Thursday, October 05, 2006
Kidnapping of women, girls, lucrative business
Security
The abduction of women and children has become a lucrative business for gangs in many parts of Iraq and particularly in Baghdad. Women are so fearful of being kidnapped that they rarely go out alone, and hire taxis to go to work. The victims are normally from wealthy families, but kidnapping is so widespread that even ordinary families cannot feel safe. Women and children are easy prey because, unlike many men in Iraq these days, they usually do not carry guns; and families respond very quickly to ransom demands for women because they are deeply concerned about their reputation. Shakir Juma'a, 35, a car dealer in Baghdad, immediately paid 30,000 US dollars for his kidnapped teenager daughter who was released unharmed a day later.
Reliable data about the number of women kidnappings is hard to obtain. A source in the ministry of women's affairs, on condition of anonymity, said that they have no figures and that the ministry of interior declined to pass such data on to them. NGOs have come up with figures but they are hard to verify. For instance, Yanar Mohammed, head of the Women's Freedom Organisation, claimed in a press conference last month that about 2,000 women have been kidnapped in Iraq over the last three years. Some suggest that this is a rather conservative estimate. A police lieutenant colonel, who asked to remain anonymous for security reasons, said most cases go unreported because families prefer direct negotiation with kidnappers to lessen the risk of their abducted loved ones being harmed. But families also refrain from contacting law enforcers out of suspicion of links between the latter and the kidnap gangs. Indeed, people who've witnessed abductions speak of victims being taken away by men in police uniforms and driving police cars. These concerns are further fuelled by the fact that few kidnappers are ever caught.
With so many women apparently being abducted, there are worries that some are falling into the hands of sex-traffickers. In a recent police raid on a house in the southern Baghdad suburb of Dora, officers discovered two kidnapped women together with forged passports - an indication that the abductors were preparing to traffic them abroad, said senior police officer Thair Hamid. Women have turned into "cheap and exchangeable goods" in Iraq, according to the Women's Freedom organisation.
