So she did, returning in 2003 after Saddam Hussein was toppled and finding herself at the center of the storm that set back the lives of Iraqi women in ways she could hardly have imagined. (…) Today, in Iraq, Shariah law is enforced, and so-called honor killings are rarely punished. So intensely has sectarian hatred seeped into the hearts of her compatriots, she says, that neighbors enslave one another’s daughters in the badlands controlled by the Islamic State, including in her father’s native city, Tal Afar. ‚The steps backward cannot be counted,‘ she said. ‚There were too many.‘ (…) ‚For me, the Islamist groups on the ground are like the Ku Klux Klan in the U.S., or the Nazis in Germany,‘ she said on the phone from Toronto this week. She cited the efforts of conservatives – so far unsuccessful – to legalize child marriage. ‚In Iraq, they wanted to legalize marriage for 9-year-old girls,‘ she said. ‚How can we live with that?‘“ (Somini Sengupta: „Finding a Path Back to Iraq, and Toward Securing Women’s Freedom“)
