a sad story but the sex trade is nothing new for Iraqis.
Interesting since that kind of stuff is what the radical Islam is against.
preussow,
I’ll bet you didn’t know that a large minority of young Iraqi men are homosexual. I was told by many men in Iraq that women are for procreation and men are for pleasure. No kidding.
When I was training the new Iraqi Army, the wash houses were very busy places at night.
It seems that the older Iraqi men were still on-board with loving women. Those who were rich enough to have them were very proud of their multiple wives.
All that aside, the refuge crisis is not reported often enough in our media and is never mentioned by our government. The amount of visas we’ve issued is a disgrace.
All that Aside!?!
What did you put up the post for then?
Why don’t these refuges stay and fight for their country? I’ve heard Democrats and Republicans crying and pleading for Iraqis to stand up and take responsibility for their own sake and now you want to pour out your bleeding heart to the ones who quit? I don’t get it.
You’re laying the blame on people with nothing. Families that were solid prior to the United States turning the place into hell on earth, with adults working legitimate jobs, are now in other countries (or else they’d be dead), and the adults are selling their bodies to make ends meet.
You’re citing the prostitution taking place within Iraq…for what purpose? Whores that weren’t whores until the United States showed up onto the scene have a much worse life than you or I or any of the politicians in DC.
The idea that we are to now scold the children for misbehaving…basically the United States is the stranger that molested and abused Iraq, and now that it is not going our way, it’s their fault.
How much more cowardly does it get than that. We should be apologizing to those people, not pointing the finger at them.
First, I’d like to point out that we are talking about the oldest profession in the oldest city. Prostitution is and never will be new to Iraqis.
Al, your problem is that you can’t see past your pity. Who else, if not these people with nothing, are going to stand up and take ownership of Iraq?
I”m not going to take the bait and argue your own finger pointing at the U.S.
You have your reasons for your opinions and no one will ever change them.
But, expecting a people to fight for their lives and freedom is not cowardly. Cowards, Al, are the lilly-livered bastards who set off car bombs in crowded markets and then blame U.S. soldiers for not protecting them.
There’s more depth to all this than we seem to appreciate here in the US…I guess that’s what I’m saying. It is not as simple as you lay out here. There are financed militias staffed by young men who work for the “real leaders of Iraq”…those “real leaders” do not go to work in the green zone.
The President and Prime Minister do not have actual power over anything in Iraq. Moktada al-Sadr has “real” power.
You expect Iraqis to stand up to “who”? The militias? The random person among them who happens to be a couple seconds from setting off the bomb attached to his chest?
This is sectarian violence Aubrey! Northern Ireland…how many years did it take for them to come to the conclusion that fighting one another was useless? You make it sound like they all just need to “grow up”.
Well, you’re right, they do need to grow up. on the whole, Iraqis are not an intelligent people. I don’t know the exact figure, but if I were to guess, I’d wager that the average level of education is equivalent to our middle school. So, yes, in my experience, Iraqis are very much like little children.
Because of their childishness, Saddam was an effective ruler over them. Like a well disciplined dog, show them the whip and they fall in line. This is also why the sheiks and people like Al Sadr have power. The Iraqi masses really are like sheep; and sheep are not an intelligent animal.
Iraqis can refuse the Al Qaeda recruiters, they can fight against the Syrian and Iranian insurgents, they can join in a unified voice and dictate that their sheiks get involved with the gov’t, and yes, they need to grow up.
When I was there two families waged a small war. Guns blazing, blood in the streets: father and sons vs. Father and sons. The source of the disturbance was a jealousy over a certain AK-47. Just one example and I mean it to demostrate that THIS is commonplace.
Iraqis with a vested interest in the community, those who have taken an ownership in the future of the country are in the minority.
While I’m no expert on No. Ireland, I beleive that they fought against the British. The Iraqis fight each other!