The nefarious female pimps of Iraq

“…That underworld is a place where nefarious female pimps hold sway, where impoverished mothers sell their teenage daughters into a sex market that believes females who reach the age of 20 are too old to fetch a good price. The youngest victims, some just 11 and 12, are sold for as much as $30,000, others for as little as $2,000. ‘The buying and selling of girls in Iraq, it’s like the trade in cattle,’” Hinda says. ‘I’ve seen mothers haggle with agents over the price of their daughters.’… ” Story here.

Female soldiers on patrol

The following article excerpt is from a PBS TV documentary about female soldiers in combat, called Lioness. “After Shannon Morgan returned from serving in Iraq, the memories of killing and carnage continued to haunt her, memories that some told her were unexpected for a female soldier. Department of Defense policy bars female soldiers from direct ground combat, but for Ms. Morgan, like the four other female soldiers profiled in the documentary “Lioness,” that regulation meant little in the heat of battle. Attached to all-male combat units in the Army and the Marines as part of the Lioness program, the female troops were used to search Muslim women as needed and to defuse the cultural tensions caused by strange men interacting with Iraqi women. But when fighting broke out, the female soldiers fought back…” Read story here in the NY Times.