Iraqi
Refugees Turn To
Sex Trade In Syria
By
Alistair Lyon
31 December,
2007
Reuters
DAMASCUS,
Dec 31, 2007 (Reuters) - A score of young Iraqi women in tight,
shimmering gowns shuffle across the nightclub dance floor under the
hungry eyes of Gulf Arabs at nearby tables.
The band
blasts out Iraqi songs into the early hours as the watching youths join
the dancing or summon girls to sit with them -- there is little pretence
about what gets transacted at this neon-lit nightspot half an hour's
drive north of Damascus.
The dancers,
some in their early teens, do not want to talk, but one said she had
no other way to support her family. "My father was killed in Baghdad
and our money is finished," muttered the dark-haired girl in a
black and silver dress.
The United
Nations refugee agency UNHCR calls it "survival sex", a desperate
way to cope for Iraqi refugees whose savings have run out since they
escaped the violence at home.
The idea
repels many of the 1.5 million Iraqis in Syria, but the struggle to
make ends meet has forced some to share tiny apartments with other families
in the slums of Damascus, put their children out to work or marry off
teenaged daughters.
Sometimes
such early marriages are simply a cover for prostitution as young brides
are swiftly trafficked, according to Hana Ibrahim, head of the Iraqi
Women's Will Association.
She also
cited a growing incidence of temporary marriage, accepted in Shi'ite
Muslim tradition, as another common route into the sex trade. "Mut'a
(temporary) marriage is just for Shi'ites, but who said the Sunnis don't
have other ways?"
UNHCR representative
Laurens Jolles said survival sex was directly proportional to general
refugee impoverishment.
"We
are more and more confronted with examples of young girls or women who
have decided on their own or through their families to get involved
in night clubs to supplement the family income or just to look after
their children," Jolles added.
Some end
up in Syrian detention. Those who get out are often bailed out by their
exploiters and returned to the streets.
Impoverishment
is also the main factor driving refugees to return home -- about 1,500
a day are crossing back into Iraq, compared to up to 500 daily arrivals,
the UNHCR says.
A survey
in November showed 46 percent were returning due to financial hardship
and 26 percent because their visas had run out -- Syria has recently
tightened entry and residence rules.
STRUGGLE
FOR DIGNITY
But among
the myriad Iraqi refugee families who have sunk into poverty are many
determined to get by without dishonour.
"We
don't think of our future, only of our children's future," said
Rukkaya Fadhil, a 34-year-old woman in a green headscarf who keeps smiling
despite the grim reality around her.
She has to
care for her husband Fallah Jaheel, paralysed from the waist down after
being shot several times in his mobile telephone shop in Babil, south
of Baghdad, three years ago.
The couple
sold their house to pay for Jaheel's first seven months in hospital
and eventually fled to Syria with their two children, aged 11 and 7.
They have lived for a year in the poor Damascus district of Sayyida
Zeinab, crowded with Iraqis.
Their savings
gone, they depend on charity and whatever help they can get from foreign
relief agencies, hoping they will one day be given funds to go abroad
so that Jaheel can get advanced treatment for his paralysis -- and perhaps
walk again.
The UNHCR
and partner agencies are handing out food and cash to the neediest Iraqi
refugee families they can identify.
They plan
to give food packages to at least 200,000 people in the next two months,
compared to 51,000 now. About 7,000 families will be getting $100 a
month by the end of December.
Bushra, 39,
who would not give her family name, sometimes despairs at the indignities
of life as a refugee and the struggle to look after her family in a
foreign land.
Her troubles
began, she explains, when her three brothers were killed at the behest
of Iraq's former leader Saddam Hussein. That prompted her husband to
leave her, and the wives of the two married brothers to abandon their
children.
Bushra was
left to care for nine children, only one of them her own, as well as
her ailing mother. One of the boys was killed by Shi'ite militia in
Iraq. Sufyan, the oldest at 21, was tortured and cannot work. He sits
staring at the television.
"I'm
so tired, God, I'm tired," the usually feisty Bushra wept in the
damp, unheated room where the family sleeps. "What's this life?
We knew no life under Saddam and no life after him."
Her mother,
a black scarf around her face, recalled their once-comfortable life
in Baghdad, saying their flat in Damascus would have fitted into a corridor
of the villa they once owned.
"Just
take me back to Iraq so I can die there," she pleaded.
Bushra, who
has worked in Iraq as a photographer and a hairdresser, cannot find
a job in Damascus -- officially Iraqi refugees are not allowed to work
in Syria. One grown-up son is a casual labourer on building sites, earning
about $3 a day.
Somehow Bushra
has held her family together, but it is easy to see how refugees in
similar straits might send their children to work or beg, or cast aside
social and religious taboos and push their womenfolk into night clubs
or dubious marriages.
Leave
A Comment
&
Share Your Insights
Comment
Policy
Digg
it! And spread the word!
Here is a unique chance to help this article to be read by thousands
of people more. You just Digg it, and it will appear in the home page
of Digg.com and thousands more will read it. Digg is nothing but an
vote, the article with most votes will go to the top of the page. So,
as you read just give a digg and help thousands more to read this article.