Uncovering Iraq's religious front for child prostitution | Iraq's Secret Sex Trade

This powerful investigation into Shia clerics in some of Iraq's holiest shrines uncovers a network of exploitation of young women and girls, trapped into prostitution and pimped out by a religious elite. For the first time the clerics' secret sex trade has been captured on camera. Undercover filming and victim testimony reveal how they procure young women for male clients, and are prepared to conduct ‘pleasure marriages’ with children.

 

Undercover With The Clerics: Iraq's Secret Sex Trade

 

The nine-year-old child forced into marriage in Iraq

In Iraq, religious ‘pleasure marriages’ are a front for child prostitution

We found that teenage girls were particularly vulnerable to predatory men assisted by clerics, often paying the heaviest of prices for their misfortune. In Iraq, for a young girl to lose her virginity outside of marriage is widely seen as a scandal bringing shame on her family and tainting its honour. Such girls are often disowned and shunned by their families. In some cases, the girls are murdered.

In Kadamiya, Sayyed Raad offered to officiate a pleasure marriage between our reporter and “a young virgin”. He advised him not to take her virginity during their time together, adding that “anal sex is permitted”. “If I do take her virginity, God forbid, what do I do?” our reporter enquired. “Do [her family] know where you live?” Sayyed Raad asked. “No, they don’t,” our reporter confirmed. “Then you can just leave,” the cleric declared.

“I informed [the cleric] I was a virgin,” Mona told me, but the cleric didn’t ask for her parents’ consent, as is the custom in Iraq, saying it wasn’t needed as both she and the man were adults. Now 17, she is under pressure from her family to marry; but is terrified her future husband will find out she’s no longer a virgin. Her uncle, she tells me, killed her cousin merely for having a boyfriend. Now she keeps thinking about suicide. “I have no way out. If I feel more pressure, I will do it.”

The investigation took me to Karbala, Shia Islam’s holiest site. An important part of our investigation was to establish the role of the holy city’s religious authorities in all this – particularly whether they condoned the practice of pleasure marriages. At the main marriage office, I spoke to Sheikh Emad Alassady, who insisted the practice was illegal.

But around the corner from the office, we found another cleric who was willing to officiate a pleasure marriage to a child, including giving explicit instructions on how to sexually abuse children without getting caught.

This cleric was clearly not the only one taking part in such abuses. Another of the women I spoke to, “Reem”, accused prominent clerics of being involved in pimping and pleasure marriages. After Reem’s husband was killed by an Isis bomb in 2016, she and her two children became homeless.

Reem said that when she approached a well-known cleric for alms, he had sex with her and pimped her out to his friends. Reem doesn’t name the cleric, but describes him as powerful and well-known in her community.

“He proposed a pleasure marriage with me. I had to do it to survive,” she said. They would have sex once or twice a week in his office. Then he began bringing his friends, including one who, Reem says, was “famous in the region. He forced me to go into a room with this friend.”

Reem then found out the cleric was charging his associates three or four hundred dollars to have sex with her, while she was paid just pocket money. “They were like animals,” she told me. “They have sex with a woman then throw her away.”

But how are clerics able to get away with breaking the law so blatantly? The strength of the Shia religious establishment, backed by the intimidatory weight of armed Shia militias, appears to have given Shia clerics a sense of total impunity. Our investigation has found many of the clerics enjoy powerful political connections. One of them, Karbala-based Sayyed Salawi, boasted to our reporter that he was attached to a Shia militia, a claim which is given credence by photographic evidence we found on social media.

The BBC later approached the clerics for their response. Sayyed Raad denied he performed mutaa marriages. The others did not respond. Sayyed Raad had said he was a follower of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq’s most influential Shia cleric.

The BBC approached Ayatollah Sistani’s office in the holy city of Najaf with the reporter’s evidence, and asked him to clarify his stance on mutaa marriages.

“If these practices are happening in the way you are saying then we condemn them unreservedly,” his office said. “Temporary marriage is not allowed as a tool to sell sex in a way that belittles the dignity and humanity of women.

“A guardian of a girl should not permit her marriage without her consent… and she is not supposed to marry if it’s against the law, which could bring troubles to her.”

Like some other Shia leaders in Iraq, the 89-year-old Ayatollah Sistani has previously – in a book published 25 years ago titled The Path of the Righteous – written that if a child under nine were promised in marriage or temporary marriage, sexual touching was religiously permitted.

The ayatollah’s office told the BBC times had changed and it had been erased from his current books.

This investigation showed how the hardships of post-conflict Iraq, and the rise of the Shia religious conservative establishment, have turned the clock back on women’s rights. Secular laws designed to protect women and children have been part of the Iraqi legal system for decades, but they have been rendered meaningless in the face of continuous flouting by powerful men backed by the country’s religious and political establishment. Meanwhile, a whole generation of young girls and women are paying a devastating price. As Reem put it, describing the clerics who abused her, “They eat the flesh, then throw away the bones.”

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ISIS’s Cruelty Toward Women Gets Scant Attention

 

Tucked away in a recent New York Times story on military operations against ISIS by Iraqi special forces and the Kurdish Peshmerga was a brief description of what these troops discovered when they entered a village in Iraq that had been occupied by ISIS fighters. A naked woman, tied to a tree, who had been repeatedly raped by ISIS fighters. Another woman was discovered in a second village, similarly naked, tied down and repeatedly raped. The fighters, it appears, are “rewarded” by being allowed to have their way with captured women.

 ISIS has received considerable world attention for its savage beheadings, executions of captured soldiers and men in conquered towns and villages, violence against Christians and Shiites, and the destruction of non-Sunni shrines and places of worship. But its barbarity against women has been treated as a side issue. Arab and Muslim governments, vocal on the threat ISIS poses to regional stability, have been virtually silent on ISIS’s systemic degradation, abuse, and humiliation of women. To the men of ISIS, women are an inferior race, to be enjoyed for sex and be discarded, or to be sold off as slaves.

From ISIS-captured territory in Syria, we saw a photograph of a line of women, covered from head to toe and tied to one another by a rope, as they were being led to a makeshift slave market. Little girls, who were going to school and playing with dolls before ISIS fighters arrived at their doorstep, were married off to men many times their age. ISIS set up marriage bureaus in captured Syrian towns to recruit virgins and widows to marry fighters, and also called on fellow jihadists in other countries to recruit brides for the fighters and send them to Syria. It is hardly likely that these “marriages” were based on consent, as is required in Islam. Where women are concerned, consent does not appear to exist in the lexicon of ISIS fighters.

When ISIS moved into Iraq, a similar set of atrocities followed. In ISIS-conquered towns, reports of women and girls having to undergo female genital mutilation spread like wildfire, until denied by ISIS’s savvy social media. Iraqi NGOs reported that scores of women of the Yezidi sect—an amalgam of Zoroastrianism and Islam—were taken captive. The older women were sold off as slaves and the young ones were kept as brides for the ISIS fighters. The nature of these forced marriages remains obscure.

Zakia Hakki, an Iraqi judge and a woman herself, says that the fighters leave behind pregnant women who, as “soiled goods,” are ostracized by their own societies, while their children are treated as illegitimate. These raped women become targets for honor killings in their own families and communities. The governments of Iraq and Syria have also failed to protect these women and give them any assistance; nor have Western NGOs been effective in looking after these abandoned women and children. ISIS’s men not only leave behind dead bodies in their wake but also women and children who are scarred for life.

In its propaganda, ISIS emphasizes women’s modesty and piety. It created the al-Khansaa female brigade to protect the morality of women and to ensure they appear totally veiled in public. The irony will not be lost on anyone.

Volunteer fighters from around the world, including from Western countries, who have joined ISIS are complicit in these crimes against women. These young men who grew up in Western cultures seem to have absorbed nothing regarding the value of human life and respect for women. Why are there are no demonstrations in Western and Muslim societies against this barbaric onslaught on women and girls? How much longer will the Muslim and Arab world watch these horrors against women and children before speaking out and acting forcefully to protect them and rid the region of the ISIS calamity?

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Andrew White ' the vicar of Baghdad': 'The vast majority of muslims are our friends'

Canon Andrew White leans over his desk and – with a mischievous glint in his eye – prepares to deliver what I now suspect is a signature move when greeting new guests. Handing over a copy of one of his books, his face breaks into a wide grin as he asks: "Would you like me to sign that for you? I tell you what, I'll use this pen. It was the same one used to sign Saddam Hussein's death sentence."

Such a macabre piece of historical memorabilia might appear an unusual keepsake for an Anglican priest but then Canon White – the so-called Vicar of Baghdad – is no ordinary clergyman. As pastor to St George's, the only Anglican church in Iraq, Canon White has been on the front line of the most violent and barbaric persecution of a Christian minority in living memory.

Cut off from the streets of Baghdad by blast-proof barriers, razor wire and round-the-clock security, St George's is one of the few churches still able to operate weekly services for the Iraqi capital's rapidly diminishing Christian congregation. Scores of his worshippers have been kidnapped or murdered, and militants have routinely tried to storm the complex which lies outside the comparative safety of the Green Zone.

Canon White, 47, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, has been shot at and kidnapped but still he returns, making sure to spend at least three weeks of every month with an embattled congregation that refer to him as their abouna (father).

The 6ft 2in, bowtie-loving priest spoke on a brief visit back to his picturesque home in a quiet Hampshire village which he shares with his wife and two boys (for security reasons he asks us not to give their names or location). The stopover was part publicity tour for his new book Faith Under Fire, part a chance to catch up with the family.

The Hampshire house is a pretty, single-storey family home in a quiet curving cul-de-sac, containing a theologian's study filled with books and crucifixes from across the world. Work is a war zone 3,000 miles away, where Canon White is protected by 30 security guards. A place of sandbags and terror, particularly for Iraqi Christians, whose population has plummeted in the past 20 years from 1.4 million to just 300,000.

The fountain pen, which Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki borrowed for a couple of days and used to sign Saddam's death warrant, is a way of breaking the ice before talking about a subject that will inevitably be gruesome. We meet just days after Shahbaz Bhatti, Pakistan's only Christian cabinet member, was gunned down in Islamabad and it is inevitable that the conversation quickly turns to violent persecution of Christians. "All over the world there are increasing threats against Christians," Canon White says. "Bhatti's death is deeply disturbing. But when you're living in the midst of the fire like in Baghdad, it's really what happens there that concerns you. We have had 123 people killed in Baghdad since November."

Last year in fact was a particularly brutal year for Iraq's Christians and 2011 looked like it was going to be no different. But in the past few weeks the killings have stopped.

As head of the Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation in the Middle East, Canon White has built unparalleled relationships with Iraq's senior Sunni and Shia clerics. In late January he gathered them in Copenhagen to issue a joint fatwa (religious edict) condemning any attacks on minority communities. "Until then Christians were being killed every day," he says. "After the fatwa the killings stopped. It's crucial to remember that the vast majority of Muslims we work with, they are our friends. We can only do what we do with their help."

When he is not administering to his flock, it is these kinds of delicate negotiations between Iraq's religious power players that occupy much of Canon White's time in Baghdad. He has been a key negotiator in kidnappings including that of the IT worker Peter Moore, who was released, and Ken Bigley, who was killed. He has himself been taken hostage, held in a room where freshly severed fingers and toes littered the floor, and has negotiated for the release of countless Iraqis. The violence he has seen is harrowing. Does he ever lose his faith? "Never," he says. "If anything, my faith has got stronger." It's a reply you often hear from religious people in conflict zones – but how can religion be a force for good when it does so much harm in these situations?

"I remind myself that if religion is a force for bad it is also a force for good," he says. "If religion is the cause of this horrific violence then it is also the cure. The only way you will be able to stop this violence is engage with Iraq's religions in a religious way. The best thing we can do is work with the Islamic leaders as most of them are not terrorists."

Canon White places the blame for the violence against his congregants squarely at the feet of al-Qa'ida in Iraq, the primarily foreign militant network inspired by Osama bin Laden. "Those who instigate violence are mainly from outside," he says. "There are certain people you simply can't work with and the al-Qa'ida people fall into that category."

But he is equally infuriated by Christian bigots and publicity seekers – such as the American pastor Terry Jones, who threatened to burn the Koran. "Pastor Terry Jones is directly responsible for the murder of some of our people," Canon White says. "They have no idea how terrible it was. Throughout the time he threatened to burn the holy Koran, they were warning us that our people would be attacked. Four of my guards were killed throughout that time. He can try and say from the safety of Florida he was trying to make an important point. But it was an important point that killed our people."

Canon White was himself a supporter of the American-led invasion of Iraq, but after all the killing, the mutilations, the kidnappings and the mass exodus of Iraq's Christians – does he still think it was worth it?

It's the first time he seems unsure of himself. "I had one day in the whole of my life when I thought to myself, why did we do this," he says. "But I remember what it was like in Iraq before the war, the fear people lived under." Yet he adds: "But at least you could walk down the street."

I press again, was it really worth it, so much violence, so many deaths?

"I had seen the terror of the Saddam regime and I knew there was absolutely nothing the Iraqis could do to remove that terror," he replies. "It's been hell. So many people killed. I still say the regime had to be removed but we should have done things differently afterwards."

Regrets are a luxury Canon White cannot afford. He has a flock in Iraq to attend to. While a semblance of peace has returned for Baghdad's Christians thanks to the joint fatwa, Canon White knows it is temporary. "From my years and years in Palestine, Israel and Baghdad I know that the majority of people can live together," he says. "But you only need a few fanatics and it all falls to pieces."

Christianity under fire

IRAQ In the past 20 years, the flight of Christians has reduced the community's population from 1.4 million to 300,000.

EGYPT On New Year's Day, 21 Copts were killed in a bomb in Alexandria.

PAKISTAN Shahbaz Bhatti, the country's only Christian cabinet member, was assassinated last week.

NORTH KOREA Christianity is vehemently prosecuted in North Korea, where any expression of religion in the totalitarian state is viewed as open insurrection against the Communist regime.

NIGERIA Sectarian conflict between Muslims and Christians in central Nigeria has broken out with horrendous violence over the past two years in and around the city of Jos.

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Smiling woman stabbed MP Stephen Timms over Iraq war

A woman stabbed a London MP twice in the stomach in revenge for him voting for the war in Iraq, the Old Bailey heard today.

Muslim Roshonara Choudhry, 21, smiled before she plunged the knife into Stephen Timms, who thought she was about to shake his hand at a meeting in east London.

Choudhry, of East Ham, is charged with attempted murder but refuses to recognise the court. She has instructed her legal team not to attempt to seek a not guilty verdict.

Mr Timms told how the woman, dressed in black, had booked an appointment at his weekly Friday afternoon surgery in the Beckton Globe community centre.

“I was sitting and I rose to greet her,” he told the court. “At that point I thought she must have been coming to shake my hand. She looked friendly and was smiling,” said the Labour MP for East Ham and a former Treasury minister. “Then she lunged at me with her right hand and it struck me here (pointing to the left of the middle of his stomach). I think I knew I had been stabbed although I didn't feel it at the time. I cannot actually recall seeing the knife.”

The court heard that Mr Timms, 54, cried out “what are you doing?” but Choudhry remained silent. The MP went on: “She stabbed me twice and I retreated although I was still not absolutely certain I had been stabbed. I retreated to the gents', lifted up my jumper and saw a lot of blood.”

Mr Timms was taken to the Royal London Hospital for emergency surgery and has now recovered to retake his seat in the Commons.

Choudhry, of East Ham, has insisted on not entering the court and is receiving legal aid.

The jury was shown dramatic still photographs from the CCTV cameras of Choudhry approaching the MP with her left hand extended as if in a handshake but with her right holding the knife behind her bag.

As Mr Timms reeled backwards from the attack days after the May general election, Choudhry was grabbed by security guard Faizal Butt and the three-inch knife was wrestled from her hand by him and the MP's assistant, Andrew Bazeley.

When police arrived they found she had a second knife with a five-inch blade in her bag.

Interviewed by detectives, Choudhry admitted she had intended to kill Mr Timms and had taken the second knife in case the first had broken during the attack, the court heard. She said she “was not going to stop stabbing (the MP) until someone made me”.

Asked why she had carried out the attack, she replied “punishment” for Mr Timms voting in favour of the Iraq war. She had acted “to get revenge for the people of Iraq,” she said.

Choudhry has pleaded not guilty to attempted murder and two charges of possessing an offensive weapon in May this year. It is believed to be the first time in living memory that a defendant has banned her lawyers from asking for a not guilty verdict.

At a pre-trial hearing she refused to enter a plea so the judge ordered that a not guilty plea be entered on her behalf. The trial continues.

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Abuse Of Temporary Marriages Flourishes In Iraq

The practice of temporary marriage has long been common in Shiite Muslim communities, especially in Iran. The idea is that rather than having an affair, a man who wants to be sexually involved with a woman should marry her — for a few months, or even, hours — so the relationship will be legitimate.

In Iraq, the practice was banned under Saddam Hussein but then flourished after the American invasion. Now, though, some men are using the system to take advantage of poor women, and many of Iraq's Shiites say the very religious institutions that sanction such marriages are to blame.

One mother of three, who is so ashamed about what happened to her she doesn't want to give her name, says her husband abandoned her when she found out he preferred men. She had no way to support the family.

A religious figure in her neighborhood promised to help. He brought her to his home, locked the door and had sex with her. He offered her $15.

For the man at least, it was a brief moment of muta'a, the Arabic word for pleasure — and the Arabic word for temporary marriage.

The woman says the man who had sex with her worked with leading Shiite religious clerics in the Iraqi city of Najaf. It's one of the most revered places in Shiite Islam.

Tales Of The Temporary Marriage

Another woman, Kawthar Kadhim, says she approached a religious scholar who works with one of the clerics and asked for help. Her husband had left her after the Gulf War, she says. Her father had tuberculosis and was coughing up blood. And her mother was paralyzed.

The scholar told her to lift the veil from her face, she says. And then he basically proposed.

"He said, 'Would she accept to marry me, muta'a marriage?' I said, 'No'," Kadhim says through an interpreter. "And when he found out that I was refusing to marry him, he said, 'OK, let her go home and then I will send for her if I get some money.' And he never did that. He never sent for me."

Other women in Najaf told us that religious offices help poor women only if they're pretty, which makes them good candidates for muta'a marriage.

One said her brothers won't allow her to go near such places, for fear she'll be tricked into a temporary arrangement.

Nagham Kadhim runs a women's rights group in Najaf. She says muta'a marriage is a sensitive subject in the holy city. But she says abuse of the practice is common. "The muta'a marriage happens when there is an economic factor, like when the woman is poor and [does] not have money," she says through an interpreter. "And the religious institution would offer her those job opportunities, through working for a kindergarten, looking after children. And then she would receive like 100,000 dinars."

That's about a $100 a month. Once the women get the job, Kadhim says the institution will host seminars about temporary marriage to convince them the practice is acceptable.

The 'Right Way' To Do A Muta'a Marriage

Aqil al Shammari is a religious scholar who works with a handful of leading figures in Iraq's Shiite community. He explains that muta'a marriage goes all the way back to the Prophet Muhammad, who once told his traveling companions they could purchase a wife with a handful of dates if they were away from their regular wives.

Shammari says he has temporarily married at least five women, while traveling. Each time, he says, he paid them. He made sure they used birth control. He kept his agreement to be married for only a month. And he didn't do anything to sully their reputations afterward.

This, he says, is the right way to do muta'a marriage.

But the line between the right way and the wrong way may be very fine.

Shammari insists that the abuse of muta'a marriage is still rare in Iraq. He says he wouldn't mind his daughter or sister entering into a temporary marriage, if the man is pious and religiously committed.

But then he gets a sly look on his face. Of course, he says, such a man is hard to find.

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Karen Armstrong on the Chilcot Inquiry

The Iraq inquiry is also known as the Chilcot Inquiry.

As we watch the unfolding drama of the Chilcot inquiry, we should be aware that this is not simply an act of domestic cleansing. Whatever the implications for our political and judicial institutions, it is crucial that the British people learn how we came to go to war. But Muslims are also waiting for the outcome of the investigation, and this makes the inquiry an opportunity that we can ill afford to lose.

It is simply not true that the current tension between the west and the Islamic world is due to an inevitable "clash of civilisations". At the beginning of the 20th century, nearly every Muslim intellectual was in love with the modern west, which they found deeply congenial with their own traditions. Hence the famous remark of Muhammad Abduh, Grand Mufti of Egypt (1849-1905), who said, provocatively, after a trip to Paris: "In France I saw Islam but no Muslims; in Cairo I see Muslims but no Islam." His point was that the modern European economy had created conditions of fairness and equity that came closer to the Qur'anic ideal than was possible in the pre-modern economies of the Muslim world.

Unfortunately, too many self-interested western policies in the Islamic world have soured that early enthusiasm. But not all Muslims have given up on the west. Gallup's unprecedented study of more than one billion Muslims, conducted between 2001 and 2007 in 35 countries, revealed, for example, that what many Muslims admire most about the west is its political liberty and freedom of speech.

But in recent months the situation has become more serious, as I discovered, somewhat ironically, during a visit to Cairo last June – just three weeks after President Obama had made his landmark speech there, promising a new era in American/Muslim relations. I had been invited to take part in the first international interfaith conference at the prestigious Al-Azhar University. It seemed an auspicious occasion. The theme of the conference was: "How could Al-Azhar best use its enormous influence to promote the cause of peace and global understanding?"

But we quickly became aware of the intense anger in the room. Even though many of us were personally known to Al-Azhar and were greeted with warmth and affection, as soon as western delegates took their places on the platform, they became representatives of "the west". There was no dialogue. Nobody responded to the content of our papers. Instead, one by one, the distinguished professors and imams of Al-Azhar rose to their feet to denounce western policy in the region.

Even though this was supposedly a religious conference, they all insisted that religion was not the issue. They were not concerned about differences in faith and belief: did not the Qur'an itself insist that religious diversity was God's will (5:48)? Instead, taking no heed of time constraints or the protests of the moderators, they deplored in detail and at length the sufferings of the Palestinians, the tragedy of Gaza, the conflict over Jerusalem, the crime of Guantánamo – and, of course, the horror of Iraq. The underlying message was clear: the west dominated the political discourse and did not take the Muslim viewpoint seriously; now it was our turn to listen.

When I discussed the situation with my western colleagues, many of us well-seasoned travellers in the Muslim world, we were concerned by the intensity, if not by the content of this assault. We had, after all, long been aware that there could be no peace for the world without a just and equitable solution to these problems. But this seemingly intractable rage was new. Obama, we concluded, had raised hopes – and that could be dangerous: if he did not in the very near future make some tangible gesture to show that the process of change had indeed begun, disappointment could only make matters worse. And if the professors felt so enraged, what on earth could it be like on the streets of Cairo, where this level of frustration, aggravated by economic and political discontent, could make many people easy targets for extremist propaganda?

But the mood of our conference changed. During the last session an American theologian managed, with some difficulty, to take the floor and spoke on behalf of us all. We had, he said, been deeply impressed by the pain in the room; we knew that "the eight horrible years of George W Bush" had inflicted grave damage on the region, and would do everything in our power to work with Al-Azhar for a better future. Immediately, one of the most vitriolic of our assailants responded with generosity and the conference was finally able to issue a firm and positive joint resolution.

So far, Obama has not given the concrete sign that we felt was essential. But the Chilcot inquiry has also raised hopes. If there is any hint of whitewash or cover-up, the consequent disillusion will only exacerbate an already inflamed situation. In Cairo, we discovered that a frank acknowledgment of culpability could turn things around. In our dangerously polarised world, we may not get such an opportunity again.

Iraqis damned for eternity with high levels or radiation and dioxins

More than 40 sites across Iraq are contaminated with high levels or radiation and dioxins, with three decades of war and neglect having left environmental ruin in large parts of the country, an official Iraqi study has found.

Areas in and near Iraq's largest towns and cities, including Najaf, Basra and Falluja, account for around 25% of the contaminated sites, which appear to coincide with communities that have seen increased rates of cancer and birth defects over the past five years. The joint study by the environment, health and science ministries found that scrap metal yards in and around Baghdad and Basra contain high levels of ionising radiation, which is thought to be a legacy of depleted uranium used in munitions during the first Gulf war and since the 2003 invasion.

The environment minister, Narmin Othman, said high levels of dioxins on agricultural lands in southern Iraq, in particular, were increasingly thought to be a key factor in a general decline in the health of people living in the poorest parts of the country.

"If we look at Basra, there are some heavily polluted areas there and there are many factors contributing to it," she told the Guardian. "First, it has been a battlefield for two wars, the Gulf war and the Iran-Iraq war, where many kinds of bombs were used. Also, oil pipelines were bombed and most of the contamination settled in and around Basra.

"The soil has ended up in people's lungs and has been on food that people have eaten. Dioxins have been very high in those areas. All of this has caused systemic problems on a very large scale for both ecology and overall health."

Government study groups have recently focused on the war-ravaged city of Falluja, west of Baghdad, where the unstable security situation had kept scientists away ever since fierce fighting between militants and US forces in 2004.

"We have only found one area so far in Falluja," Othman said. "But there are other areas that we will try to explore soon with international help."

The Guardian reported in November claims by local doctors of a massive rise in birth defects in the city, particularly neural tube defects, which afflict the spinal cords and brains of newborns. "We are aware of the reports, but we must be cautious in reaching conclusions about causes," Othman said. "The general health of the city is not good. There is no sewerage system there and there is a lot of stagnant household waste, creating sickness that is directly affecting genetics. We do know, however, that a lot of depleted uranium was used there.

"We have been regulating and monitoring this and we have been urgently trying to assemble a database. We have had co-operation from the United Nations environment programme and have given our reports in Geneva. We have studied 500 sites for chemicals and depleted uranium. Until now we have found 42 places that have been declared as [high risk] both from uranium and toxins."

Ten of those areas have been classified by Iraq's nuclear decommissioning body as having high levels of radiation. They include the sites of three former nuclear reactors at the Tuwaitha facility – once the pride of Saddam Hussein's regime on the south-eastern outskirts of Baghdad – as well as former research centres around the capital that were either bombed or dismantled between the two Gulf wars.

The head of the decommissioning body, Adnan Jarjies, said that when inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency arrived to "visit these sites, I tell them that even if we have all the best science in the world to help us, none of them could be considered to be clean before 2020."

Bushra Ali Ahmed, director of the Radiation Protection Centre in Baghdad, said only 80% of Iraq had so far been surveyed. "We have focused so far on the sites that have been contaminated by the wars," he said. "We have further plans to swab sites that have been destroyed by war.

"A big problem for us is when say a tank has been destroyed and then moved, we are finding a clear radiation trail. It takes a while to decontaminate these sites."

Scrap sites remain a prime concern. Wastelands of rusting cars and war damage dot Baghdad and other cities between the capital and Basra, offering unchecked access to both children and scavengers.

Othman said Iraq's environmental degradation is being intensified by an acute drought and water shortage across the country that has seen a 70% decrease in the volume of water flowing through the Euphrates and Tigris rivers.

"We can no longer in good conscience call ourselves the land between the rivers," she said. "A lot of the water we are getting has first been used by Turkey and Syria for power generation. When it reaches us it is poor quality. That water which is used for agriculture is often contaminated. We are in the midst of an unmatched environmental disaster."

Christian Fundamentalists coming out of closet over Iraq War

While Tony Blair was in office, he avoided bringing up the subject of religion but nearly every pundit knew that he was a staunch fundamentalist christian. Before the Iraq war, Bush and Blair prayed together and Tony Blair has never denied it. I wonder if they were praying that their power does not gewt taken away regardless of them embarking on a war that will kill hundreds of thousands and makes millions homeless.

If two Muslim leaders prayed together before starting a war, how would the world react?

In the winter of 2003, when George Bush and Tony Blair were frantically gathering support for their planned invasion, Professor Thomas Römer, an Old Testament expert at the university of Lausanne, was rung up by the Protestant Federation of France. They asked him to supply them with a summary of the legends surrounding Gog and Magog and as the conversation progressed, he realised that this had originally come, from the highest reaches of the French government.

President Jacques Chirac wanted to know what the hell President Bush had been on about in their last conversation. Bush had then said that when he looked at the Middle East, he saw "Gog and Magog at work" and the biblical prophecies unfolding. But who the hell were Gog and Magog? Neither Chirac nor his office had any idea. But they knew Bush was an evangelical Christian, so they asked the French Federation of Protestants, who in turn asked Professor Römer.

he best opinion is that like all Bible prophecy, it is a mixture of wish-fulfilment and contemporary (iron age) politics. Some of it at least seems to refer to the turmoil brought about by Alexander the Great in the fourth century BC (unlike Bush, Alexander actually conquered Afghanistan). But they have been for the last two hundred years the subject of increasingly excited evangelical fanfic, especially in America; in the 70s and 80s, Gog was meant to be Russia. Ronald Reagan seems to have believed that.

But with Reagan, the prophecy appreciation part of his brain functioned quite independently of the part that started wars (there's nothing in the Old Testament about Nicaragua or even Grenada). Bush seems to have taken the threat of Gog and Magog to Israel quite literally, and, if this story can be believed, to have launched a war to stop them.

Mr Blair has previously admitted that he was influenced by his Christian faith, but Mr Burton reveals for the first time the strength of his religious zeal.

"While he was at Number 10, Tony was virtually gagged on the whole question of religion," says Mr Burton.

"Alastair [Campbell] was convinced it would get him into trouble with the voters.

"But Tony's Christian faith is part of him, down to his cotton socks. He believed strongly at the time, that intervention in Kosovo, Sierra Leone – Iraq too – was all part of the Christian battle; good should triumph over evil, making lives better."

Mr Burton, who was often described as Mr Blair's mentor, says that his religion gave him a "total belief in what's right and what's wrong", leading him to see the so-called War on Terror as "a moral cause".

"I truly believe that his Christianity affected his policy-making on just about everything from aid to Africa, education, poverty, world debt and intervening in other countries when he thought it was right to do it.

"The fervour was part of him and it comes back to it being Christian fervour that spurred him into action for better or worse."

Mr Burton says that inherent in Mr Blair's faith was the belief that people should be treated fairly: "He applied that same principle in everything he did – from establishing the Social Exclusion Unit to ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, and ridding Iraq of the evils of Saddam Hussein's rule."

It is very funny that these Christian Missionaries that come to our doors always trying to portray that Islam is a terrorist religion and Christianity is a peaceful religion. I always ask them who started the World Wars and how many people were killed. They quickly jump to 9/11 where say roughly 3000 people were killed by Terrorists. How many people has this war on Terror killed? In Afghanistan? In Iraq? In Pakistan? How many people have Israel Killed in Lebanon and Palestine? How many people did the Christian fundamentalists killed in Kosovo?

It is a well known fact that Mr Blair's Cabinet included several deeply committed Christians, such as Ruth Kelly, the Education Secretary, who is a Roman Catholic, and the Chief Whip, Hilary Armstrong - but they rarely break the injunction not to mix religion and politics publicly.

Now, I read the most interesting stuff which I didnt expect.

Alastair Campbell said today he was inspired by the Bible when he gave evidence to the Iraq inquiry.

The former spin chief, who famously told Tony Blair: "We don't do God", said that on the eve of his appearance a supporter emailed him Psalm 56.

The psalm, which attacks those who "twist" the words of others, gave him comfort on a day when he was again in the media spotlight.

Mr Campbell quoted it on his blog, adding: "I never detected a death plot among the British media, but the rest of it sums up the Westminster lobby to a tee."

He revealed he was "amazed how many people, though they thought they know I don't do God, sent me passages from the Bible."

Its good to see all these liars and fundamentalists coming out of the closet and revealing their true face. I am sure that most common people do not see the Iraq war as the war between Islam and Christianity but day by day it looks to me thats what it is.

Racism rife in Iraq

Black Iraqis in the southern province of Basra are complaining of discrimination, saying they are not fairly represented in the state.

African Iraqis have lived in the country for centuries and now number more than one million.

Many of them are descendants of African slaves brought to Iraq. Many Iraqis still refer to them by their ancestral name, abeed - meaning slaves.

Salem Shaaban is a member of the Free Movement of Iraqis, advocating more rights for African Iraqis.

He says black people in Iraq feel there is a tradition of discrimination against them in the society.

"For example when two people fight in the street and one is black and the other is white, they say X had a fight with the slave. It really hurts."

Read complete artricle here.

Shia Sunni Politics back in Iraq

Iraq's electoral commission has barred 500 candidates from running in March's parliamentary election, including a prominent Sunni lawmaker, in a decision that is sure to deepen Iraq's sectarian divides.

Hamdia al-Hussaini, a commissioner on the Independent High Electoral Commission, said the commission made the decision after receiving the list from a parliament committee that vets candidates for ties to Saddam Hussein's outlawed Baath party.

The decision to bar the candidates – most of whom are believed to be Sunni – potentially threatens the country's fragile security because it risks leaving Sunni voters feeling targeted and disenfranchised. The Sunni boycott in a January 2005 election is considered one of the key factors that deepened the insurgency. The candidates have three days to appeal, al-Hussaini said. Among those barred is prominent Sunni leader Saleh al-Mutlaq.

Some of the most prominent Sunni politicians, fixtures for years on Iraq’s fickle political landscape, have been made targets, apparently for supporting Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party. Among them were Defense Minister Abdul-Kader Jassem al-Obeidi and Saleh al-Mutlaq, the head of the National Dialogue Front, whose alliance with Ayad Allawi, a former prime minister, was expected to fare well in Sunni provinces that were underrepresented in the last election in 2005.

“This is a perversion of the political process; it is a perversion of the democratic process,” said Nada Jbouri, a Sunni lawmaker and ally of Mr. Mutlaq’s. “When you eliminate candidates, it is no longer a fair representation of the people.”

The dispute began last week when Iraq’s Accountability and Justice Commission said it would disqualify more than a dozen candidates and political parties. The eventual list sent to electoral officials had about 500 names, out of 6,500 candidates. Hundreds more will be disqualified Monday, said Falah Shanshal, a Shiite lawmaker whose committee oversees the commission’s work.

“The commission’s work was very professional,” he said. “All the documents were carefully checked. They did a great job.”

Critics, though, have questioned the very legality of the Accountability and Justice Commission. It inherited the responsibilities of the contentious and now-disbanded de-Baathification committee, but Parliament has yet to approve its members, leaving the previous staff, including its director, Ali Faisal al-Lami, as powerful caretakers.

Hardly anyone seems to believe that the commission acted on its own. That lack of transparency has given rise to a raft of conspiracy theories in Baghdad that has already frayed electoral alliances, in particular Mr. Mutlaq’s coalition with Mr. Allawi. More troubling, it has hampered efforts to reach a compromise, politicians and diplomats say, because no one seems to know who is driving the campaign.

“That’s one of the main problems,” said Dr. Othman, the Kurdish lawmaker. “These decisions are being made behind closed doors.”

Electoral officials say the candidates will have three days, beginning Monday, to appeal the decision before a seven-judge panel approved by Parliament. Some Iraqi officials, along with United States and United Nations diplomats, hope those appeals can secure a last-minute compromise, not unheard of in a political system accustomed to brinkmanship.

But in Baghdad’s Sunni neighborhoods, and predominantly Sunni provinces to the north and west of the capital, where anti-Baathism is often seen as coded language for a campaign to disenfranchise Sunnis, many viewed the disqualifications as an indictment of Iraq’s fledgling institutions and their attempt to portray themselves as representative.

The dispute has highlighted an issue that remains unresolved in Iraq: to what degree will members of the banned Baath Party be reincorporated in public life.

Iraq's Sunnis feel threatened

From Al Jazeera Blog:

The last time I visited Mosul was in April … it is still a dangerous city but I felt the tension has subsided.

While we were driving through the city… it was something a security adviser of the Mosul governor's office told me that made me realise how serious and dangerous the consequences of the political impasse over the election law could be.

"You see all this destruction … It was all destroyed in 2005, 2006 and 2007. What you are seeing would be nothing compared to what may happen if we don’t take part in the election. I am not just talking about myself but all the people in Mosul," Zuhair Younes said.

Resentment, anger … that was the feeling I got after speaking to many people of this northern Iraqi province.

This is a Sunni heartland. And the provincial authorities, tribal elders and many of its people are threatening to boycott national elections if parliament approves a law that reduces the number of seats allocated to their province.

"This is a conspiracy to get rid of nationalists. Hashemi doesn’t represent anyone but himself," Brahim Sabaweh, a resident of Mosul said.

There is no love lost for vice-president Tarek Hashemi – himself a Sunni. He initially vetoed the law because he wanted more representation for Iraqi exiles abroad - many of them Sunnis.

The move led to a Shia-Kurd alliance against the Sunnis in parliament - which led to the reduction of seats for Sunni provinces.

This is a community which still hasn’t come to terms at their loss of political dominance when the US invaded Iraq in 2003.

For Sunnis, it is all about having a voice in the political process. Many of them boycotted the 2005 election – consequently they didn’t have a role in drafting the constitution which mapped the future of Iraq. But in the 2009 provincial poll, they turned out in large numbers.

The result: an Arab nationalist party took over the provincial government.

It was the first time in post-2003 Iraq that the people of Mosul felt represented … And since then the city has become safer.

But there is a real fear that may change if Sunni governorates lose seats in parliament.

People here had hoped the 2010 election would be another step forward towards representation and reconciliation

So far, the lack of agreement threatens to divide this country even further.

Blair and Bush planned war 11 months before it took place

Tony Blair made it clear to George Bush at a meeting in Texas 11 months before the Iraq invasion that he would be prepared to join the US in toppling Saddam Hussein, the inquiry into the war was told today.

The prime minister repeatedly told the US president that British policy was to back United Nations attempts to seek Iraq's disarmament, Sir David Manning, his foreign policy adviser, told the inquiry.

However, Blair was "absolutely prepared to say he was willing to contemplate regime change if [UN-backed measures] did not work", Manning said. If it proved impossible to pursue the UN route, then Blair would be "willing to use force", Manning emphasised.

Manning recalled the meeting between the two leaders at Crawford, Bush's Texas ranch, in April 2002. "I look back at Crawford as the moment that he [Blair] was saying, yes, there is a route through this that is an international, peaceful one and it is through the UN, but if it doesn't work, we will be willing to undertake regime change," Manning said.

The issue is crucial because Blair was warned at the time by Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general, and other legal advisers that going to war with regime change as the objective was unlawful and breached the UN charter.

Read complete article here

Staggering number of birth defects in Fallujah, Iraq

Doctors in Iraq's war-ravaged enclave of Falluja are dealing with up to 15 times as many chronic deformities in infants and a spike in early life cancers that may be linked to toxic materials left over from the fighting.

The extraordinary rise in birth defects has crystallised over recent months as specialists working in Falluja's over-stretched health system have started compiling detailed clinical records of all babies born.

Neurologists and obstetricians in the city interviewed by the Guardian say the rise in birth defects – which include a baby born with two heads, babies with multiple tumours, and others with nervous system problems - are unprecedented and at present unexplainable.

A group of Iraqi and British officials, including the former Iraqi minister for women's affairs, Dr Nawal Majeed a-Sammarai, and the British doctors David Halpin and Chris Burns-Cox, have petitioned the UN general assembly to ask that an independent committee fully investigate the defects and help clean up toxic materials left over decades of war – including the six years since Saddam Hussein was ousted.

"We are seeing a very significant increase in central nervous system anomalies," said Falluja general hospital's director and senior specialist, Dr Ayman Qais. "Before 2003 [the start of the war] I was seeing sporadic numbers of deformities in babies. Now the frequency of deformities has increased dramatically."

The rise in frequency is stark – from two admissions a fortnight a year ago to two a day now. "Most are in the head and spinal cord, but there are also many deficiencies in lower limbs," he said. "There is also a very marked increase in the number of cases of less than two years [old] with brain tumours. This is now a focus area of multiple tumours."

After several years of speculation and anecdotal evidence, a picture of a highly disturbing phenomenon in one of Iraq's most battered areas has now taken shape. Previously all miscarried babies, including those with birth defects or infants who were not given ongoing care, were not listed as abnormal cases.

The Guardian asked a paediatrician, Samira Abdul Ghani, to keep precise records over a three-week period. Her records reveal that 37 babies with anomalies, many of them neural tube defects, were born during that period at Falluja general hospital alone.

Dr Bassam Allah, the head of the hospital's children's ward, this week urged international experts to take soil samples across Falluja and for scientists to mount an investigation into the causes of so many ailments, most of which he said had been "acquired" by mothers before or during pregnancy.

Other health officials are also starting to focus on possible reasons, chief among them potential chemical or radiation poisonings. Abnormal clusters of infant tumours have also been repeatedly cited in Basra and Najaf – areas that have in the past also been intense battle zones where modern munitions have been heavily used.

Falluja's frontline doctors are reluctant to draw a direct link with the fighting. They instead cite multiple factors that could be contributors.

"These include air pollution, radiation, chemicals, drug use during pregnancy, malnutrition, or the psychological status of the mother," said Dr Qais. "We simply don't have the answers yet."

The anomalies are evident all through Falluja's newly opened general hospital and in centres for disabled people across the city. On 2 November alone, there were four cases of neuro-tube defects in the neo-natal ward and several more were in the intensive care ward and an outpatient clinic.

Falluja was the scene of the only two setpiece battles that followed the US-led invasion. Twice in 2004, US marines and infantry units were engaged in heavy fighting with Sunni militia groups who had aligned with former Ba'athists and Iraqi army elements.

The first battle was fought to find those responsible for the deaths of four Blackwater private security contractors working for the US. The city was bombarded heavily by American artillery and fighter jets. Controversial weaponry was used, including white phosphorus, which the US government admitted deploying.

Statistics on infant tumours are not considered as reliable as new data about nervous system anomalies, which are usually evident immediately after birth. Dr Abdul Wahid Salah, a neurosurgeon, said: "With neuro-tube defects, their heads are often larger than normal, they can have deficiencies in hearts and eyes and their lower limbs are often listless. There has been no orderly registration here in the period after the war and we have suffered from that. But [in relation to the rise in tumours] I can say with certainty that we have noticed a sharp rise in malignancy of the blood and this is not a congenital anomaly – it is an acquired disease."

Despite fully funding the construction of the new hospital, a well-equipped facility that opened in August, Iraq's health ministry remains largely disfunctional and unable to co-ordinate a response to the city's pressing needs.

The government's lack of capacity has led Falluja officials, who have historically been wary of foreign intervention, to ask for help from the international community. "Even in the scientific field, there has been a reluctance to reach out to the exterior countries," said Dr Salah. "But we have passed that point now. I am doing multiple surgeries every day. I have one assistant and I am obliged to do everything myself."

For Iraqi Widows, marriage is the only option

Haifa Ahmed Mua’alim, 32, is going to tie the knot in a couple of weeks.

She is marrying a man recommended by her sister-in-law to help feed her two orphan children of a previous marriage.

The young woman lost her husband, the love of her life, two years ago to the violence that has been plaguing her country since the 2003 US invasion.

"When he died I decided never to marry again. We had a stable and lovely relation," she recalled tearfully.

For the past two years Haifa has been struggling to feed her kids, spending every penny they once had.

But without work or help from any one, she is accepting to remarry at the advice of her deceased husband's sister.

"I’m being forced to change my mind in exchange for a better life for my sons."

Haifa only saw the future husband once and never spoke with him, insisting it's a marriage of convenience for both of them.

"My sister-in-law told me that he also lost his wife and he is a good man who carries four children in his baggage," she said.

"Maybe it is too precipitated and latter on, I might regret, however, it is better to take care of six children than see your two sons hungry and unable to go to school," Haifa reasoned.

"I’m glad to find someone willing to take care of them but being happy is another issue that I prefer to keep for my own."

The Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs estimates there are nearly two million widows and five times kids living without fathers in the country.

"Widows are a serious case in Iraq. Our ministry is trying to help but the lack of proper budget is seriously affecting our work," said a senior officer, requesting anonymity for not being allowed to speak to the press.

"More widows will be added to this group and to help them the parliament should focus on their problem, create enough conditions for them to work and feed their children."

Debate

Haifa represents a new trend in Iraq which is encouraged by religious leaders who have been advising single and widower men to marry widows as a way to help them.

"Those women are victims of the violence in our country," Sheikh Abdul-Kareem Rafel, a religious leader at Sadr City, told IOL.

"The government isn’t offering them enough help to raise their kids alone and advising Iraqis to marry them is a nice way to prevent millions of kids from being raised without a father and prevent women from becoming prostitutes to support them."

Rana Lattif, a local woman activist, opposes such second marriage arrangements.

"Instead of encouraging women to remarry, we have to force the government to help them, offer stable living conditions and open job places as the majority became widows because of the unfair war in the country," she told IOL.

"Of course there are women who prefer to be in such unacceptable situation but they are few and the majority is marrying again because it was the only choice found," she contends.

"If the government takes responsibility towards them, I’m sure this number would decrease impressively."

Sara al-Azza, a member of a charity that has nearly 1,200 widows registered with more than half willing to remarry, disagrees.

"We cannot keep waiting for the government to take an action," she told IOL.

"The women come to us after deciding to remarry and what we do is just look for men who have a good background, true good intentions and are able to support her family," she explains.

"No one is forced to marry but we have made many arrangements with the both sides happy to start a new life together.

"Since we started working on this issue, we never had a complaint from any of the parties. It is a serious matter and we are happy to help."

Rhim Abdel-Rassoul Rabia’a, a 41-yrea-old mother of three who lost her husband three years in a Baghdad bomb attack, is waiting for a second husband.

"After years of looking for a job, I got desperate and that’s why I started looking for a second marriage even though that was the last thing I would like to do," she told IOL.

"I was told that women over 40 take more time to find a husband but this is my only hope. I just want a man to look after me and my kids, even if I marry without love."

Rhim says when she was a young girl she dreamed of a life of happiness, studying and working to become someone important in life.

"I know that none of my dreams can come true but at least I can help my kids become able to support themselves without the need to remarry for that."

Iraqis sell organs to survive

Raad Bader al-Muhssin, 41, worked as a gardener for more than 20 years, during which he used to make no more than $4 dollars per day.

After the 2003 US invasion and the ensuing violence, life became harder as the number of clients requesting his services nosedived.

Adding insult to the injury was the recent discovery that his wife had cancer.

Thus, when he was offered $12,000 dollars for one of his kidney he did not hesitate or have second thoughts.

"I never had more than $100 dollars in my pocket at the end of the month, even if I didn’t spend one cent from my salary," Muhssin told IslamOnline.net.

"I lived my whole life a poor man and was afraid my children were going to have the same fate and my wife would die because we do not have money to help her," he added.

Five months ago when he was cleaning a garden in Baghdad, the owner started to speak with Muhssin about kidney transplantations and a friend who arranges them.

"I never imagined I would become a donor but when my wife’s condition got worse, I went to his house and asked for a way to find his friend who would guide me to the similar fate."

Muhssin called the friend who told him he had to take a blood test to check if he had any health problems.

"I borrowed some money and made it in a private lab. When I took the test results, the guy checked in a list he had in his pocket and came with the news that he had four patients with the same blood type and that they would pay good money for it."

Experts say organs donations, which are not illegal, have impressively increased in the past 18 months.

"It is a very complicated issue, especially because there isn’t any law that prevent donations," Abdel Haythem Abdel-Kareem, a health expert and member of the transplantation chamber, told IOL.

"Of course there are many cases of free donation but the majority are looking for money and even travelling to Jordan where prices are higher with patients coming from different countries willing to pay for it."

There isn’t an official number of how many transplantations are carried out in Iraq every year but local NGOs helping patients looking for organs donations say that one in 500 persons accept to donate without financial interest.

Al-Muhssin made the donation, got his money and opened a small shop to sell gums, cigarettes, cereals and beans.

"It is one chance in life," he suggested.

"I still have a healthy kidney and with the money I got I will never be humiliated again," he added.

"My sons returned to school and our life changed. If I was going to wait for the government to help my family, I would have died before getting it."

Salwa Ahmed (not her real name), is another victim of poverty in Iraq.

After her husband died in a car bomb attack in Diyala four years ago, she moved to Baghdad with her four kids to find a better job and better living conditions.

"I was already living as displaced, my kids were hungry all day because I couldn’t afford more than one meal," she said.

"When a woman in the camp said that there was someone who constantly pays them visits asking for kidney donation, I got excited and was prepared to sell one and give my children a better living condition," Ahmed added.

"At first he wanted to pay only US $3,000 but after two weeks of negotiations and my lab test, which should I had a rare blood type, the price went up to US $8,000," she said, noting that the sum equals 15 years of hard work.

"Today I feel healthy, my children have enough food and new clothes and I was able to get a job as seller in a clothes shop."

Ahmed has no regrets.

"I know it might look wrong but when a mother sees her children suffering from hunger, you realise that a kidney is nothing.

"I hope I will never have kidney problems but even if this happens I will be happy to know that at least I have saved the life of my loved ones and of a person who was in a dire need of an important organ that God blessed me with having two healthy ones."

Muhammad al-A’ani, an aid employee working with patients requesting organs transplantations, says some people are so desperate for the money they are willing to do anything.

"Recently we received a man who couldn’t donate his kidney because he had some renal problems," he noted.

"But he was asking of someone who would be interested in buying one of his corneas.

"I got surprised and tried to help him so that he would not fall prey to any gang in Iraq," said al-A’ani.

"I kept looking for information about him and two months ago I heard from a colleague that he did it for nearly US $20,000. We couldn’t find where or how but we will keep investigating it because it is too serious to leave behind."

He lamented that body transportations became like an industry controlled by a mafia.

"Unfortunately there are dozens of corrupted nurses, doctors and government employees who allow such disgusting situations to take place in exchange for money."

The Health Ministry says it is too complicated to find out who is donating for free and who is selling his body organs.

But in some cases donations, whether free or paid, are not done voluntarily.

Many children and youngsters have been reportedly kidnapped by gangs that sell their body parts for huge prices.

A 17-years-old victim, who requested anonymity, said he was drugged and abducted.

He woke up two days later in a dirty room with signs of a surgery. They gave him US $20 and drove him to the outskirts of Baghdad.

He later started to have health problems as a result of an infection he got during the procedure.

"It is unfair and I might die now because of the criminals who wanted to make money from selling my body," he cried.

"I don’t have a rich family and my father is now selling the house to raise money and find someone who is willing to sell his kidney and save my life.

"I was once a healthy person with two kidneys but now I’m a victim who wants to buy an organ that was stolen from me. Is not that ironic?"