Abdullah brought Noura, a native of Syria, and four other women to a large function room in a seedy Erbil hotel, guarded by masked, heavily armed security guards, and filled with “many almost naked women, some of them completely naked”.
“I asked ‘What is this?’” she recalled.
“This is the society here. You’ll have to adapt,” Abdullah replied.
Noura had been modelling for a couple of years, carving out a successful career in Damascus and winning a local competition in 2017. In 2018, her modelling coach came to her with an exciting opportunity – go to Erbil for a month to compete with models from across the Middle East and get the opportunity to sign lucrative contracts.
Noura was happy making around $150 a month modelling clothes, makeup, and jewelry – a good salary in her war-torn homeland – but the prospect of making as much as $5,000 was impossible to resist. With this money “I could have a future,” she thought at the time.
But on her first night in Erbil, the 19-year-old felt very alone and far from home, surrounded by raucous men receiving lap dances from women as bills rained down on their naked flesh. Noura had been trafficked into Iraq and the Kurdistan Region’s thriving underground sex trade.
In conservative Iraqi and Kurdish culture, dating is not common and relationships between men and women are strictly defined. Sex is a very private matter, kept firmly behind closed doors where abuse is unchecked, and traffickers shame, force, and exploit men, women, and children into prostitution.
The most extreme examples are the so-called sex slave markets where Islamic State (ISIS) militants paraded Yezidi women and girls, selling them to the highest bidder who abused his victim until he grew bored of her and traded her onto one of his comrades. But similar practices happen on a smaller scale every day.
“Iraqi, Iranian, and Syrian women and girls, as well as LGBTI persons in the IKR [Iraqi Kurdistan Region], are particularly vulnerable to sex trafficking,” the US Department of State said in its most recent report on global human trafficking.
The LGBT community, which lives in hiding in the Kurdistan Region, is especially vulnerable. Often rejected by their families, they are easy prey for abusers and violence.
“They are often very susceptible to exploitation where someone is blackmailing them by threatening to expose them as being gay. Again, lack of acceptance by community and family creates opportunities for this abuse,” an expert in the field said on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the subject.
Refugees and internally displaced persons living in camps are another group being trafficked. Aid workers who are in the camps on a daily basis said they have heard cases of women being sold for sex with men outside the camps.
Under American sanctions, the sex industry is growing in Iran with many customers crossing the border from the Kurdistan Region to buy a night with a woman or girl. There are reports of some influential and wealthy political and business leaders in the Kurdistan Region bringing Iranian women back across the border and setting them up in an apartment.
Some Yezidi women were freed from ISIS captivity only to be forced into prostitution in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities. Agents promised women living in the camps a better life, but instead brought them to work in brothels, CNN detailed in a recent report.
Social media is increasingly being used to buy and sell women and girls, the US State Department report noted. The practice of revenge porn is growing in Iraq where hackers and former partners steal and threaten to publish intimate images or videos.
“We know of cases where young women were sold to Kirkuk, they were sold to Baghdad, and gone. And these are poor women, middle class women, young women who are being exploited,” explained Sherri Kraham Talabany, head of development organization SEED Foundation, in an interview on October 1.
She put some of the blame on “shame culture” where loss of honour can mean expulsion from your family and community or even death.
On her first morning in the Kurdistan Region, Noura told Abdullah that parties like the one the night before were not what she had signed up for. She was in Erbil to establish business contacts to further her modelling career and wanted no part of this scene.
Some of the other women Noura was housed with, including two older sisters from Syria, appeared to be experienced prostitutes – using their singing and belly dancing to attract clients. The women were also afraid of Abdullah. Noura swiped her hand through the air to show what happens to those who say no to him. She stood up to him several times in her fight to protect herself – and paid the price for it.
Abdullah, who tried to hold onto Noura’s passport when she first arrived, had promised he would open doors for her career, taking her to events where she would meet powerful businessmen and politicians, and rigging the modelling competition so she would win.
Noura didn’t have the money to cover her airfare home and felt she had no choice but to stay. An amateur singer, she made friends with a pianist at a party and talked with him about ways she could earn money without Abdullah and his parties.
This friendship angered Abdullah who wanted to keep a tight control over Noura and the other women he was pimping out. That night, back at the house where they were staying in Erbil’s Pank Village, he beat her, breaking her collar bone and a rib. Noura fought back, using her kickboxing skills until she could break free, grab her phone and passport, and limp out, leaving her suitcases behind.
Her modelling coach followed her down the street, trying to physically force Noura to return to the house. Noura’s screaming attracted a crowd and security guards, who called the Asayesh (internal security forces). Noura showed her injuries to the Asayesh and told them she’d been kidnapped. The Asayesh took a look through the home where the women were living and, seizing their passports, told everyone to come to the police station the next day. Abdullah had already slipped away.
At the police station, the security forces threatened to stamp the word “da’ara” – prostitution – in red letters inside their passports and deport them. Terrified of being publicly branded with what could mean a death sentence, the women begged Noura not to pursue a case against Abdullah. She relented.
The women were all allowed to leave, but the Asayesh kept their passports. Abdullah, using connections, got the passports and held onto them. He moved all the women to Duhok. Noura asked every day for her passport back, but Abdullah lied, saying the Erbil police had them and there was nothing he could do. Noura didn’t believe him, but was powerless to do anything.
Police in the Kurdistan Region have been criticized for the way they handle cases of prostitution. Last year, they publicly released video footage of women, including at least one minor, accused of working in a brothel. Women’s rights activists demanded the police be reprimanded and trained how to protect women in such situations.
The problem is that authorities and influential people are often profiting from the trade in human flesh. A recent BBC investigation revealed clerics were “selling young girls for sex” using the controversial practice of temporary “pleasure marriages”.
In Duhok, 10 days after her fight with Abdullah, Noura was finally able to go to hospital where she told doctors she had fallen down the stairs. Her broken collarbone is still visible on her slender frame.
At the two-storey house where they lived, the women occupied the upstairs while Abdullah and his family lived downstairs. One day, after more than a month in Duhok, Abdullah’s nine-year-old daughter came upstairs looking for her father. Noura saw an opportunity and offered to help the girl.
People in desperate situations can feel forced to take drastic measures, which is what Noura did, stressing she never intended to harm the little girl. The two set out across the city where Noura called Abdullah to tell him she had his daughter and would exchange the girl for her passport and cash. “I felt sorry for her,” Noura said of the young girl, “but I felt I had no choice. Her dad put her in this situation.”
Abdullah gave in, handing Noura her passport and a couple of hundred dollars. The standoff lasted about eight hours. Noura left Duhok for Erbil the same day.
“I was afraid. I didn’t know what to do. I came to Erbil not knowing anyone or where to stay,” she said. “I slept in Sami Abdulrahman Park. It was so cold.” It was now mid-November, when nighttime temperatures dip below 10 degrees Celsius.
After two nights sleeping rough, she connected with an acquaintance from Syria who invited her to stay at her home, bought her winter pajamas, and said she could stay as long as she needed, contributing to rent if and when she found a job.
For five months, Noura lived off instant noodles, losing weight while she slowly got her feet back under her. She got gigs performing at family restaurants and started making money. She had enough to afford a flight home, but by then she had overstayed her visa and owed fines to the immigration department. She also learned that her former modelling coach had filed a case against her with the Syrian police, alleging Noura was engaged in human trafficking.
Noura pulled up her Instagram account on her phone, showing pictures of her looking carefree and innocent, modeling watches and handbags as a teenager in Syria. All she wanted to do was take good pictures and live a nice life. Now she was left with a heartbreaking choice, “go to Syria and go to jail or stay in Erbil.”
“I hate it,” she said of the Kurdistan Region capital, lighting another cigarette to occupy her hands, fluttering with a nervous energy. “But for now, Erbil is the best place because I know a lot of people.” She is saving up money to pay for her legal case in Syria, holding onto the dream that she can one day go home.
*Names have been changed to protect the identity of victims
