Female circumcision wrecking lives [Archives:2005/834/Health]

By Roonak Faraj and Talar Nadir in Sulaimaniyah (ICR No. 120, 13-Apr-05)
copyright Institute for War & Peace Reporting
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.”

For Sairan, 47, a resident of Sulaimaniyah, the psychological scars left by circumcision refuse to heal. “Even now, I can't get the screams, the struggles 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 anesthetic and little attention to hygiene. As a result, there is a high risk of infection and hemorrhaging. 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, 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 that God will be 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 some of what 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.
——
[archive-e:834-v:13-y:2005-d:2005-04-18-p:health]