The Iraqis Live in Fear of Abduction

“Since the fall of the regime, we have taken a census that shows some 400 cases of women and girls being abducted and then violated. After, they are killed or thrown on the side of the road, hardly alive,” says Layla Mohamad of the Organization of Women’s Liberty in Iraq.
According to Layla Mohamad, this is only the tip of the iceberg, because several Iranian women refuse to lodge a complaint in order to not be banished from a conservative society where a violated woman is an accomplice of her unhappiness. “The Iraqis are afraid of returning to school or their place of work,” she adds. Faced with this menace, the Interior Minister posted more than a thousand guards before the doors of primary schools. In their monthly editorial, Al-Mousawat (“Equality”) the Organization of Women’s Liberty in Iraq read a list of the women who had disappeared. “Amouda Hadi Hassan, 33 years old, left her house on July 3rd at 9:30 to buy bread. She was abducted,” we read beneath the photo of a young woman.
“The absence of authority has permitted gangs to develop,” Layla Mohamad explains, in pointing her finger at the forces of the coalition. “We have written a letter to Paul Bremer (the American civil administrator in Iraq,) but he has not deigned to respond,” she notes. The Organization of the Defense of Human Rights, Human Rights Watch, affirmed in a report dated in July that the “failure of the force of occupation to protect the women has had serious immediate, as well as long-term, repercussions.” (AFP)