IRAQ/SYRIA: In Syria, Iraqi Refugee Daughters Risk Being Sold

Um Ali is scared. She says male relatives want to kill her and sell her daughters into marriages that are really sex-trafficking arrangements that put young women to work in brothels overseas.

She lives in hiding and relocates often. Her pulse accelerates every time an international text message pops into her cell phone.

"The world is small," wrote her brother in a recent threat.

Um Ali is one of over a million refugees who have sought shelter in Syria since U.S. troops entered Iraq in 2003. She left with her husband and children during a wave of militia violence against Iraqis working--"collaborating"--with Americans in 2006.

Some girls and women among these refugees face being sex trafficked by people within their own families. No statistics or studies are available on this specific problem, but there are plenty of stories of men in a pinch treating female relatives as young as 13 as commodities for sex and marriage markets.

Dodging such threats is particularly hard for women when they come from inside the family. Women who run away risk being branded prostitutes and subject to death at the hands of "dishonored" male kin.

"Iraqi women are fleeing violence in their country and in their families," psychologist Mari Samaan told Women's eNews. "Syrian society and women like Um Ali pay the price for America's war in Iraq."

She says that the longer a woman such as Um Ali survives on her own, the more likely it is that male relatives will suspect her of sex work. Many of these women lack professional skills. Marrying young and depending on men all their lives, they struggle to cope without a male provider and protector in Syria.

Hard Traditions
"Iraqi traditions are hard," Samaan said. "Every woman without a husband or family watching over her is seen as prostitute. I have seen girls raped by armies and militias and then killed by her own families."

Despite Syria's increasing efforts to prevent sex trafficking, many face the sorts of dangers Um Ali is trying to evade.

Married at age 12 to a man who went on to beat and belt her for 21 years, Um Ali wanted a different fate for her three teenage daughters.

"In Iraq, he only hit me," she told Women's eNews. "In Syria, he started on the girls. I want them to choose their path in life, unlike me. They are smart and they love to study. If they were safe from these threats, they could finish school."

When a family friend gave his daughter to a Saudi man in marriage in exchange for a huge dowry, an idea lit up in her husband's head.

"He doesn't think," Um Ali said. "All he can think of is money."

Soon the marriage proposals trickled in, including one from an Iraqi man she suspected of running a brothel in the United States. Gambling debts her husband had accrued in Syria forced him to flee back to Iraq before he could cash in on the transaction.