This story begins with the British colonization of Iraq in 1917, specifically in Baghdad, where the colonization identified and built residential buildings in the center of Baghdad and designated them for sex and exploitation of women, specifically in the “Kouk Nazar and Al-Kaljiah”[1] area opposite Al-Midan Square.[2]

The soldiers of the British colonial army and their loyalists used these places as a place for sex, and all those who practiced the sex profession were provided with an “identity”, meaning that there was a license to practice work.

Sex workers were subjected to medical examinations on specific dates, taxes were also imposed on pimps[3], and this work turned into an open and organized form at that time.

Writer Karim Muhammad explains in his book “Secret and Overt Prostitution in Baghdad“, which was published in 1974[4], that “sexual relations in our society are surrounded by a thick veil of secrecy, which stands in the way of making them a field for organized scientific investigation.”

 This makes it difficult and complicates the research process on this subject. The localities of “Kouk Nazar and Kalkieh”, opposite the Maidan Square, were the only areas in which these homes are located, and there are even statistics for the number of visitors to these homes, wages, working hours, and other statistics.

 The author points out that the process of canceling and destroying the role of sex in the mid-fifties, that is, after the revolution against the monarchy designed by Britain for Iraq, “has led to a geographical dispersal of the areas of communication and practice together.”

Sex in Baghdad moved from the public role to the secret role, then moved to the forced role, for the days of the “Kouk Nazar and Al-Kaljiah” areas, which were public and monitored by the royal authority, ended with the advent of the Iraqi Republic in 1958, so sex work moved to the secret role, and the role of sex spread in Many places, difficult to control, were administered in secret by the organs of the former monarchy; Then, after the events of 2003 and the control of the sectarian regime, it moved to a coercive role.

Trafficking in women has become very common now, and there are well-known places in Baghdad that are a focus for organizing these trafficking operations, supervised by militias, gangs and Islamic mafias. Today, the areas of “Al-Bataween and Al-Taweel” have appeared, along with hotels, amusement parks, massage parlors, cafes, and secret homes scattered throughout Baghdad.

All of what is mentioned is the practice of the sex trade. The work of militias and merchants of this profession has expanded, and their business has flourished, in the era of lawlessness, in the era of gangs, militias and Islamic mafias. On February 23, 2012, the Iraqi parliament passed the Anti-Human Trafficking Law[5], in which the law considered that “the recruitment or harboring of persons, by means of threats of force, fraud, or deception, with the aim of selling them or exploiting them in acts of prostitution, sexual exploitation, or enslavement,” are all a form of forms of human trafficking.

But despite this rather good law, on the other hand, there are some unfair laws against women, such as Article (398) of the Iraqi Penal Code[6], one of these articles is honoring the rapist and marrying him off to the victim.

• An interview with one of the sex workers “Sarah[7]“

The owner of the house prepares Sarah, trains and decorates her before each job interview and on a daily basis, and the owner of the house takes care of transporting Sarah in a private car to and from the workplace every night, to return Sarah in the morning with the agreed money. Sarah earns $100 per night, half of which goes to the owner of the house, and Sarah keeps $50 for herself. Sarah is trying to keep this amount in order to collect enough money to escape away from this terrifying world or to emigrate to Turkey.

• The first working day

“As I am new to this profession and have not practiced it before, the owner of the house decided to gift me for a whole month to one of the merchants of the capital, Baghdad, who belongs to the most famous armed Islamic militia, for a very large sum of 6000 US dollars, of which my share was only 500 dollars. He asked to film my work with him and I was not able to rejection”.

The homeowner earns about $3,000 per day from the sex trade networks she owns, but the homeowner’s share of this amount is only $700, not net, while the rest of the $2,300 per day goes to the Islamic militias controlling the area.

Where these Islamic militias bring girls to the owner of the house using methods of extortion and violence, and they also protect the place militarily from the state and the rest of the militias, and they also provide other services such as delivery and security monitoring of sex workers and others.

• The role of Islamic militias

In an interview we conducted with a member of the Islamic militia[8], he admitted that there are more than (500) sex houses in Baghdad, operating openly, belonging to this militia only, most of them in the “Al-Taweel” area, west of the capital, while there are more than (1200) commercial units, most of which are centers For massages and cafes used for sex trade. He talked about the employment of more than 1,550 women in the field of sex work in Baghdad alone, the majority of whom are from the northern and southern governorates and who escaped from ISIS in northern Iraq or from domestic violence in southern Iraq.

This militia member talks about “These actions are contrary to the Islamic religion, but these militias do not necessarily believe in Islamic legislation and use religion as a cover to finance their corrupt political projects in Iraq, as this trade (women’s trade) generates huge profit for them to buy weapons and to buy influence and power. In addition, to control Iraqi politicians by seducing them, not only that, but also some members of the sex networks have strong ties with Iran for spying services, and others through the use of women. Before every election, we witness video sex scandals for many politicians in order to pressure and threaten them to respond to the militias’ demands. This is how the militias justify these dirty acts religiously. Many religious authorities and clerics give religious fatwas to legislate these actions in order to serve and strengthen political Islam in Iraq as a temporary measure against what they call the Western attack on Islam. They use the term “the end justifies the means” in their fatwas. Sometimes a conflict arises between these militias in order to control these sexual commercial centers, and sometimes-armed conflict rages between them and they kill each other in order to control these centers by force.

As you saw a year ago, a group called “Rab’allah” that belongs to the Lebanese Hezbollah appeared by bombing many bars and nightclubs in Baghdad in order to collect taxes from them, knowing that these places are actually affiliated to the Saraya al-Salam militia, which resulted in an armed conflict in The streets of Baghdad between the militias in order to control these places.

 At the same time, the “Hezbollah” group is promoting these actions in the media, saying that they want to close these places that spread corruption in society, but in fact, all they want is to impose taxes on them. This is what actually happened. Hezbollah’s militia was silenced with some money, and now we no longer hear any objection from these militias”.

Iraq was considered one of the countries that succeeded in greatly reducing cases of sexual exploitation and human trafficking, especially after the issuance of the Personal Status Law No. 188 of 1959, in which it prohibited even forced marriage and polygamy, but the phenomenon of sex trafficking returned to the fore in the nineties of the last century after Circumstances of the difficult economic sanctions imposed on Iraq and also after the change of the previous regime in 2003 to an Islamic sectarian regime.

The problem of women being lured is the inability to return to their families because of tribal and societal customs that dictate the killing of every girl, her escape from her relatives is exposed.

This makes the task of extricating these women from the sex trafficking gangs difficult or impossible, women are sometimes forced to obtain identity papers and forged passports, and use pseudonyms while changing their surnames, in order to hide and block the way for their relatives to pursue them through the security services.

Many of the murder cases were recorded for girls who were found, which the Arab tribes consider “disgrace.” The judiciary reduces its sentence to the perpetrators of these dishonorable operations, and classifies them as part of honor crimes, for which the sentence does not exceed a prison sentence of six months or a year as a maximum.

Unfortunately, there is no confidence in the Iraqi national military institution. Often when these women complain about this work for the Iraqi national military institution, they are sexually exploited in a much worse way than they used to suffer in the city of Al-Taweel.  Here, sex workers live in a closed circle, and a sad story that cannot be escaped, as they are not safe from the militias except themselves.

[1] Al-Kaljiah or Kok Nazar are two names for one locality that is the most famous place for sex in Baghdad; This area is in the middle of the famous Maidan Square, and the two most important streets in Baghdad end there: Al-Rasheed and Al-Jumhuriya. It is also “Kuk Nizar or Al-Kaljieh”, opposite the existing Ministry of Defense building.

Al-Kiljiah, as Dr. Moataz Muhyi Abdul Hamid mentions in his extensive research on the history of secret and public prostitution in Baghdad, is the name of one of the formations of the Hulagu army, which was based in that place after the invasion of Baghdad. As for “Kouk Nazar”, the origin of the name goes back to the Armenian artillery commander in the Ottoman army, Lazar, who asked Sultan Murad IV when entering Baghdad a plot of land to build a church for the Armenian Orthodox, and indeed this was done to him; The locality was called Kok Lazar: that is, the land of Lazar

[2] The naming of Al-Mahala and the famous square in the middle with the name (Al-Midan) dates back to the Abbasid period, when the square was established near the palaces of the Abbasid caliphs and princes to entertain them through exercise. While some of its name is attributed to its transformation into a field for training and reviewing the Ottoman army during the rule of the Ottomans at the beginning of the ninth century, which is what is known in the military conventions and terminology in the field. The researcher in the history of Baghdad (Ibrahim Abdul Rahman) indicates that “the square was later transformed from a place for training of the Ottoman army into a market for selling fodder for horses, carts that transported goods and merchandise and travelers to Baghdad, where Al-Midan Square was the main station for the northern entrance to Baghdad, and it was also used to display and sell The slaves brought from the countries of Russia, the Caucasus, Armenia and Central Asia, and one of the worst stages that afflicted the history of the square is its allocation of a place to carry out executions by the sword in the Ottoman era, which was carried out by the most famous executioner of that period (Taha Naour one-eyed) in the midst of the crowds of worshipers and with the beating of drums. Other sources indicate that the name of the square dates back to the nineteenth century, in reference to a poet named Omar al-Midani, because he used to frequent it at that time.

[3] A “pimp,” or “broker,” as it is known in the Iraqi dialect, and a fine was imposed on him if he employed a “Sexworker” who did not have a prostitution identity, or a medical examination, and more; The authority of the British army imposed a tax on entrants to places of Sexworking; Where the customer is given a pass, which the Iraqis call “bus”, which is taken from the English word “pass”.

[4] Secret prostitution in Baghdad, the psychology of the body from self-perception to phenomenon – Karim Muhammad Hamza

[5] https://www.moj.gov.iq/uploaded/4236.pdf

[6] https://www.rwi.uzh.ch/dam/jcr:00000000-0c03-6a0c-ffff-ffff96be3560/penalcode1969.pdf

[7] Nickname

[8] The interview was conducted secretly over the phone and without mentioning his name or the name of the militia, he works with.