The New York Times reports the following story:

MARABA, Syria — Back home in Iraq, Umm Hiba’s daughter was a devout schoolgirl, modest in her dress and serious about her studies. Hiba, who is now 16, wore the hijab, or Islamic head scarf, and rose early each day to say the dawn prayer before classes.

But that was before militias began threatening their Baghdad neighborhood and Umm Hiba and her daughter fled to Syria last spring. There were no jobs, and Umm Hiba’s elderly father developed complications related to his diabetes.

Desperate, Umm Hiba followed the advice of an Iraqi acquaintance and took her daughter to work at a nightclub along a highway known for prostitution. “We Iraqis used to be a proud people,” she said over the frantic blare of the club’s speakers. She pointed out her daughter, dancing among about two dozen other girls on the stage, wearing a pink silk dress with spaghetti straps, her frail shoulders bathed in colored light.

As Umm Hiba watched, a middle-aged man climbed onto the platform and began to dance jerkily, arms flailing, among the girls.

“During the war we lost everything,” she said. “We even lost our honor.” She insisted on being identified by only part of her name — Umm Hiba means mother of Hiba.

For anyone living in Damascus these days, the fact that some Iraqi refugees are selling sex or working in sex clubs is difficult to ignore.

Even in central Damascus, men freely talk of being approached by pimps trawling for customers outside juice shops and shawarma sandwich stalls, and of women walking up to passing men, an act unthinkable in Arab culture, and asking in Iraqi-accented Arabic if the men would like to “have a cup of tea.”

By day the road that leads from Damascus to the historic convent at Saidnaya is often choked with Christian and Muslim pilgrims hoping for one of the miracles attributed to a portrait of the Virgin Mary at the convent. But as any Damascene taxi driver can tell you, the Maraba section of this fabled pilgrim road is fast becoming better known for its brisk trade in Iraqi prostitutes.

Many of these women and girls, including some barely in their teens, are recent refugees. Some are tricked or forced into prostitution, but most say they have no other means of supporting their families. As a group they represent one of the most visible symptoms of an Iraqi refugee crisis that has exploded in Syria in recent months.

According to the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, about 1.2 million Iraqi refugees now live in Syria; the Syrian government puts the figure even higher.

Given the deteriorating economic situation of those refugees, a United Nations report found last year, many girls and women in “severe need” turn to prostitution, in secret or even with the knowledge or involvement of family members. In many cases, the report added, “the head of the family brings clients to the house.”

[Read the rest of the article.]

Click here for another story involving Iraqi women and sexual slavery.

From the Ansar Burney Trust -

LAHORE: Many smuggled minor girls from Pakistan are forced into prostitution in Middle East in an organised crime.

Some minor girls recently rescued from Middle East by human rights activist Ansar Burney revealed horrifying facts regarding the flesh trade going on in the region.

They said most of their companions belonged to Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Ukraine, Afghanistan and newly independent countries from Russia.

“Most of the victims are between the age of 11 to 13 years and are smuggled to the Arab countries where they are forced into prostitution in Middle East and Arab countries,” one of the victims said and added that on the passports the ages of these girls were shown as 20 to 22 years old.

She said the human traffickers promised a beautiful and bright future and respectable jobs in the Middle East and Arab countries to lure young girls and after reaching abroad these girls are forced into prostitution.

“The traffickers forced the young girls to show themselves as virgins because most of their clients demanded young girls,” said another victim. She said “After arrival and clearance from the airport the traffickers took her passport and forced her physically to do what she was told,” she said. Threats of informing the police and of telling their families were the other tools being used by the traffickers against their sex slaves.

She said threats of violence kept the victims in line and in some cases these threats became reality. Many girls were forced to have abortions and were forced back to work within weeks. She maintained beatings and forced abortions are common in the life of the sex slaves.

Read more of the report here.