Mosul’s women breaking through society’s barriers
The Women of Mosul is a group of 10 women, all from Mosul but now living around the world - in Mosul, the Kurdistan Region, the US, and Europe. They have come together to “defend, to protect the women of Mosul.”
ISIS forced women in Mosul to wear the niqab, covering their faces and effectively removing them and their perspective from public life and discourse, diminishing their impact on society. The Women of Mosul want to lift this veil, but they do so cautiously as they have suffered decades of repression even before ISIS arrived on the scene.
Sipping cappuccinos in a cafe in Erbil, two of the women passionately described what they hope to achieve. They are unable to use their real names in order to protect the members of the group still in Mosul but also to protect themselves from backlash within their community.
This is the first time such a group has formed, and they have only been able to do so when the majority of their members are living in exile, no longer under control of Mosul society or ISIS.
“Even when we tried to do something for women, we had to do it in secret,” both before and under ISIS, said a teacher, mother, and former journalist who has chosen the alias Ishtar, the goddess of love and war, fertility and power.
But they are speaking out publicly now because “we have to do it,” they said, describing the problems for women as “saturated.”
The women were first compelled to form their group to aid the Yezidi girls and women who were enslaved, many of them in Mosul. But they quickly identified many other groups of vulnerable girls and women.
Some young girls were forced to marry ISIS militants and others were arranged early marriages by their families in an effort to protect them from militants. Other women have male family members who joined ISIS and will now face an uncertain future. And those who have children with militant fathers do not know how they and their children will be received by society.
Widowed, divorced, and single women are regarded with shame by their tribe and society, they said. But many women in Mosul lost their husbands, killed by ISIS. This is another group the Women of Mosul hopes to be able to help.
Many women who lived under ISIS are afraid, said a former teacher and school principal who chose the alias Scheherazade, the teller of one thousand and one tales. “We want to support her, to get over that fear and make her able to know how to defend herself in front of this society, so she does not stay under the control of the family or the tribe. We do this all to make her able to defend her rights.”
And vice versa, “we want to tell society about women, that they are not something unimportant in society. For this, the first step is that women must speak up for themselves, first.”
As the world debates Mosul’s future, these women felt unrepresented in the media and the discussions.
And it is not just about ISIS, said Ishtar. “The problem is about the society in Mosul in general. It is closed and is not open for women. There are many obstructions for women.”
The first thing the Women in Mosul have done is set up a Facebook page, giving girls and women a platform to tell their own stories, and putting women’s stories upfront to encourage discussion of issues important to the women of Mosul.
They set up their page in mid-December and gained more than 1,000 followers on the first day. They have received a multitude of messages of encouragement and been contacted by many women from Mosul who want to share their personal stories.
“These women are not weak. All they need is some support to be strong,” said Ishtar.
Ishtar left Mosul seven years ago and now lives in the Kurdistan Region but has long wanted to do something to help girls and women in her hometown. “Maybe with my help, I can be the voice of women to reveal the persecution that they suffer.”
“Problems are hidden and nobody talks about it,” said Scheherazade with Destiny’s Child’s I’m A Survivor playing over the chatter of the cafe in the background. “I feel I should encourage girls to defend themselves and I should do something to be the voice of these girls and do something to protect them and to educate them, to know how to defend themselves.”
Scheherazade was living in Mosul when ISIS arrived. Unhappy having to wear a niqab covering her face, she rarely went out, she recalled. But one day, she and her brother went to a restaurant. She had to lift her veil in order to eat and was seen by ISIS militants. They seized her brother and whipped him publicly.
The whole incident lasted about an hour, Scheherazade recalled, “but it felt like a year.” After this, she decided to flee Mosul.
Both Ishtar and Scheherazade are teachers and for them, the most important thing for the future is for Mosul’s women to learn about their rights. This is the first step to rebuilding Mosul’s society.
“We are brave,” said Ishtar. “We have the ability to do what we want. We are not uneducated. We are open-minded. We can do many things. But the community limits us. We want to break from these limits.”