Promising Democracy, Imposing Theocracy:
Gender-Based Violence and the US War on Iraq
Part VII. Violence against Women in Detention
Some of the most hidden arenas of violence against women in Iraq are the hundreds of US– and Iraqi–run detention centers established since the 2003 invasion. Like their male counterparts, Iraqi women have been detained and tortured on the basis of their religious affiliation. But women are also tortured on the basis of their gender. According to Iraqi human rights advocate and writer Haifa Zangana, the first question asked of female detainees in Iraq is, "Are you Sunni or Shia?" The second is, "Are you a virgin?"99
The Abu Ghraib scandal focused almost exclusively on the torture of male prisoners. But the first evidence of abuse in Abu Ghraib came from a letter written by a woman detainee. The letter, smuggled out of the prison in December 2003 (five months before the scandal broke), was signed only with the first name, Noor. It said that women were being systematically raped by US soldiers in Abu Ghraib and that some detainees were pregnant as a result of these rapes.
"The first question asked of female
detainees in Iraq is, 'Are you Sunni or Shia?'
The second is, 'Are you a virgin?'"
The secret US military inquiry into Abu Ghraib headed by Major General Antonio Taguba verified many of the letter's claims. Taguba's report cites photographs of a US military policeman "having sex" with an Iraqi woman detainee as well as videotapes and photographs of naked female detainees taken by guards. Some of these images were shown to members of the US Congress during the course of the investigation. However, unlike the photographs of men being tortured, Congress has refused to release these images of Iraqi women to the public.
Based on Noor's letter, Iraqi lawyers gradually uncovered evidence of ongoing and widespread US torture of Iraqi women detainees. Rafida Shalal al–Jbouri, a social researcher at the Center of Rehabilitation for Youth (a division of the Iraqi Justice Ministry) confirmed that occupation soldiers were assaulting and raping women prisoners at Abu Ghraib and al–Tasfeerat prisons.100 In 2004, attorney Amal Kadham Swadi asserted that prisoner abuse was occurring across the country, stating that, "sexualized violence and abuse committed by US troops goes far beyond a few isolated cases."101 US–based organizations have also documented the torture of Iraqi women. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) publicized documents in March 2005 citing 13 cases of rape and other forms of torture of female detainees, which were released after a lawsuit brought by a team of human rights organizations, including the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights. No action was taken against any soldier or civilian in any of these cases.102
Routine Horrors
In addition to sexual violence, evidence of torture of women by US forces includes routine maltreatment, degradation, physical and psychological abuse, and unhealthy and unhygienic conditions. Women detainees have been forced to remove their headscarves, dragged by their hair, made to eat from dirty toilets, and urinated on.103 In 2005, UK Member of Parliament Ann Clwyd confirmed a report of US soldiers torturing an elderly Iraqi woman by attaching a harness to her and riding her like a donkey. Women have been kept in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day. Some detainees, still nursing infants at the time of their arrest, were subjected to intense psychological trauma because of the separation from their babies.104
The vast majority of Iraqi women detainees were held by the US military without charges or any semblance of due process. Very few were arrested on suspicion of a crime. Rather, as Newsweek reported in 2004, most of these women were essentially hostages, held by the US "as bargaining chips to put pressure on their wanted relatives to surrender."105 US officials have acknowledged this tactic, which violates the Geneva Convention and other international laws. In addition, US forces have routinely arrested the wives and daughters of male detainees and threatened the women with rape in front of their male relatives in order to coerce the men into confessions.106
One woman who was arrested by the US military because of allegations against her husband is the wife of Iraq's former Minister of Commerce. While under arrest, this woman (who has chosen to withhold her name) was forced to stir burning human waste in metal containers. A US sergeant warned her that, "If you don't do it, I will tell one of the soldiers to fuck you."107 Recalling her time in prison, the woman said, "Once I saw the guards hit a woman, probably 30 years old…They pulled her by the hair and poured ice water on her. She was screaming and shouting and crying as they poured water into her mouth. They left her there all night. There was another girl; the soldiers said she wasn't honest with them. They said she gave them wrong information. When I saw her, she had electric burns all over her body."108
The number of women who have endured detention and torture by US occupation forces is unknown. According to Iman Khamas, head of the International Occupation Watch Center, "Since December 2003, there are around 625 women prisoners in Al–Rusafah Prison in Uma Qasr and 750 in Al–Kadhmiya alone. They range from girls of twelve to women in their sixties."109 Even the number of detention centers is a matter of controversy, though it is clear that jails have mushroomed across Iraq since the US invasion. Hajj Ali, director of the Organization for the Defense of Detainees in Occupation Jails, states, "Under Saddam there were 13 prisons. Now there are 36 run by the government and 200 run by the militias. All these have the approval of the American government."110 The US State Department Democracy and Human Rights Bureau put the number of detention centers even higher, at 450. There are also an undisclosed number of secret detention centers, established by the US in violation of international law.111
Redefining Rape: The US Military Commissions Act
No international legal or humanitarian provisions allow torture, even in conditions of war. Perhaps that is why the 2006 US Military Commissions Act (MCA) effectively expunges rape from the definition of torture. The law, championed by President Bush, requires proof of specific intent to commit torture. But motive is very hard to prove in cases of sexual assault because a defendant can always claim that his motivation was sexual gratification rather than torture. The law limits the definition of rape to sexual penetration (most US states and international law use a broader definition). The law also requires physical contact to prove sexual assault, excluding numerous forms of sexual abuse that US forces have committed in Iraq, including forced nakedness and sexual threats and humiliation. Under the law, only forcible or coerced penetration is considered rape. Thus, the Taguba investigation's photographs of a US military policeman "having sex" with an Iraqi woman would not be evidence of rape, since they do not necessarily document coercion. Yet, US federal and international law recognizes that rape occurs whenever the victim does not give free and voluntary consent. In a sexual relationship characterized by an extreme disparity of power (such as that between a prison guard and an inmate) consent becomes a hollow concept. The MCA thereby effectively sanctions violence against women by US forces.
New Jailers, Old Torments
Reports of torture continued after the US shifted responsibility for Iraq's prison system to the country's Interior Ministry. In September 2006, the United Nations special investigator on torture reported that torture was worse in US–occupied Iraq than under Saddam Hussein.112 According to OWFI, which has conducted a Women's Prison Watch project since November 2005, "Torture and rape has become a common procedure of investigation in police stations run by the militias affiliated with the government, mostly the Mahdi and Badr militias."113 Amnesty International has demonstrated that US–led multinational forces in Iraq are legally responsible for crimes against detainees, including crimes committed by Iraqi security forces.114
During visits to Kadhmiya Prison, run by Iraq's Interior Ministry, and other Iraqi–run jails, OWFI took testimonies from numerous women who said they were raped by prison authorities.115
Zina Akram Khdayir is a 24–year–old woman who went to the police in Baghdad in June 2005 to escape a situation of life–threatening domestic violence. While seeking refuge at the Aminyah Police Station, Zina was raped by a man known to her as Major Saad. She was then forced to confess to "being a terrorist" or face being returned to her family. Zina resolved to file a complaint against Major Saad, but was later offered release in exchange for withdrawing that complaint. She was released in July 2006 without a trial.
Forty–year-old Khadija Mohammed Mhawish was tortured regularly for more than two years in several different jails. She reported being flogged with cables, having her fingernails pulled out, and being forced to stand naked before prisoners who were urged by guards to rape her. Khadija, who was sexually assaulted in front of her son (also a prisoner), identified the following men as her rapists: Fifth Branch officers Major Raid, Captain Nabeel, First Lieutenant Saad, and non–commissioned officers Abdilamir and Raad.
Fatma Mohammed Ashur was raped by Ministry of Interior officers Lieutenant Colonel Amir, Captain Riyadh, Military Intelligence non–commissioned officers Hussein and Ziyad, and al–Bayya Police Station officers Lieutenant Colonel Jalal and First Lieutenant Hazza.
Ilham Mohammed Ridha was tortured in May and August 2005. She was flogged, shocked with electrical cables, and gang–raped by officers in the al–Karrada Police Station for Major Crimes.
Coerced Silence and Official Denial
Like women in many parts of the world, Iraqi women often face severe social stigma and even violence at the hands of their families upon release from prison. Amnesty International researchers suspect that Noor, the author of the letter that precipitated the Abu Ghraib scandal, was killed in the name of family honor after her release. Iman Khamas, head of the International Occupation Watch Center, Mohammed Daham al–Mohammed of the Union of Detainees and Prisoners, and Hoda Nuaimi, politics professor at Baghdad University, all separately reported that three young women from western Baghdad were killed by their families after returning from Abu Ghraib pregnant.116 The threat of "honor killing" is compounded by the near–total lack of due process under US occupation. With no reliable justice system, some families turn to "tribal diplomacy" to secure the release of relatives from prison.117 Tribal leaders are more likely than other authorities to prescribe "honor killing" as a remedy for the perceived disgrace that a woman's detention casts on her family.
Given the threat of renewed violence, it is not surprising that relatively few Iraqi women have been willing to speak publicly about their ordeals in detention. Yet, despite the intense pressure on women to keep silent, at least nine Iraqi organizations118 as well as Amnesty International, the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq, and the Brussels Tribunal have documented the torture of Iraqi women by US and Iraqi forces. Despite this evidence, US and Iraqi authorities routinely hide behind women's reluctance to testify about abuse, using detainees' coerced silence to deny allegations of torture. For example, Hassan Jaffar, a senior Iraqi military official, has repeatedly told reporters that women were "imagining" the abuses they recounted.119
US Media Tow the Line
Official denial is reflected in mainstream US media, which has paid little attention to Iraqi women's experiences of detention. The lack of media coverage is remarkable given that thousands of Iraqi women have been arrested since the US occupation began; that torture by the US military has been infamously documented by the torturers themselves; and that US Vice President Dick Cheney has publicly acknowledged and defended torture in Iraq and elsewhere.120 Even during the highly publicized 2006 kidnapping of US journalist Jill Carroll, there was little media curiosity about her captors' single demand, namely, the release of Iraqi women in US custody.
Those reports that have addressed the issue of women's torture have implicitly cast doubt on the veracity of the allegations. Some have suggested, for example, that images of women being raped by prison guards are staged pornography rather than evidence of torture.121 In fact, there is no firewall between the for–profit production of war–related pornography and the circulation of images of women's torture. Indeed, several former detainees report that photographs of their rapes have been posted on pornographic Internet sites, propelling their experience of torture into virtual perpetuity.
Other US media stories have chosen to focus on "honor killings" of released detainees rather than on the unlawful detentions that triggered the murders.122 These stories divert attention from US crimes of illegal detention and torture of women, implicitly shifting blame to Iraqi society for tolerating "honor killing." What these reports miss is the ways that crimes of occupation reinforce crimes of honor and how repressive codes of family honor have made all Iraqis more vulnerable to abusive authorities, whether they are US occupiers or their Iraqi successors.
99Haifa Zangana, "The Height of Humiliation," Middle East Online, June 26, 2006, http://www.middle–east–online.com/English/?id=16823 (accessed Dec. 11, 2006).
100Monitoring of Human Rights in Iraq Network, "The Second Periodic Report of Monitoring Net of Human Rights in Iraq," Nov. 20, 2005.
101Luke Harding, "The Other Prisoners," The Guardian UK, May 20, 2004.
102Haifa Zangana, "Women of the New Iraq," Alternet, Aug. 16, 2005. www.alternet.org/story/24063/ (accessed Dec. 11. 2006).
103Annia Ciezadlo, "For Iraqi Women, Abu Ghraib's Taint," Christian Science Monitor, May 28, 2004.
104Haifa Zangana, "The Height of Humiliation," Middle East Online, June 26, 2006. http://www.middle–east–online.com/English/?id=16823 (accessed Dec. 11, 2006).
105Mohammed Bazzi, "US Using Some Iraqis as Bargaining Chips," Newsweek, May 26, 2004.
106See for example: paragraph 36 of the International Committee of the Red Cross' "Report of the International Committee of the Red Cross on the Treatment by the Coalition Forces of Prisoners of War and other Protected Persons by the Geneva Conventions in Iraq During Arrest, Internment and Interrogation," Feb. 2004. OWFI reports the case of Ahmad Ibrahim Mahmoud Al Jibouri of Kirkuk. He was arrested for allegedly trying to shoot down a US helicopter. In detention, US soldiers raped his wife and daughter in front of him in order to elicit his confession. His wife was detained for two–and–a–half years. (OWFI Summer 2006 Report, p. 11).
107Tara McKelvey, "Unusual Suspects," American Prospect Online, Feb. 1, 2005, http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewPrint&articleId=9044 (accessed Dec. 15, 2006).
108Ibid.
109Ibid.
110Haifa Zangana, "The Height of Humiliation," Middle East Online, June 26, 2006, http://www.middle–east–online.com/English/?id=16823 (accessed Dec. 11, 2006).
111See Article 9 of the United Nations International Covenant on Political and Civil Rights, as well as the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
112Guardian Unlimited, "Torture in Iraq 'worse than under Saddam'," Sep. 21, 2006, http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1878100,00.html (accessed Jan. 31, 2007).
113Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq Summer 2006 Report, p. 7.
114Amnesty International, "Iraq: UN Security Council should ensure full accountability for Multinational Force abuses," June 14, 2006, http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGMDE140272006?open&of=ENG–IRQ (accessed Feb. 5, 2007).
115Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq, Summer 2006 Report.
116Rouba Kabbara, "Human Rights Groups: Iraqi Women Raped at Abu Ghraib Jail," Middle East Online, May 29, 2004, http://www.middle–east–online.com/english/?id=10096 (accessed Dec. 11, 2006).
117Scheherezade Faramarzi, "Female Prisoners Key in Iraq Hostage Drama," Associated Press, Jan. 21, 2006.
118UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, "Iraq: Activists call on army, police to respect women's rights," IRIN News, Feb. 8, 2006, http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=51607&SelectRegion=
Middle_East&SelectCountry=IRAQ (accessed Dec. 13, 2006), and: Haifa Zangana, "The Height of Humiliation," Middle East Online, June 26, 2006, http://www.middle–east–online.com/English/?id=16823M (accessed Dec. 11, 2006). The nine organizations include: Women's Will, Occupation Watch, the Women's Rights Association, the Iraqi League, the Human Right's Voice of Freedom, the Association of Muslim Scholars, the Iraqi Islamic Party, the Iraqi National Media and Culture Organization, and the Iraqi National Association of Human Rights. The Iraqi National Association of Human Rights' report on Oct. 29, 2005 documented that women held in Interior Ministry detention centers are subject to "systematic rape by the investigators and to other forms of bodily harm in order to coerce them into making a confession." The Ministry of Justice confirmed the accuracy of the report.
119UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, "Iraq: Activists call on army, police to respect women's rights," IRIN News, Feb. 8, 2006, http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=51607&SelectRegion=
Middle_East&SelectCountry=IRAQ (accessed Dec. 13, 2006).
120Mark Tran, "Cheney Endorses Simulated Drowning," The Guardian, Oct. 27, 2006, http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,,1933317,00.html (accessed Feb. 5, 2007).
121Susan J. Brinson, "Torture or 'Good Old American Pornography'?," The Chronicle of Higher Education, June 4, 2004: B10–B11.
122Lila Rajiva, "Iraqi Women and Torture, Part One: Rapes and Rumours of Rape," Dissident Voice, July 27, 2004, http://www.dissidentvoice.org/July2004/Rajiva0727.htm (accessed Dec. 13, 2006).