5,000 "honor" killings every year!

"The UN estimates that around 5,000 women and girls are murdered each year in so-called “honor killings” by members of their families"

Extremists want to control women

A great comment by Hillary Clinton: “Why extremists always focus on women remains a mystery to me, but they all seem to. It doesn’t matter what country they’re in or what religion they claim. They want to control women. They want to control how we dress. They want to control how we act. They even want to control the decisions we make about our own health and bodies.”

Iraqi activists try to get tough on "honor killings"

On International Women's Day I was reminded that "honor killings" still exist in Iraq. Thanks Haydar for sharing.

'Near the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, a father doused his three teenage daughters with boiling water and shot them because, he told a court, he suspected they were having sex. Two died.

He said he killed them to defend his honor.

Murder in Iraq can carry a death sentence but under laws that activists say are far too lenient for so-called “honor killings”, the father was jailed for just two years. Medical examinations showed the girls were virgins.

The light sentence was a result of Article 409 of Iraq’s penal code which is often used in cases of “honor killings” by men. Women’s activists in Iraq, led by the only woman in Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s cabinet, Minister of State for Women’s Affairs Ibtihal al-Zaidi, are lobbying to change the law.'

Continue reading

Saudi women will be allowed to vote, but they will not be allowed to drive

"Two days after Saudi King Abdullah's historic decision to allow women to participate in elections, two Saudi women were punished for breaking the ban on female driving: One was sentenced 10 lashes by a court in Jeddah and another was detained in Riyadh."

PS: Every article I've read about this story implies that KSA is a democracy. It's not.

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Saudi women drive

in Riyadh! Maha drove a Hummer with her face covered: "Reporting from Beirut— She got her driver's license in Indiana. She likes to drive fast.

And on Friday, Maha Qahtani, 39, in a face-covering niqab, raced through the streets of Riyadh in her family's blue Hummer H3, defying Saudi Arabia's religion-inspired bans on female motorists.

In all, nearly three dozen Saudi women got behind the wheels of various vehicles Friday, human rights activists said, in what was billed on social networking websites as a day of defiance against the ultra-conservative kingdom's longstanding driving decrees."

Al Qaeda's magazine for women

For women who "launch" LOL.



Thanks Fareed for posting on fb.

Women's rights in Iraq

"Iraq was once at the forefront of women’s rights. In the 1950s, it became the first Arab country to have a female minister and to have a law that gave women the ability to ask for divorces.

But under Saddam Hussein, women had no role in the government, and the resistance movements were dominated by men. After he was ousted in 2003, women successfully lobbied the American administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, to set up the constitutional requirement that a quarter of Parliament’s members be women."

Women's rights in Iraq were advanced by Abdul Karim Qassim, who was assassinated by Baathists.

Islamic law bad for women, bad for Iraq

Fundamentalist Islam is backward and it has taken Iraq (and Iran) backward.

H. Patricia Hynes and Yanar Mohammed, truthout:

Studies on the ground of the war's impact on women and girls come to vastly different conclusions. In October 2002, Saddam Hussein released criminals from Iraqi prisons. This and the soon-to-follow 2003 US-led assault on Baghdad, created conditions for bloodletting, for a sharp increase in organized crime trafficking in drugs, stolen cars, and women and girls; and for the ascendancy of armed Islamist conservatism. Saddam's tightly controlled violence and reign of terror were replaced by unpredictable, widespread violence against Iraqi women. The immediate consequences for women: hejabs worn by Muslim and Christian women alike (and abayas in some regions) to avoid being harassed and beaten in public; an epidemic of women killed in the city of Basra by fundamentalist men, who leave them in the street as a lesson to other women; increased rape, including of women in detention; abduction into prostitution; and a dramatic rise in "honor" killings, or the murder of women and girls by male family members to restore family honor. Muta'a - Sharia law-permitted exploitation [or dating*] of women by men in so-called temporary marriages, which serve as fronts for prostitution [or just premarital sex*] - rose after the war began, with men targeting desperate, penniless widows and the Shia militia targeting single girls. The real ruler in Iraq today, according to Iraqi Professor Maha Sabria, "is the rule of old traditions and tribal, backward law" with a US-brokered Constitution based in Islamic law, one which does not assure women basic rights or protections.

The Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq (OWFI), which investigated women's deaths in Basra by visiting city morgues, found that most of the women killed by fundamentalist "vice squads" in Basra were largely professionals, activists and PhDs. The lesson to other women: end any participation in the public, political and social spheres and stay home under male surveillance. By early 2008, only 20 percent of primary and secondary students countrywide were female; the rest were prisoners in their homes. Houzan Mahmoud, who has risked her life to organize a petition against the introduction of Islamic law in Kurdistan, summed up the impact of the war: "If before there were one dictator persecuting people, now almost everyone is persecuting women."

*The charge that "Mut'a" or "temporary marriage" is a front for prostitution, an exploitation of women, is wrong. I'm sure many Shia men do exploit women and engage in prostitution, but many Shia men do "Mut'a" just to engage in consensual pre-marital sex. When I lived with my girlfriend in college, my parents found out about it eventually, and when they did, they were very disappointed. They told me the only way to make it ok by God is to do a "temporary marriage" with her. And that's what I did with my American girlfriend from Arkansas, just to make my religious parents happy, or more happy than they were when they discovered I was living in sin.

"Mut'a" is one of those words that some Sunni Arabs love to throw at Shia as an insult, as if Sunni Arabs do not engage in pre-marital sex.

Women's rights in the mid east

It's just coincidence that I saw this on fb: “Tell the believing men to lower their gaze and be modest. That is purer for them. Lo! Allah is aware of what they do” (Quran 24:30). (Thanks Khalid)

and then I saw this:

Stupid reactions to assault on Lara Logan

Today I learned that CBS reporter Lara Logan was sexually assaulted and beaten in Tahrir Square on Friday, the day Hosni Mubarak resigned. How sad and embarrassing for Egyptians at a time when Egypt celebrates the end (hopefully) of dictatorship. I hope the rapists are arrested and punished for their crimes.

I've been reading about some of the reactions to the assault, which seem almost as shocking as the assault itself. Last night on Twitter Nir Rosen called Logan a "major war monger". What a schmuck. Today he apologized.

From the crazy right, Glen Beck used the occasion to attack the "radicals" in our universities (Rosen was a fellow at NYU) and thinks the assault proves what he's been saying about Egypt. At least Beck mentioned that Logan was rescued by Egyptian women and Egyptian soldiers. I suppose he deserves praise for that.

I think the stupidest reaction was from conservative commentator Debbie Schlussel, who wrote: "So sad, too bad, Lara. No one told her to go there. She knew the risks, and she should have known what Islam is all about. Now she knows. This never happened to her or any other mainstream media reporter when Mubarak was allowed to treat his country of savages in the only way they can be controlled. How fitting that Lara Logan was 'liberated' by Muslims in Liberation Square while she was gushing over the other part of the 'liberation'. Hope you're enjoying the revolution, Lara!"

Wow, that's disgusting. I'm not disgusted by her remarks on Islam - that's to be expected from the right wing. What disgusts me is that Schlussel attacked the victim, basically blaming Logan for being raped.

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Honor Killings or Domestic Violence?

Anna Momigliano argues in The Nation that we should not bash Arab culture and that domestic violence exists in every culture. Domestic violence is not punished like it should be in some European countries like Italy:

"Violence against women is widespread in almost any country, regardless of ethnicity or religion," says Farian Sabahi, an Iranian-Italian academic who teaches Islamic history at the University of Turin.

Although data suggest that violence against women is more common and tolerated in traditional Muslim societies, the difference when compared with Europe is not as significant as one would expect.

According to a 2009 survey, four out of ten women in Turkey experience domestic violence. In Italy gender-based violence strikes "only" 32 percent of the female population (about 80 percent is believed to take place within the family).

Most surprising, perhaps, is the perception of domestic violence among women: while only 10 percent of Turkish women report it as a crime, in Italy this figure is around 18 percent.

Gender-based violence is surprisingly common even in countries thought to be more egalitarian. In Britain, 45 percent of women have reportedly experienced some form of domestic violence, sexual assault or stalking. Similarly, 37 percent of German women have reportedly experienced some form of physical violence, and 25 percent say they have been abused by a partner.

...In 2007, in the Sicilian town of Palermo, Renato Di Felice served only two days in prison, despite being found guilty of purposely killing his wife, Maria Concetta-Pitas, in 2003: the couple's children had testified that their mother had been disrespectful toward her husband, moving the judge to a mild sentence.

But I wonder what percentage of Turkish victims of domestic violence actually report the crimes to authorities, and does the high rate of domestic violence in Italy have anything to do with the large Muslim population there? In Italy, many Italian Muslim women are trapped in polygamous marriages:

Sbai estimates there are 14,000 polygamous families in Italy; others put the number even higher. Many take advantage of the so-called orfi marriage, a less formal union performed by an imam, that does not carry the same social or legal standing as regular marriage.

She is convinced that the polygamists in Italy are practicing a more fundamentalist and abusive form of multiple marriage. Because they feel so threatened by the Western culture around them, the men often imprison their wives and confine them to a life of solitude wholly dependent on the husband.

"They are kept in a kind of ghetto," Sbai said.

When Sbai recently created a hot line for Muslim immigrant women, she was inundated with 1,000 calls in the first three months. To her astonishment, she had tapped into a hidden community of women desperate for information, many trapped in violent, polygamous households, isolated and lonely.

Anna Momigliano:

Passion and honor-related crimes against women seem so engrained in Italian society that in 2006 a German court granted extenuating circumstances on the basis of "ethnic and cultural background" to a Sardinia-born man who had his girlfriend gang-raped because he feared she might have cheated on him.

"All Italians, and those living in Sardinia particularly, felt insulted and outraged by this German sentence," notes Sabahi. "Yet when similar crimes take place among the Arab immigrants, Italian authorities tend to blame it on Islam, without caring about offending the Muslim community."

Sabahi believes "racist prejudice will not help" stop violence; she believes education is the key. "Institutions should focus on protecting women, rather than bashing culture," Sabahi says.

Good points by Momigliano, and she didn't even mention OJ Simpson. But she seems to ignore the differences between "honor killings" in Arab culture and domestic violence in the West. In Arab culture, the murderer is often the brother or the father of the victim. We do not often hear of an American man who kills his sister because she had pre-marital sex or because she was raped, and in America violence against women is publicly combatted and the criminals are punished appropriately.

PS: Thanks Aton for posting the article about polygamous marriages in Italy.

Some Arabs begin moving mindset out of 7th century

By "7th century" I don't mean to imply that honor killing is an Islamic practice. It is a backward Arab practice that should have ended centuries ago.

"Honor killings have long been tolerated in Muslim countries, but movements are underway to both punish murderers and bring an end to the bloodshed Something is finally beginning to change. The Syrian parliament, for example, last month canceled the clause that permits a judge to show leniency toward a person who kills "for reasons of honor."

Honor can no longer be used as a defense by lawyers when presenting their client's case, and contrary to the previous law that did not state a minimum punishment, now the judges will be forced to imprison murderers for at least two years.

In Jordan the law has not yet been amended, even though the government has twice submitted it to parliament, but the courts themselves have begun acting as if the issue of family honor is no longer valid.

The punishments they have imposed recently for honor killings have been far harsher than what Jordanian citizens are used to.

Official statistics about honor murders are nonexistent, since police refrain from classifying them as such. However, a study carried out by the National Center for Social and Criminal Studies in Egypt indicated that some 70 percent of murders against women were carried out by their husbands, 20 percent by their brothers and 7 percent by their fathers.

The most unpleasant finding in the survey is that more than 70 percent of these murders were perpetrated on the basis of unfounded rumors and remarks from neighbors or friends about the victim's behavior.

The Egyptian human rights organization says the government itself encourages murders of this kind since the law in Egypt still regards family honor as a rationale for lenient sentencing.

Paragraph 237 in the Egyptian penal code reads, "Anyone who comes upon his wife at a time when she is committing adultery and kills her together with the person with whom she was fornicating on the spot, will be punished with imprisonment instead of the punishments stipulated in paragraphs 234 and 236." Those paragraphs contain sentences of life imprisonment, imprisonment with hard labor or death.

There is no plan in Cairo to amend the law and a petition on it has not yet been dealt with by the constitutional court.

However it is not merely the punishment of honor killings that is undergoing renewed scrutiny in Arab states. The public discourse is also beginning to change. Dr. Maan Said, for example, wrote this weekend in the Palestinian Internet newspaper Dunia al-Watan that, "It is surprising that the honor is always masculine but it is masculine from one aspect only. We do not hear, for example, that a young woman killed her sister or her mother in order to cleanse the shame. Could it be that our daughters do not feel the need to wash the shame? On the other hand, the washing of the shame is always done through the blood of women. Is a woman's blood the only blood that is suitable for cleansing of this kind? Let us once more discuss matters that we thought always were part of our basic values but that have become customs that shame us."

The Syrian writer Yassin Rafaiya also chimed in.

"The murder for family honor is one of the ugliest crimes, but the criminal, the murderer, is freed from jail after only a few months while he boasts to the judge that 'that was a defective finger and so we amputated it,'" he wrote. "The family honor murder is an indication of the degeneration and decline even of religious values which grant women respect and status. However these rights have become very wanting in our days."

This discourse, which has traditionally been dominated by voices from Arab women journalists, researchers and feminists, has now moved over to the men's purview."

ISF arrest recruiter of female suicide bombers

"Iraqi Security Forces arrested two wanted al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) terrorist-group members today during two joint security operations conducted in Baghdad and northern Iraq.

Both security operations were conducted based on warrants issued by Iraqi courts.

In northwest Baghdad, ISF and U.S. advisors searched a residential building for a suspected female terrorist who is believed to be actively recruiting female suicide bombers for use in high profile, AQI-sponsored attacks against government officials and innocent civilians.

Based on preliminary questioning and evidence found on the premises, ISF identified and arrested the wanted female terrorist and a suspected AQI associate without incident.

During a second security operation conducted in Esaiwid, located northeast of Baghdad, the 3rd Emergency Response Unit and U.S. advisors searched two buildings for a member of a Kirkuk-based improvised explosive device cell, who provides safe haven to cell leaders who are running from ISF.

Information and evidence collected at the scene led the 3rd ERU to identify and arrest the warranted AQI member without incident."

Thanks Anand for sending.

KSA is the worst place in the world for girls

Domestic Violence in Iraq

It does not surprise me that there is domestic violence in Iraq. But genital mutilation? Honor killings?? In Kurdistan??

Iraqi women suffer regular domestic violence-UN
29 Apr 2009
Source: Reuters

BAGHDAD, April 29 (Reuters) - The vast majority of Iraqi women face domestic violence on a regular basis and many commit suicide because of it, the United Nations said on Wednesday.

Iraq and the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan should take measures to stop violence against women, including honour killings and genital mutilation, the UN mission in Iraq, known as UNAMI, said in a regular report on human rights.

"The sensitivity of Iraqi communities to issues concerning women is such that families are frequently not reporting to the authorities incidents of violence against women," it said.

To "escape the cycle of violence", many women turned to suicide.

Iraq should "investigate incidents involving gender-based violence, in particular the so-called 'honour crimes' perpetrated against women, and take measures to ensure that persons found responsible for committing these crimes are held accountable and brought to justice", UNAMI said.

UNAMI said it was concerned about threats against women because of the way they dressed, and it repeated a statement from November that women were threatened by rape, sex trafficking, forced and early marriages, murder and abduction. The 2003 U.S.-led invasion triggered a ferocious Sunni Islamist insurgency and sectarian bloodletting between once dominant Sunnis and majority Shi'ites. Religious extremists filled a vacuum of lawlessness, imposing conservative policies that were particularly intolerant of women's rights.

The violence has fallen sharply and, as extremists retreated, their influence waned.

PLIGHT IN KURDISTAN

The U.N. report, which covered the second half of 2008, said it paid special attention to the plight of women in Kurdistan, an area where ethnic Kurds, who are mostly Muslims, have enjoyed virtual independence since the end of the first Gulf War.

It said 139 cases of gender-based violence were recorded in the second half of the year in Kurdistan, which comprises three of Iraq's 18 provinces.
"Out of the total number, 77 women were seriously burned, 26 were victims of murder or attempted murder and 25 were cases of questionable suicide," the report said.

A total of 163 women were killed as a result of domestic violence in Kurdistan in 2009, compared to 166 in 2007.

Honour killings were a significant concern, it said.

The report cited an example of a father who shot and killed his 16- and 22-year-old daughters when he found out one of them was having a relationship. The father was not arrested.

The report expressed concern about female genital mutilation in Kurdistan, where many people think it is harmless and required by Islam. Some efforts were being made to address the problem, including the possibility of a law to make it illegal.

Still, a survey in the last quarter of 2008 by a German organisation found 98 percent of women in 54 villages in one area had undergone genital mutilation, the report said. (Reporting by Michael Christie; Editing by Robert Woodward)

Iraqi Women's Minister Resigns in Protest

Iraqi Women's Minister Resigns, Draws Support

by Corey Flintoff

February 17, 2009 · Women in Iraq's parliament have rallied behind the country's minister for women's affairs, who resigned earlier this week saying she was frustrated by a lack of support from the government.

The resignation highlights the plight of many Iraqi women, especially widows created by the country's decades of war.

Nawal al-Samarraie had served as Iraq's minister for women's affairs for less than six months when she created a stir by turning in her resignation. She complained she had never received support from the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, and that her budget for projects had been slashed from about $7,500 a month to around $1,500.

"I think it is wrong to stay as a minister without doing anything for my people, especially in this time and in this situation of Iraqi women — we have an army of widows, violated women, detainees, illiteracy and unemployment — many, many problems. I had to resign," she said.

In Iraq, Widowhood Often Means Poverty

Iraqi women's advocates have coined the phrase "an army of widows" to refer to the women who lost their breadwinners in the conflicts reaching back to the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s. Samarraie says there are more than 3 million such women, most of them with children, who have no social safety net.

Samarraie, a 47-year-old gynecologist and member of parliament, says that part of the problem is that Iraq is a patriarchal society, where women are considered adjuncts of their husbands or fathers. And part of it, she says, is political expediency.

"I think they neglect it because they consider that women's issues [are] secondary," she says, "compared with what's going on in the street — violence and unemployed men."

Traditionally, widows in Iraqi society moved back in with their extended families, but many families already have too many mouths to feed, leaving widows and their children homeless.

An Iraqi widow can claim a small government pension, ranging from about $50 to $75 a month, which many Iraqis say is not enough for a family to subsist.

continued

Recruiter of Female Suicide Bombers Arrested

Al Qaeda's last hope in Iraq is behind bars. Thanks Maury for posting the Yahoo story.

Woman accused of recruiting female suicide bombers held in Iraq

U.S. and Iraqi forces also detained more than 100 people who were considered a threat to the recent peaceful provincial elections.

By Tina Susman
February 4, 2009

Reporting from Baghdad -- In the 72 hours before last week's provincial elections, U.S. and Iraqi forces targeted more than 100 people considered threats to peaceful balloting in the capital, the top American military commander in Baghdad said Tuesday.

Iraqi officials also announced Tuesday the arrest of a woman they said was responsible for recruiting dozens of female suicide bombers. At a news conference, Maj. Gen. Qassim Atta, an Iraqi military spokesman, showed a video of the woman, identified as Sameera Ahmed Jassim, in which she described recruitment methods.

There was no way to independently verify the video's authenticity, but the use of female suicide bombers has soared in the last year. More than 30 women blew themselves up last year, compared with eight in 2007, according to U.S. military figures. U.S. and Iraqi officials say Sunni Arab insurgents have run short of male recruits and turned to women for the missions.

Suspected suicide bombers were among those rounded up in the sweep conducted in the 72 hours leading up to Saturday's elections, said Army Maj. Gen. Jeffery Hammond, commander of U.S. forces in Baghdad and the surrounding region.

continued

Daughters of Iraq

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Thanks C.H.

Daughters of Iraq: front-line guards against suicide bombers

Iraqi women take on key security role as attacks by female suicide bombers rise.

By Tom A. Peter | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the September 11, 2008 edition

Reporter Tom A. Peter talks about the potential future of community policing in Iraq.

Baghdad - Although the overall level of violence in Iraq has decreased to a four- year low, the country has recently witnessed a sharp rise in a violent trend that alarms many Iraqis: female suicide bombings. This year the number of suicide bombings carried out by women has more than tripled to 29 attacks, say US military officials.

Al Qaeda and other insurgent groups have turned to women to exploit cultural practices that do not allow men to search women. As a result, females can pass through most checkpoints in Iraq without someone so much as looking in their handbags.

To combat this threat, Iraqis have begun recruiting women for the Daughters of Iraq, a female counterpart to the Sons of Iraq community policing program largely credited with reducing violence in Iraq. While female security guards remain a small minority, they've stopped many female insurgents. And, some say their example could help change perceptions about the role of women in Iraq.

"Right now women [suicide bombers] are more dangerous than men," says Sheikh Zaid Ahmed Al-Wan, an Awakening Council leader in Adhamiya, a Baghdad neighborhood. "You can't see anything on a woman's body, especially when she's wearing an abaya [a traditional Islamic gown] or a long dress. In the summer you can see everything on a man, you can even see if there's something in his pocket and even in the winter you can tell if he's carrying a big weapon or a bomb."

The most recent female suicide attack killed 18 people and injured 75 on Aug. 14. The bomber targeted Shiite pilgrims in a rest area in Iskandariyah in Iraq's Babil Province.

The bombing highlights how females can often inflict more damage than males. The majority of women bombers wear explosive vests or belts covered by abayas and are sometimes made to look pregnant, according to US military officials who track suicide bombing trends. This allows women easy access to crowded areas where they can cause the most damage.

Identifying a common profile for female bombers can be difficult, with one as young as 13. There is also speculation that bombing cells have used mentally handicapped women to carry out some attacks.

While the motives of each bomber varies, US military officials say most female suicide bombers share at least one of the following characteristics or circumstances: dishonor through sexual indiscretion, loss of a family member and a desire for revenge, desire to attain heroic status, inability to produce children, or an interest in demonstrating gender equality.

continued

Bomb vest fitted by her husband's relatives

This makes me Angry: "A young female suicide bomber was caught by police in Baquba before she could detonate her payload. She said she was fitted for the bomb by her husband's female relatives, though her own mother appears to have played a leading role, as well."

Posted on Monday, August 25, 2008

By Leila Fadel | McClatchy Newspapers

Dazed Iraqi teen suicide bomber says she didn't want to die

BAQOUBA, Iraq — The 15-year-old girl had the chubby cheeks of a child who hadn't lost her baby fat when she was arrested Sunday by an alert policeman. Around her chest was a vest packed with explosives. The policeman chained her to the bars of a window, stripped off her dress, found the vest and deactivated the bomb. Had he not intervened, Rania would have been this year's 31st suicide bomber in Iraq.

A day later, Rania seemed in a daze as she spoke about the people who put her up to it: the relatives who forced her to don the vest and apparently drugged her, her husband, whom police accuse of being a member of the group al Qaida in Iraq, and her mother, who seemed to play a central role in turning Rania into a human bomb but whom she looked to as a rescuer.

Continued

What Arabs are (not) Angry about II

Grooming a female suicide bomber

'More women have carried out suicide bombings here in Diyala province than anywhere else in Iraq -- 15 this year alone. Iraqi commanders believe the Sunni Arab insurgent group Al Qaeda in Iraq has established networks in the province designed specifically to recruit women.

The ethnically and religiously mixed province east of Baghdad has long been a center of Al Qaeda in Iraq, which formed alliances here with Sunni tribesmen and nationalist political groups against Shiite militants. This is a world in which few women are educated, loyalty to family and tribe are paramount, and fear permeates relations with outsiders.

Al Qaeda in Iraq leaders, known as emirs, managed to recruit entire clans to their cause by marrying into the families here. The women forced into these marriages are often passed around among emirs, said Saja Quadouri, who sits on the provincial council's security committee and is its only female member.

"They will get married to more than one man and get pregnant without knowing who the father is," she said. "Eventually, due to despair, hopelessness and fear, they get exploited to commit such crimes, as they become unwanted by society."

Other women are persuaded to perform a suicide mission to avenge the loss of a father, husband or brother, said a U.S. intelligence analyst, who asked not to be identified for security reasons. In tribal societies, the loss of male relatives typically leaves women without protection or means of survival.

Asma's marriage collapsed shortly before her husband died in a shootout; she says she does not know who killed him. Her father has spent the last three years in a U.S. detention facility on terrorism charges.

Squatting on a bed mat, Ikran, 50, described how the masked gunmen took over their neighborhood on the west side of Baqubah shortly after the fall of Saddam Hussein's Sunni-led regime in 2003. She asked that the family be identified by their first names only, to avoid shaming the tribe.

"People say they were displaced families from other neighborhoods who came to our area and tried to control it," said Ikran, a formidable woman in a somber black robe and green head scarf. "The first thing they did was kill several people and leave the bodies in the traffic circle, so everyone would see."

The militants cruised the neighborhood in search of young men to stand at checkpoints and turned up at schools, where they provided instruction at gunpoint on their extreme interpretation of Islam.

"They told the whole school that we must cover our faces and . . . wear gloves," said Ikran's younger daughter, Ilaf. The pretty teen with henna-tinted fingernails said she dropped out of class because she was terrified by their frequent visits. Just 15, she is engaged to marry a neighbor's son.

In the womb-like safety of the cell, Ikran scoffed at the militants' strictures and lit up a cigarette, which they would have regarded as sacrilege. But she said she never dared cross the militants in public.

"We were afraid of them," Ikran said. "Sometimes they would ask us, 'Are we good?' Of course we said yes. Otherwise we would have been killed."

When U.S. forces arrested Ikran's husband, Dawoud, on terrorism charges three years ago, she said the family retreated behind closed doors and rarely ventured outside their home.

"We can't think why anyone would accuse us," she said. "Iraqis will do anything for money." '