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Much
criticised by human rights groups, the practice is
said to leave girls vulnerable to infection,
haemorrhaging and long-term health and sexual
problems.
Forty years have passed since Sairan Muhammed was
circumcised, but she still remembers the event
vividly.
"I was seven-years-old. My mother took my hand and I
didn't know where she was taking me,” she said. “We
went to a house with a wooden roof. I could hear the
shouting and crying even before we got there. I ran
away, but my mother chased after me and caught me.
In the house, there were six other girls who were
being circumcised too.”
For Sairan, 47, a resident of Sulaimaniyah, the
psychological scars left by circumcision refuse to
heal. “Even now, I can't get the screaming, the
struggling and the fear of that day out of my mind,"
she said.
Circumcision, also called female genital mutilation,
is a well-known practice in Somalia, Sudan and
Egypt, but is not generally considered to be common
in this part of the world. However, according to a
2004 survey of women from the Kurdish-controlled
Iraqi areas of Erbil, Dohuk and Sulaimaniyah, a
staggering 75 per cent of 40,480 respondents were
found to be circumcised.
Twelve-year-old Ameena Muhammed, from the town of
Kalar, remembers the agony of the procedure. “I was
5-years-old. I was grabbed by two people, and they
circumcised me. I didn’t go outside for two days,
and it hurt when I peed,” she said.
The Kurdish method of circumcision involves the
removal of a girl’s external genital organs. The
procedure is usually carried out by women who are
not trained in surgery. There is no anaesthetic and
little attention to hygiene. As a result, there is a
high risk of infection and haemorrhaging. Women with
disfigured genitals commonly have problems with
urination, intercourse and childbirth.
In Iraqi Kurdistan, uncircumcised women are often
looked down upon. Shamsa Ali, 50, from the Sarshaqam
neighborhood of Sulaimaniyah, describes how a deep
sense of shame led her and her two sisters to
circumcise themselves, “We were in our early teens,
and we felt ashamed because we hadn’t been
circumcised. Our friends told us that if a girl
isn’t circumcised, the water from her hand is
unclean and not fit for drinking and that God is
angry with her. So we decided that the three of us
should go to Hamdia's, a friend of ours, and
circumcise one another."
Muslim clerics in northern Sulaimaniyah declared a
fatwa on the practice in 2000. Muhammed-Amin Abdul-Hakeem
Chamchamali, the head of the Kurdistan Religious
Scholars Union, said the “common belief that
uncircumcised women are dirty or unsuitable for
marriage is unfounded” and they “are not guilty of
anything in the religious sense”.
Dr Rezan Ismael, a gynaecologist in the Rania
township, an area where many girls are circumcised,
believes that female genital mutilation damages
women’s sexual organs so profoundly that it can lead
to sexual dysfunction and marital problems, “The
damage done by female circumcision is most apparent
after marriage. I think that 70 to 80 per cent of
marital problems are sex-related.”
The damage is compounded because the women
conducting the circumcisions are often illiterate
and unskilled.
One practitioner from the town of Basrma, who
preferred not to be named, circumcises girls aged
between two and five, performing the operation with
a blade and placing the child in a washtub to
staunch the bleeding, then applying a mixture of
salt and oil to the wound.
Fatim Ibrahim says she performs circumcisions
because she sees it as a moral duty. “I learned the
profession from a woman in our village,” she said.
“I do it because it is virtuous, and so that God is
satisfied with me. So far, I have circumcised over
one thousand girls.”
The damaging practice has been condemned by many
international human rights groups. In a report about
women in Iraq published in February this year,
Amnesty International concluded, “Some aspects of
[female circumcision] are analogous to torture in
that it is intentional, calculated, and causes
severe pain and suffering.”
Roonak Agha of the Kurdistan Women’s Union has
launched a campaign to educate mothers against
circumcising their daughters, which she says has
begun to lower the incidence in some areas. “We held
symposiums and seminars, and have made a concerted
effort to stop circumcision. We have held talks with
religious scholars here so that we can persuade
mothers to put an end to this phenomenon.”
Thanks to projects like these, circumcision is on
the wane in the larger cities of Kurdistan. But in
smaller towns and villages, the practice is more
difficult to eradicate.
While some progress is being made in tackling female
genital mutilation, many victims of the practice
continue to suffer the consequences. Sairan Muhammed
said her husband took a second wife because of her
sexual frigidity. One consolation for her, she said,
is that her four daughters will not have to
experience what she went through.
Roonak Faraj is the editor-in-chief of Rewan
newspaper. Talar Nadir is an IWPR trainee in
Sulaimaniyah.
www.iwpr.net
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