Middle East | Iraq | Activism

Meet the creator of a secret network of women’s shelters in Iraq

When an Islamic State fighter stopped their car in Anbar Province, Iraq, Safiyah knew something terrible was about to happen. Her husband, a soldier in the Iraqi Army, had been executed days earlier in Tikrit, and she knew the only way to protect their four daughters now was to flee the city. They had been heading for the city of Kirkuk when their escape was cut short. An armed man forced Safiyah’s driver from the car. Then, with the help of other Islamic State fighters, he dragged the four girls, between the age of 16 and 23 years old, to a truck. Safiyah was left behind, too old to be s

Middle East | Iraq | Activism

Iraqi City Bans Festival As It Draws Criticism For Mixing Men and Women

Source: The Blaze

An Iraqi city banned a color festival and erected concrete barriers around a park as the festival would have allowed for the mixing of men and women. According to Agence France‑Presse, Murtada al-Shahmani, a member of the city’s provincial council, said the decision to cancel the festival in Basra, Iraq was out of respect for families who were mourning the deaths of loved ones at the hands of the Islamic State. Those “without conscience or hearts or morals come to hold mixed-sex festivals that bring them out to be joyful, and the families of the martyrs see them and weep for thei

Middle East | Iraq | Activism

Kurdish Women’s Radical Self-Defense: Armed and Political

Source: Kurdish Info

For women, self-defense is further a matter of life or death: The Yazidi women of Shengal (Sinjar), who are portrayed as passive, pitiful victims by the reckless media, now reject being essentialized as rape victims and have, similar to YJA Star (women’s army of the PKK) and the YPJ, the Women’s Defense Forces in Rojava, built their own autonomous women’s army called YPJ-Shengal, the self-defense force of the Yazidi women, parallel to their emerging autonomous self-governance structures.

Middle East | Iraq | Activism

This man risks his life every day to rescue kidnapped women from Islamic State

Source: The Telegraph

During the siege of Mount Sinjar last August, thousands of men were brutally murdered over a matter of weeks. But amid the slaughter, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) terrorists chose a different fate for the women of the town. Women from every house were taken hostage, with Isil fighters grabbing thousands of young girls and elderly grandmothers in the largest single kidnapping of women this century. After the attack, those who survived faced the seemingly impossible task of trying to rescue their women from Isil territory. No government has offered to infiltrate I

Middle East | Iraq | Activism

Iraq’s female citizens: prisoners of war

Source: 50.50

On the second day of the Nobel Women’s Initiative conference on building global support for women human rights defenders, the 100 participants delivered a sobering and urgent message: history is still repeating itself. Watching the military-industrial complex wreak havoc in the Middle East, reflected Shirin Ebadi, holder of the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize, is like ‘rewinding a movie’. Women human rights defenders from across the globe were in agreement: the incalculable suffering of the people of Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria have taught us, once and for all, that bombs lead to suffering, and n

Middle East | Iraq | Activism

Women wage war on Islamic State

Source: Reuters

Women fighters at a Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant base on Mount Sinjar in northwest Iraq, just like their male counterparts, have to be ready for action at any time. Smoke from the front line, marking their battle against Islamic State, which launched an assault on northern Iraq last summer, is visible from the base. Reuters photographer Asmaa Waguih spent time with the women who have taken up arms. Male and women fighters worked together, side by side. All of the fighters, whether women or men, don’t get married, choosing to sacrifice their personal lives for the cause th