[News] Military Prostitution and the Iraq Occupation

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/mcnutt07112007.html

July 11, 2007


Military Prostitution and the Iraq Occupation


Privatizing Women

By DEBRA McNUTT

Military prostitution has long been seen around U.S. bases in the 
Philippines, South Korea, Thailand, and other countries. But since 
the U.S. has begun to deploy forces to many Muslim countries, it 
cannot be as open about enabling prostitution for its personnel. U.S. 
military deployments in the Gulf War, the Afghan War, and the Iraq 
War have reinvigorated prostitution and the trafficking of women in 
the Middle East.

Another major change has been the reliance of the U.S. military on 
private contractors, who have now surpassed the number of soldiers in 
Iraq. Public attention has begun to focus on the role of these 
contractors in U.S. war zones. Less attention has been paid to how 
private contractors are changing the nature of military prostitution. 
In the best known example, DynCorp employees were caught trafficking 
women in Bosnia, and some indications suggest that similar acts may 
be taking place in Iraq.

I am researching whether civilian contractors are enabling military 
sexual exploitation in Iraq, Afghanistan, the United Arab Emirates 
(UAE) and other Muslim countries. My research is investigating new 
patterns of sexual exploitation of women by the U.S. for military 
purposes, and how institutionalized prostitution has changed as U.S. 
forces have been stationed in Muslim countries. I am especially 
interested in the possible role of civilian contractors in promoting 
prostitution of local women, or in importing foreign women into U.S. 
war zones under the guise of employment as cooks, maids or office workers.

I have come to this research as a feminist activist who has long 
worked on issues of women and militarism, influenced by women such as 
Cynthia Enloe, Katherine Moon, and Saralee Hamilton. I have organized 
against the sexual exploitation of Filipinas near U.S. military 
bases. More recently, I have worked on the related issues of sexual 
harassment and assault of women GIs within the U.S. military. I have 
also been actively opposed to the U.S. attacks on Iraq since the Gulf War.

During the brief Gulf War, the U.S. military prevented prostitution 
for its troops in Saudi Arabia, to avoid a backlash from its hosts. 
But on their return home, the troop ships stopped in Thailand for "R 
& R." After the Gulf War, harsh economic sanctions forced many 
desperate Iraqi women into prostitution. The sex trade grew to such 
an extent that in 1999 Saddam ordered his paramilitary forces to 
crack down on it in Baghdad, resulting in the executions of many women.

The U.S. invasion of March 2003 brought prostitution back to Iraq 
within a matter of weeks. The Iraq War has now lasted eight times 
longer than the Gulf War deployments, and is marked by a huge 
reliance on private security contractors. A U.S. ban on human 
trafficking, signed by President Bush in January 2006, has not been 
applied to these contractors.

The rebirth of prostitution has generated fear that permeates all of 
Iraqi society. Families keep their girls inside, not only to keep 
them from being assaulted or killed, but to prevent them from being 
kidnapped by organized prostitution rings. Gangs are also forcing 
some families to sell their children into sex slavery. The war has 
created an enormous number of homeless girls and boys who are most 
vulnerable to the sex trade. It has also created thousands of refugee 
women who try to escape danger but end up (out of economic 
desperation) being prostituted in Jordan, Syria, Yemen or the UAE. 
Our occupation not only attacks women on the outside, but attacks 
them on the inside, until there is nothing left to destroy.

If foreign women are imported into Iraq for prostitution, they would 
almost certainly follow the already established channels of illegal 
labor trafficking, as documented in the Chicago Tribune series 
"Pipeline to Peril." For example, independent journalist David 
Phinney has documented how a Kuwaiti contract company that imported 
workers to build the new U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad's Green 
Zone also smuggled women into the construction site.

Within the Green Zone, a few brothels have been opened (disguised as 
a women's shelter, hairdresser, or Chinese restaurant) but are 
usually closed by authorities after reports about their existence 
reach the media. The U.S. military claims that it officially forbids 
its troops to be involved in prostitution. But private contractors 
brag on sex websites that they have sometimes been able to find Iraqi 
or foreign women in Baghdad or around U.S. military bases. These 
highly paid security contractors have much disposable income, and are 
not held accountable to anyone but their companies.

One contractor employee living in the Green Zone reported in February 
2007 that "it took me 4 months to get my connections. We have a PSD 
[Personal Security Detail] contact who brings us these Iraqi cuties." 
Western contractors' e-mails also suggest that some Chinese, 
Filipina, Iranian and Eastern European women may also be prostituted 
to Americans and other Westerners within Iraq. (Other reports 
indicate that Chinese women might also be prostituted in Afghanistan, 
Qatar, and other Muslim countries where it may be difficult for rings 
to find local women.)

On leave from Iraq in 2005, Army Reservist Patrick Lackatt said that 
"For one dollar you can get a prostitute for one hour." But as the 
war has escalated in Baghdad and the other Arab regions of Iraq, it 
has become too dangerous for Westerners to move around outside of the 
military bases and the Green Zone. Contractors are now advising each 
other to do their "R & R" in the safer northern Kurdish region, or in 
the bars and hotels of Dubai, the UAE emirate that has become the 
most open center of prostitution in the Persian Gulf. Meanwhile, any 
prostitution rings in Iraq have to go deeper underground to hide from 
Iraqi militias.

As observed by Sarah Mendelson in her 2005 Balkans report Barracks 
and Brothels, many U.S. government protocols and programs have been 
implemented to slow human trafficking, but without enforcement they 
end up merely as public relations exercises. Military officials often 
turn a blind eye to the exploitation of women by military and 
contract personnel, because they want to boost their men's "morale." 
The most effective way for the military to prevent a public backlash 
is to make sure that the embarrassing information is not revealed. It 
is not necessary to cover up information if it does not come out in 
the first place.

It has been difficult for me (and other researchers and journalists) 
to get to the bottom of this crisis. In his book Imperial Life in the 
Emerald City, Rajiv Chandrasekaran observed, "There were prostitutes 
in Baghdad, but you couldn't drive into a town to get laid like in 
Saigon." The question of who is behind the trafficking of people is 
as hard to crack as the trafficking of drugs (if not more so). It is 
difficult enough to track the widespread illegal trafficking of 
workers to Iraq. But the trafficking of Iraqi or foreign women for 
prostitution is even better concealed. The prostitution rings keep 
their tracks well hidden, and it is not in the interest of the 
military or its private contractors to reveal any information that 
may damage the war effort.

The fact that information is difficult to find, however, is a reason 
to intensify the search, and to make military prostitution a major 
issues of the women's and antiwar movements. It is our tax dollars 
that fuel the war in Iraq, and if any women are exploited as a result 
of the occupation, we owe it to them to take responsibility for these crimes.

I am currently writing a larger report on my findings, and am seeking 
any input from researchers and journalists, military veterans, 
private contract employees, exiles and refugees, or former 
prostituted women who may shed light on military prostitution in the 
Middle East, and the role of the military and its private contractors.

My ultimate purpose is doing this research is not only to help expose 
these crimes against women, but to help build a movement to stop 
them. Missing from the discussions about Iraqi women's rights is how 
the U.S. occupation is creating new oppressions that destroy women's 
self-worth. It is our responsibility as Americans to stop our 
military's abuses of women, by ending the occupation.

Debra McNutt is a feminist and antiwar activist and researcher living 
in Olympia, Washington. She can be contacted at 
<mailto:debimcnutt at gmail.com>debimcnutt at gmail.com




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