The latest annual report
on trafficking by the State Department noted that Iraq remains an important hub
for the sex trade and human trafficking in the Middle East. People are both
shipped to and out of the country, which has only gotten worse since the
Islamic State’s onslaught in the summer of 2014.
The State Department found that Iraq continues to have an
active sex trade. Iraqi females are often victims of temporary marriages, where
their husbands then put them into the sex trade. Syrian refugee women are often
targeted for exploitation. Foreign women are told that they are going to be
taken to Kurdistan for work, but are put into prostitution instead. This
includes women from Iran, China, and the Philippines. Women are brought into
brothels and hotels in Baghdad, Basra, and other large cities. Iraqi and Syrian
refugee women are also trafficked to other Middle Eastern countries and Turkey.
The Islamic State’s seizure of most of Ninewa during 2014 has only increased
these negative trends. The group’s rape and enslavement of Yazidi women in that
province is well documented, and continues to this day. The United States has
made similar reports about the exploitation of women in Iraq for the last
several years.
Prostitution rings are run by criminal gangs and family
members, and are supported by members of the security forces and government. In
2014 for example, a member of the Basra intelligence directorate was accused
for working with a gang involved in kidnapping and selling girls. Members of
the Iraqi Security Forces, the Kurdish Asayesh, and government officials from
the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) have all been accused of taking bribes
and working with crime organizations involved in the trade. In the KRG
non-government organizations said that Asayesh and Kurdish government workers
were involved with a group turning Syrian women at the Domiz refugee camp into
prostitutes. This is just one more example of the widespread corruption within
the Iraqi government.
The State Department found both the central and Kurdish regional
government’s efforts to stop the sex trade lacking. State found only limited
efforts in trying to arrest and prosecute gangs involved in trafficking. The
U.S. believed that was due to judges not understanding the anti-trafficking law
passed in 2012. The KRG on the other hand, does not have any anti-trafficking
legislation and did not endorse or adopt the one passed by the national
parliament. Neither governments provide adequate services for victims of the
sex trade, and instead usually arrest women and deport the foreign ones. Iraqi
courts have prosecuted girls as young as nine years old and given them long
prison terms from 15 years to life. In 2014 the KRG arrested 28 young girls and
charted four with prostitution and 24 with begging. Neither Baghdad nor Irbil
appears to be interested in this matter, and some from both governments are
instead profiting from it.
The reason why Iraq has failed to adequately tackle this
problem is two fold. First, the government has never taken the sex trade as a real
problem. That means it has not appropriated any real resources to tackle the
issue. Second, the corruption endemic within the government gives political
cover to the gangs involved in the trade. The result is that the only ones ever
facing the consequences are the women victims who are faced into this trade.
SOURCES
U.S. Department of State, “2015 Trafficking In Persons
Report,” July 2015
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