Iraq

Iraq's lost women

At the height of Saddam Hussein's murderous campaign against the Kurds, were some women sent from Iraq to be prostitutes? Their families want to know.

[Times photo: Jamie Francis] Hidiat Ibrahim Ahmed, 84, holds an ID issued to his daughter, Hasiba, who was 30 when she disappeared during Iraq's campaign against the Kurds in 1988. Azheen Qadir Aziz, 11, stands in the background. Her aunt Ismet Qadir also disappeared.

[Times photo: Jamie Francis] Azheen Qadir Aziz, 11, holds a photo of her aunt, Ismet Qadir, who disappeared April 7, 1988. She may have been sent to Egypt.

SULAIMANYAH, Iraq - In 1988, Saddam Hussein's soldiers swept through dozens of villages in northern Iraq, rounding up men, women and children whose only crime was being Kurdish.

Among those captured was Ismet Qadir.

In her mid-30s, Qadir had striking dark eyes, long, thick hair and a vibrant personality. "People said she was beautiful," recalls her brother, Abdul, who will never forget the date she disappeared: April 7, 1988.

For the next 15 years, nothing more was heard of Ismet or 182,000 other Kurds seized during the Anfal, Hussein's brutal campaign against Iraq's largest ethnic minority. The discovery of huge mass graves after the regime fell last April confirmed fears that most, if not all, had been killed.

But now a startling document has surfaced, purportedly written by the Mukhabarat, Hussein's secret intelligence service. It reveals yet another dark side of the regime, but suggests Ismet Qadir and 17 other Kurdish women might still be alive.

They were, the document says, sent to Egypt to work as prostitutes.

"This was something very difficult, very horrible for us," says Abdul Qadir. "When you find your sister has been taken to a bad place, how can you describe your feeling?"

The Egyptian government has denied any knowledge of the women, some as young as 13 when they were taken. But their relatives and Kurdish officials say more should be done to determine their fate.

"We dearly hope to find at least one of these," says Mansur Karem, director of Anfal victims in the Kurdistan Regional Government. "She would be living evidence for indicting the Arabs" of Hussein's regime.

The case of the missing women has its roots in Hussein's drive to permanently suppress Iraq's 5-million Kurds, whose refusal to give up their unique language and culture threatened his plan to "Arabize" Iraq and become leader of the entire Arab world.

In 1988, at the height of his power, Hussein unleashed his forces against the Kurds' own paramilitary, the pesh merga.

"We resisted from April 1 to April 7," says Abdul Qadir, a pesh merga fighter at the time. "Then we got orders from the leadership to withdraw because resistance was useless" against Hussein's superior might.

As the pesh merga retreated to the mountains, Iraqi soldiers moved into Kurdish villages in the desert east of Kirkuk and arrested those left behind - mostly women, children and old men. Among those taken were Qadir's widowed father and the rest of his family - sister Ismet and two brothers. Then the soldiers destroyed the villages.

Six months later, the elder Qadir was released because of age, and he returned to northern Iraq with a tale of horror. He and his children, along with thousands of others, had been beaten and tortured, shunted from one crowded detention center to another, denied food and water. Eventually, the men were separated from the women, and the women further separated into groups of young and old.

Abdul Qadir never again saw his sister or brothers. Their father died in 1996, grieving to the end.

"Even up to the moment he died, he talked about his children and prayed for their safety, for their freedom. He wished he had a chance to see then once again for the last time, to say goodbye."

Over the years, Qadir often thought about his sister, too - one of his young daughters strongly resembles her missing aunt. But he despaired of ever finding her until last year, when a Kurdish newspaper ran a story about a document purportedly discovered in Baghdad during the postwar looting of government buildings.

Dated Dec. 10, 1989, and marked "secret," it was from a regional Mukhabarat office to the agency's General Directorate in Baghdad. The one-page document says "several groups of people" had been detained during Anfal operations.

"Among these is a group of girls whose ages range between 14 and 29 years. According to your orders, we have sent a group of these girls to the nightclubs and brothels of the Arab Republic of Egypt and, as you have requested, we are sending you a list of the names and ages of these girls."

That was followed by 18 names, with Ismet No. 10 on the list.

The story caused a sensation and prompted action by the Kurdish Regional Government. Its representatives met with Egyptian authorities in northern Iraq, Baghdad and Cairo.

"They told us that after a long investigation, that no one with these names came into (Egypt)," says Karem, the victims advocate.

There is one problem with the document. The ages of Ismet and some of the other women are incorrect; Kurds speculate the Mukhabarat simply guessed at ages based on looks.

But all of the names are of real women, whose relatives have come forward to verify they have been missing since the late 1980s. Qadir thinks the document is authentic, even though he doubts his sister or any of the others are still alive.

"I think that if they were in Egypt, the government would have killed them to avoid a big scandal," he says. "I don't think the Egyptian government will admit these women were in nightclubs in Egypt."

Others are more optimistic.

Basharat Hanza says his sister Hasiba - tall, pretty, outgoing - was also captured April 7, 1988. Her name appears on the list along with those of her daughters, who were just 13 and 14 at the time.

"Regardless of everything, we felt very happy that my sister was alive," Hanza says. "I think she's in Egypt even if the Egyptians say no."

If the women were sent there, the reason remains unclear. Was Hussein's government trying to curry favor with certain Egyptian officials or businessmen by supplying them with beautiful young women? Were Mukhabarat agents simply making money on the side in a thriving Mideast sex trade?

No matter what, Kurdish authorities say, there is considerable evidence many Kurdish women were raped and subjected to other cruelties during the Anfal campaign. Hussein's regime purportedly decreed that any Iraqi soldier fighting the Kurds had the right to take any woman he wanted.

"We also heard stories that many young females were taken by Arab chieftains and tribal leaders, and we heard horrible things about what happened to some of the most beautiful," Karem says. "And we heard stories that females were sent to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia."

In an interview with a Kurdish newspaper last January, a Kurdish mullah, or religious leader, said he was visiting Mecca in 2002 when a Saudi man approached him in a market. The man said his wife was Kurdish, and invited the mullah to his apartment to meet her.

The wife described how she and several other young women had been kidnapped by Iraqi soldiers and taken to an area near the Saudi border. Most of the women were killed, but she and a few others escaped to a Saudi village. There she met her future husband.

The woman had been in touch with her family but apparently had no desire to return to Iraq. In traditional Muslim societies, relatives often shun - even kill - a woman thought to have disgraced the family's honor, even if by no fault of her own.

But relatives of at least some of the 18 missing women say they would welcome them back with kisses and parties.

"I don't feel any shame because they did not take the bad path by themselves," says Hanza of his sister and her daughters. "They were taken by a brutal regime."

The families praise the Kurdish government for trying to find the women, but think more could be done if the the United States, a close ally of Egypt, got involved. Ahmed Qadir just wants to learn - for better or worse - what happened to Ismet and the others, some of whom would now be in their 50s.

"We will be satisfied to get their bones," he says.

Hanza, though, remains convinced the women are alive.

"If there will be some guarantee of freedom to look for my sister, I will go and search every nightclub in Egypt."

- Susan Taylor Martin can be contacted at susan@sptimes.com

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