HONOR AND VIOLENCE AGAINST

WOMEN IN IRAQI KURDISTAN

Previous Publication
Spaces of Diasporas: Kurdish identities, experiences of otherness and
politics of belonging
Minoo Alinia
HONOR A N D VIOL E NCE
A G A I N S T WO M E N I N
I R AQI KU R DI STA N

Minoo A linia
HONOR AND VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN IN IRAQI KURDISTAN
Copyright © Minoo Alinia, 2013.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2013 978-1-137-36700-6
All rights reserved.
First published in 2013 by
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 To my family
and
to those people who stand against oppression and
struggle for peace, justice and human dignity
This page intentionally left blank
 C ON T E N TS

Acknowledgments ix
Acronyms xi

1 Locating the Book 1

2 Framing the Historical and Political Context of
Oppression and Resistance in Iraqi Kurdistan 13
3 Intersecting Oppression and the Multiplex of
Violence against Women 31
4 Policing Patriarchy: Honor, Violence and Manhood 53
5 Women Opposing Violence: Room for Resistance and
Spaces of Empowerment 83
6 Forced or Arranged Marriage and Women’s Responses 109
7 Suicide as Protest 125
8 Concluding Remarks 145

Notes 165
References 167
Index 181
This page intentionally left blank
 AC K NOW L E DGM E N T S

I t would not have been possible to carry out this project without help
from a number of people. I would especially like to mention Choman
Hardi, Rebin Hardi, Awesta xan and their lovely children, and Najiba
Mahmoud and her family, for giving me refuge in their homes, for
their care, warmth and hospitality, and for providing me with contacts
and information, and many valuable discussions. I am also truly grate-
ful to Khalid Salih for providing me with some valuable contacts.
I extend my particular appreciation and endless thanks to all my
respondents, especially to those women and men who shared their pri-
vate and, at times, painful experiences with me, to the women’s shel-
ters and women’s organizations in Suleimaniah, Hewler and Sangasar,
and to the women’s rights activists who have been great sources of
help, information and inspiration, and shared their valuable experi-
ences. Special thanks go to the Centeri Rageyandin in Suleimaniah
for providing facilities for my access to some remote areas.
I also express my gratitude to my colleagues at the department of
Social Work, Mid-Sweden University, where I started this project, and
to my colleagues at the Hugo Valentin Centre, Uppsala University,
where I am currently located, for their encouragement and valuable
discussions.
My warmest gratitude goes to Palgrave Macmillan and especially
to the editorial director, Farideh Koohi-Kamali, and editorial assis-
tants, Leila Campoli and Sara Doskow, for their outstanding work,
their patience and their interest in the project, and to the anonymous
reviewer for invaluable and enriching comments.
Last but not least, I send my love to my dear distant family for
giving me strength and for their unconditional support in anything I
do, and to my dear friends for their friendship, love and true support.
I will specially thank Shamal Kaveh for helping me with translation
and spelling of Kurdish words.
M INOO A LINIA
May 2013, Stockholm
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 ACRON Y MS

IPC Iraqi Penal Code

KDP Kurdistan Democratic Party
KRG Kurdistan Regional Government
PUK Patriotic Union of Kurdistan
UNFPA United Nations Population Fund
 1

L OC AT I NG THE BOOK

I NTRODUCTION
On April 7, 2007, in the village of Bahzani, close to the city of Mosul
in Iraqi Kurdistan, 17-year old Doa Khalil Aswad was stoned to
death by several of her male relatives in front of a large crowd. Several
uniformed policemen watched the killing. She was killed because she
had fallen in love with the wrong man. She is not the only person to
have been killed for love, or simply for refusing to subordinate herself
to rules that limit her personal freedom, feelings and desires. The
United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) estimates that 5,000
women are killed each year in the name of honor (UNFPA 2012).
In Iraqi Kurdistan, 446 women were killed between 1991 and 2002,
and 155 women committed suicide between 1999 and 2000 (Najiba
Mahmoud’s private archive). In March 2009, 53 cases of violence
against women were recorded in Hewler, Suleimaniah, Duhok and
Kirkuk—the four main cities of Iraqi Kurdistan (Human Rights
Data Bank 2009). According to the newspaper Hawlati, 76 women
were killed or committed suicide and 330 women either burned
themselves or were burned by others in 2011 in three areas around
Hewler, Suleimaniah and Duhok (ibid.). Azadi hospital statistics
show that 434 people, 90 percent of whom were women, attempted
suicide in the city of Kirkuk between November 2011 and March
2012—and 124 of these women died of their injuries (Warvin). Both
men and women can be either victims or perpetrators of violence,
but the majority of the killers are men and the majority of the victims
are women.
Killings occur among people of different religious faiths, of differ-
ent nationalities and in different regions and countries of the world.
Such killings are the most extreme form of violence in the name of
honor but this violence is widespread and takes many other differ-
ent forms. The phenomenon has attracted more and more attention
in recent years, and has been the subject of political discussion and
2 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

policymaking. Because such murders have also occurred in Western

countries among groups with migrant backgrounds, the issue has
been featured in the political projects of racists, right-wing populists
and extreme nationalists in the West.
Fadime Sahindal, a young woman of Kurdish descent from Turkey,
was killed by her father in Sweden in 2002. She was killed because
she refused to enter into a forced, or an arranged, marriage to a
cousin, and also because she had started a relationship with a man
with whom she had fallen in love. It was not the first murder of its
kind in Sweden, but the strong focus by the Swedish media initi-
ated an intense and polarizing debate. The increased attention paid
to condemning and taking legal action against gender-based violence
within migrant communities—which had previously been tolerated
in the name of cultural difference—was a big step forward. Violence
against women within these communities had been neglected by the
authorities, and women’s calls for help were often not taken seriously
as there was a perception that such violence was “within the culture”
(Eldén 1998; Ertürk 2009; see also Burman et al. 2004). However,
the changes in policy and the related legal action were not accom-
panied by changes in the perceptions of the violence, and were not
the result of new knowledge and new definitions of the problem.
One discriminatory approach—a cultural relativist approach that
tolerated violence against women in the name of multiculturalism—
was replaced by another discriminatory approach—an ethnocentric
approach that justified ethnic discrimination and racialization in the
name of gender equality. Instead of criticizing the culturalization
of violence that allowed violence against women in the name of cul-
tural rights, it was cultural differences and the idea of coexistence
and pluralism that came under attack. Migrants from the Middle
East and North Africa were categorized and labeled as carriers of the
honor culture, even in cases where the perpetrators and the victims
of violence were born or raised in Sweden. Inspired by discourses
on the “clash of civilizations” and the “war on terror” in the after-
math of the events of September 11, 2001, violence against women
was used to legitimize and justify racializing discourses and practices
(Alinia 2011; Ertürk 2009; Keskinen 2009). A notion of cultural dif-
ference from a nationalistic and ethnocentric point of view constructed
a dividing line between “us” and “them,” and strengthened the racial-
ization of Swedish society in the name of gender equality and the rights
of migrant (Muslim) women (for further discussions see Alinia 2004,
2006, 2011; Å lund and Alinia 2011; Carbin 2010a,b; Eduards 2007;
Gruber 2007). This culturalist approach, which according to Razack
 L OC AT ING THE BOOK 3

(2004: 129) “enables the stigmatizing and surveillance of Muslim

communities,” has dominated Swedish public debate and policy
since 2002 and has been supported by the media, politicians and
officials (Alinia 2011; Carbin 2010a).
Two other, albeit marginalized, categories of definition of violence
in the name of honor have existed alongside these culturalist explana-
tions. One defines violence in terms of the universal problem of men’s
violence against women (Carbin 2010a) opposed to the culturalist
explanations’ focus on differences and particularities of this kind of
violence. Unlike the culturalists emphasis on difference, it emphasizes
the similarities between various types of gender-based violence. The
problem with this universalist notion is that since it defines the prob-
lem based only on gender and sexuality, it misses intersecting oppres-
sion based on class and ethnicity as well as the political, historical and
structural specificities that distinguish violence in the name of honor.
Hence, attempts to elucidate the violence often unwittingly end up in
culturalist explanations.
The other category of definition starts from an intersectional
approach. No existing Swedish studies of violence in the name of
honor have departed from this approach but, as noted earlier, a num-
ber of articles, reports and other scientific publications have criticized
the strongly dominant culturalist approach.
This book employs intersectional analysis to take account of not
only gender oppression but also the oppressions of class, ethnicity,
generation and sexuality. It departs from the experiences of victims,
perpetrators and activists in order to capture the complexity and mul-
tidimensionality of the phenomenon, and to contribute and deepen
knowledge on this issue. It highlights the mechanisms behind vio-
lence and murder in the name of honor, its historical, social and polit-
ical aspects; and the meaning of honor in relation to female sexuality;
and the oppressive structures of gender, sexuality, class, ethnicity and
generation in the case of Iraqi Kurdistan.
The empirical material was collected in Erbil and Suleimaniah, two
major cities in Iraqi Kurdistan, and in various smaller towns and vil-
lages near Suleimaniah during two months of fieldwork in 2007 and
2008. It consists of 30 individual interviews conducted with women’s
rights activists, representatives of women’s organizations and shelters,
victims of violence and the perpetrators. The language in the southern
part of Iraqi Kurdistan is Sorani, the southern dialect of the Kurdish
language, which I speak, and all communication with the respondents
was in their native language. Their words as set out in this volume
have been translated by me.
4 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

The Discourse of Honor and the

Culturalization of Politics
Presenting violence against women as an isolated phenomenon and
as a cultural characteristic of “the other” is what Ži ž ek calls the
“culturalization of politics,” according to which “political differ-
ences—differences conditioned by political inequality or economic
exploitation—are naturalized and neutralized into ‘cultural’ differ-
ences” (2009: 119). Culturalization that is defined by Yuval-Davis
as “the colonization of the social by the cultural” (1997: 66) does
not take account of the multiple processes of power relations at all
levels and in all the social domains of life. Moreover, the concept of
culture is very much loaded with racial conceptions and has been
widely used as a substitute for biology and race in the terminology
of modern racism (Azar 2001; Pred 2000). However, criticizing cul-
turalist explanations does not imply that culture and cultural prac-
tices are irrelevant. It is more about what is meant by culture or how
culture is defined and used as an analytical concept, how cultural
and social processes and phenomena are studied, and from which
position, since there are no neutral spaces or positions (Collins
2009; Mohanty 2003; Riley et al. 20081; Yuval-Davis 2011). Thus,
the aim should be, as Welchman and Hossain argue, to devote “par-
ticularly rigorous attention to the construction of equal and honest
engagements and alliances, and conscious efforts to avoid this being
or becoming for the ‘West’ . . . a particular and isolated problem of
‘the . . . other’” (2005: 14). Many scholars have criticized the “racial-
ized discourse of ‘cultural pathology’” (Werbner 2007: 170) for
ignoring historical and sociopolitical contexts and processes, and for
describing violence in the name of honor as an isolated phenomenon
essential to certain cultures and groups of people.2 With respect to
the media and policy debate on such violence in Western Europe
and the United States, with a particular focus on the Netherlands,
Germany, the United Kingdom and Canada, Korteweg and Yurdakul
point out that:

The debate took place in a context of racialization, in which these

immigrants have increasingly been constituted as different along the
intersecting dimensions of gender, religion and culture . . . Muslim
immigrants were often the primary focus of media and policy debate
even though these countries have very diverse migrant streams, includ-
ing non-Muslim immigrants who commit honour-related violence.
(2010: 40–41)
 L OC AT ING THE BOOK 5

It is striking how the perpetrators of violence and their culturalist

opponents, who stand on opposing sides, depart from the same per-
ceptions of culture and identity. They both agree about the cultur-
alization of violence, defining killings as culture and thus hiding the
governing structures of power and intersecting oppressions within
which this violence emerges (Alinia 2011). Perpetrators use culture
and honor as excuses and as a way to legitimize and justify killings,
normalize the violence and maintain existing power relations (see
chapter 4). Their culturalist counterparts reproduce perpetrators’
discourses by departing from their explanations without any further
problematization and analysis. Consequently, they define the prob-
lem from the viewpoint of the perpetrators and reproduce their honor
discourse and present their version as representative of a whole group,
country, region, nation and so on.
In order to distance myself from sexist and racist honor discourse,
I do not use terms such as honor killing, “honor culture” or “honor
violence.” These terms depart from perpetrators’ explanations and
are based on the oppressive honor discourse. In Sweden, moreover,
these concepts are strongly connected to the culturalist discourse of
honor and have become part of the vocabularies of racist and right-
wing populist parties. Instead, I use the term “violence in the name
of honor,” which although still not an ideal concept, is less problem-
atic. The concept departs from a broad definition and encompasses
various types of violence, including killing. This study is in line with
what Žižek (referring to Walter Benjamin) calls the “politization of
culture” (2009: 119). It seeks to identify political processes and vari-
ous structures of power and dominance that not only make violence
possible, but also encourage it. It sees the violence not as a cultural
characteristic essential to certain groups, but as an outcome of certain
social, political and historical processes, as well as intersecting vio-
lence and oppression of gender, class, ethnicity, sexuality and genera-
tion, that are continually evolving.
This study argues that what characterizes violence and murder in the
name of honor is its focus on the control of female sexuality. At the same
time, however, it argues that it cannot be seen as a problem entirely
related to gender and sexuality, isolated from the oppressive structures of
ethnicity and class. This violence is also strongly connected to collective
identity construction, boundary making and community maintenance,
as well as tribal social organizations and the drawing of boundaries
based on national, ethnic and sectarian beliefs and conflicts. Moreover,
in Iraqi Kurdistan, these processes have to be studied in relation to
6 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

nation state formation and foreign interference, and in the context of

almost a century of war, ethnic oppression, displacement, militarization,
state violence, dictatorship and national oppression, and of widespread
illiteracy and socioeconomic marginalization. These processes must
also be seen in relation to political structures, that is, the nature of the
state and the political system, the nature of Kurdish nationalism and the
Kurdish movement, and these actors’ gender politics.
The contextual framework of the study, in relation to the overarch-
ing organization of power and influence in Iraqi Kurdish society, is
discussed in chapters 2 and 3, with a particular focus on the implica-
tions for gender identities and relations, for women and for violence
against women in the name of honor.

L OC ATED E X PERIENCES A ND
S ITUATED K NOW LEDGE
This study is based on individual experiences of violence and murder
committed in the name of honor, and also of resistance and struggle
against it. There is, however, an inevitable gap between experience as
it is lived and any communication about it (Dolan 2002; Essed 1991;
Riessman 1993; Widerberg 1996). Experience involves a culturally
and historically specific context and, as Widerberg suggests, there is
a discursive dimension to articulations that provides a livid tension in
relation to the lived experience. This refers to the way people interpret,
describe and represent their lived experiences through discourses,
ideologies and the knowledge produced in their society. Another
important aspect of experience is its central role in the construction
of subjectivity. Our experiences based on our different “situatedness”
affect our knowledge, our perceptions of reality, the way we identify
and the way we relate to social and political processes (Anthias 2002;
Collins 2009; Skeggs 1997; Yuval-Davis 2011).
In order to properly understand violence and murder in the name
of honor in Iraqi Kurdistan, while at the same time challenging and
unmasking racist and sexist beliefs and stereotypes, respondents’ expe-
riences need to be studied in the broader context of power hierarchies
and the overall organization of power and domination in that society.
In this regard, experiences not only of violence and oppression, but
also of resistance must be seen within the “matrix of domination”
(Collins 2009) and the intersecting violence of class, gender, ethnic-
ity, sexuality and generation that frame constructions of manhood,
womanhood, honor and violence. Women’s subjugation, liberation
or emancipation is, as Gökalp puts it, “heavily embedded within the
 L OC AT ING THE BOOK 7

power relations that interplay at the familial, communal, national,

and global levels” (2010: 568; see also Collins 2009; Enloe 2000;
Mohanty 2001, 2003; Sharoni 1997; Yuval-Davis 1997, 2011). As
is discussed in the later chapters, in Iraqi Kurdistan, these processes
have historically been connected not only to local and national but
also to regional and international relations of power and dominance.
Violence against women is a universal phenomenon, although wom-
en’s experiences of violence and their struggle against it differ depend-
ing on where and under what circumstances they live (Collins 2009;
Ertürk 2009; Mojab 2004b; Mohanty et al. 2008; Yuval-Davis 1997).
It is impossible to find a unified and homogeneous female experience,
“particularly when historical patterns of colonialism and contemporary
global inequalities are taken into account” (Jacobson et al. 2000: 1).
Discussing the diversity of women’s experiences, Yuval-Davis points
out that Western women’s struggles began by claiming “their full and
equal citizenship rights” while “in the colonial South or wherever
national liberation struggles were fought, feminists became engaged
in the general national struggle” (2011: 109). Therefore, any analysis
of women’s experiences “must always be appropriately contextualized,
rather than being appropriated by universalizing notions” (Jacobson
et al. 2000: 1). Understanding the complexities of violence against
women in both its dimensions, according to Ertürk, is best captured
by “intersectional and continuum approaches” (2009: 61). Cockburn
(2004: 43) writes about a “gendered continuum of violence,” which
ranges from everyday domestic life to war. This means that violence
against women is inherently interconnected in peace time or in times
of war. Violence against women has both a universal and a particu-
lar dimension. It is therefore important “to see the particularities in
women’s diverse experiences without losing insight of the universality
of VAW [violence against women]” (Ertürk 2009: 61).
An intersectional approach challenges the modern/postmodern
dichotomy of ethnocentrism and cultural relativism, and stands for
politics and epistemologies of location, positioning and situation
(Collins 2009, 2004; Harding 1991; Haraway 2004). The epistemo-
logical basis for intersectionality is described by Yuval-Davis thus:

A development of feminist standpoint theory which claims, in some-

what different ways, that it is vital to account for the social positioning
of the social agent and challenge “the god-trick of seeing everything
from nowhere” (Haraway 1991: 189) as a cover for and a legitimiza-
tion of a hegemonic masculinist “positivistic” positioning. (Yuval-
Davis 2011: 3–4)3
8 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

I NTERSECTING O PPRESSION, P OW ER ,
K NOW LEDGE A ND R ESISTA NCE : TOWA RD
A N A NA LY TIC A L F R A MEWORK

The wider analytical framework of this study is very much inspired

by Patricia Hill Collins’s concept of intersectionality (2009). A sig-
nificant aspect of critical studies of intersectionality is their relation
to power and stratification. Intersectional analysis originally carried
out by black and other marginalized women is defined by Kimberlé
Crenshaw, who introduced the term, as “the multidimensionality of
marginalized subjects’ lived experiences” (Yuval-Davis 2011: 8; see
also Collins 2009; Anthias 2002). However, intersectional analysis
concerns not only oppression but also resistance and struggle. Collins’
study of black American women’s experiences discusses not only the
complexity of oppression but also the complexity and contradictory
nature of struggles when various forms of oppression intersect.
Among the key tools of empowerment and struggles against all
forms of oppression and social injustice are coalition strategies, recog-
nition of other oppressed groups’ experiences and, above all, knowl-
edge of the complex nature of intersectional oppression. However, as
Collins puts it, the relationship between oppression and the strug-
gles against it is far more complex, since resistance is also carried on
within the matrix of domination where the multidimensionality of
intersecting oppression, and the different situatedness and position-
ing of social agents, make a simple model of permanent oppressors
and perpetual victims impossible (Collins 2009: 292). A dialectical
analysis of power in relation to social injustice can be so explained:

When it comes to social injustice, groups have competing interests

that often generate conflict. Even when groups understand the need
for . . . transversal politics . . . they often find themselves on opposite
sides of social justice. (ibid.)

Individuals and groups experience oppression differently: as men or

women, poor or rich, minority or majority, young or old, of differ-
ent nationality, and so on. This also affects their perceptions of real-
ity, their knowledge and identity, their relationship to oppression and
resistance, and their ability to relate to other groups’ oppression and
struggles (ibid.). As Collins puts it, each group “identifies the oppres-
sion with which it feels more comfortable as being fundamental and
classifies all others as being of less importance” (2009: 306). Which
or whose experience is the one that matters also depends on power
relations and historical and political processes within a society. For
 L OC AT ING THE BOOK 9

example, in the case of Iraqi Kurdistan, as well as in many other post-

colonial contexts, experiences of gender-based oppression have been
subordinated to those of ethnicity and nation. As Yuval-Davis notes,
in such situations women often argue that there is “no sense in fight-
ing to be equal to the men in their societies, if even the men were not
free citizens of their own national collectivity and state” (2011: 109).
Focusing on the politics of empowerment for black American
women, Collins highlights the relationship between power and
knowledge, and emphasizes the importance of and need for “counter
hegemonic” and empowering knowledge based on their own experi-
ences (2009: 291–292). Oppression at firsthand for most of the peo-
ple who experience it is “not an intellectual issue” but “a lived reality”
that “is felt in the body in myriad ways” (Collins 2009: 292–293;
hooks 1994). However, struggle and change as a result of human
agency are possible when people begin to question the reality of their
lives. In order to develop a politics of empowerment, it is necessary
to understand “how power is organized and operates” (Collins 2009:
292). The organization of power and dominance, the arrangement
of intersecting systems of oppression and the matrices of domination
are historically and socially specific, and they must be identified and
outlined in relation to each specific society. A particular matrix of
domination, however, is organized around four interrelated domains
of power: the structural, the disciplinary, the hegemonic and the
interpersonal (2009: 294).
The structural domain organizes subordination through the regu-
lation of citizenship rights and through institutions such as school, the
legal system, the labor market, the media, and so on (Collins 2009:
294–295). The disciplinary domain manages oppression and power
relations through rules and regulations and “bureaucratic hierarchies
and techniques of surveillance” that aim to produce “quiet, orderly,
docile, and disciplined populations” (ibid.: 295–299). The interper-
sonal domain functions through routinized, everyday interactions
and practices that are “systemic, recurrent, and so familiar that they
often go unnoticed” (ibid.: 306–307). The hegemonic domain, which
appears to be a key domain, is about ideology, culture, consciousness
and knowledge. Hegemonic ideologies that justify oppression can be
seen as systems of “‘commonsense’ ideas” (ibid.: 302) that are deep-
rooted and internalized, and force oppressed groups to reproduce
their own subordination.
Collins quotes Audre Lorde, who suggests that: “the true focus of
revolutionary change is never merely the oppressive situations which
we seek to escape, but that piece of the oppressor which is planted
10 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

deep within each of us” (Collins 2009: 306; see also Fanon 1967).
An important feature of the hegemonic domain is the suppression
of the “free mind.” Hence, Collins emphasizes the “power of self-
definition and the necessity of a free mind” as well as the need for
“counter-hegemonic knowledge that fosters changed consciousness”
(2009: 304). In this regard, Collins also mentions the need for “safe
spaces” for women where they can recover, exchange experiences,
build solidarity, receive support, get access to empowering knowledge
and escape oppressive discourses and practices (2009: 293). The sig-
nificance of space, as Massey argues, is not first and foremost physi-
cal, but more related to power, since an important aspect of space and
spatiality is its connection with social power (1999: 291).
Power operates within various domains and in different ways, and
the violence it commits can take different forms. An intersectional
analysis of power and oppression therefore implies a broad definition
of violence that does not limit its understanding of violence to its
subjective and visible forms. Thus, this book starts from the wider
definition of violence elaborated by Slavoj Žižek (2009). Violence is
not limited to its visible and subjective forms, such as that which is
directed to concrete individuals or groups and committed by concrete
perpetrators. There is also systemic—or objective—violence that is
invisible, normalized and inherent in social and political structures
and institutions, as well as rules, regulations and norms. Violence can
also be symbolic, operating through language, discourses, ideologies
and beliefs which seek to normalize, legitimize and hide oppressions
in other domains. The normalized and hidden violence of oppressive
power structures, institutions and discourses is revealed first when its
mechanisms are exposed and when those who experience it start to
question it. By refusing forced marriage and exceeding the bound-
aries and norms reproduced by the oppressive discourses and prac-
tices of honor, women challenge the power structures and discourses
behind them. The violence that they are exposed to should be seen as
a response to their refusal to obey and their questioning of the nor-
malized, everyday violence in their lives.

D ISPOSITION
The book is organized around the experiences of the different catego-
ries of respondents presented in chapters 4–7. Each chapter examines
different themes and focuses on different aspects and experiences.
However, all the chapters are closely connected and, together as a
whole, provide knowledge about the phenomenon and its various
 L OC AT ING THE BOOK 11

dimensions. The wider analytical framework of the book concerns the

intersectionality of oppression and the resistance and struggle against
it within the overall organization of power and dominance in Iraqi
Kurdish society.
Chapter 2 sets out the contextual framework of the study. A brief
historical overview is provided on the formation of nation states in
the Middle East and their role in the subordination and exclusion of
minorities. The organization of power and dominance within Iraqi
Kurdish society is also outlined, around the role of the state, tribes
and the Kurdish leadership. Chapter 3 provides an overview of the
intersecting oppressions of gender, class, ethnicity, sexuality and gen-
eration in Iraqi Kurdistan, the way in which they influence notions of
sexuality, honor and violence, and how they contribute to women’s
oppression. Socioeconomic marginalization, war, displacement and
militarization, the Kurdish national movement, the role of religion,
the growth and strengthening of patriarchal tribal and kinship struc-
tures, and the normalization of violence are discussed alongside and
partly as a consequence of ethnic oppression. Chapter 4 explores the
experiences of perpetrators, using interviews with men who have killed
their female relatives. Concepts of honor, violence and manhood are
central to their explanations of the motives for their crimes. The major
themes of this chapter are the role of the state and the law, militariza-
tion and ethnic oppression, socioeconomic marginalization and reli-
gious conservatism in the production of a certain discourse on honor
and masculinity that is strongly connected to violence. Chapter 5 dis-
cusses the experiences of women’s rights activists, representatives of
women’s organizations and organizers of women’s shelters, and their
work for gender equality and against gender-based violence and kill-
ing. The focus is, among other things, on the importance of and need
for spaces for solidarity, mobilization and activism, as well as alterna-
tive knowledge on the impact of national/ethnic oppression on wom-
en’s struggles, and on the role of the state, the law, and religious and
social conservatism. It also discusses the challenges that activists face
and their achievements. Chapter 6 discusses women’s experiences of
everyday violence and threats to kill in their daily individual struggle.
A major theme of this chapter is forced or arranged marriage, which
is one of the main reasons behind the conflict between young women
and their families. Women are threatened with death by their families
and hence forced to take refuge in women’s shelters. Chapter 7 dis-
cusses the experiences of women who committed suicide because of
the high level of control and extreme violence they were exposed to in
their everyday life with their families. The involvement of mothers in
12 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

that control and their active role in the violence against their daughters
are discussed, as well as the role of the community. Chapters 6 and 7
discuss the role of poverty, socioeconomic marginalization, and tribal
and kinship structures, as well as the role of the state, the law and the
legal system. Chapter 8 presents a final discussion and contains some
concluding remarks.
 2

FR A M I NG T H E H ISTOR IC A L A N D
POL I T IC A L C ON T E X T OF
OPPR ESSION A N D R ESISTA NCE I N
I R AQI KU R DI STA N

I NTRODUCTION
The region of Iraqi Kurdistan, situated in the northern part of Iraq,
comprises the three governorates of Erbil, Suleimaniah and Duhok.
It has common borders with Syria, Iran and Turkey. Estimates of the
number of Kurds in Iraq range from 4 to 5 million, or about 23 percent
of the population (Izady 1992: 119; McDowall 1992a; van Bruinessen
1992a). Assyrians, Chaldeans, Turkmen, Armenians and Arabs also
live in the Iraqi Kurdish region. According to the official homepage of
the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), the region has a young
and growing population, 36 percent of which is under 14 years of age.
Only 4 percent is aged over 63 years and the median age is just over
20 (ibid.). Traditionally, the majority of people in the Kurdistan region
lived in villages and survived through farming and animal husbandry.
The region was known as “the breadbasket of Iraq.” Today, the majority
live and work in the three main cities of Erbil, Duhok and Suleimaniah
(ibid.). The region’s demography has changed considerably in recent
decades, mainly as a result of the destruction of villages and the forced
migrations to towns and cities organized by the previous Iraqi regime.
There are now seven universities in Iraqi Kurdistan, most of which
were established after 2003 and since the formation of the KRG.
Nonetheless, for decades, “school attendance for Kurdish children
has been difficult as a result of war and displacement” and “girls
have been disproportionately affected” (Begikhani, Gill and Hague
2010: 27). According to the Iraqi Family Health Survey, in 2006–
2007, 43.3 percent of women were illiterate, compared to 19.6 percent
14 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

of men. Some families, especially in rural areas and among unedu-

cated sectors of society, do not send girls to school but instead often
force them into early marriage or to help within the household (ibid.).
According to a report by the World Health Organization, in 2006–
2007 26 percent of women aged 20–49 years had been married before
they reached the age of 18 (ibid.).

A H ISTORIC A L O V ERV IEW

The region of Kurdistan comprises parts of Iran, Iraq, Turkey and
Syria, but there has never been a state of Kurdistan. The heart of the
area is the extremely rugged Zagros mountain range. A large part
of this region has been called Kurdistan since the early thirteenth
century, but it was not until the sixteenth century that the term
Kurdistan came into common use. Various non-Kurdish-speaking
minorities based in Kurdistan have been tied to the Kurds by net-
works of social and economic relations. Kurds are primarily concen-
trated in Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria, but Kurdish communities are
also found in Armenia and Lebanon. The majority of the people
in the Kurdistan region are Sunni Muslims, mainly of the Shafi’i
school. Some Muslims in the region follow Sufi orders. Other
groups are Shi’a Muslims, Alavi, Yezidi and Christians of differ-
ent churches. Religion has not been a major unifying factor among
Kurds (McDowall 1992a; van Bruinessen 1992b). Kurdish Islamist
parties have grown in strength in Iraqi Kurdistan in recent years, but
even they define their political goals and aspirations mainly within
the frame of Kurdish nationalism. There are a large number of dif-
ferent Kurdish dialects and subdialects, but Kurmanji and Sorani are
the main ones. Both are spoken in Iraqi Kurdistan—Kurmanji in the
north and Sorani in the south.
Traditionally, the Kurds were largely organized into a rough hier-
archy of tribes, subtribes and tribal confederations with strong pri-
mordial loyalties. Power in the emirates was in the hands of the Emir,
the Pasha and the Khan. They had their own territories, and their
own armies recruited from the tribes. Kurdish society has always been
heterogeneous, highly stratified and complex, with many internal con-
flicts and rivalries that usually affected social and political life. These
loyalties and local power relations, often linked to the strategic geopo-
litical location of Kurdistan, later became linked with those at the state
and interstate levels, and also operated in the context of world politics
(Entessar 1992; McDowall 1992b: 12; van Bruinessen 1992a: 34).
 FR A MING THE H ISTOR IC A L AND POL I T IC A L CON T E X T 15

From Subjects of a Multiethnic Empire to

Nation States’ “Other”
During the seventh century, as an outcome of the Arab invasions of
Persia and Anatolia, the Kurds became Islamized and were integrated
both religiously and politically into the Islamic Empire, with its cen-
ter in Baghdad.1 As Kurds gradually converted to Islam, the Muslim
caliphate in Baghdad opened up to them. Kurds became generals in
Islamic armies, while others acceded to power in subsidiary king-
doms. During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Seldjuk Turks from
Central Asia invaded Persia and Anatolia, laying the ground for what
later became the Ottoman Empire. By the end of the seventeenth
century, 40 large and small Kurdish emirates had been established.
Kurdish society went through a complex stage of differentiation. A
process of limited urbanization began in all the Kurdish areas, within
both the Persian and the Ottoman empires, but this process of socio-
economic and cultural development was inhibited when Kurdistan
as well as Armenia and Azerbaijan became the location for a war
between the two empires (Hassanpour 1992: 50–53). The bound-
ary between the Persian and the Ottoman empires was finally drawn
through the Kurdish region, and is now the modern border between
Iran, Turkey and Iraq. In 1639, part of Kurdistan was incorporated
into the Ottoman Empire and the other part into the Persian Empire
(Ciment 1996: 38; Entessar 1992; Vali 1995). Hassanpour argues
that war and the division of Kurdistan had two contradictory effects
on the national development of the Kurds:

On the one hand, they retarded the growth of the Kurds as a unified
nation and inhibited the formation of a united Kurdish state. On the
other hand, the enormous destruction and suffering caused by foreign
domination resulted in the genesis of national awakening in a feudally
organized society where loyalties were primarily to family, tribe and
birthplace. (Hassanpour 1992: 55)

There was a dual administration in Kurdistan throughout the time

of the Ottoman Empire. Some areas were administered directly
by local ruling families, which chose their rulers internally. Other
areas were governed by Kurdish princely houses, but the Sultan
decided which member of the family would rule. The relationship
between the Kurdish emirates and the Sultan’s empire was a com-
plex and occasionally volatile mixture of independence and deference
(Ciment 1996: 38). The Persian state, by contrast, initiated a policy
16 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

of centralization and a rapid destruction of the remaining Kurdish

principalities. The Safavids followed this with massacres and depor-
tations to the eastern borders of Iran (Hassanpour 1992: 53). In so
doing, they were initiating or enforcing stricter control of the Kurds
and preventing the establishment and formation of large, powerful
tribal confederations in Iranian Kurdistan (Vali 1995: 10).This also
encouraged the process of urbanization.
The military defeats of the Ottoman Empire during the First
World War by the British and the French produced a radical change
throughout the Middle East in favor of these colonial powers.
Different provinces of the empire were carved up into a number of
successor states, each under the control of one or other of the vic-
torious powers. During this process, the oil rich part of the empire,
which later became Iraq, came under British rule. The new order
was not accepted by many of the inhabitants of the Middle East,
although some minorities welcomed it. Socioeconomic conditions in
the region became highly problematic, but the colonial states were
either unable or unwilling to do anything about it. This gave rise to a
number of opposition and resistance movements. In spite of all local
resistance, however, as Owen states, by the mid-1920s the British
and the French were “the masters of the Middle East” (Owen 1992:
10–11). The situation for the Kurds also became more complex with
the disintegration of the empire, but what distinguished the Kurds
from other groups was that they were already strongly organized
along tribal lines and had a fairly independent position. The power
vacuum created by the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire mobi-
lized Kurdish tribes once again and encouraged Kurdish aspirations
for self-determination.
In 1916, the British and French governments signed a secret treaty,
the Sykes-Picot Treaty, dividing the Ottoman domains in the Middle
East among themselves. Sykes-Picot became the basis for the openly
declared Treaty of Sévres in 1920, which included among its provi-
sions the possibility of a Kurdish state, a state of Armenia, and Arab
states of the Hijaz, Iraq and Syria. British support for a Kurdish state
was based on its wish to control the oil-rich Kurdish province of
Mosul (Chaliand 1994; Ciment 1996: 44; Entessar 1992; McDowall
1992a). The treaty of Sévres was abandoned in 1923, however, when
the allies and the newly founded pro-Western republic of Turkey
signed the Treaty of Lausanne. The outcome of the new treaty was
the division of the Kurdish region of the Ottoman Empire between
the new states of Turkey, British Iraq and French Syria (Chaliand
1994; Ciment 1996: 44).
 FR A MING THE H ISTOR IC A L AND POL I T IC A L CON T E X T 17

Although the specific causes of Kurdish resistance and Kurdish

identity formation have been different in each country, an “unequal
center-periphery relation” has long characterized the Kurdish situa-
tion in these different states (Entessar 1992: 6). This center-periphery
relationship is characterized by socioeconomic marginalization.

Cultural and socio-political discrimination against an ethnic group by

the larger society is what Joan Nagel has called “unequal center-periphery
relations”. This discrimination has contributed to the enduring qual-
ity of Kurdish ethnic consciousness. The relatively greater development
of the centre vis-à-vis periphery, Kurdish regions and the subsequent
socio-political and economic inequality experienced by the Kurds, have
given rise to a condition akin to internal colonialism and to what Frank
Young has termed “reactive subsystems”. (ibid.)

“Reactive movements,” according to Entessar, are those which are

organized by the periphery in reaction to its exclusion from a state
controlled by dominant “ethnic groups.” Such movements emerged
among Kurds largely in the form of what Vali calls “autonomist move-
ments” (Vali 1998). These have traditionally been organized within
the system of tribes, based on primordial loyalties and local power.
Autonomist movements dominated the Kurdish political scene until
the mid-twentieth century, and the emergence in Kurdistan of mod-
ern political ideologies such as nationalism and Marxism.

Kurdish Identities, Experiences of

“Otherness” and the Politics of Belonging
Kurdish nationalism is quite a new phenomenon, closely associated
with the construction of nation states and national identity in the
Middle East in the period between the First and Second World
Wars (Chaliand 1994; Ciment 1996; Entessar 1992; Vali 1998,
2003; van Bruinessen 1999, 1992a, b). However, the conditions
for these processes and the ways in which nation states were built
were different in each country, and these differences have marked
Kurdish identity and politics. The “European-designed nation state
system” was followed by a period of European colonization or indi-
rect domination. The power, interests and strategic ambitions of
the European states involved primarily the United Kingdom and
France determining the content of the large structural changes
that took place during this period. The imposed boundaries were
in most cases drawn without regard to the distribution of people
18 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

and the state machinery, and the structured political system that
emerged in these countries tended to benefit the dominant eth-
nic groups and ignore others. As a result, a number of minorities,
among them the Kurds, started to challenge the hegemony of the
dominant groups in society. As McDowall says, Kurdish national
feeling was expressed in “a negative form: opposition to political
control by outsiders” (McDowall 1992a: 82). Based on primordial
and ethnic conceptions of identity and origin, a process of resis-
tance was thus suggested:

A historically and culturally defined zone of inclusion and exclusion

which persistently affirms the uniform identity of the Kurdish com-
munity by contrasting its ethnic origin to those of the surrounding
Arab, Persian and Turkish communities. (Vali 2003: 61)

This opposition to outsider control was strongly organized within

the tribes and principalities, and was an important factor that con-
tributed to the maintenance of a Kurdish identity and later to the
development of Kurdish nationalism. Belonging, or “an emotional
(or even ontological) attachment, about feeling ‘at home’ . . . becomes
articulated, formally structured and politicized only when it is
threatened in some way” (Yuval-Davis 2011: 10). Experiences of
otherness and resistance to oppression organized around a political
project have successively strengthened the idea among Kurds that
they are a distinct people. Yuval-Davis argues that the politics of
belonging “comprise specific political projects aimed at construct-
ing belonging to particular collectivity/ies which are themselves
being constructed in these projects in very specific ways and in very
specific boundaries” (ibid.). Conceptions of a unified and distinct
Kurdish identity and of a common origin, despite the many traits
that divide Kurds such as language and religion, and the existence
of a highly stratified society dominated by tribal elites, have been
important prerequisites for the continuity and survival of a Kurdish
identity.
Moreover, their geopolitical position between two powerful
empires drew Kurds into recurrent wars which, in turn, contributed
to an awareness of their position, their political significance and their
claim on or demands for political power. The Ottoman Empire, in par-
ticular, tried to win the support of the Kurdish principalities in war-
time with promises to respect their autonomy (Hassanpour 1992:53).
Paradoxically, these policies strengthened not only the Kurds’ idea of
 FR A MING THE H ISTOR IC A L AND POL I T IC A L CON T E X T 19

themselves as a distinct people, but also their rivalries and internal

conflicts as they allied themselves with different parties in time of
war. Kurdish nationalism is strongly influenced by the culture and
system of loyalties, which characterize a tribal system. This is most
obvious in those regions, including Iraqi Kurdistan, where the tribal
system and the corresponding organization survive. Kurdish nation-
alism as a modern political ideology has been developed in symbiosis
with the system of tribes.
The denial of Kurdish and other minority identities was a neces-
sary precondition for the construction of national identity in colonial
nation state formations. Through this process, Kurds were divided
between several nation states in the Middle East and became “oth-
ered minorities.” The political form and character of Kurdish nation-
alism, according to Vali, can therefore be defined by the dialectics of
denial and resistance. However, these nation states, and the official
nationalist discourses constructed to legitimize their authoritarian
rule and hegemonic political culture, varied in both form and char-
acter. Kurdish national identity has therefore been highly fragmented
since its inception because it is marked by the political and cultural
diversity of distinct societies (Vali 1998).
Despite these many differences, questions of identity and home-
land have dominated Kurdish society and politics. This is demon-
strated in the narrative discourse that emerged from the earliest
Kurdish novels, more or less in parallel with the formation of nation
states in the Middle East (Ahmadzadeh 2003). The Kurdish novel
usually depicts an ongoing war with central government, and the aim
of the struggle is shaped by the subordination and oppression of the
rights of the Kurds and the denial of their identity. According to
Ahmadzadeh, there is a “stagnation in Kurdish novels concerning
social relations.” This could more accurately be called a stagnation
in the Kurdish nationalist discourse, which is generally so preoccu-
pied by political questions that social questions are largely ignored
(2003: 297). Gender roles are also clearly defined in the Kurdish
novel. Characters in Kurdish novels “are mostly involved in a fight
against external enemies who deny their national existence and iden-
tity” and these figures (usually men) are described as idealized heroes
who do not display any inner conflicts (ibid.). Homeland is usually
symbolized in the shape of mothers who play no functional role but
are either passive, deprived, sick or dying. These “helpless mothers,”
according to Ahmadzadeh, are an expression of the lack of a Kurdish
homeland (299).
20 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

I R AQI KURDISTA N : I MPREGNATED BY

R ESISTING E THNIC O PPRESSION
As noted above, Iraq was established by the British in 1920. It was
made up of the three ancient Ottoman provinces of Basra, Baghdad
and, later, the oil-rich Mosul, with its large Kurdish population. The
Kurdish cities were occupied by British forces under the British man-
date from the League of Nations from 1920 until 1932. British policy
in Iraq is described by Efrati (2012) as retribalization, since it exten-
sively revived tribal and kinship structures and empowered tribal
leaders and sheikhs by giving them power and influence in order to
attract their loyalty and secure British rule. In many cases, these were
not genuine tribes or leaders but warlords who could serve the inter-
ests of the colonialists. As discussed below, Saddam Hussein imple-
mented a similar policy in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Under the Ottomans in the mid-nineteenth century, Midhat Pasha,
the Governor of Baghdad, launched a reform program to centralize
and modernize the bureaucracy, the economy, education, law, land-
holding and so on. The reforms also secured individual rights and
limited the influence of tribal leaders (Efrati 2012). When the British
took over after the break-up of the Ottoman Empire, these reforms
were reversed. The British appointed tribal leaders and sheikhs as local
warlords and gave them the right of ownership of land in their rul-
ing areas (ibid.). Efrati describes the abolition of landholding and the
situation of peasants under the British thus: “British policy ultimately
contributed to the transformation of a free cultivating peasantry into
a population of serfs tied to the land as sharecroppers” (ibid.: 5). The
retribalization of Iraq under British rule also led to the appointment of
local Kurdish leaders as administrators under the supervision of British
advisers. However, the relationship between the Kurds, on the one
hand, and the British and their client government in Baghdad, on the
other, did not prosper, and Kurdish dissatisfaction with and resistance
to Iraqi-British rule increased. When in 1922, as an outcome of the
Treaty of Lausanne, Mosul was made part of Iraq, Kurds, against their
will, became subjects of the state of Iraq under British imperial rule
(Entessar 1992; Ciment 1996; Chaliand 1994). Kurdish demands for
self-determination were rejected and periods of negotiation and war
have followed ever since. The Kurds have recurrently been involved in
guerrilla warfare against the government and guerrillas have periodi-
cally controlled large parts of Kurdish northern Iraq.
Iraq has gone through dramatic changes, including recurrent
military coups, occupations and alterations to the political system.
 FR A MING THE H ISTOR IC A L AND POL I T IC A L CON T E X T 21

The Kurds in Iraq have experienced abrupt changes in the state’s

attitude to the Kurdish issue. The Kurdish regions have occasion-
ally been granted limited autonomy by Iraqi governments, but more
often the state’s wish for political hegemony and the Kurds’ wish
for political autonomy have led to conflict (Chaliand 1994; Entessar
1992). In the mid-1950s, the pro-British Hashemite monarchy in
Iraq came to an end in a military coup led by General Abdul Karim
Ghasem. In 1958, a provisional constitution recognized Arabs and
Kurds as partners in Iraq for the first time. However, the actual
constitution, while stating that Arabs and Kurds were considered
partners in the country, reaffirmed the country’s place as an integral
part of the Arab nation. In its early years, Ghasem’s regime allowed
Kurdish cultural activities and legalized the Kurdistan Democratic
Party (KDP), but it rejected demands for total political autonomy for
Kurdistan (ibid.).
Kurds in Iraq have enjoyed greater cultural rights than Kurds in
Iran and Turkey, but they have also experienced recurrent wars and
armed conflicts, genocide, mass deportations, chemical warfare, mass
executions and human rights violations on an enormous scale. The
rule of the Ba’ath regime (1968–2003) was the most challenging and
the most devastating for Iraqi Kurds. When the war between Iran and
Iraq ended in 1988, Saddam Hussein unleashed the anfal campaign, 2
a new and extensive program of Arabization and genocide, on the
Kurdish population. During the offensives, over 2,600 villages were
destroyed and an estimated 100 thousand civilians were murdered
(Hardi 2011: 13). Women, children and elders who remained were
“forcibly relocated to housing complexes on the main highways and
were left without compensation or support” (ibid.). Hardi writes that
in many cases Kurdish villagers were transported to concentration
camps, where the men were executed and the women and children
were deported to camps in other parts of Iraq. One outcome of the
systematic mass killing of young men is that women in Iraqi Kurdistan
outnumber men. There are a large number of widows, especially Anfal
widows who lost their husbands during the campaign (ibid.). There
were also many incidents of the use of chemical weapons, of which
the bombing of the town of Halabdja when 5,000 people died stands
as the most notorious one. As a consequence of the anfal campaign,
the Kurdish rebellion collapsed and a large number of people fled to
Iran and Turkey. The invasion of Kuwait by Iraq in 1990 created a
new situation for the Kurds in Iraq. In March 1991, an uprising in
Kurdistan brought the whole of northern Iraq under the control of
the Kurds. However, Saddam Hussein was not defeated and it soon
22 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

became clear that this rebellion too would end in disaster. The popu-
lation fled en masse to neighboring countries (Chaliand 1994). In
order to prevent the mass flight and alleviate the disaster, in 1991, the
United Kingdom, France and the United States used United Nations
Security Council resolution 688 to establish a no-fly zone as a “safe
haven” in northern Iraq. The Kurdish political parties organized an
election for a national assembly and established control over northern
Iraq. After the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, the situation in Iraqi
Kurdistan once again appeared on the international political agenda.
The two main Kurdish parties, the KDP and the Patriotic Union of
Kurdistan (PUK), supported the invasion and cooperated in the war
against the Iraqi regime. Since 2003, these two parties have ruled
Iraqi Kurdistan under the umbrella of the KRG.
The sheiks of Barzan have played a central role in the Kurdish
nationalist movement in Iraq since the 1930s. Before the establish-
ment of the PUK, the Kurdish political scene was totally dominated
by the KDP and the personality of Mustafa Barzani (Chaliand 1994).
The PUK was set up in the mid-1970s, made up mainly of followers
of Jalal Talabani, who had left the KDP, the Marxist–Leninist Komala
and the Socialist Movement of Kurdistan. The PUK and the KDP
have been the dominant political organizations in Iraqi Kurdistan
ever since. The relationship between Talabani and Barzani has been
volatile, and the two parties were in armed conflict with each other
in the late 1990s (Entessar 1992: 75–80; Chaliand 1994). However,
they became closer and started to cooperate as a result of the new
political situation in Iraq after 2003.

THE S TATE , THE TRIBE , KURDISH

L E A DERSHIP A ND WOMEN ’S OPPRESSION
According to Efrati, knowledge of Iraq’s development, its regimes
and modes of governance, and an outline of the political and socio-
economic realities that emerged during the period from when the
British took over in the 1920s until the military coup that overthrew
the Hashemite government in 1958 is essential in order to under-
stand the context in which the old “new” state of Iraq constructed
women as second-class citizens after 2003 (2012: 1).

Under the Americans, who came to Iraq armed with a vision of creat-
ing a free and democratic state in which women’s rights are enshrined,
religious and tribal leaders were propped up, and the floodgates were
opened to retribalize and resubordinate women. (Efrati 2012: 171)
 FR A MING THE H ISTOR IC A L AND POL I T IC A L CON T E X T 23

The British and later the US occupation contributed to a revival and

the strengthening of tribal and sectarian power and conflicts, which
have been extremely harmful to society in general and for women
in particular. Throughout the country’s history, there has been a
process of continual struggle between women’s rights activists and
their allies, both within and outside the government, fighting for the
rights of women in society, family and politics, and the various patri-
archal religious and tribal leaders, often with the indulgence of British
and US representatives, fighting to subordinate women and exclude
them from social and political power. The problem remains and the
struggle continues. Efrati argues: “Similar threads running through
past British and present American policies influenced the fate of two
generations of Iraqi women separated by half a century” (ibid.: 163).
It is within this wider framework that Iraqi Kurdish women’s
oppression and struggles must be situated. However, the situation
of Kurdish women is different because for them both the oppres-
sion and the struggle have also had other dimensions. As members
of an oppressed minority located in a region dominated by war and
militarization, destruction, mass violence and ethnic cleansing, their
experiences of oppression and struggle are even more complex.
The various domains of power in Iraqi Kurdistan are highly com-
plex and multilayered, and the boundaries between them are quite
diffuse. The region has been a battleground for almost a century.
Resistance against the state and its politics of ethnic oppression has
dominated everyday life and also the identities and politics of the
Kurds, since the formation of Iraq. It has been a society where the
state has been the enemy and the presence of the state has often meant
fear, death and destruction. Three main power centers can be identi-
fied in Iraqi Kurdistan: the state, tribes and the Kurdish national-
ist leadership. These have dominated in different ways, in different
domains and to different extents, and pursued power and influence.
Oppression and violence against women have been structured, pur-
sued, maintained and normalized by each of them in different ways
and on different scales. Although they are not equally responsible,
they have been the main actors with various degrees of power and
responsibility, and the ability to make a difference, in Iraqi Kurdish
society and politics. Violence against and the killing of women have,
for decades, been institutionalized and legitimized by the state’s gen-
der and sexual politics, the legal system’s support for killings and
the media and other institutions, all under strict state control. In
addition, there are patriarchal tribal and kinship structures with
their gender roles and relations based on the strict control of female
24 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

sexuality, marriage and reproduction, and the Kurdish leadership has

not only neglected gender equality but also actively participated in
women’s subordination in a multitude of ways. As people with signifi-
cant influence and authority in the hegemonic domain of power in
Iraqi Kurdistan, Kurdish nationalist leaders might have been able to
bring about change in women’s situation, but they did not do so.
However, the role of the state is much more crucial. The legal sys-
tem, the media, the education system and all the social and political
institutions have been under the control of the state. Even though, as
Yuval-Davis argues, the state is not unitary in its practices, intentions
or effects, “there is a need to retain the state as a separate sphere,
‘a body of institutions which are centrally organized around the
intentionality of control with a given apparatus of enforcement at its
command or basis’” (1997: 80; see also Rai 1996a,b; Connel 2000).
However, the relationship between the “control/coercion twin” is
different in different state formations (ibid.). An examination of “the
individual autonomy allowed to citizens” in relation to domains of
power is important for the measurement and determination of the
social, political and civil rights of citizens (Yuval-Davis 1997: 83). The
important role of the state and of the law is also emphasized in stud-
ies and reports on various countries (Husseini 2009; Bakhtiarnejad
2009; Fair family law 2011; Ertürk 2009; Greiff 2010). In addition,
reports from Amnesty International (1999, 2004) highlight the obli-
gations of the state and the legal system and their important role in
violence and killing.
To understand the structure of power in Iraqi Kurdistan, it is nec-
essary to consider the process of nation state formation in the region
and its relation to the demands of Kurds and other minorities for
rights and recognition. Kurdish society has always been highly strati-
fied and complex, involving many internal conflicts and rivalries that
usually affect the individual as well as social and political life. As dis-
cussed above, the Kurds were traditionally organized into a rough
hierarchy of tribes, subtribes, and tribal confederations. These were
characterized by patriarchal and hierarchical structures, strong pri-
mordial loyalties, a leading lineage and a shared ideology of com-
mon descent, segmented alliances and opposition (van Bruinessen
1999, 2009). Because of their geopolitical location and the recurrent
wars of self-defense, group solidarity and mutual aid have long been
important functions of the tribe and its subtribes. As “a socio-political
unity,” the Kurdish tribe consists of several smaller entities such as
“clan, lineage and family.” Individual members of a group are related
by blood or marriage, and “marriage is not an individual choice but
 FR A MING THE H ISTOR IC A L AND POL I T IC A L CON T E X T 25

a collective affair” (Begikhani 2005: 218–219). Kurdish tribes share

a strong tendency toward endogamy, and the men have a preference
for marriage with their father’s brother’s daughters (van Bruinessen
1999, 2009). A large majority of the conflicts between women and
their families are related to forced marriage, and it is not difficult to
see the connection between violence toward and the killing of women,
and tribal policies and practices concerning sexuality, reproduction
and marriage. The significant role played by tribal structures has been
highlighted in many studies (Bakhtiarnejad 2009; Begikhani 2005;
Amnesty International 1999).
The power of tribal and kinship structures in Iraqi Kurdistan was
not weakened by the formation of a nation state in Iraq—it became
stronger. As van Bruinessen (2009) argues, the specific tribal forma-
tions that existed in Kurdish society in various historical periods were
the products of the interaction of the ruling state with Kurdish soci-
ety (see also Aziz 2011). This, however, is not specific to Iraq and the
Kurds, but is shared by all colonial and postcolonial state formations
(Yuval-Davis 1997; Ertürk 2009). As Yuval-Davis suggests:

It is misleading to see in the rise of the “modern nation-state” a com-

pletely different form of social organization from the “premodern”
ones. In many states, especially post-colonial states, for example,
extended family and kinship relationships have continued to be used as
foci of loyalty and organization, even when constructed as ideological
political parties. Political, social and probably even civil rights might
depend on the familial positioning of the particular citizen . . . In these
states, traditional social and especially familial relations continue to
operate and often either women do not have many formal citizenship
rights at all, or those rights are very minimal. (1997: 81)

The process of nation state formation in the Middle East is therefore

of crucial importance. The specific form and characteristics of the
colonial states have strongly influenced the sociocultural processes
and structural formations of these societies (Aziz 2011; Vali 1998).
The establishment of modern, centralized states in the region after
the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire did not lead to the dis-
solution of tribal and kinship organizations. Instead, tribal chieftains
became attractive partners and allies for the new ruling states. They
were also the main actors with the ability not only to survive state
repression but also to mobilize resistance and opposition against the
state. These new pro-Western and/or colonial states, often led by cor-
rupt elites, were undemocratic and patriarchal, and their main con-
cern was to maintain their political power by any means (Aziz 2011;
26 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

Mojab 2004a; Efrati 2012). Thus, they were willing to compromise

with the most conservative segments of society. Hence, Kurdish tribes
have been, recurrently, and in different periods, important political
actors both as allies and as opponents. Especially in opposition, they
have also been the only actors able to protect their members and cli-
ents against the state’s violence and brutality (Bozarslan 2004; van
Bruinessen 2009, 1999).
The establishment of nation states and the subsequent exclu-
sion of and discrimination against minorities, including the Kurds,
brought together two very different types of Kurdish opposition after
the 1920s (Bozarslan 2004). The first type was based on the large
urbanized, educated, middle-class Kurdish nationalist movement
formed in the late nineteenth century, which advocated a Kurdish
state (ibid.: 30–31). This urban movement also demanded women’s
right to education and involvement in public life as part of its nation-
alist project (Klein 2001). The first Kurdish women’s organization
was established in Istanbul in the early years of the twentieth century
(Alakom 2001). However, this movement was heavily persecuted and
dispersed after the establishment of the Turkish nation state. Many
urban Kurdish intellectuals and activists fled, were persecuted or
were silenced in different ways. One outcome of the unwillingness of
the ruling states to accommodate pluralism and recognize minority
identities and aspirations was that the conflict became more and more
violent, and the educated urban elite, to some extent, lost control of
the political dynamics to other segments of society—the tribal elites
(van Bruinessen 1999; Bozarslan 2004).
Unlike the urban Kurdish elite, this tribal elite, the Kurdish
chieftains and religious elders and institutions, was authoritarian,
patriarchal and primordialist. The movements they organized, also
called “autonomy movements” (Vali 1998) or “reactive movements”
(Entesar 1992), did not have a nationalist agenda. States were rejected
simply because they were states—not because they were non-Kurdish
(Bozarslan 2004: 30–31). They were characterized by their politi-
cal aspirations, and gaining local power was their primary political
goal and motivation (Vali 1998; Bozarslan 2004). Kurdish opposi-
tion led by tribal leaders dominated the Kurdish political scene until
the middle of the twentieth century, giving it a huge influence on
Kurdish identity, including gender, society and politics—especially in
Iraq (Bozarslan 2004; van Bruinessen 2009).
Iraqi Kurdistan was a war zone from the early 1960s (Mojab
2004a: 116) until 2003. Kurdish tribes held the balance of power
in the struggle between the state and the Kurdish opposition. Each
 FR A MING THE H ISTOR IC A L AND POL I T IC A L CON T E X T 27

side tried to attract the Kurdish tribes and mobilize them against the
other in a complicated pattern of alliance building and opposition (van
Bruinessen 2009; Mojab 2004a; Begikhani 2005). Initially, existing
tribes were formed into tribal militia regiments, but later units were
not proper tribes in the sense of a named sociopolitical formation
with an ideology of common descent (van Bruinessen 2009). During
the Iran–Iraq war (1980–1988), a considerable part of the Kurdish
population was incorporated into the militias, and this was consid-
ered a substitute for military service—permitting young men to stay
away from the front. The militia commanders (mustashar, translated
by van Bruinessen as counsellors) and the tribes commanded by them
appear to have become less egalitarian, held together by strong clien-
telist links rather than by kinship (ibid.). Under these conditions, the
tribes, or more precisely their chieftains, became more powerful than
they had been for a long time. This policy was similar to and prob-
ably inspired by the systematic tribalization of Iraqi society and poli-
tics pursued by the British and their appointed governments decades
before (Efrati 2012). This policy was also extensively practiced in
Turkey, in the form of the “village guard system,” which according to
Beşikçi was a systematic state policy of “forcing Kurds to kill Kurds”
(Beşikçi 2009). Alongside, “kidnapping of young women, highway
robbery, rape, racketeering, and taking over the land of those who
left the villages when they refused to become village guards” were
commonplace (ibid.). Moreover, Beşikçi states that feudal institutions
“like tribes, shaikhs, and large landholders have been protected by
the state itself because the state can prevent national developments
among Kurds with the tribes and shaikhs it has tied to itself” (ibid.).
The Kurdish leadership in Iraq “failed to create a viable, demo-
cratic system of governance” (Mojab 2004a: 129). Moreover, the rival
PUK and KDP concluded alliances with as many of the mustashars as
possible. This enabled the latter to bring a large share of the economic
resources of the region under their control and to continue to rule as
warlords in their own districts (van Bruinessen 2009). Thus, as van
Bruinessen puts it, tribes played more prominent social and politi-
cal roles in Kurdistan in the 1990s than half a century before (ibid.;
see also Mojab 2004a). These kinds of “political patronage” (van
Bruinessen 2009) strengthened the positions of the tribes and their
chieftains, and extended their social and political influence and legiti-
macy. As Mojab notes, in these processes, even Kurdish nationalist
parties “discarded the more positive elements of rural and tribal gen-
der relations—relatively free socializing of men and women and the
absence of veiling—and did not hesitate to treat the most oppressive
28 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

aspects of patriarchy as genuine national culture” (Mojab 2004a:

122). In their relations with the tribes, the two parties contributed to
a “major compromise regarding the status of women” (ibid.: 129). As
discussed in chapter 5, the power and influence of tribal and religious
leaders lingers on even under the KRG, and compromises on gender
and family politics are highly problematic (see also Begikhani 2005;
Mojab 2004a, Al-Ali and Pratt 2011). The harmful influence of reli-
gious conservatism and its notion of women’s sexuality as a threat
and a danger, which are discussed in chapters 4 and 5, have also been
identified in studies of other countries (Dogan 2011; Maktabi 2009;
Husseini 2009; Bakhtiarnejad 2009; Fair family law 2011; Begikhani
et al. 2010), where compromises between the secular state and con-
servative religious beliefs have obscured women’s individual rights
and freedom, undermined the position of women and subordinated
them within the family and society.
The Kurdish political parties have been either unable or unwilling
to show any genuine interest in the situation of women or in gender
equality (Mojab 2004a; Alinia 2004; Begikhani 2005). On the con-
trary, they have contributed to women’s subordination by relegating
gender issues to the future, and even by actions that directly under-
mine women. One example mentioned by many of the activists I
interviewed was that, during the war between the PUK and the KDP
in the late 1990s, both parties gave sanctuary to and protected abus-
ers and killers of women who had fled to them from the opposing
side. As the experiences of women’s rights activists demonstrate, even
in power the parties continue to compromise with both the central
government in Baghdad and tribal and religious leaders on gender
issues and the position of women (see chapter 5).
The growth of tribal power and its system of norms and values has
continued in Iraqi Kurdistan in parallel with war, state violence and
brutality, socioeconomic marginalization and poverty, militarization,
everyday and institutionalized discrimination, a lack of infrastructure
and a proper educational system, and the existence of laws that legiti-
mize and accept the killing of women.

S UMM A RY
The formation of gender roles and relations, and violence against
women, in Iraqi Kurdistan cannot be understood outside the historical
and political processes connected to the formation of the colonial Iraqi
state. Nor can it be understood outside the circumstances around the
formation of Kurdish identity in relation to the Iraqi state, which has
 FR A MING THE H ISTOR IC A L AND POL I T IC A L CON T E X T 29

been characterized by oppression and resistance. In such a context, the

formation of Kurdish identity around resistance to ethnic oppression
and the state’s oppression and brutality has dominated not only poli-
tics, but also everyday social life. Defending the homeland, the nation
and the collectivity have long been national and moral duties for the
Kurdish people, and especially for men. All other social issues and forms
of oppression caused, for example, by class and gender differences have
been overshadowed, subordinated and relegated to the future or even
neglected in favor of the resistance to ethnic oppression and national
unity. In such a process, the formation of gender roles and relations
has taken place in a context in which ethnic oppression, mass killings
and genocide, armed struggle, war and militarization have defined
the conditioning and framing of individual and collective identities.
Moreover, through these processes, tribal and kinship structures have
been strengthened and tribal leaders and warlords have become more
and more powerful in society and influential in politics. Consequently,
local and tribal identities and belonging, and tribal morals, norms and
regulations have become more powerful. This has been a consequence
of the policy of the state and its colonial masters’ making alliances
with the most conservative sectors of society. The family has been
the location for both oppression—of women and the younger genera-
tions—and resistance—in the form of the struggle against the state’s
violence and oppression. Women have been continually excluded from
social power by the state and the law, and subordinated within the
family and in society. Issues of gender and sexuality have been either
relegated to the future or totally neglected by a Kurdish nationalism
that, because of the political circumstances, has been strongly influ-
enced by tribal and kinship structures and traditions.
 3

I N T E R SEC T I NG OPPR ESSION A N D THE

M U LT I P L E X O F V I O L E N C E
A G A I N S T WO M E N

I NTRODUCTION
Violence in the name of honor, including killing as its most extreme
and ultimate form, is a particular form of violence against women.
It has a strong link with the regulation of sexuality and reproduc-
tion, in particular the control of female sexuality. It is also strongly
connected to defending and maintaining collective identity, and set-
ting or maintaining the biological and social boundaries of a group.
This connection to collective identity and community maintenance
explains why there is often more than one perpetrator involved in
the violence or killing. There are often conflicts or contradictions
within the group but, for the many reasons discussed below, critical
voices have been silenced. A proper grasp of this violence requires
contextualization and close attention to how notions of gender and
sexuality have been shaped by and are connected to the historical and
political processes and governing structures of power and dominance,
and their intersecting oppressions. The chapter outlines Iraqi Kurdish
women’s oppression and highlights the intersecting violence they face
within the overall organization of power and dominance, and how
it has affected and encouraged violence and killing in the name of
honor. The situation for women in Iraqi Kurdistan has improved in
the past two decades, especially since 2003, particularly, with regard
to their legal status, the criminalization of violence and killings, and
their involvement in public life. However, domestic violence against
women, including violence and killing in the name of honor, remains
a huge problem. In order to understand this situation, it is necessary
to look at the situation for women from a historical perspective, and
go back several decades.
32 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

WOMEN ’S O PPRESSION IN I R AQI KURDISTA N

The oppression of Kurdish women is generally located within the
wider frame of gender and ethnicity, but sexual, class-related and
generational oppression are also closely involved and interlinked. The
ethnic oppression that both women and men faced was not limited to
military brutality and political violence, but also involved socioeco-
nomic marginalization, poverty, low levels of literacy and the lack of a
proper education system, little social mobility and so on. In addition,
women have been oppressed by men, their families and communities,
and the state and its institutions. Women faced control and oppression
because of their sexuality, which was regarded as a potential threat or
danger in a context permeated by war, militarization and violence,
where the boundaries between groups were highly politicized.

The Pervasive Violence

Before 2003, the Iraqi state disciplined, structured and maintained its
power and oppression through strictly controlled institutions, such as
the legal system, the police and the military, the education system and
the media. Alongside the state were other powerful institutions such
as tribal and kinship structures—and, to some extent, the Kurdish
political leadership too, which was at times closely connected to the
tribal structures. All these actors contributed in different ways and
to a varying extent to the oppression of Kurdish women. Kurdish
women experienced exclusion, violence and oppression in all domains
of power, although to a varying extent and in different forms depend-
ing on their class and age, as well as their urban or rural background,
level of education and family situation.
Even in times of conflict and war, the state, tribes and the Kurdish
leadership were in tacit agreement about the organization and mainte-
nance of women’s subordination. For historical, structural and political
reasons, the organization of power and the oppression of women within
the family, kinship structures and the tribe have been regarded as pri-
vate domain, in which the state has not intervened. Even if it had tried,
it probably would not have been able to bring about any significant
change because of its lack of legitimacy and credibility. The Kurdish
leadership, by contrast, was able to make a difference even though it
did not have any legal or political influence, because, as leaders of the
movement, they enjoyed a high degree of hegemony and authority.
Despite their extremely vulnerable situation, many individual
women have resisted oppression in different ways in the interpersonal
 IN T ERSECT ING OPPR ESSION 33

domains of their everyday life. They have questioned and challenged

the power of patriarchal structures and the systemic and normalized
violence inherent in the structure of everyday life, but the structural,
disciplinary and hegemonic domains of power remained beyond their
reach. As discussed later, violence has been the main way of disciplin-
ing women to be docile subjects. While women obey the oppressive
structures and submit to their objectified roles, the power structures
and their systemic oppression remain hidden in a seemingly peaceful
situation. As soon as women refuse to subordinate themselves and to
reproduce their own oppression, however, violence and murder are
used as a policy mechanism and a disciplinary tool to keep them in
their place. It is mainly but not entirely the role of men to maintain
the gender order and silence opposition against it.
Demands on women’s bodies and sexuality, and consequently vio-
lation of their individual rights and freedom, become more direct
and even more brutal in situations conditioned by war, militariza-
tion, occupation, and ethnic and nationalist conflict, at which time
gendered representations of the nation and the collective become
especially important (Abdo 2004; Al-Ali 2008; Connel 2000, 2009;
Einhorn 2008; Enloe 2000; Gökalp 2010; Kanaaneh 2002; Mojab
2000; Nagel 1998; Ruggi 2000; Saigol 2000; Yuval-Davis 1994,
1997 and 2004). In such circumstances, men as “warrior-heroes” have
a “sacred duty” to defend the homeland, and this defense includes
“protecting—and policing—the sexuality and reproductive function
of the ethnic/national group’s women” (Einhorn 2008: 200).
On the connection between masculinity and violence, and its effect
on everyday interactions, Dolan argues that there is a “crucial con-
nection between state-level dynamics and micro-level behaviour, and
the ideas which make up masculinity are a key connector between the
two” (2002: 60). Militarization and violence in a wider sense reinforce
the effects of militaristic thinking on the whole of society, and on
the interpersonal domain of everyday interactions so that they affect
emotions, cognition and thought when violence becomes a large part
of everyday consciousness (Saigol 2000: 108; see also Gökalp 2010).
Discussing the emergence of violence as the major mechanism for
political struggle in the Middle East, including the Kurdish regions,
Bozarslan (2004: 8–9) links violence to “unequal power relations
manifested in material and symbolic domination” and argues that
violence “is a result primarily of political structures,” usually linked
to the nature of the states and their power relations. He believes that
“the constantly changing political configuration” provided no oppor-
tunities for Kurdish actors to develop alternative strategies to violence
34 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

(ibid.: 41). Thus, violence as the only option emerged as a result of the
political situation, power relations and authoritarian structures, and
this has had extensive social and psychological consequences: “The
criminalization of political, ethnic and sectarian identities and the
divisions resulting therefrom have contributed to the formation of a
‘tragic mind’ that perceives violence as the surest provider of justice
and hope” (ibid.: 15).

Subordinated Masculinity, Gender,

Violence and Manhood
Connel argues that “men predominate across the spectrum of vio-
lence,” which can be seen at the private, public and institutional levels
(2000: 214; see also Enloe 2000; Nagel 2005), although, “it is in
social masculinities rather than biological differences that we must
seek the main causes of gendered violence and the main answers to it”
(Connel 2000: 216). However, it must be pointed out that, as Yuval-
Davis explains, the character of modern wars has changed in the sense
that women are, to a great extent, included in armies—which makes
a simple division of men and women in regard to their relation to
violence impossible. She also points out, however, that despite these
changes, “it is the ‘warriors’ camaraderie,’ often also referred to as
‘male bonding,’ that is almost universally emphasized” (2004: 182).
As many other studies indicate, problems of sexuality and sex-role
socialization are intimately connected to national conflicts and war
(Abdo 2004; Accad 2000; Al-Ali 2008; Anand 2007; Connel 2000;
Einhorn 2008; Enloe 2000; Gökalp 2010; Ilkkaracan 2000; Mojab
2000 and 2001; Ruggi 2000; Saigol 2000; Yuval-Davis 2004). As
Nagel puts it, women are seen as sacral symbols or as the spoils of
war, the real actors are men who are defending their freedom, their
honor, their homeland and their women. (2005: 400–402). In both
cases, it is men’s honor and men’s interests that matter. This central-
ity of manhood and the masculinity of violence against women is
well demonstrated in the perpetrators’ accounts contained in chap-
ter 4. Becoming a nationalist, as Enloe (2000: 44) asserts, “requires
a man to resist the foreigner’s use and abuse of his women.” Specific
codes and regulations defining “who/what is a ‘proper man’ and a
‘proper woman’” are, according to Yuval-Davis (1997: 67), central to
the identities of the members of collectivities. Meanings of manhood
and womanhood are especially important when it comes to contexts
dominated by colonialism, ethnic oppression, war, and so on.
 IN T ERSECT ING OPPR ESSION 35

Feelings of disempowerment which result from processes of coloni-

zation and subjugation have often been interpreted by the colonized
men as processes of demasculinization and/or feminization. The (re)
construction of men’s—and often even more importantly women’s—
roles in the processes of resistance and liberation has been central in
most such struggles. (ibid.)

In addition, seen from a psychological and individual point of view,

“a man who feels threatened in his ethnic-religious-national identity
can also feel threatened in his masculine self, something that awak-
ens a fear of the feminine and of a loss of self” (Böhm and Kaplan
2011: 99). In contexts of war and militarization, “the ‘microculture’
of masculinity in the interpersonal domain of everyday interactions
articulates very well with demands of nationalism, particularly its
militaristic side” (Nagel 1998: 252). Male community members, as
subjects of the national/ethnic group, are supposed to have special
responsibility for defending and controlling the territory, and pro-
tecting women and children against the enemy and outsiders. As dis-
cussed in chapter 2, in the Kurdish nationalist discourse, there is a
duty of “the nation’s boys” to safeguard a Kurdistan that is portrayed
and symbolized in the shape of a suffering, sick and dying woman,
often a mother. Linking the national movement to bravery and man-
hood is a common theme not only in the Kurdish novels discussed in
chapter 2, but also in stories, poems, music, protest songs and every-
day language. Kurdish guerrillas are often referred to as kurekan1 (the
boys), despite the fact that women, if not in Iraqi Kurdistan then in
Iran and Turkey, have also fought as guerrillas. However, as Baxter
shows in the case of Palestinian nationalism, the nationalist move-
ment became masculinized when it was linked to the “achievement of
manhood,” and the capacity of males to take charge of female sexu-
ality took on patriotic significance, at least in some quarters (2007:
743, referring to Katz 1996).
Essentialist notions of gender become widespread and are strength-
ened in times of war, sectarian and racial conflicts, and “male privi-
leges in the community usually become more entrenched” (Enloe
2000: 5). On the other hand, men from subordinated minorities
and from competing collectivities feel threatened by a loss of control
over women, and this can make them more anxious and more deter-
mined to “police the behavior of women” (ibid.: 57; see also Anand
2007). Discussing masculinity and violence in northern Uganda,
Dolan (2002) makes a distinction between “men’s lived experi-
ences of their own masculinities,” which are necessarily multiple
36 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

and multidimensional, and their “lived expectations of masculinity,”

formed through discourses and social constructions of masculinity,
which are “contained in a hegemonic normative model or set of ideas
concerning what defines a man” (ibid.: 60). Dolan, therefore, sug-
gests a number of key issues which need to be taken into account:

First, men’s lived experiences are heterogeneous . . . Second, the domi-

nance of a single model of masculinity at the expense of multiple mas-
culinities makes men vulnerable to acts of violence against themselves
and their families . . . Third, this dominance can be taken as an indica-
tor of a “weak state,” in several senses . . . Fourth, hegemonic models of
masculinity are manipulated by states, notably by linking masculinity
with other key markers of identity such as ethnicity and race . . . Fifth,
the fact that conflict reinforces a hegemonic model of masculinity
both confirms and contests the notion that war results in a “crumbling
social fabric” . . . Finally, and linked to the previous point, the fact that
conflict reinforces a hegemonic model of masculinity goes a long way
to explaining why the gains in women’s emancipation, which some
have attributed to the social space created by war situations, are largely
illusory. (2002: 80–81)

As Dolan points out, this can also affect men in their private life and
in relation to their families. Men who resort to violence and have
“unhealed, non-worked-through traumas . . . perceive the world as
dangerous” and, according to Böhm and Kaplan, are “always vul-
nerable in close relationships, since they have a poor understanding
of possible alternatives to violence, in frustrating situations” (Böhm
and Kaplan 2011: 101). Explaining the production of a single model
of masculinity, Dolan argues that a weak state “lacks the political
will and / or capacity” to provide a context of security and protec-
tion within which multiple masculinities could emerge. Furthermore,
he argues that protection is closely connected to the state’s monop-
oly on the legitimate use of force. However, the state’s right to this
monopoly can only be legitimized and respected in the eyes of its
citizens when the state has the capacity and the will to protect all of
its citizens, “not just in terms of immediate physical security, but also
in terms of the ability to fulfill the non-violent expectations those
citizens have been socialized into” (Dolan 2002: 80–81). To neglect
the contextualization and location of experiences and, as Rai (1996a:
25) puts it, “to overlook the processes of state and class formation in
the Third World” contributes to Orientalist “ideology” and racializa-
tion (see also Enloe 2000: 44).
 IN T ERSECT ING OPPR ESSION 37

Mohanty et al. suggest that women’s “experiences of war and their

participation in it, either as actors or resisters, victims or perpetrators,
cheerleaders or critics, are always influenced by the construction of
gender operating in and around their lives” (2008: 5–6). Kurdish
women and men have faced colonial/ethnic/national oppression, and
have also been included in the struggles against them. These experi-
ences have affected their identities as individuals, as members of a
collectivity, and as women and men. For almost a century of ethnic
oppression, conflict and war, women’s bodies and sexuality were a
battlefield and “the universalized representation of conquest while
male bodies have been both masculinized in victory and feminized in
defeat” (Eisenstin 2008: 39).

Women Caught between Ethnic Oppression,

Poverty and Men’s Violence
The Iraqi state’s policy of systematic burning and destruction of
Kurdish villages during the Ba’ath regime led to massive internal dis-
placements and a forced migration from the countryside to the cit-
ies. The Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) reports on the same
thus:

By 2001, at least 600,000 people were internally displaced

mainly because of the previous Iraqi regime’s policies since the
1970s . . . According to a UNDP survey, 66% of people living in Duhok
province have been forced to change their residence due to war at any
point in their lives, while the figures in Suleimaniah and Erbil are 31%
and 7%, respectively. (KRG homepage)

Hardi (2011) describes how the Anfal campaign killed hundreds

of thousands of people, mostly young men, during the 1980s and
led to the emergence of an internally displaced, traumatized and
marginalized urban population (see chapter 2). Over 2,600 villages
were destroyed and survivors lost their farms, making them poor
and homeless—displaced in their own country. Women were badly
affected, not least as victims of rape by Iraqi soldiers (Hardi 2011).
The destruction of villages and forced displacement strongly affected
the demographics of the cities, creating a large marginalized urban
population. A large number of widows now live in poor conditions
as a consequence of the mass killing of men. There are no accurate
statistics but “there are suggestions that the number of Anfal wid-
38 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

ows stands at approximately fifty thousand” (Begikhani, Gill and

Hauge 2010).
Partly as a result of the recurrent wars and the destruction of vil-
lages, ethnic cleansing and forced displacement, a large urbanized
society and a strong tribal and kinship structure now exist side by side
in Iraqi Kurdistan (van Bruinessen 2009). This has had an impact on
society, the family as an institution and interpersonal relations. Rapid
urbanization has also caused many new conflicts and clashes within
families and between the generations, especially between younger
women and their families, as a result of the disintegration of old social
structures, the displacement of social relations and encounters with
the new urban environment, new media and education opportunities.
At the same time, however, as discussed above, family and kinship
were the only safe haven for individuals against state violence and
brutality. In Iraqi Kurdistan, as in Palestine (Baxter 2007), the fam-
ily became more and more the location of power as a result of politi-
cal and state violence, war and militarization. Moreover, as discussed
above, tribal and kinship structures gained more power and influ-
ence as a result of the political situation. Thus, despite the challenges
and changes of recent years, the extended family remains a “powerful
and important reference point” for identity formation and identifica-
tion, as well as for the distribution of political and economic power
(Begikhani 2005).
As is usually the case in postcolonial states (Yuval-Davis 1994),
women from the Kurdish elite usually have a stronger position within
the family and the community compared to the majority of women,
and some have even reached positions of tribal leadership (Galletti
2001; van Bruinessen 2001). There have also been wide variations
among different Kurdish communities, tribes and regions, for
instance, regarding marriage and divorce and the rights of women in
this respect (Aykan 2009). The connection between violence against
women and socioeconomic marginalization, political persecution and
the militarization of Kurdish society in Iraq is mentioned by Mojab
(2004a) and Begikhani (2005); and the impact of socioeconomic sta-
tus and lack of education is mentioned in the contexts of Jordan by
Husseini (2009), that of Palestine by Kanaaneh (2002), of Iran by
Bakhtiarnejad (2009), of Pakistan by Amnesty International (1999)
and of Turkey by Ilkkaracan (2000), Gökalp (2010) and Dogan
(2010). This does not mean that violence against women occurs only
among the poor and socioeconomically marginalized sectors of soci-
ety. All these studies, including the present volume, indicate that vio-
lence against women and violence in the name of honor occur in all
 IN T ERSECT ING OPPR ESSION 39

social sectors of society. At the same time, however, all these studies,
including this one, suggest that the problem is most widespread in
contexts of poverty, and low levels of literacy and education, as well
as other kinds of socioeconomic marginalization. Women from the
most marginalized socioeconomic sections of society—who consti-
tute the majority in Iraqi Kurdistan—suffer from early and forced
marriage to a large extent than women from the middle and upper
classes. For example, girls of a very young age are married through
bride exchanges (see chapters 6 and 7) because this is often the only
way for poorer families to have their sons and daughters married
without major expense. According to Begikhani et al. (2010), there
are a large number of unmarried women, and their number is increas-
ing for various reasons, one of which is “the high cost of marriage and
housing.” Once they are deemed to be beyond the age of marriage,
these unmarried women, irrespective of social background and posi-
tion, are stigmatized as qeyre kich (old girls).
In Jordan, Husseini writes that “most honour killings occur in
poor and uneducated populations . . . in rural areas, where economic
hardship and daily struggles are the rule” (2009: 43). In Husseini’s
study, like the respondents in this volume, “almost all of the men
charged with these crimes come from working- or lower-middle-class
backgrounds” (ibid.). The impact of education and literacy level, as
well as rural or urban background and tribal connection, are also
mentioned in studies from Iran (Bakhtiarnejad 2009), Pakistan
(Amnesty International 1999) and Turkey (Gökalp 2010; Ilkkaracan
2000). One reason for this may be, as discussed below, that men
with powerful contacts and more resources more often escape pun-
ishment, or their crimes remain undetected. Ilkkaracan (2000), com-
paring western Turkey with south-eastern Turkey, argues that, as a
consequence of socioeconomic marginalization, militarization, state
violence and ethnic and institutional discrimination, the south-east
region has remained extremely underdeveloped in all senses com-
pared to western Turkey. As a result, patriarchal structures remain
strong and violations of women’s rights and freedoms are much more
common in the south-east (Ilkkaracan 2000; see also Ertürk 2009;
Gökalp 2010; Sevér and Yurdakul 2001). Moreover, she argues that
the lack of trust in the state and its institutions, linked to its discrimi-
nation and violence against Kurds, means that women do not report
violence within the family to the police, the reason being the same
family and kin that may suppress and exploit women are also spaces
of safety against the state’s aggression and oppression, and there-
fore necessary for an individual’s survival. Another example of this
40 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

phenomenon is Palestine (Kanaaneh 2002; Ruggi 2005). According

to Ruggi, the family is a “fundamental building-block” in Palestinian
society and the family’s status is largely dependent on its “honour,
much of which is determined by the respectability of its daughters”
(2005: 394–395).
The above-mentioned studies suggest that violence against
women decreases with an improvement in socioeconomic conditions
and levels of literacy, and increases when these deteriorate (see also
;Bakhtiarnejad 2009; Fair family law 2011; Husseini 2009 Ilkkaracan
2000; Kanaaneh 2002; Sevér and Yurdakul 2001). However, a key
factor that goes beyond formal education is knowledge and conscious-
ness of oppression—how it is organized and how it can be opposed.
As Collins (2009) suggests, consciousness-raising, empowering and
counter-hegemonic knowledge and a free mind, as well as knowledge
of intersecting oppression and its consequences for oppression and
struggle, are key to women’s empowerment (see also Gökalp 2010).
Increased knowledge alongside structural and institutional reform
are also highly recommended by the above-mentioned studies as the
way to women’s empowerment.

G ENDER , H ONOR A ND V IOLENCE : THE

S E XUA L P OLITICS OF KURDISH WOM A NHOOD
An understanding of the relationship between gender and nationalism
is essential, since nationalism has been a major ideological and political
force in the construction of Kurdish identity. As Yuval-Davis argues,
nation building always involves specific notions of manhood and
womanhood (1997: 1). The problematic relationship between gender
and nationalism has been discussed and theorized by a great number
of scholars. Kurdish nationalism in Iraq, as discussed above, has been
closely connected to and strongly influenced by tribal, patriarchal and
primordial notions. For the purpose of this study, in accordance with
Yuval-Davis (1997), I do not define nationalism in terms of good or
bad, or ethnic or civic (see also Brah 1993; Özkirimli 2000). In assert-
ing that there is an inherent connection between the ethnic and the
nationalist projects, Yuval-Davis identifies three major dimensions of
the latter: (1) the genealogical dimension, constructed around the
specific origin of people (Volknation); (2) the cultural dimension, the
symbolic heritage provided by language, religion or other traditions
constructing the essence of the nation (culture-nation); and (3) the
civic dimension, focused on citizenship (Staatnation) (1997: 21). Even
though there are differences in socioeconomic, historical and political
 IN T ERSECT ING OPPR ESSION 41

contexts as well as variation in the organization of power in each soci-

ety, that heterogeneously affect the relationships between these three
dimensions, as well as the position of women and violence against
them, these differences are not essential when it comes to the position
of women in nationalist projects. A growing body of feminist work
upholds the notion that nationalism’s relation to women has not been
easy or problem free, but quite the contrary (see, for instance, Connel
2000, 2009; Eduards 2007; Einhorn 2008; Enloe 2000; Gökalp
2010; Kanaaneh 2002; Nagel 2005; Riley et al. 2008; Waylen 1996a;
Yuval-Davis 1997). These studies have established that “nationalisms
are profoundly contradictory for female adherents” (Jacobs 2000:
225) and they are not constructed in “a gender neutral fashion”
(Waylen 1996: 14). Women in nationalist ideology are, according to
Waylen, seen as: “(1) the community’s—or the nation’s—most valuable
possessions ; (2) the principal vehicles for transmitting the whole nation’s
values from one generation to the next; (3) bearers of the community’s
future generations—crudely, nationalist wombs; (4) the members of
the community most vulnerable to defilement and exploitation by
oppressive alien rulers; and (5) most susceptible to assimilation and
co-option by insidious outsiders” (1996: 54. See also Yuval-Davis and
Anthias 1989: 7).
The “symbolic constructions of women as the embodiment of
nation,” Einhorn argues, “decisively affect the behaviour and room
for movement afforded actual women,” since women’s sexuality “is
seen as threatening the idealized vision of women-as-nation” (2008:
200–201) and as threatening the honor of the nation and its men
(Nagel 2005). As shown in chapters 4–6, women’s position as a sym-
bol of the collectivity—the nation, the kin and the family—makes
them highly vulnerable since their bodies become the battlefield of
various group interests, ideologies and projects. Women face violence,
humiliation and murder “as part of the process by which the sense of
being a nation is created and reinforced” (Saigol 2000: 107).
Not all Kurdish women experience oppression and violence in
the same way, however, because they are divided along class, gen-
erational and other lines. As members of different social classes and
generations, in different rural or urban settings and different fam-
ily structures, and with different educational and cultural resources,
they have different experiences of violence both within the family
and in society. For example, studies in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin
America, the occupied Palestinian territories, Turkey, Iraq and the
United States of America show that many women have been excluded
from and marginalized in society and politics as members of poor,
42 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

illiterate or subordinated ethnic/racial groups rather than as “women

per se” (Collins 2009; Gökalp 2010; Ilkkaracan 2000; Kanaaneh
2002; Pankhurst and Pearce 1996: 44). In addition, women’s and
men’s experiences of violence differ depending on their membership
of different state and political systems (ibid.).

Bodies and Boundaries: Female Sexuality,

Reproduction and the Politics of Belonging
This book suggests that sexuality closely related to age and reproduc-
tion is a system of oppression similar to gender, class and ethnicity.
However, as Collins argues, the ways in which sexuality can be con-
ceptualized as part of intersectional oppression differ (2009: 138).
Here is how she describes one of these approaches:

[It] views sexuality as a specific site of intersectionality where inter-

secting oppressions meet. Studying Black women’s sexualities reveals
how sexuality constitutes one important site where heterosexism,
class, race, nation, and gender as systems of oppression converge. For
Black women, ceding control over self-definitions of Black women’s
sexualities upholds multiple oppressions. This is because all systems
of oppression rely on harnessing the power of the erotic. In contrast,
when self-defined by Black women ourselves, Black women’s sexuali-
ties can become an important place of resistance. (138–139)

This conceptualization views sexuality “as conceptual glue that binds

intersecting oppressions together” (ibid.: 145). Collins suggests that
“investigating efforts to regulate Black women’s bodies can illuminate
the larger question of how sexuality operates as a site of intersection-
ality” (ibid.). According to Collins, black women’s experiences with
pornography, prostitution and rape constitute specific cases of “how
more powerful groups have aimed to regulate Black women’s bod-
ies” (145–146). Although the experiences of Iraqi Kurdish women
and black American women are different in many respects, in both
cases regulating women’s bodies and sexuality, and oppression of
their individuality and agency emphasize, as Collins puts it, the con-
nections between “sexual ideologies developed to justify actual social
practices and the use of force to maintain the social order” (146).
In the context of Iraqi Kurdistan where, because of the political
situation and social organization, the drawing of boundaries (bio-
logical, social and political) between insiders and outsiders has been
extremely important, the control of reproduction and, thus, control
of female sexuality have been significant for the maintenance of these
 IN T ERSECT ING OPPR ESSION 43

boundaries. Since biological reproduction of the group/collectivity/

nation is connected with the female body and sexuality, various col-
lectivities make demands on women’s bodies and expect women to
live their lives and regulate their sexuality in accordance with the col-
lective’s goals and causes. Therefore, how women respond and how
they relate to their own wishes and desires—and to the will of their
families, their group, their nation, and so on—has been and remains a
matter of continual struggle about who has the right to decide about
women’s bodies. However, women “are not just individuals, nor are
they just agents of their collectivities.” Their identities and belong-
ing are complex and multidimensional, and therefore their conditions
and experiences as well as their responses are very different from each
other (Yuval-Davis 1997: 38; see also Collins 2009).
Demands on women’s bodies and sexuality can be stronger within
tribal and kinship structures, since control of reproduction is essen-
tial to their continued existence. As Sirman (2004) argues, relations
of domination and subordination as well as those of production and
distribution in tribal structures are organized around kinship. This is
also the case for ethnic collectivities where exclusionary/inclusionary
boundaries tend to be built around a “myth” of a common origin or
“a common destiny” (Yuval-Davis 1994: 410). Like tribal and kin-
ship organizations, membership of such collectivities is supposed to
be by birth. Hence, the maintenance of these structures and of their
boundaries, and accordingly loyalty to the family and kin, are essen-
tial and expected from all members. These relations based on geneal-
ogy and origin constitute the ideological basis for the existence and
survival of these collectivities and their boundaries, and also for the
construction of gendered roles, missions and the duties within them.
The connections between violence against women in general and
violence in the name of honor in particular with tribal and kinship
organizations, and/or ethnic oppression have been highlighted by
Amnesty International (1999), Bakhtiarnejad (2009), Efrati (2012),
Ertürk (2009) and Ilkkaracan (2000).
The sexual politics of Kurdish womanhood have been strongly
affected by and organized around resistance against outsiders’ control
and struggles against ethnic oppression, in which issues of identity
and belonging, and insiders and outsiders, have been highly politi-
cized. Tribal and kinship structures have been strongly involved in
these processes—and also strengthened. Accordingly, young women
of reproductive age have faced tight controls and restrictions on love,
sexuality, marriage and divorce to ensure that they give birth to the
right kind of children in order to maintain the boundaries of the
44 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

collectivity (cf. Collins 2009; Mernissi 2000; Yuval-Davis 1994).

Gender divisions, as Yuval-Davis argues, often play “a central organiz-
ing role in specific constructions of ethnicity, marking ethnic bound-
aries and reproducing ethnic difference” (1994: 413). In a society
like Iraqi Kurdistan—and even Iraq in general—where, because of
recurrent occupations, war and foreign rule, the boundaries between
insiders and outsiders are strictly defined, women have been expected
“to demarcate boundaries between communities and carry the heavy
burden of honour” in a heavily militarized society (Al-Ali 2008: 413;
see also Efrati 2012). As demonstrated in the respondents’ accounts,
women respond in different ways to the violation of their rights as
women and as members of marginalized groups. Some protest and
refuse to be subordinated while some “develop their own patriar-
chal bargains” (Yuval-Davis 1994: 413; see also Kandyioti 1988). For
example, Kanaaneh (2002) shows in her study that Palestinian women
in the occupied Palestinian territories respond differently to Israeli
family planning, including state provision of contraception, depend-
ing on their level of education, their individual life projects and their
socioeconomic position at the same time even as they all defend the
Palestinian cause and oppose the occupation. As Kanaaneh clearly
describes, in the process of oppression and resistance that character-
izes the Israeli–Palestinian relationship, women’s bodies and, more
specifically, their wombs are at the center of political processes and
struggles:

In the Galilee, too, there are significant links to be traced among gen-
der, reproduction, sex, health, nationalism, and the state. The height-
ened emphasis on women as reproducers of the nation in response
to Israeli population politics has limited female participation in the
nation and has further alienated women from institutions that could
improve their health and help them in their reproductive strategies.
(2002: 78–79)

This is related to a “paradox” that often characterizes the situation of

women from subordinated minorities: “Often, the particular culture
they would like to assert vis-à-vis the hegemonic culture includes also
elements which they feel subordinate them as women” (Yuval-Davis
1994: 414; see also Alinia 2004; Chakravarti 2005; Gökalp 2010;
Kanaaneh 2002). This paradox can produce ambivalence and contra-
dictions in terms of women’s sense of identity and loyalty, squeezed
between their ethnic and gender identities as well as their class and
social position, family background, and so on. As Kanaaneh points
 IN T ERSECT ING OPPR ESSION 45

out, the Israeli family planning project “to a certain extent” has been
able to “appeal to Palestinians beyond the realm of state politics” by
appealing to their desire for “‘modernity’ and middle-class status”
(Kanaaneh 2002: 78).

Female Sexuality, Gender, Violence and

the Politics of Honor
Among the social measures for controlling female sexuality and
reproduction, and maintaining patriarchal order, are moral codes and
obligations such as honor and namus —translated by King (2008)
as sexual honor (see also Akpinar 1998; Baxter 2007; Fischer-Tahir
2009; Husseini 2009; Werbner 2007). The concept of honor, as
opposed to the general conception, is neither new nor only a charac-
teristic of non-Western or “backward” societies (Blok 2001; Dogan
2011; Ertürk 2009; Husseini 2009; Nagel 2005; Sen 2005). Thus,
the anthropological model of honor and shame is criticized by a num-
ber of scholars for focusing exclusively on female sexual transgres-
sion ( Abu Loghud 1986; Baxter 2007; Werbner 2007). In addition,
van Bruinessen (2009), referring to the meaning of honor in Kurdish
society, criticizes the exclusive focus on sexuality. According to such
critics, honor is a broad concept that refers to “caste and class status,
to public reputation and to symbolic capital accumulated through
generosity towards guests and inferiors” (Werbner 2007: 167) as well
as to qualities “such as hospitality and generosity . . . male prowess in
poetry recitation . . . reciprocity, pride, dignity, valour, strength, emo-
tional openness, indirect communication, and conflict avoidance”
(Baxter 2007: 739). Dogan makes a distinction between two con-
cepts of honor, mainly in relation to violence. According to him, the
word honor in its general meaning, as discussed above, is often “gen-
der neutral” and linked to “reputation or prestige, and is not compat-
ible with violence or killing” (2011: 424). By contrast, the concept
of honor that inspires violence and killing “has both collective and
gender specific aspects, and it is closely associated with the concept
of shame” (ibid.: 425). Here, Dogan is referring to the problematic
anthropological model of honor and shame, but, nonetheless, I think
that his distinction in regard to violence and gender can be useful—
with some modifications. Thus, the concept of honor in its general
meaning is gender neutral and individual, and is not compatible with
violence and killing. The concept of honor that inspires killing and
violence is connected to female sexuality, masculinity and manhood.
It is also collective, since it exists within the framework of an identity
46 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

politics built around resistance to outsiders’ control and domina-

tion. Honor in this latter meaning is also called namus (Fischer-Tahir
2009; King 2008).
As discussed above, what distinguishes violence and killings moti-
vated by the defense of honor is the strong control and regulation of
female sexuality. An important aspect of the control of female sexu-
ality in Iraqi Kurdistan is the almost century-long history of ethnic
oppression and resistance to it, in which boundary making and com-
munity maintenance around the politics of belonging have been of
crucial importance. In these processes of oppression and resistance,
women—as the symbolic embodiment of the nation, territory and
collectivity—and their bodies, sexuality and reproductive capacity
have been the battlefield on which ethnicity, gender, class and genera-
tional oppression converge. Moreover, the growth of tribal and kin-
ship structures and their power over or influence on Kurdish identity
and politics have also helped to increase control over and the subor-
dination of female sexuality. Even though the political and histori-
cal situations are very different, the significance of tribal and kinship
organizations, and of ethnic marginalization and oppression, to the
occurrence of violence against Kurdish women has been noted in both
Iran (Bakhtiarnejad 2009) and Turkey (Ilkaracan 2000). The strong
connection between honor, manhood, sexuality and violence is also
clearly demonstrated in the perpetrators’ accounts in chapter 4, and
highlighted in the case of Turkey (Dogan 2010, 2011) and Jordan
(Husseini 2009).
I argue that honor in its collective and violent meaning, as a motive
and excuse for the control, violation and killing of women, should
be seen as a political discourse aimed at maintaining and securing
patriarchal power by subordinating women and controlling their sex-
uality. Moreover, the striking similarities between perpetrators’ nar-
ratives and their motives for killing, irrespective of their nationalities
and location (see chapter 4; see also Dogan 2011; Husseini 2009),
strengthen this argument and provide proof of the existence of such
a strong and hegemonic discourse. Neither the female respondents
who had experienced violence nor the activists explained the violence
and threats as related to honor. Instead, they talked about concrete
acts of violence and control committed in the name of honor, such as
forced marriage or threats to kill, linked to sexual affairs, falling in
love, refusing a forced marriage or refusing to submit to their will and
wishes. They talked about strong restrictions on their behavior and
personal freedom, physical and psychological violence, and threats
to kill and actual killings (see chapters 5–7). In stark contrast, honor
 IN T ERSECT ING OPPR ESSION 47

was a word frequently mentioned by the perpetrators, who explained

their crimes by connecting them to honor, culture and religion (see
chapter 4). Thus, connecting violence with culture, honor and hon-
orableness as a discourse of patriarchal power is the perpetrators’ dis-
course and should be seen as such—not as the culture of a society or
a people. To define this kind of crime and killing in terms of culture
and honor is to become a megaphone for the killers of women by
repeating exactly what they want us to believe.
The honor discourse imbues and binds together structural, disci-
plinary and interpersonal domains of power, operated, reproduced and
maintained through people’s daily interactions, communications and
actions, in institutional practices, in state policy and legislation, and in
political discourses and projects.

The Polluting Womanhood

An important and related aspect of violence in the name of honor is the
notion of female sexuality as potentially dangerous, which is common
within both nationalist ideology and conservative religious thought
and discourses (Bakhtiarnejad 2009; Dogan 2011; Husseini 2009;
Mernissi 2000). Women who faced violence did not mention religion
as an important factor, but religion and its influence on gender rela-
tions and the status of women was often mentioned by the activists.
Religion and honor were also used by some of the perpetrators to
legitimize and excuse the killing of women. However, some perpetra-
tors in other studies (Dogan 2011; Husseini 2009) admit that what
they did was not compatible with Islam, but claim that they had to act
in order to be respected as a proper man. Killing in the name of honor
is not recommended or encouraged by any religion (Bakhtiarnejad
2009; Dogan 2011; Ertürk 2009; Husseini 2009). However, as these
authors also point out, this does not make religion irrelevant to the
occurrence of violence and killing in the name of honor.
Dogan argues that in an Islamic context rules regulating “wom-
en’s sexuality and the proprieties of their behavior, whether sexual
or non-sexual, are deeply rooted in primary religious materials”:
the Qur’an, “the Hadith —the traditions, sayings, and deeds of
Prophet Mohammad; and Tafsir —exegesis of the Qur’an” (2011:
427). Although violence and killing in the name of honor is not
an Islamic issue, Muslim communities, according to Dogan, are
more vulnerable since conservative and orthodox interpretations
of the Qur’an and the hadith dominate in many parts of Islamic
world, according to which women are the second sex, foolish and
48 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

the source of pollution (ibid.: 428–432; see also Bakhtiarnejad

2009). Dogan (2011) argues that “non-orthodox and liberal voices
are quite unheard,” which means that an environment has been
created that is conducive for Muslim men “to perceive that women
are subordinate to men, and that female relatives, either by blood
or by marriage, are the personal property of males” (Dogan 2011:
434). Accordingly, the “social status of women and their sexuality
have ostensibly been reconstructed as a source of “potential stress”
or “potential threat” to family honour” in dominant orthodox
and conservative Islamic interpretations (ibid.: 423). Dogan states
that conservative and liberal interpretations of the Qur’anic verses
give rise to very different notions of and policies toward women,
their sexuality and their individual rights. This is endorsed by
many Muslim thinkers and other scholars (e.g., Fazlhashemi 2008;
Wadud 1992; Yuval-Davis 2011).
Religion has not historically been a major identity marker or political
force in Kurdish society. However, like other parts of the Middle East,
religion is becoming more influential in the state and in politics at the
national and regional levels in Iraq. In Iraqi Kurdistan, two steadily
growing Islamist Kurdish parties with conservative notions of gender
and sexuality have had a great impact in the Kurdish regional parlia-
ment, particularly on civil and family law (see chapters 4 and 5). Activists
describe how these political parties, together with religious elders, have
blocked attempts to reform family law on matters such as polygamy,
heredity and divorce. As Yuval-Davis infers—which is also demon-
strated in Islamist Kurdish women’s accounts in chapters 4 and 5—one
major aspect of radical Islamic identity politics, within the framework
of the “clash of civilizations” is to attack feminism, women’s rights and
gender equality by labeling them “Western culture” (2011: 134–144).
The killing of women is not religious, but the impact of fundamental-
ist and conservative interpretations of religion cannot be denied, since
they present female sexuality as a danger and a threat. Such ideas can
be the building blocks on which violence, humiliation and killing can
be excused and legitimized in the name of Islam or God.

Legalized Killings and Women’s Legal Status

The situation of women and their legal status in Iraq cannot be
described in terms of a linear development (Al-Ali 2008; Efrati 2012).
According to Efrati, Iraqi family law has been “a site of struggle and
subordination” in the state of Iraq since the country was born in the
early years of the twentieth century. Women’s subordination within
 IN T ERSECT ING OPPR ESSION 49

the family and society has been something that all parts of society
and all power centers seem to have agreed on, except for short periods
thanks to women’s struggles, in a society marked by recurrent for-
eign rule, invasions and military coups, as well as internal divisions,
conflicts and wars. Women’s achievements, struggles and efforts have
often been attacked in any new political situation, invasion, coup
or change in political leadership. Developments in the situation for
women always seem to move one step forward and two steps back-
ward. Discussing the situation of women after the US-led invasion in
2003, Efrati states that after more than half a century, the struggle by
women’s rights activists, to a large extent, is about the same issues as
those that concerned activists during the Hashemite period in early
twentieth century (Efrati 2012: 163). As a direct outcome of the
enforcement of tribal law and conservative Islamic law, for example,
“in Basra alone since the beginning of that year [2012] eight hundred
women found themselves in fasl marriage—handed over in the settle-
ment of disputes” (2012: 167).
It is in this larger political context that the situation of Kurdish
women with regard to the legal system must be discussed. Since
1990, and especially since 2003, the legal status of Kurdish women
has improved and their opportunities for activism and participation
in public and political life have greatly increased. The law has been
reformed in favor of women to some extent, although killings and vio-
lence against women are still a big problem. However, the Iraqi legal
system remains the foundation of all law in the Kurdistan region, and
thus these achievements cannot be taken for granted given the situ-
ation in the rest of the country. Moreover, despite these reforms and
the fact that the Kurds in the new Iraqi parliament are among those
who usually support law reform and improvements in the situation
of women (Efrati 2012), activists’ accounts in chapter 5 show that
political compromises are usually made between the KRG and the
Iraqi central government on family and personal status law (see also
Al-Ali and Pratt 2011).
Honor, and defending family honor in particular, “occupy a con-
siderable place in the Iraqi criminal justice system” (Begikhani et al.
2010). Killing in the name of honor was criminalized in all parts of
Iraqi Kurdistan in 2000 and 2002 by the PUK and the KDP admin-
istrations, respectively. In accordance with Iraqi law, honor had pre-
viously been regarded as a mitigating circumstance, which allowed
killing a woman as the easiest way to “resolve a problem.” Articles
128 and 130–132 of the Iraqi Penal Code (IPC) from 1969 were par-
ticularly important to the juridical treatment of killings in the name
50 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

of honor, especially those parts dealing with “legal excuses and legally
extenuating circumstances” (Begikhani 2005: 212). Article 128(a) of
the IPC addresses mitigating circumstances thus:

[Legal] excuses [have the effect of] either exempting from penalty or
mitigating it, and there is no exemption unless defined by law. Besides
these circumstances, if the commission of the crime is for honourable
motives or based on grave (khatir) provocation by the victim without
right, this shall be considered a mitigating excuse. (ibid.)

Regarding the sentences for crimes committed in the name of honor,

article 130 of the IPC notes:

If the mitigating circumstance applies in a crime punishable by the

death penalty, the punishment shall be reduced to life or temporary
sentence or to imprisonment for not less than one year. If the punish-
ment is temporary or a life sentence, it will be reduced to imprison-
ment for not less than six months, unless otherwise stipulated by law.
(Begikhani 2005: 212)
Article 131 covers the reduction of lesser sentences, while Article 132
introduces the further possibility of a reduction in sentence where the
court finds that the circumstances of the crime or of the perpetra-
tor call for the court’s compassion. Reference should also be made
to Article 41, which allows for the “established right” of a husband
or father to “discipline” (ta’dib) his wife or children “within limits
established by law or custom.” Hence, violence in the name of correc-
tion is not only tolerated but regarded as the exercise of a legal right.
(ibid.: 212–213)

The first Kurdish parliament organized after the establishment of the

no-fly zone in the early 1990s refused to repeal the law allowing killing
in the name of honor (Begikhani 2005: 215; Mojab 2004a: 129). It was
almost ten years later, and thanks to the activities and campaigning of
women’s rights activists, women’s rights organizations and NGOs, that
the PUK and the KDP started to reform the 1969 Iraqi Penal Code,
despite protests “from a number of judges, lawyers and religious authori-
ties” (Begikhani 2005: 212–216). Women won this battle and the cause
of honor is no longer regarded as a mitigating circumstance in Iraqi
Kurdistan. Killings in the name of honor are now treated as murder
(ibid.). However, while the existence of the law is a significant achieve-
ment, there is a wide gap between the law and its implementation.
Although legal measures have been enacted in Kurdistan against
murder in the name of honor, the personal status law is still a matter
 IN T ERSECT ING OPPR ESSION 51

of conflict and controversy between the KRG and women’s orga-

nizations and activists (see chapter 5). In addition, the existence
of parallel religious and tribal laws undermines women’s rights
and subordinates women (see chapter 5; see also Begikhani 2005).
Moreover, law alone cannot bring justice, since “law is bound to his-
torical situations” and recognition of a right in law is not the same
as realization of it in everyday practice (Plett 2011: 289). In order
to be fully implemented in practice, a new law must be followed by
a number of legal and institutional reforms, improvements in the
socioeconomic situation of people, awareness-raising, education, and
so on. Thus, a change in the law is not everything but, as discussed
above, a necessary and significant step forward in changing the situ-
ation of women and prohibiting violence and killings (see chapter 4).
Although law and society mutually interact, the prolonged effects
and the impact of laws on society, and especially on issues related
to gender and sexuality, must not be underestimated (Efrati 2012).
Legal and juridical definitions and treatments of a crime can, over
a period of time, affect a society’s attitudes and opinions about that
crime. The great importance of the law on and legal definitions of
killings in the name of honor, and the role these play in increasing or
reducing the incidence of such crimes, are examined in other stud-
ies (e.g., Amnesty International 1999, 2004; Bakhtiarnejad 2009;
Ert ü rk 2009; Fair family law 2011; Gill et al. 2012; Greiff 2010;
Husseini 2009; Welchman and Hossain 2005).
Referring to Kimberlé Crenshaw, Plett argues that law and legal
rights can be seen as means for social change and can help to pro-
vide justice (2011: 289). Law can be seen as ‘a medium not only
of dominant policy‐makers but also as a tool in social and political
struggle, i.e., in the hands of oppressed societal groups’ (ibid.). In
Iraq, including the Kurdish region before the change in the law,
killing a woman was not a criminal act if it was motivated by the
purification of honor, and therefore the killer did not receive a long
sentence. Hence, the state and the law supported perpetrators and
oppressors instead of the victim and the oppressed. In the ongoing
struggle against violence and the killing of women, as in the struggle
for gender equality and women’s rights and dignity, the law was on
the side of the perpetrators and the oppressors, while those who
needed the assistance of the law in their struggle for social justice
did not receive it. This, as demonstrated in chapters 4 and 5, has
been devastating for women, as killing of women is encouraged and
also, as noted above, murder is accepted as the easiest way to resolve
a problem.
52 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

S UMM A RY
In sum, it can be said that decades of state violence, dictatorship,
ethnic and national oppression, war and militarization, as well as the
growth of tribal and kinship structures, and their social and politi-
cal influence and socioeconomic marginalization, together with legal
support for violence against women have not only influenced the con-
struction of manhood, womanhood and sexuality to the disadvan-
tage of women, but also legitimized and normalized the violation and
killing of women so that killing women became the most accessible
and the easiest way out of a conflict. Throughout these processes, pri-
mordial nationalist and ethnic ideologies, together with patriarchal
tribal norms and traditions, and religious conservatism, have been the
main ideological frame for gender identity formation in Iraqi Kurdish
society. Women’s bodies and their sexuality have become a battlefield
for diverse sectarian and nationalist identities and interests. Notions
of manhood and masculinity have been strongly intertwined with
violence and the control of female sexuality around the construction
of Kurdish identity against a ferocious state and its violence and eth-
nic oppression. Women’s rights and interests have been subordinated
to the interests of the nation, kinship and family. Oppressive and sub-
ordinating gendered norms and obligations packaged and preserved
as national culture have undermined women and their needs, and
have normalized and legitimized violence in a society where every-
thing has been overshadowed by national struggle and ethnic oppres-
sion. The patriarchal discourse and the ideology of honor backed by
primordial and tribal notions of genealogy and religious conservatism
have served as a policy mechanism for maintaining the patriarchal
order and its sexual politics within Kurdish society.
 4

P O L I C I N G PA T R I A R C H Y : H O N O R ,
VIOL E NCE A N D M A N HOOD

THE S OCI A L P RODUCTION OF M ASCULINIT Y

In a prison in Erbil, I met four men who had killed their wives or female
relatives. They did not regret their crimes. On the contrary, they were
proud of having restored their honor and their manhood, and were
rather surprised at being punished for this. For them, the violence
they committed, and the honor they referred to, seemed to be very
much about maintaining, defending and confirming their manhood
and masculinity. As Nagel puts it, it is men who are “the real actors,”
irrespective of whether women are seen as symbols to be respected or
as physical and sexual beings to be suppressed and controlled. In either
case, it is about men’s honor and manhood (2005: 400).
Thus the problem, as discussed in chapter 3, must be seen as the
intersection of violence and the social production and reproduction
of masculinity (Hearn 1996a; Nagel 2005) in a context in which the
concept of honor that inspires violence (Dogan 2011) has a hege-
monic position. Each social context is unique and therefore experi-
ences of masculinity and manhood are not uniform (Connel 2000;
Dolan 2002). Hence, these men’s ideas of masculinity and manhood
cannot be understood outside the context in which their notions
of manhood and masculinity have been affected by their position
as members of a subordinate and suppressed minority. Hearn and
Morgan (1990) argue that there is a complex interplay between hege-
monic and subordinate masculinities, which affects notions of man-
hood in each particular context. Even in a patriarchal society, men
will experience subordination, stigmatization and marginalization as
a consequence of their class position, ethnic identity, religion, sexu-
ality, and so on (ibid.; see also Baxter 2007; Collins 2009; Connel
2000). In societies where ethnic oppression, militarization and vio-
lence are part of daily life, men’s multiple and complex individual
54 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

identities can be undermined by a narrow male identity built around

violence, honor and the control of women’s sexual behavior. Thus, a
meaning of honor connected to the control of female sexuality and
violence becomes a component of manhood in a collective identity
reproduced in various political discourses and projects. These identi-
ties are constructed and reconstructed in a process of “exclusion and
repression” (Westwood 1990: 58) in the intersecting structures of
class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and generation. All this in a Kurdish
society where the state has been the enemy and its presence has meant
death and destruction, tribes, kinship structures and the family have
become more and more the center of power and the Kurdish nation-
alist leaderships and their discourses have packaged these identities as
national culture. These have given way to and also been reproduced
in a sociopolitical context in which violence and resistance to ethnic
oppression and subordination have been significant components, and
where manhood and honor connected to the control of female sexu-
ality are highly valued (see chapters 2 and 3). Locating perpetrators’
experiences in their context is necessary not only to obtain a proper
understanding of the violence, but also to prevent essentialism and
racialization, which are often connected with gender-based violence
in non-Western and nonwhite communities (see Alinia 2011; Collins
2009; Razack 2004; Westwood 1990).
However, de-essentializing Kurdish masculinity does not and
should not in any way mean denying, marginalizing or mitigating
men’s violence against women in Kurdish society. Irrespective of the
differences between men and the oppressions they face caused by
their positions in structures of power and stratification, the study
of men, as Hanmer argues, “involves the recognition of the use and
misuse of social power that accrues to the male gender, of recogniz-
ing benefits even when none are personally desired” (1990: 29). In
the context of Iraqi Kurdistan, national ideology and its subordina-
tion of women have oppressed and marginalized women. All internal
divisions and contradictions, within the Kurdish community, includ-
ing gender-based violence, have for decades been silenced and denied
because any discussion about them would be regarded as a threat to
the “Kurdish cause” and against the unity of Kurds in their struggle
against the state and its ethnic oppression. At the same time, however,
the strong integration of Kurdish nationalism with patriarchal tribal
structures, to which the control of reproduction, female sexuality and
marriage are central, has violated women’s rights and strengthened
their subordination. Moreover, these have been going on within a
political context in Iraq in which women’s rights and family law have
 P O L I C I N G PA T R I A R C H Y 55

recurrently been “tribalized” as a by-product of foreign invasions,

foreign rule and / or corrupt states (Efrati 2012: 171). However, it
must be pointed out in this context that there are differences, contra-
dictions and conflicts, since all individuals—men and women—are
differently positioned, have different relations to and experiences of
various power structures, and identify and act differently.
Despite the differences between them, the perpetrators shared many
experiences. They originated from non-privileged social groups and
were either illiterate or had only a few years of primary school educa-
tion. Three of them had been peshmerge (Kurdish guerrillas) for most of
their lives, from a very young age. They also explained their crimes, and
the motives and reasons they had for killing were almost identical.

Killing for Honor, Dying for

Honor: National Images of Manhood
Nagel argues that the culture of nationalism “resonates with” mascu-
line cultural themes, meaning that terms “such as honor, patriotism,
cowardice, bravery, and duty are hard to distinguish as either nation-
alistic or masculine” (2005: 402). The “politization of women’s bod-
ies” and the control of female sexuality, as discussed in chapter 3,
have two explanations: first, women as symbols and mothers of the
nation are, as Nagel puts it, “exalted icons of nationalism”; and, sec-
ond, “women as wives and daughters are bearers of masculine honor”
(2005: 405). Relating masculinity and nationalism, Nagel (1998:
256) argues that the sexual purity of women is not the only way that
“sexuality arises as an issue in masculinity and nationalism.” In nation-
alist movements, especially militarized ones, men’s privilege is usually
strengthened and more entrenched (Enloe 2000; Nagel 1998). Nagel
refers to “the highly masculine nature of things military,” meaning
that the military is “highly sexual” (Nagel 2005: 406). All this sheds
light on how, in an Iraqi Kurdish context characterized by national
oppression, war and militarization, the national imagery of men has
become closely connected with honor, violence, weapons and bravery.
Nagel outlines several masculine sexualized aspects of military insti-
tutions and activities: first “is the sexualized nature of warfare”; sec-
ond is the “depiction of the ‘enemy’ in conflicts,” portraying enemy
men as either sexual demons or sexual eunuchs; and, third is the use
of the “masculine imagery of rape, penetration, and sexual conquest
to depict military weaponry and offensives” (ibid.).
For decades, the honor discourse, produced and supported in
nationalist, tribal, legal and religious discourses in all domains of
56 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

power, has normalized the subordination of women and the control

of their sexuality. The superiority of honor has become internalized in
these processes as an unquestionable part of Kurdish men’s identity,
and it is seen as an obligation of all members of the group to be loyal
to it. This has emerged in Iraqi Kurdistan in a context in which the
main power centers—the state, tribes and the Kurdish leadership—
have in different ways and to different extents all contributed to that
(see chapter 3). X.M., a 65-year-old illiterate and an extremely conser-
vative man from the countryside, killed his 45-year-old wife because,
according to him, she had had a relationship with another man. X.M.
had been a peshmerge from a very young age. He was married to the
victim for 30 years and they had eight children together. The conflict
with his wife seemed to be connected to other conflicts between him
and her family, linked to some failed marriage exchanges and other
issues. One of his sons from his first marriage disappeared during the
Anfal campaign in the 1980s (see chapter 2) and he said that he had
been depressed for a long time because of this. He had been taken
to an elder in the village who had said that his depression was not
serious. He justifies his crime with reference to Islam and to Kurdish
nationalism:

I beg the Kurdish Government to help us. We are Muslims. This is not
Europe. We are Muslims . . . This is Kurdistan, the great father’s land.
This is the great Barzani’s country . . . How can it be like this? Now I
prefer to die here than be outside . . . Everybody ridiculed me and said
that I was a donkey. Is that acceptable?

X.M. was a peshmerge in the KDP and it is Mullah Mustafa Barzani

who he calls “the great father.” Mustafa Barzani, the father of the
president of the Kurdish Region of Iraq, Masoud Barzani, was the
political and military leader of the Kurdish nationalist movement in
Iraq from 1946 until his death in 1979. Many theories of national-
ism have likened the nation to a family: a “male-headed household”
in which men and women have their “natural” roles (Nagel 2005:
404). In such a view the role of women is to “embody family and
national honor,” and therefore “women’s shame is the family’s shame,
the nation’s shame, the man’s shame” (405). Nationalist construc-
tions of gender often relate, as X.M.’s does, to “an ancestral past” that
invokes “powerful constructions of women’s place and their nature,
as well as constructions of gender relations which are believed to be
‘traditional’” (Jacob 2000: 225). X.M.’s concept of a good Kurdish
woman is this:
 P O L I C I N G PA T R I A R C H Y 57

Women must be modest, stay at home; and do not go around in a

stranger’s car without their husband. Woman must stay with their
children, be calm and take care of children and neighbours—don’t
they? If a guest comes to the house she must welcome him/her.
Women must be like that. A man does not batter his wife if she does
not give him a reason . . . I told her I am your custodian, and you are
not allowed to do that. It cannot be like this. It cannot be acceptable
that you challenge the marriage between me and you and God. You
challenge your own body, you give your body to other men and you
even challenge my body.

Breaking rules of honor is described by X.M. as tehheda and pela-

mar, which are translated by Fischer-Tahir (2009: 67) as a challenge
and an attack. This underlines the point made by Nagel (2005) and
Enloe (2000) that the military is highly sexualized. In narratives of
the honor discourse, the Kurdish woman is, as Fischer-Tahir puts it,
“expected to behave in such a way as not to endanger a man’s honour,
and should an ‘attack’ occur, it is the ‘men’s’ duty to react by taking
up and riposting the challenge” (2009: 67).
Gender relations are not only the focus of the nationalist discourse.
They are also the driver “for revivalist, religious fundamentalist and eth-
nically based movements” (Jacob 2000). As discussed in chapter 3, and
also by other studies (Bakhtiarnejad 2009; Dogan 2011; Ertürk 2009;
Husseini 2009), killing for honor is not a religious act or a tradition
related to Islam or any other religion. However, as the above-mentioned
studies suggest, and as also demonstrated in the activists’ accounts in
chapter 5, religious fundamentalism and conservative interpretations
contribute to women’s subordination and to the violence against them.
X.M. justifies his crime with reference to Islam as well as to Kurdish
culture and tribal customs. X.M. also defends conservative gender roles
and presents them as part of Kurdish and Islamic culture and tradition,
contrasting them with what he regards as European culture.
Another man, M.R., was a 36-year-old married father of four at the
time of our interview. He killed his unmarried and pregnant niece and
her boyfriend, and received a 12-year sentence. He had studied for six
years in primary school and had been a peshmerge since he was 19 years
old. He is from a big tribe and the killing caused conflict between his
family and the male victim’s family. The murder could, according to
him, lead to many more killings and much more bloodshed. He could
have been killed by the man’s family, and for this reason he reported
himself to the police. He said that he did this in order to bring the
conflict to an end and prevent more killings. However, he did not
expect to get a 12-year prison sentence, as the penalty for such crimes
58 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

used to be six months. He seemed disappointed and believed his sen-

tence to be unjust since he regarded the murders as legitimate:

Murder is not good. I mean it is very, very bad. But if it is related to

namus (honor), and to xak (soil), you cannot tolerate. You must . . . I
feel that it is a shame one should be punished for defending his namus.
I think it is unfair. If I killed innocent people or if I had robbed people
or attacked people, then it would be justified to punish me and even
kill me.

The right to kill for the sake of honor seems to be normalized as an

unquestionable moral imperative. Honor here is, as Dogan (2011) puts
it, tightly connected to violence, female sexuality and the collective
and it must be maintained by any means. In Iraqi Kurdistan, killing
has long been the easiest and most accessible, as well as a totally legal
and legitimate, way to maintain or “clean” honor. This is also shown
to be the case in studies from Jordan (Husseini 2009) and Turkey
(Dogan 2011). Emphasizing the “relationship between structures and
ideologies,” Chakravarti (2005: 327) argues that the concept of honor
in relation to punishing and killing is “essentially a means of maintain-
ing the material structures of ‘social’ power and social dominance”
(309). As noted above, the ideology of honor has been necessary for
the regulation of sexuality and especially for the control of female sex-
uality in a society where the power and influence of patriarchal tribal
structures have been strong, partly as a by-product of colonialism and
foreign control (see chapter 2). Moreover, honor has been related to the
control of female sexuality as a component of male identity, influenced
by ethnic oppression, resistance and militarization. As a male member
of a subordinate and suppressed minority, M. R. links the violence
and the crime he committed to namus, to women’s chastity and mod-
esty and to the soil (the word xak is also used in Kurdish nationalist
discourse as a synonym for homeland). In nationalist imaginations,
women represent and symbolize the nation, and women’s bodies and
sexuality are often overlapped with the boundaries of the national
homeland. This connection is even stronger within subordinated and
suppressed nationalisms (see chapter 3; see also Baxter 2007; Connel
2000; Fischer-Tahir 2009; Saigol 2000; Yuval-Davis 1997). Honor for
these men is related not only to an individual man and woman, and
their families, but also to other factors, as explained by Fischer-Tahir:

To the imagined body of a group as well as to the territory they claim.

Words such as haram and qedexa kraw (Arabic/Kurdish: “forbidden”),
 P O L I C I N G PA T R I A R C H Y 59

pelamar kirdin (“to rape”) and pak kirdin (“to purge”) are commonly
used in Kurdish nationalist discourse, in speaking of Kurdistan’s
socially and spatially defined bodies and the suffering and resistance
of the Kurds to the violence practiced by the regimes in Baghdad.
(2009: 67–68)

As discussed in chapter 3, there is a clear connection between the

occurrence of violence at the macro level, such as political or state
violence, and violence at the micro level and in the private sphere.
Militarization in a wider context implies the effects of militaristic
thinking on an entire society, which reinforces emotion, cognition and
ideation when violence becomes a large part of everyday conscious-
ness (Bozarslan 2004; Saigol 2000: 108). In the Kurdish context,
violence has emerged as the only option for resolving conflicts as a
result of a political situation characterized by dictatorship, oppression
and the lack of opportunities for peaceful opposition. Militarization
has strengthened a notion of manhood and honor that is interwoven
with violence.
As discussed above, war and militarization have strong masculine
aspects (Al-Ali 2008; Baxter 2007; Connel 2000; Saigol 2000) and,
as demonstrated in M. R.’s accounts, watching over women’s chas-
tity and defending the nation’s soil and the Kurdish homeland are
among the most honorable things a Kurdish man is expected to do.
In this discourse, men can and should kill and even die for this cause.
A man is obliged to defend the purity and chastity of his family’s
female members in the same way he is obliged to defend the home-
land. Saigol (2000: 113) argues that “war imagery gets divided into
masculine and feminine” where being defeated is equal to being femi-
nine, while winning is equivalent to being masculine. Thus, to be a
man and to enact his masculinity becomes very important especially
for what Connel (2000: 30–31) calls “socially de-authorized margin-
alized masculinities.” Baxter argues that Palestinian men humiliated
by the Israelis respond by asserting power and authority in “the only
arena left to them: their home and their women,” as a consequence
of “male despair and powerlessness in the face of the Israeli occupa-
tion,” which has led to a “crisis of masculinity” (2007: 743). Based
on research in northern Uganda, Dolan discusses how definitions
of masculinity are narrowed, since in the context of violence there is
no possibility of developing alternative masculinities. Thus, “unable
to live up to the model, but offered no alternative, some men resort
to acts of violence” (2002: 57). In such a situation women are “‘tri-
ply oppressed’—together with the men, by the men themselves, and
60 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

through self-oppression” (see chapters 5 and 6; see also Haj 1992,

referred in Baxter 2007: 743; Collins 2009; Mohanty 2003).
Honor, in the context of Iraqi Kurdistan, refers not only to a com-
plex of rules, norms and values for men’s control of women, “but more
generally to rules of behaviour with regard to the self and the other in
terms of group and territory” (Fischer-Tahir 2009: 67). The group in
this context, as discussed above, can mean the family, the lineage or
the tribe, but also the Kurdish nation (ibid.). Honor and the defense
of honor are regarded as unquestionable. Hence, to be tough and not
to compromise on these issues are part of the idea of being a proper
“man” and the qualities of manhood. Thus, the construction of man-
hood and masculinity, of which a gender-specific and collective con-
ception of honor is an important component, is strongly connected
with violence in a context where political violence, militarization and
resistance to ethnic oppression have, for decades, been an integral
part of daily life. In such a context, the honor discourse has been the
framework for gender identity construction for many generations.

H ONOR AS A N E XCUSE A ND A P OLICING D ISCOURSE

Discussing honor in the context of the contemporary West Bank in
Palestine, Baxter (2007: 737) defines honor as “a wide-ranging, dynamic,
multi-stranded ideology about ‘right living.’” Reasoning from the polit-
ical context of occupation, political violence and militarism in Palestine,
Baxter argues: “Holding honor translates into being respected and this
brings rewards of various kinds . . . Losing honor—particularly over sex-
ual misbehaviour of its women—means families are exposed to ridicule
and derision” (2007: 741). An-Naím explains honor in relation to the
term “community discourse,” an internalized discourse within commu-
nities that is “one strategy among many to combat ‘crimes of honour’”
(2005: 64). I would add that this internalized discourse aims to prevent
women and men from crossing boundaries that are constructed to limit
their movement and individual desires. It makes them police themselves
and others within their group, kin and family, fearing the judgment of
what is depicted as a unified watching community.
In the South Kurdish language Sorani, which the respondents
speak, two words represent images of honor: namus and sharaf. These
words, which are used in daily life, can be translated as honor, but the
word ‘honor’ is very broad and nonspecific with regard to this prob-
lem (Baxter 2007; Dogan 2011; Werbner 2007). However, in Turkish,
Kurdish, Persian and Arabic, the word namus specifically relates to
women’s modesty (Fischer-Tahir 2009; King 2008; Mojab 2004a)
while the word sharaf has a broader meaning that relates to qualities
 P O L I C I N G PA T R I A R C H Y 61

such as generosity, bravery, etc. (Fischer-Tahir 2009). Despite these dif-

ferences, the word ‘honor’ has become the equivalent of both namus
and sharaf in the public debate and academic writing. As discussed
in chapter 3, the distinction Dogan makes between different notions
of honor based on their relation to violence is useful in this regard.
He distinguishes between honor that is gender neutral, individual and
does not inspire violence, and honor that is gender-specific, collective
and inspires violence (2011: 424–427). The latter meaning is not only
inspired by and connected to notions of manhood and masculinity
constructed in ethnic and sectarian conflicts, political violence and
war, but also, according to Dogan, influenced by conservative interpre-
tations of the Qur’an and the Hadith (Prophet Mohammad’s sayings).
In these conservative religious notions, female sexuality is regarded as a
danger and a threat to society (ibid.; see also Bakhtiarnejad 2009).
Dogan is of the opinion that in societies or communities where
violence and killing in the name of honor occur, the individual is
“always under pressure and constantly forced to prove his honour”
(2011: 424). In this definition, honor is “not necessarily associated
with rank or social status and it cannot be gained through personal
action. It can only be maintained, or lost. Furthermore, it ‘implies
duties rather than bestows privileges’” (ibid.).
Honor as a hegemonic ideology and discourse reproduces norms,
values, ideas, beliefs and practices in everyday interactions and com-
munications at all levels of social life and in all the domains of power,
and affects gender identities. This partly explains why the perpetra-
tors were surprised by their sentences, since they thought they had
acted as they were supposed to. They did not expect to be punished
because, according to their ideas, they did what any honorable man
would do. This corresponds with perpetrators’ experiences in Jordan
(Husseini 2009) and Turkey (Dogan 2011). This is what a Jordanian
man who killed his sister said:

I killed her because she was no longer a virgin . . . She made a mistake
willingly or not. It is better that one person dies than the whole fam-
ily dies of shame and disgrace. It is like a box of apples. If you have
one rotten apple would you keep it or get rid of it? I just got rid of it.
(Husseini 2009: 10)

M.R., who, after killing his niece and her lover, went directly to the
police, says:

We have sharaf and namus. I would accept everything else and tol-
erate everything, but when it is about namus, not only me, no man
62 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

will tolerate it. Especially in our Kurdish society, in our tribes nobody
would tolerate this. I could not tolerate it and that is why I killed them.
When I killed him I came directly home and also killed my niece.

As discussed earlier (and in chapter 3 also), honor in a broader and

more general sense is not connected exclusively to the control of
female sexuality but also with a number of highly valued qualities
such as generosity, bravery, and so on (Baxter 2007; Dogan 2011;
Werbner 2007). Connecting the control of female sexuality and vio-
lence with honor and honorableness is a patriarchal discourse and a
policy mechanism for maintaining the structures of power and disci-
plining women to be docile subjects under patriarchal rule (see also
Chakravarti 2005). This discourse consists of a series of narratives,
norms, prohibitions, rules and codes specifying what contributes
to honor and what damages it. It is symbolic, producing oppressive
norms and regulations that are reproduced and normalized through
everyday interactions and in writing, speech and everyday practice.
The most fundamental form of symbolic violence is the production
of knowledge, interpretations and truth in a society that creates what
Žižek calls a “universe of meaning” (2009:1). The knowledge produc-
tion that occurs, among other things, through discourse has strong
potential power, since it affects a society’s and an individual’s per-
ceptions and thinking, and produces social knowledge that is shared
and accepted in the society (Collins 2009; Fairclough 1992, 2003;
van Dijk 1997). Control occupies a central place in this definition of
social power. Having power over a group means having the oppor-
tunity to control the way the group thinks and acts. This control
occurs through processes of mental influence that include thought,
understanding and intentions. A prerequisite for control is access to
power resources, such as the social position, status and authority to
provide a discourse with legitimacy and the authority to help it spread
and appear as truth. Knowledge is a product of discursive practices
and is decisive for the reproduction of social and cognitive structures
(Van Dijk 1993). Members of a group or a society share not only
mental conceptions and ideas, but also different interpretations, con-
clusions, categorizations, comparisons, etc. In a wider sense, knowl-
edge is what people must have or are supposed to have in order to
act as competent members of a group, a culture or a society (ibid:
36–37). Thus, studies of the honor discourse—of its social and politi-
cal effects and its relation to the reproduction and maintenance of
social power, as well as to exclusionary discourses and practices in
regard to migrant and minorities—should also focus on the symbolic
 P O L I C I N G PA T R I A R C H Y 63

violence that is inherent in it. Any challenging or questioning of the

internalized rules expressed and reproduced in the honor discourse
leads to disrepute, the loss of honor and the loss of men’s manhood
and respectability, and thus to anger and violence against women.
I asked M.R. about his understanding of sharaf and namus and to
explain to me what these words mean. He responded with surprise:
“What do they mean?” Since we were speaking Kurdish, and I am a
person with a Kurdish background, I was supposed to know. I told
him that I knew but, if he were explaining it to somebody who did
not know, what would he say? He answered:

For us sharaf is the greatest thing. For us, I mean, the most important
and the greatest thing is sharaf. It is like that. It is above everything
else.

I asked why it is dependent on women. He replied:

I have respect for women. Women also have their own rights. I have
respect for women but not for all women, no. Not those women who
betray their families, their fathers, their uncles and their brothers.
These women have no right to do that. They have no right to betray
their fathers, uncles and brothers.

In this discourse, everything is seen from the perspective of male

superiority, and everything is subordinated to men and their inter-
ests, to the extent that even murder is legitimized. M.R. emphasized
that he was innocent and argued that he killed his victims because
they were guilty of crossing boundaries they were not allowed to
cross. He had no respect or sympathy for them. M.R. seems to have
planned the killings carefully, and to have calculated the risks and the
consequences.

I killed both of them because I wanted to make it clear to everybody

that it was because of namus. There are many detainees here who have
killed men and they are not regarded as reliable in saying that they
have killed for honor. Yes, I killed them and I have many proofs, I have
sonograms, I have certification from doctors, I have witnesses . . . I feel
that it is a shame one should be punished for defending his sharaf and
namus. I think it is unfair. If I had killed innocent people, I mean if I
had killed two persons without any reason or if I had attacked people
and robbed them, it would be justified to punish me and even to kill
me. But unfortunately now I have been sitting here for two years for
my sharaf and my namus.
64 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

I pointed out that many women are killed every day, and asked him
what he thought about this, and whether he thought it was unfair.

Yes, it is true that many women are killed but one must investigate and
see if that woman is killed for namus or not. Women are killed for dif-
ferent reasons. It is good if they investigate and find out the reason.

Despite the fact that they claim to have killed for honor, it is not easy
for the perpetrators to give a convincing definition of honor. It seems
to be something they just know and feel in their bones, something
they have learned by experience, and that it is not easy to explain. It
is an internalized discourse, well-defined for those who recognize it.
These men never seem to have had a reason to reflect on the mean-
ing of honor or to question it. At least they did not want to admit to
having done so, since any doubt would seem to be damaging to their
manhood. They acted as if it was the only or easiest way to resolve
a problem. It is therefore difficult for them to understand why they
should be punished for something that they believe corresponds with
public expectations and the community’s conception of an honorable
man. The problem becomes even more complex when these concep-
tions are positively sanctioned by the state and by the law, as was the
case in Iraqi Kurdistan until the early twenty-first century.
Another man, R.S., a 33-year-old farmer from the countryside who
had attended primary school for some years, had been in prison for
five years at the time of our interview, serving a life sentence for the
murder of his wife. He said he had killed her because she was having
a relationship with another man. He justified the killing by referring
to Islamic law and tribal customs. This is how he reasons.

I mean, according to Islamic law and in our tribal customs such things
are not tolerated and accepted . . . According to our tribal surroundings
and according to our traditions this is not acceptable. There is no dif-
ference. Adultery is not acceptable, not only for women but also for
men . . . I have not hurt people, have not committed any crime, I have
not killed without reason. I have not killed for money and things like
that.

R.S., like the other killers I interviewed, regarded his sentence as

unfair. During the interview, he repeatedly complained about the
sentence, returning to the matter again and again, arguing that he
killed for honor and that this was legitimate and not a crime to him.
I asked R.S. if he did not think it unjust to his wife that he had taken
her life. He replied:
 P O L I C I N G PA T R I A R C H Y 65

It is true. Death is a big issue but sharaf is bigger than death. Yes,
murder is big and I do not support the murder of innocent people. But
when she is guilty, and if her criminal guilt is bigger than death, then
she deserves to die. If a person does not have sharaf then it is better
that the person dies. It is better that she does not exist on this earth.

When I asked, “Could you explain a little more what you mean when
you say you have restored your sharaf ?,” he replied, “It is what I said
and I will not discuss it any more. You must understand.” He spoke
with emphasis as if irritated by my question.
In none of my interviews with these men was I given a concrete
definition of honor. Every answer referred to the superiority of
honor and manhood. It was taken for granted as an unquestionable
part of their identity, and of the system of values, ideology and dis-
course that surrounded them, which had been reproduced in all the
domains of power in society over decades and for generations. It was
striking that all the perpetrators’ conceptions of honor were so simi-
lar. They even talked in the same terms and used the same words,
as if they were talking out of a manual. These killings had not been
challenged by the state until recently. On the contrary, they had been
supported by the law because it served the state’s interests to attract
the support of the most conservative sections of society in order to
ensure its survival (see chapters 2 and 3).

THE F E A R OF THE C OMMUNIT Y : P OLICING

S ELF A ND O THERS
The perpetrators responded very much in the same way to my ques-
tion about what honor meant to them: honor was above everything
else or, as one put it, “above life and death.” These men enact their
gender and their masculinity by ensuring the modesty and chastity of
the women in their family (see Abu-Odeh 2000: 373; Dogan 2011;
Husseini 2009). If a man does not intervene, he demeans his gender.
This was clearly demonstrated in the perpetrators’ narratives. None of
the men regretted the murders or felt any sympathy for the victims,
and none thought what he had done was wrong or unfair. On the
contrary, they saw themselves as victims and thought that they had
done the right thing—that they did what they were expected to do
in order to be regarded as men by their communities. They felt proud
and expected to be treated accordingly. It is striking how perpetrators,
not only in my study but also in the studies by Husseini (2009) and
Dogan (2009), relate their crimes to their community’s expectations
66 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

and encouragement. X.M. said that if he had not killed his wife, people
would not respect him and would not see him as a man.

She was making me crazy. I am not mad, I am not an alcoholic.

Everybody sees me as a man and I see them as a man. Unfortunately,
she took my honor (sharaf and namus). Is this right? How can it be
accepted? Now I prefer to die here than live outside and be ridiculed.
Now I can hold my head up. I did not dare to go to a funeral or to go
out in public because people were ridiculing me.

In a similar way, a Jordanian killer states: “If I hadn’t killed her, people
would look down on me. Once she was raped, she was no longer a girl.
My only alternative was to kill her. Death is the only way to erase the
shame” (Husseini 2009: 12). Society’s and the community’s expecta-
tions and their notions of what a man should do in such a situation are
also highlighted in the other studies mentioned above. Although I did
not interview the families of victims and perpetrators, or people from
their neighborhoods, I can say, based on the respondents’ accounts
and many informal discussions during my fieldwork, that there is not a
unified or homogeneous community view of violence or the killing of
women. Many contradictions and nuances are totally excluded from the
honor discourse, which aims to present the notion of a homogeneous
and unified community in support of the killers. Knowledge produc-
tion in discourses occurs through not only what is said but also what
the discourse excludes and keeps silent about. The honor discourse is
silent about and totally excludes all contradictions and nuances in soci-
ety in regard to violence and killing in the name of honor. By both
systematizing and generalizing statements, it constructs a “universal
truth” about society and culture, and the prerequisites for social power
(Thörn 1996). In this respect, discourses can, according to Burr (1995:
48–51), be regarded as some kind of frame of reference, a comprehensi-
ble fund for the interpretation of statements, experiences, actions, etc..
People in the highly stratified and complex Iraqi Kurdish society are
positioned differently in, for example, gender, class and generational
structures. They, therefore, have different attitudes and viewpoints
on these and other issues. For example, I found that young people
are much more critical not only of gender-based violence and the
killing of women, but also of other social and political issues. Older
people who lived through the Ba’ath regime’s cruelty and oppression
were more satisfied with the current situation. Moreover, I found
more understanding for murderers and even condemnation of vic-
tims among the older generations, compared to younger people who
 P O L I C I N G PA T R I A R C H Y 67

were, to a greater extent, critical of and frustrated by what was going

on. Increasing levels of education and socioeconomic resources, an
urban rather than a rural background, and family background also
have a significant impact. These factors are also emphasized in other
studies and reports (Dogan 2011; Husseini 2009; Ilkkaracan 2000).
However, as these studies indicate, this does not mean that violence
is not occurring among rich, urban and educated people.
The women’s accounts in chapters 6 and 7 show that there were
family and kin members who were prepared to help them flee or visit
them in secret, and supported them in different ways. Those who
remained in secret contact with the women took a big risk, since per-
petrators threaten anyone who helps the victims. This was a deterrent
for many and could be one reason why most people do not actively
oppose the killings. X.M. said that his son and his daughter sup-
ported their mother against him:

My son . . . fought me three times because of his mother. I told him:

“my son your mother is like this, try to talk to her because our chil-
dren are small” . . . They all hit me, my wife, her brother, her sister-in-
law and my daughter . . . Since I killed his mother, my son has ruined
me and taken all my property. He has taken his mother’s gold, sold my
car . . . They were all against me, my son, my daughter, my son-in-law,
my daughter-in-law, everybody.

Husseini (2009) shows that people in killers’ neighborhoods and

communities are often negative toward them and show more sym-
pathy toward the victims. Good opinion, expectations and judgment
of the community are some things that everyone is worried about or
even afraid of, but in reality such a unified position does not exist,
and nor does a homogeneous community support killings and the
killers. This raises many questions about discursive constructions of
community, and their role and function in the honor discourse and
policing patriarchy. To create fear in people so that they police them-
selves should be seen as an effective part of the policy mechanism and
disciplining. It is part of the same discourse that presents violence
and killing as honorable cultural acts, while excluding the contra-
dictions, conflicts and struggles that exist within the same commu-
nity. The range of violence, killing and suicide is itself evidence of
a society with strong contradictions and conflicts. A recent survey
carried out in Iraqi Kurdistan shows the differences in people’s atti-
tudes. Of the 1,029 participants, 54 percent regarded the murder of
women as a major problem, 31 percent regarded it as a minor problem
68 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

and 14 percent thought that it was not a problem at all (Hawlati

newspaper). On leaving jail, some of the perpetrators in Husseini’s
study realized that society no longer trusted them, and that they were
not heroes in the eyes of their community, as they had believed they
would be. Husseini writes about one of the men she interviewed:

He said that the murder had ruined his life. Today, he said, no woman
wants to marry him. He had tried to seek the hand of eleven women
in marriage, but they all refused, including a cousin whose father had
encouraged him to kill his sister . . . He nostalgically told me he was
treated as a hero in prison. “All the men who were with me for the same
reason in prison were treated as heroes by everybody.” Once he was
back in the real world, he was ignored and felt worthless. (2009: 14)

Everyone is a loser in this drama. By acting according to the honor

discourse, perpetrators help to reproduce it and maintain their own
affliction. The state and the authorities also reproduce it through
their legal support for killers and culturalization of the crime, in
order to mask its structural, political and socioeconomic dimensions
(see chapters 3 and 5).
The perpetrators saw themselves as victims. They did not feel lucky
or happy, and they did not try to hide it. Two of them were on the
verge of tears several times during their interviews. Also, they did not
try to deny the deliberate nature of their crimes or make any excuses
such as being ill. All but one of the four stressed that they killed in
full consciousness of what they were doing, and that they meant what
they did. They wanted to restore their honor. Since killing in the
name of honor was, in the past, seen as a mitigating circumstance and
something that in practice would not be punished (see chapter 3),
defending honor has long been the best excuse for killing women and
escaping the legal consequences. For example, X.M. says that when he
shot his wife and wanted to flee, a policeman came after him and shot
at him: “I told him why you are doing this? That was my wife. I shot
her because she was a whore.” The perpetrators did not recognize
what they did as criminal, and did not regard themselves as criminals.
They pointed out that they had never hurt anybody before and they
would never hurt anybody again.

C OMMUNIT Y, HUM A N
A SSOCI ATION A ND S OCI A L C ONTROL
Perpetrators saw it as their right to kill those women who challenged
the norms that guarantee their subordination and men’s superior
 P O L I C I N G PA T R I A R C H Y 69

position. They saw their crimes as a justifiable act that should be

understood and accepted. They claimed support even from members
of the victims’ families, from their own families and from their com-
munities, since they had done what they were supposed to do. As
discussed above, the notion of a homogeneous community with a
unified position in regard to the killing of women is a policy mecha-
nism reproduced in the honor discourse. In reality, the picture is
much more complex. Iraqi Kurdish society is a highly stratified and
divided society in many senses, with an urban and rural mix in which
strong tribal and kinship structures exist alongside urban life. Studies
from other countries show how violence in the name of honor occurs
mostly in rural and tribal contexts, or in marginalized urban settings
with strong tribal and rural connections where social relations, sexu-
ality and especially female sexuality are tightly regulated. An individ-
ual’s behavior depends on the nature of their group or community
and their rules and regulations (Davies and Neal 2000). Human
activities are not and cannot be totally free from social coercion and
restrictions. There is, as Durkheim (1983: 211) puts it, “no social
phenomenon that is of such a character.” The individual is never
totally free since, as social beings, we need to be part of a society, a
group and a community, and to identify with them, which entails
mutual effect, interactions and adjustments. Thus, what is at issue
is the character and extent of the social integration and control, not
total freedom and detachment from society. It is about the organiza-
tion of society and social relationships.
Tribal and family-based identities and belonging are the structural
bases of the discourse and politics of honor. Human relationships
and human actions in these social structures are predominantly based
on benefiting the whole group. Thus, the collective aspect of honor
related to this kind of crime must be understood in relation to the
social organization of the extended family and tribe, although the
honor discourse is influenced by nationalist constructions of gender
and vice versa.
M.R., who killed his niece and her lover, supports his niece’s fam-
ily because his brother, the father of the victim, died many years ago.
He says that the mother and siblings of his niece agree with him and
support the killing. I have not met them and do not know what they
think, but the fact that they are dependent on him for their everyday
life and survival could be seen as a reason why they do not oppose
him. I asked him if he meant that the victim’s mother, sisters and
brothers really approved of him killing their daughter or sister. Were
they happy about it? M.R. responded:
70 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

Yes, they were almost happy and understood it because it was about
namus. If it was not because of namus nobody would like it. Nobody
would be happy about murder, not only of a woman but even of a
chicken.

I asked M.R. again at the end of the interview whether he thought

he had done the right thing. He replied: “I think, yes, I mean I do
not tolerate such things. I think I did right. I mean when you kill for
that reason I never say that it was wrong.” I asked whether anyone in
his family had said he did wrong: “In your family, your tribe, is there
anybody who condemns what you have done?” He replied:

My family, my ashira (tribe), and all other people know that I did
the right thing and have not done anything wrong. Everybody under-
stands it. If what I did were not right, then nobody would like it.

As I did not interview the perpetrators’ and the victims’ families, I

cannot verify M.R.’s claim of support. Jordanian perpetrators inter-
viewed by Husseini (2009) also claimed the support and understand-
ing of communities and victims’ family members, but many of the
people in their neighborhoods who were interviewed by Husseini
displayed more ambivalence and some even expressed support for
the victims rather than the killers. Moreover, as noted above, in her
interviews with killers released after their imprisonment, many were
nostalgic about their time in jail, where they were seen as heroes by
their fellow prisoners. Back home, they realized that they were nei-
ther respected nor accepted by people in their communities, but were
instead met with suspicion. As noted above, there are many contra-
dictory positions in regard to these killings within the highly strati-
fied Kurdish society, although conservative and oppressive forces have
been the loudest and most influential as they have had the resources
and power and, until recently, even had the support of the law (see
chapters 6 and 7). These events also occurred in a wider context in
which violence against women was seen as a peripheral issue or as a
nonissue compared to the national and ethnic oppression that has
overshadowed the whole of society, culture and politics.
The existence, alongside the official sanctioning of the crime, of
tribal and religious laws that define honor as a mitigating circum-
stance institutionalizes the subordination of women. Judgments not
only in official courts but also in the parallel tribal and religious courts
have been based on the honor discourse and favored male superiority.
Even in cases with contradictions and conflicts, which occur when
 P O L I C I N G PA T R I A R C H Y 71

the victim is not a family member, there is often an opportunity for a

perpetrator to negotiate with the victim’s family and make an agree-
ment according to “komelayeti, a structure run by elderly, religious,
political, and tribal representatives” (Begikhani 2005: 219). The
komelayeti is a tribal procedure for negotiations and reconciliation
between families or groups who are in conflict. They can resolve the
conflict by, for example, giving money, property or a woman to the
victim’s family. These “parallel and unconstitutional ‘legal’ bodies are
also a direct threat to the possibilities of asserting choice in marriage”
(Chakravarti 2005: 327; see also Begikhani 2005).
When R.S. killed his wife, the murder caused conflict between
him and his wife’s family, but they made up and it is only his wife’s
mother who has not reconciled with him. Others in his wife’s family,
according to him, do not oppose the murder, as he explains here:

Her father is a very good man. He said that it is your right to do as

you did. He even said that he would bring me a new wife. He gave me
these promises, but her mother, no.

Asked whether the victim’s father, brothers and extended family really
think what he did was right, he responded:

Everybody is satisfied with that, except her mother who says that I
should not have killed her. But all the others support me and under-
stand what I have done and say you are a man and the son of a man. In
our law, in our tribal law, such things are not acceptable.

Asked what they would have said about him if he had not killed his
wife, he said:

Everyone would have criticized me and even ridiculed me. Because

we are ashayer (tribal) as I said; we are ashayer. I would have been
degraded and everybody would have looked down on me if I had
accepted it and tolerated that woman cheating on me. Then I would
have been degraded in the eyes of everybody.

I asked whether he would also look down on a man who does not
kill his wife in such a situation. He replied: “Yes. Yes, for me sharaf is
everything. It is above everything. For us, sharaf is much greater than
the human being, than death, than everything else.”
Hearn states that domestic violence against women is a development
of the “dominant-submissive power relations that exist in ‘normal’
72 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

family life” (1996a: 31). Violence is available as a resource specifically

for the making of masculinity; men use violence when their power
and privilege are challenged, and when other strategies have failed
(ibid.). As a matter of fact, the use of violence and killing against
women reveals dysfunction and a crisis in governing power structures,
since their oppression is no longer hidden and their normalization has
been questioned. When the ongoing normalized violence inherent in
the structure of society and the family is questioned and challenged
by individual women, and when they are no longer afraid of threats
and beatings, murder becomes the only way to protect the system.
Violence as a strategy and as a means becomes even more available
and possible, as in the case of Iraqi Kurdistan where women, prior
to the law reform, lacked any institutional and political support, and
were abandoned by all and left in the hands of their oppressors—who
have also acted as their protectors against state violence.
Moreover, as discussed above and in more detail in chapters 2
and 3, the use of violence becomes central and can appear as the only
option in interpersonal and private conflicts, in situations where war,
militarization and political violence have become an integrated part
of everyday life (see Bozarslan 2004; Saigol 2000). In such a context,
violence intersects and interacts with the social production and repro-
duction of masculinity as maintained in the honor discourse.

H ONOR A ND P UBLIC A SSESSMENTS OF M A NHOOD

Perpetrators were very determined to defend their killings, which to
them seemed the only way to resolve their problem. They felt that
they did not have any other choice, and, as men, they could not have
behaved any differently, especially once the matter had become public
knowledge. Such feelings were also expressed by the men Husseini
interviewed in Jordan. She states that these men were, to a lesser
extent, victims of their own society (2009: 16). M.R., who killed his
niece and her boyfriend, said:

God knows it feels very bad, really. I mean this shouldn’t happen at all.
But when it happened, that boy had to agree to solve the problem by
marrying her, so that this would not happen.

He was on the verge of tears and I stopped the interview for a short
break. He understood and admitted that by killing them he had
“destroyed” his own life, something that he did not expect in the
light of his experience and his expectation that the law supported
 P O L I C I N G PA T R I A R C H Y 73

such killings. He had not expected to be punished. He sees himself as

a victim because the new law has created a new situation, even if there
is a big gap between the law and its implementation (see chapter 5).
I asked him to explain why he was sad. I wondered why he was not
happy since he had restored his honor. M.R. responded:

Happy for that? I said that I wished that this had not happened from
the beginning, but when it happened that boy should have solved the
problem . . . Of course I think about it. I am sitting in jail, of course I
think and I wish that it had not happened to us. It feels really bad.

A marriage, according to M.R., could have saved him and his family
from “losing their honor.” From what he said, the problem seemed
to be about society’s reaction and estimation, and not about having a
forbidden relationship. I asked M.R. if there could have been any other
way to resolve the conflict without killing anyone. He answered:

Yes, it is possible. If I do the same thing with a girl, with a family, and
it goes so far that the girl becomes pregnant, if I am a man and have
sharaf, I must do something about it. I can marry her. If her family
will not give her to me then I can abduct her.1 There are always solu-
tions, but this man deprived us of our sharaf and did not care about
us. That was the problem . . . We would have been grateful if he had
married her.

Based on Dogan’s distinction between two concepts of honor—one

gender-specific that inspires killing and one gender neutral that does
not—it is arguable that M.R. was talking about the concept of honor
that does not inspire killing. An honorable man in his eyes takes the
consequences of his actions, does not damage the honor of others and
does not cause suffering and death. However, his idea of the com-
munity’s judgment is an aspect of the honor discourse that is strongly
connected to female sexuality, manhood and violence. The issue of
publicity and its impact on the outcome of a conflict is also stressed
by representatives of women’s shelters and activists (see chapters 5
and 6). They often try to resolve a conflict before it becomes public,
since the publicity itself often leads to violence or killing in order to
prevent the loss of honor and of the community’s esteem. Sometimes,
marriage can save a victim’s life since it can legalize and legitimize the
relationship, and even a pregnancy, before it becomes public knowl-
edge. Chapter 6 gives an example of a young man agreeing to marry a
young woman who is pregnant by him, thereby resolving the problem
before it becomes public knowledge. However, a man who has had a
74 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

relationship with a woman outside of marriage does not always agree

to take her as his wife. In the eyes of many such men, she is a fallen
woman. I met two very young women who were pregnant by their
boyfriends. When they asked their boyfriends for help, they denied
all knowledge and refused to marry them (see chapter 6). Here is the
reason behind such a situation:

In the mind of a man who seeks to marry a virgin after taking the
virginity of other young women before marriage, sex is defilement;
sexual contact is a degrading experience which degrades the woman
and, by the same token, any men who are linked to her by ties of blood
or marriage. (Mernissi 2000: 205)

These men can be regarded as honorable and as proper men or as

without honor and the qualities of manhood, depending on which
concept of honor they themselves and their communities adhere to.
Moreover, namus, which King (2008) defines as sexual honor, is a
male matter, and mutual recognition or lack of recognition of namus
is, as noted above, represented in words such as tehedda (challenge or
attack) (Chakravarti 2005: 309; Fischer-Tahir 2009). In her study of
Pakistan, Haeri (1999) defines honor as “intimately tied to a sense
of a ‘natural’ masculine right to possess and control his womenfolk”
(quoted in Fischer-Tahir 2009: 64). This is how honor is described by
Jamous (1992, quoted in Fischer-Tahir 2009):

The exercise of authority over domains that are “forbidden” or

haram . . . and in the transgression of the integrity of the forbidden
domains of others by means of what we shall call exchange of violence.
The house of another “man” is such a forbidden domain, as is the body
of a “man’s” wife.(Fischer-Tahir 2009: 64)

An example of such an “exchange of violence,” and also of the inter-

secting violence of gender, sexuality and class, is the story of Mukhtar
Mai, a young Pakistani woman from a village in Punjab who, on June
22, 2002, was sentenced by the village council to a collective and
public rape. A number of men undressed her and raped her in front
of villagers. The reason given was that her 12-year-old brother had
been accused of trying to attract a girl from a higher caste and from
a different tribe (Mai 2006). Mai’s brother had entered the forbid-
den domain of other men who were also from a higher social class.
Crossing the domains of other men’s namus can lead to the killing of
men. Two other male victims are discussed in chapter 6. These vic-
tims, in the eyes of their killers, were guilty of crossing the boundary
 P O L I C I N G PA T R I A R C H Y 75

of their honor and their possessions, into their domain—and of not

recognizing their namus.
In daily interpersonal relations and actions, concepts of honor,
manhood and sexuality are reconstructed and maintained as a hege-
monic discourse and ideology, especially when they are also backed by
the state and its legal system and by other centers of power in society.

THE I MPACT OF THE S TATE ,

P OLITICS A ND THE L AW
The state is a key player that can encourage, contribute to or chal-
lenge violence against women through lawmaking and policymaking
(see Chakravarti 2005; Connel 2009; Efrati 2012; Hanmer 1990;
Husseini 2009; Rai 1996a; Shalhoub-Kevorkian 2005; Warraich
2005). It is therefore vitally important to study the legal and politi-
cal aspects of each of the specific national contexts in which these
crimes occur. Neglecting these aspects will not only be misleading,
but could also lead to the essentialization of violence by representing
it as a cultural characteristic.
The state and the perpetrators, as well as tribal leaders and the
Kurdish leadership, have all agreed in different ways and to differ-
ent extents to police patriarchy with reference to the discourses and
ideology of honor and manhood (see also chapters 3 and 5). As dem-
onstrated in chapter 3, one problem concerning the “Third World”
(Rai 1996a), and more specifically colonial and postcolonial societies,
is that the state is deeply embedded in conservative and patriarchal
sectors of civil society (Efrati 2012; Yuval-Davis 2004). This embed-
dedness in the civil society cannot always be regarded as positive for
women, since it means that they experience oppression “from and in
both areas of their lives,” that is, in relation to the state and to the
civil society, in public and in private (Rai 1996a: 35). As Efrati (2012)
shows in the case of Iraq, the formation of the state under British rule
in the early twentieth century meant a “retribalization” of society and
the “re-subordination” of women.
The legal–political and socioeconomic aspects of violence in the
name of honor in Iraqi Kurdistan are connected to the structural and
disciplinary domains of power, together with hegemonic ideologies
and discourses built around honor and manhood. It is also important
to take account of the structure and nature of the state, ethnic rela-
tions, the political situation, the existence or absence of democratic
institutions and the possibility of legal opposition and mobilization,
socioeconomic conditions, literacy, tribal and kinship structures, and
76 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

the level of militarization. Perpetrators’ accounts demonstrate the

importance of these aspects, and especially the significance of the law
and legal consequences, to the incidence of violence and murder. I
asked R.S. whether he regretted murdering his wife. He responded:

No. I do not regret it, not at all. Despite the fact that my life is destroyed
here and I have been here now for five years and seven months. Now
my life is destroyed here. If this hadn’t happened, I might have been
the father of four or five children. Here I am losing my mind. Here
you sit and sit in a room all the time. It feels very, very bad . . . I do not
bother about one, two, three, four or five years, but is it just that I
should sit here for the rest of my life? It is very difficult. This is unfair
against me. It is not fair.

He does not regret his crime, even though he realizes that he must
pay a high price for it, something he did not expect or imagine when
he killed his wife. R.S. did not expect to be jailed for so long when he
reported the murder to the police. He often emphasized throughout
the interview that he had not known about the new law, according to
which killing in the name of honor has been criminalized as murder.
As discussed in chapters 3 and 5, it was in the 1990s that women’s
rights activists and women’s organizations began to oppose violence
and the killing of women, and such violence became the focus of
public debate and was problematized. This process finally led to a
change in the law in the early 2000s (see Begikhani 2005; Fischer-
Tahir 2009; Mojab 2004a; Mojab and Gorman 2007). Even though,
as discussed in chapter 5, there are many limitations to and shortcom-
ings in the new law, as well as obstacles to its implementation, the fact
that it exists can act as a deterrent to killers. This new situation can
cause problems for those who kill in the name of honor but are not
well informed about the change in the law, as R.S. elaborates:

The following day I went to the police station and reported the murder.
They paid no attention to my psychological condition. They defined it
according to article 406, which means that they defined it as deliberate
murder in the court. I received a life sentence according to article 406.
Life! I have been here now for five years and seven months. There was
no such law before and I was born and live in the countryside, not in
the city. I had no access to the media and therefore no possibility of
hearing about the new legislation. We have no electricity, no television.
The only thing is the radio and I haven’t heard anything on the radio
about it. I have heard nothing regarding killing of women for defense
of honor and such things.
 P O L I C I N G PA T R I A R C H Y 77

I asked whether he would have still killed his wife if he had been
informed about the new legislation. He replied:

No. I would not have behaved in the same way. If I had known about
the legislation, I would have behaved according to the law . . . I would
have left it for the legal system to take care of.

I asked why he had not thought about doing this anyway. He could
have divorced her and let her go her own way, and gone on to live his
life. He responded: “Many others before me who have had the same
problem resolved it by killing. It does not matter, man or woman. I
did as others before me have done.” I asked if he had divorced her on
the grounds that she had been unfaithful, would he still have lost his
honor. He replied:

No. But as I said, when this happened the new law had not come from
the parliament yet. I did not hear about the legislation. For us it has
been usual and normal to act like that, and people in our area have
always behaved in the same way as I did.

This shows very clearly the impact of the new law, the significance of
positive and negative sanctioning, and the boundaries that the leg-
islation has put on what is acceptable and what is not. It shows the
problem and the dilemma that perpetrators face (see Husseini 2009;
Touma-Sliman 2005). The importance of legislation and its effects
on the number of killings in Jordan is well demonstrated in Husseini
(2009), and in the United Kingdom, where Gill, Begikhani and
Hague (2012: 83) highlight the need for a “shift in political think-
ing” away from conceptualizing violence and killings as a cultural
tradition. The importance of and the need for new political think-
ing as well as the problem of the culturalization of the crime are
discussed in chapter 1. Culturalization is a way of excusing murders
that departs from the perpetrators’ perspective and favors male supe-
riority. Answering the rhetorical question, “Why do men beat their
wives?,” Hanmer writes:

They do it because they can get away with it. In the words of the old
music hall joke: “Do you beat your wife?” “Of course, I can’t beat
anyone else’s!” It is not that they all do, but that they all can should
they wish to. Vis-à-vis the state, nothing will happen to you if you do,
and even if you seriously injure your wife it is unlikely that much will
happen to you. (1990: 33–34)
78 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

This is exactly what has been going on in Iraqi Kurdistan. It has

been a great part of, and has played a significant role in, the mainte-
nance, legitimization and normalization of violence against women
and their murder. Neglecting political aspects and instead presenting
violence and murder as cultural not only obscures the intersecting
structures of power and oppression that make the violence possible,
but even normalizes it. Hanmer goes on to argue the importance of
the state and the law: “Theories of masculinity or femininity are less
than helpful given the widespread dominance, backed up by the law
and the various state sectors responsible for its implementation, of
men in marriage and families” (Hanmer 1990: 34).
As discussed above, gender roles bind not only women but also
men to certain behavior, missions and duties. However, individual
women’s and men’s relation to the honor discourse differs depending
on their positions in intersecting structures of gender, class, ethnic-
ity, sexuality and generation, and their experiences of and relations to
various domains of power within which these discourses are repro-
duced. Legal action against such crimes and the criminalization of
them can not only show people an alternative way but also over time
lead to changes in people’s attitudes. Serhan, a Jordanian killer who
was interviewed by Husseini for her study, expressed his wish for
the criminalization of such killings. He killed his own sister, who
he loved very much and to whom he was very close. He claimed that
he had had to kill her because he could not see any other alternative.
Husseini writes: “He also acknowledged that his lenient punishment
would encourage him and other males to murder again in the name
of honour” (2009: 15). Serhan says:

If the state amended the law to execute men who kill their female rela-
tives or lock us behind bars for good, I do not think that any family
would venture to push their male relative to kill. No family wants to
see its male relative executed or locked up for good. (ibid.)

Husseini and other activists found that fighting for changes to Jordanian
legislation was not easy. They met strong resistance from Islamists and
conservative deputies in the Jordanian parliament, who did not want
change (2009: 52). These experiences highlight the importance not
only of the law, but also of information and communication about it.
Husseini describes how, despite the difficulties and many obstacles,
the process of struggle led to the spread of information and changed
many people’s attitudes. It mobilized people in some sectors of society
against killings and gave them a platform and a voice.
 P O L I C I N G PA T R I A R C H Y 79

Politically sanctioned and legalized violence and murder commit-

ted in the name of the restoration of honor has many chronic and
far-reaching consequences. The state and the legal system, the tribal
system with its law, customs and patriarchal structures, and conserva-
tive religious conceptions of gender and sexuality have been repro-
duced and strengthened, and have imposed their rules and relations
on Kurdish society for decades while the Kurdish political leadership
has been either silent or supportive (Mojab 2004a). As a consequence
of the governing structures’ and especially the state’s policing of
patriarchy, women’s subordinated position and the violation of their
rights, both within the family and in society as a whole, have been
normalized, legitimized and institutionalized. Policing is, as Hanmer
argues, “a state activity which does not treat the abuse of women in
their homes as a crime, but as a peace-keeping activity” (1990: 33) or
as a cultural act (see chapters 1, 3 and 5). The state is “the most
important institutional player in gender politics” because the state
“has power to grant, or deny, recognition to groups, movements,
institutions and individuals” (Connel 2009: 144–145). The signifi-
cance of laws and the legal and political measures against the crime,
as well as of legal assistance to victims, is confirmed in other studies
(Begikhani 2005; Bakhtiarnejad 2009; Chakravarti 2005; Husseini
2009; Shalhoub-Kevorkian 2005; Warraich 2005). On the role of
legislation, this is how Hearn argues:

Policy development in relation to men who have been violent to

known women is fundamental to reducing and stopping violence.
Traditionally, this has not been a major area of concern in most agen-
cies. The policy options that have been developed are quite limited.
Incarceration is extremely rare for men who have been violent to
known women. (1996b: 107)

Even though murder in the name of honor was criminalized in Iraqi

Kurdistan in the early 2000s, the lack of proper and systematic sta-
tistics makes it difficult to compare the situation before and after
the legal reforms to examine the impact of the law on the incidence
of violence and murder. Before the change in the law, and especially
before the 1990s, there was total silence about this kind of crime and
it went on unnoticed as a natural part of everyday life. It was not even
seen as a problem by many. There is a general impression that vio-
lence and killings have increased in the past two decades. However,
as discussed in chapter 5, the difference compared to the past is that
more women are refusing to be oppressed, more murders are being
80 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

reported and discussed by the media and activists, and there is thus
a growing awareness about them. Moreover, access to information is
much easier than before, and news about violence and murder there-
fore spreads much faster and wider. Hence, we cannot talk decisively
about an increase but nor can we probably talk about a noticeable
decrease (see chapter 1). For example, 446 women were killed in Iraqi
Kurdistan between 1991 and 2002, and 155 women committed sui-
cide between 1999 and 2000 (Najiba Mahmoud’s private archive).
In 2011 alone, in the three governorates of Hewler, Suleimaniah and
Duhok, 76 women were killed or committed suicide and 330 women
burned themselves or were burned by others (Hawlati).
These figures do not show any significant decrease in violence and
murder in the past two decades. However, it should be noted that the
law was only changed in 2000 and 2002, which is not a long time
compared to the many decades of the legalization and normalization
of killings. Changes in the law are not directly and automatically fol-
lowed by changes in people’s attitudes, but they certainly affect peo-
ple and society in the long run. Another important point is that the
legal definition is only one dimension of the problem, and changing
the law alone cannot bring about real change if it is not accompanied
by political and structural changes as well as reforms in people’s liv-
ing standards and education, and in forming democratic institutions,
combating corruption, and so on. There are still many problems and
obstacles to the implementation of the law. Many powerful forces resist
any change at all. Thus, the new legislation in Iraqi Kurdistan must
be seen as only a first and necessary step. There is also a need for bet-
ter communication and implementation of the law. The legal reform
needs to be accompanied by changing attitudes, and production of
new and empowering knowledge based on women’s and oppressed
groups’ experiences. There is, according to the activists mentioned in
chapter 5, a big gap between the law and its implementation, not least
because of corruption and nepotism, but also because of the mentality
of many of the people working in the police and the legal system.
The problems of corruption and nepotism as obstacles to social jus-
tice were raised by all respondents, including the perpetrators. R.K., a
32-year-old who had been a peshmerge since the age of 20, had killed
his wife and was awaiting sentence at the time of our interview. They
had been married for six years and had one child. He cried several
times as he described his situation:

She loved another man. And when she loved him, she betrayed me and
also that person betrayed her. He filmed her while they had sex. Then
 P O L I C I N G PA T R I A R C H Y 81

he pressed her and forced her to have sex with some other men because
he threatened to show the film. She did and they filmed this as well.
And then they pressed her for money and threatened to make the film
public if she did not give them money. I did not know anything about
it . . . She did not feel well . . . She had given them money several times
but the last time they wanted 5000 dollars to get back the films, and
then she told me . . . I loved my wife so much. I loved her very much
until it came to the point that she betrayed me.

Unlike the other men, R.K. did not talk much about honor and man-
hood. He oscillated between feelings of anger, bitterness, disappoint-
ment and humiliation. He was also very upset and angry because the
men who filmed his wife and blackmailed her for money went free,
even though they confessed. According to R.K., this was because they
all belong to powerful and rich families that have close contacts with
government officials and people in the legal system, or are brothers
of powerful men. He was less disappointed about being jailed than
about these men not being punished.

S UMM A RY
This chapter has focused on issues of honor and violence, and their
relation to notions of manhood and masculinity, using perpetrators’
accounts. The narratives reveal the close connection between perpe-
trators’ notions of manhood, honor and violence. The similarity of
their contentions and the way they explain their crimes demonstrate
the strong and hegemonic honor discourse that has formed their gen-
der identities and notions of manhood in a context impregnated by
ethnic oppression and resistance, war and armed conflict, and in a
situation where violence has emerged as the only option for resolv-
ing conflicts. These narratives also highlight how honor is used as an
excuse for murder and as a policy mechanism for maintaining patri-
archal power relations. They show how human relationships based
on tribe, kinship and extended family contribute to strictly defined
and regulated gender roles and to social control. The honor discourse
has also constructed the idea of a homogeneous society, community
and culture, members of which are expected to die or kill for honor.
This has been internalized and works as an effective policy mecha-
nism, disciplining the self and others in a context where notions of
masculinity and manhood have been constructed around maintain-
ing the community and its honor and resisting ethnic oppression.
Men have acquired the role of guardians of honor and defenders of
82 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

the patriarchal order, with a mission and responsibility to monitor

gender roles and women’s modesty and sexual behavior. The honor
discourse, produced within the wider sociopolitical context of Iraqi
Kurdistan, characterized by decades of ethnic oppression, war, mili-
tarization, poverty, armed struggle, state terror and dictatorship, as
well as the growth of tribal structures, religious conservatism and the
legal sanctioning of violence and killing in the name of honor, has
degraded women as society’s “other” and has presented them as a
potential danger in need of control.
This chapter has demonstrated the important role played by the
law, and the way that violence and murder are regarded and treated by
the state and the law. Perpetrators’ accounts show that the criminal-
ization of violence and killing could have a significant effect on men’s
behavior in the long run. It could make people more cautious about
killing, now that it is no longer a comfortable or the easiest option
but might instead cost them many years of imprisonment. This chap-
ter also highlights that reform of the law must be accompanied by
reform in other areas, such as the education system, as well as socio-
economic development, the establishment of democratic institutions,
and so on.
 5

WO M E N O P P O S I N G V I O L E N C E : R O O M
F O R R E S I S T A N C E A N D S PA C E S O F
E M P OW E R M E N T

I NTRODUCTION
This chapter deals with the experiences of women’s rights activists,
women’s organizations and women’s shelters in their work against
violence and for gender equality in Iraqi Kurdistan. Women’s orga-
nizations and shelters are fairly new phenomena in Iraqi Kurdistan.
They started in the early 1990s after the establishment of the no-
fly zone over Iraqi Kurdistan by France, the United Kingdom and
the United States, under United Nations Security Council resolution
688, in the aftermath of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and the brutal
oppression of the Kurdish uprising known as raparin. The no-fly zone
ended, to a large extent, decades of brutal state oppression, destruc-
tion, ethnic cleansing and mass killing. It opened up space for people
to express their opinions, organize and mobilize for various social
and political ends. Women were among the first to take the opportu-
nity to organize themselves, raise gender equality issues and mobilize
against gender-based violence. However, economic sanctions against
the country throughout the 1990s had disastrous consequences for
people, irrespective of their ethnic or religious identities and loyal-
ties. Moreover, as discussed in chapters 2 and 3, the Kurdish region
of Iraq was, throughout this decade, marked by war and destruction
because of the armed conflict and rivalries between the two main
Kurdish political parties, the PUK and the KDP.
In 2007 and 2008, I visited 12 women’s organizations and shelters
in Suleimaniah and Erbil as well as some smaller towns and villages
near Suleimaniah and carried out interviews with their representa-
tives. I also interviewed other activists who did not belong to any
specific organization but were working independently or with other
84 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

types of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Apart from two

small women’s organizations that are affiliated with the two Kurdish
Islamist parties, all the other organizations are secular. The role and
influence of the Islamist women’s organizations are highly marginal
and they do not have any shelters.
The interviews with activists covered their activities and experi-
ences, their achievements, their ways of working with and help-
ing women, and the problems and obstacles they face. The women
who are active in these organizations often, but not exclusively,
come from urban, educated and middle-class backgrounds. The key
activists and the older generation have had experiences of political
activism within the Kurdish opposition movement (both national-
ist and left wing) against the Ba’ath regime. Organizations and
activists differ for a number of reasons and do not constitute a
homogeneous group. However, despite their conflicts, contra-
dictions and even rivalries, they have cooperated and often cam-
paigned together, organizing activities around issues related to
violence against women, the law, and so on. Some of the women’s
organizations are directly connected to political parties, while oth-
ers work as NGOs. All, however, to a varying degree, are dependent
on support from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). It is
not possible to draw an absolute boundary between organizations
regarding their dependence on or independence from the KRG,
but only to speak of different degrees or types of dependency or
independence.

B EFORE A ND A FTER R A PA RIN

In the western world women started organizing in order to claim their

full and equal citizenship rights, in the colonial South or wherever
national liberation struggles were fought, feminists became engaged
in the general national struggle . . . They argued that there was no
sense in fighting to be equal to the men in their societies, if even the
men were not free citizens of their own national collectivity and state.
(Yuval-Davis 2011: 109)
In all their lives in America . . . black women have felt between the
loyalties that bind them to race on one hand, and sex on the other.
Choosing one or the other, of course, means taking sides against the
self, yet they have almost always chosen race over the other: a sacrifice
of their self-hood as women and of full humanity, in favour of the race.
(McKay 1992: 277–278, quoted in Collins 2009: 132)
 WOM E N O P P O S I NG V IOL E NC E 85

The above quotations describe well the situation of Kurdish women.

Squeezed between their identity as women and as members of a
subordinated and oppressed minority, sacrificing their selfhood as
women is also what many Kurdish women’s rights activists’ experi-
ences have been about. In my discussions with activists, I realized
that many of them, when they talked about their experiences, made a
distinction between before and after the Kurdish uprising in the early
1990s. Activities, organizations and campaigns for gender equality
and against gender-based violence in Iraqi Kurdistan became pos-
sible as soon as the Ba’ath regime’s control over the Kurdish region
ceased. Space was created for civic oppositional activism by the launch
of the no-fly zone. Prior to that, all political and social activities that
were not linked to the government were forbidden. However, from a
longer historical perspective, as Al-Ali (2008) and Efrati (2012) note,
the notion of a linear development regarding the situation of Iraqi
women must be questioned. They show that women’s situation in
Iraq has differed at different times, linked to various governments’
gender politics and to the overall political situation in the country
(see also Graham-Brown 2001).
Notions of linear development should be questioned not only
for Iraqi women, but also for all Middle Eastern and North African
women since, as Joseph and Slyomovics (2001: 10) note, critical his-
torical studies of these regions “reveal more fluidity in gender hierar-
chies in the pre-colonial period than had been previously imagined.”
Thus, when articulating Middle Eastern women’s contemporary situ-
ation and historical development, one should bear in mind the com-
plexity caused by the fact that, in the process of nation state building
in the region, “pre-colonial and postcolonial patriarchies have inter-
sected” (Joseph and Slyomovics 2001: 9; see also Yuval-Davis 1994).
In these processes, women have been regarded by states “as part-be-
ings caught between the contradictions of universalist constitutions,
defining them as citizens, of shari´a-derived Personal Status codes
limiting their rights in the family, and of a postcolonial malaise bur-
dening them with being the privileged bearers of a national authen-
ticity” (Kandiyoti 2001: 52).
Seeing Kurdish women’s situation in Iraq within the above-men-
tioned framework, one must keep in mind that as members of a subor-
dinated and suppressed minority, their situation has been even more
complicated by a context of ongoing state terror, militarization, ethnic
cleansing and war. During many decades of national oppression and
long periods of armed conflict and war, women, their problems and
86 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

their rights were marginalized and subordinated to other issues—

primarily the nationalist movement and resistance against brutal state
violence and ethnic oppression. The national issue has dominated not
only politics, but also the whole of society, as well as art, literature and
popular culture in Kurdistan (Ahmadzadeh 2003; Alinia 2004). The
formation of gender roles and relations has been strongly affected by
increasingly powerful tribal and kinship structures, on the one hand,
and by ethnic oppression, war and militarization, on the other. In
such a context, women as the symbol of the nation, family and other
collectivites have become more and more vulnerable and exposed to
violence (see chapters 1 to 3). Gender equality and women’s rights
were relegated to the future by the Kurdish leadership and more or
less ignored (Alinia 2004; Mojab 2000, 2001). Nonetheless, women’s
participation in the national movement was important for them since
it was an arena that provided opportunities for them to be involved as
political actors in public and political life (Mojab 2000).
Enloe states that it was when they were first politicized by their
involvement in the nationalist movement that Tamil women real-
ized that “women and men were being made to play quite different
roles in the escalating violence between Tamil guerrillas, the govern-
ment’s military and the occupying Indian army” (2000: 55). This
was also more or less the case for women involved in other national-
ist struggles, for instance, in the Philippines, Southern Sahara and
Eritrea (55–57). However, as Enloe asserts, militarization simultane-
ously “puts a premium on communal unity in the name of national
survival, a priority which can silence women critical of patriarchal
practices and attitudes; in so doing, nationalist militarization can
privilege men” (57–58). Dolan (2002) highlights the problem of nar-
row definitions and constructions of masculinity and manhood in
war and sectarian conflicts. This is also what Kurdish women and
men have experienced.
G.S. has been working with issues of gender equality and violence
against women since the early 1990s. She was leading a women’s orga-
nization at the time of our interview. She was active within the Kurdish
movement before the 1990s, and talked about her experiences:

It was after the liberation of Kurdistan that I saw women’s reality,

something that shocked me . . . Before raparin there were no women’s
organizations. There were only some Baathist women’s organizations
that reported against women who were struggling. Before raparin we
were all in a state of intoxication and totally absorbed by the struggle
for freedom and against national oppression. Now we can think about
 WOM E N O P P O S I NG V IOL E NC E 87

individual freedom. I had a friend who was killed by her own brother,
who was a leftist guerrilla, because she wrote a letter to a boy she was
in love with. I myself woke up and started to think about women’s
issues as soon as Kurdistan became free . . . When you are under occu-
pation you cannot demand individual rights and freedom, but when
you have your own government then you must do that. Now we have
political freedom and it is time to demand individual rights and to
think about social issues.

G.S.’s experiences of the marginality and even nonexistence of gender

consciousness within the Kurdish movement and the total subordina-
tion of gender to ethnic oppression and the “national interest” were
shared by other activists. As discussed above, the problem must be
seen in relation to the intersecting oppressions of gender, class, ethnic-
ity, sexuality and generation in the context of Iraqi Kurdistan, where
identities are constructed around ethnic oppression and resistance,
and where the state, tribes and the Kurdish leadership have been the
main actors and power centers. The Kurdish nationalist movement
has, like other nationalist movements, “rarely taken women’s experi-
ences as the starting point” but instead can be ascribed to this :

Typically has sprung from masculinized memory, masculinized humil-

iation, and masculinized hope. Anger at being “emasculated”—or
turned into a “nation of busboys”—has been presumed to be the natu-
ral fuel for igniting a nationalist movement. (Enloe 2000: 44)

Accad argues that in the Middle East, “nationalism and feminism

have never mixed very well” and in “most discussions of third world
feminism, sexuality and the privatized oppression of women by
men are relegated to secondary issues” (2000: 238). She means that
the issue of sexuality has been dismissed, neglected and presented
as a nonproblem by political actors and political ideologies such as
Marxism and nationalism, as against poverty, war, ethnic oppression,
and so on. At the same time, “sexuality is much more central to social
and political problems in the Middle East than previously thought”
(237), since sexuality “is at the core of most debates and choices of
human existence” (247). Accad argues therefore that a transforma-
tion in attitudes toward family, sexuality and society and, specifically,
a transformation in interpersonal and sexual relationships based on
domination and subordination “would create a more secure and solid
basis for change in other spheres of life—political, economic, social,
religious and national as they are often characterized by similar rap-
ports of domination” (237–238).
88 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

On the importance of sexuality from an intersectional point of

view, Collins argues, in relation to black American women, that sexu-
ality is “a specific site of oppression” where other systems of oppres-
sion converge (2009: 138). This is “because all systems of oppression
rely on harnessing the power of the erotic” (ibid.). The relationship
between intersecting oppression and resistance—both of which exist
within a matrix of domination—is, as Collins puts it, highly com-
plex, and thus the notion of “permanent oppressors and perpetual
victims” is misleading. Moreover, as Collins points out, oppression
and resistance affect each other and are connected to each other,
and thus the multidimensionality of oppression makes resistance
much more complicated and even contradictory, where competing
interests can often generate conflict when people take positions on
opposite sides (292). This is what has happened in Iraqi Kurdistan,
where the struggle against ethnic oppression and for the so-called
national cause has been prioritized so that everything else must wait.
Women were accused of betraying the nation whenever they brought
up the issues of gender equality and violence against women. This
is because, as Nagel argues, nationalist politics is “a major venue for
‘accomplishing’ masculinity” (1998: 251), the culture of nationalism
emphasizes and resonates with masculine cultural themes, and the
“micro-culture” of masculinity in everyday life articulates very well
with the demands of nationalism (ibid.). The treatment of women in
several independent states shows, according to Mama, that women’s
participation in national liberation movements and in armed struggle
does not necessarily lead to a progressive gender policy (2001: 259;
see also Dolan 2002). This problem can be traced to the contradic-
tory construction of women in nationalist ideologies—as symbols of
nation and bearers of traditions and customs on the one hand and
as potential threats and as dangers connected to their sexuality and
reproductive ability on the other. In such situations, where various
forms of oppression intersect, recognition of other kinds of oppres-
sion is necessary for solidarity and for a transversal politics struggling
for social justice on a broad front and across dividing lines of gen-
der, ethnicity, class, and so on. However, this demands knowledge of
intersecting oppressions and their complexities, their consequences
and the obstacles they present to resistance and struggle.
Y.I., a well-known intellectual and activist who has been closely
involved in the Kurdish movement for many years, said:

The struggle has gone on for 80 years, but after the 1980s I realized
that I have only struggled for one identity while my other identity, my
 WOM E N O P P O S I NG V IOL E NC E 89

identity as a woman, which is equally important, is in danger and has

been neglected. I realized that I had not paid enough attention to that.
Our idea had been: let us first make Kurdistan free and then take up
other issues. I realized that this is wrong. My Kurdish identity should
not go before my identity as a woman. I realized that if it were to do
so, then I would not be able as a woman to participate in the struggle
on an equal basis and on the same level as men. As a woman with
female sex I worked according to male norms, and therefore I usually
say that I have been a traitor for 17 years. This insight has enriched
my political struggle and now I think that women must also decide on
their struggle for freedom. Nobody can or should talk for or instead of
women but women themselves.

Fighting against national oppression and for social justice has been
understood and is seen as the obligation of all members of the nation,
including women. Sharoni identifies two images of Middle Eastern
women in the context of women’s participation in national liberation
movements throughout the region: women as fighters and women as
mothers of the nation (1997: 431). However, Enloe reminds us that
this is a broader problem since the experiences of women involved in
nationalist movements show that “living as a nationalist feminist is one
of the most difficult political projects in today’s world” (2000: 46).
The reason is, as Enloe puts it, “one becomes a nationalist when one
begins to recognize shared public pasts and futures. But most wom-
en’s past experiences and strategies for the future are not made the
basis of the nationalism they are urged to support” (ibid.). Women’s
participation in the Kurdish movement has increased in both quality
and quantity in the past three decades, but in its representations of
women, or in the relegation of equal rights to the future, the Kurdish
case is no different from other nationalist movements:

In the last two decades of the twentieth century, women joined the
ranks of guerrillas fighting against Turkey and Iran, entered parlia-
mentary politics, published journals, and created women’s organiza-
tions. However, the patriarchal nationalist movement continues to
emphasize the struggle for self-rule at the cost of the struggle for
equality. Nationalists depict women as heroes of the nation, repro-
ducers of the nation, protectors of its “motherland,” the “honour” of
the nation, and guardians of Kurdish culture, heritage and language.
(Mojab 2000: 89)

Thus, the 1990s in Iraqi Kurdistan can be seen as a turning point for
gender equality issues. However, the 1990s was not only the period
90 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

in which struggles for gender equality began, but also a period of

political, social and economic challenges and difficulties. Strict inter-
national economic sanctions were imposed against Iraq in 1990, and
these continued until 2003. These sanctions, according to Al-Ali,
had “the most devastating effects on women and gender relations
throughout the country and across social classes” (2008: 414). The
sanctions struck the whole of society but “women were particularly
hit” because of the changing social climate, state discourse and poli-
cies, and gender ideologies (ibid.; see also Begikhani 2005; Mojab
2004a). Moreover, as noted above, during the 1990s in the Kurdish
region of Iraq, the PUK and the KDP were involved in armed strug-
gle against each other, with disastrous consequences for the whole of
society and especially for women (see chapters 2 and 3).
Despite all these difficulties, the women activists I interviewed
were mostly positive about the post-1990 period. The reason for their
positive attitude was their appreciation for democratic rights and the
fact that they had obtained the opportunity to organize and mobilize
for their rights. The situation of women in Iraqi Kurdistan changed
for the better in the sense that, as G.S. states, the decrease in, and
finally demise of, the Ba’ath regime’s control and violence, and the
emergence of a free space, made it possible for women, and people
generally, to widen their views, identify other social issues and prob-
lems and realize that issues such as gender equality, sexual oppres-
sion and poverty were also serious social and political problems. As
social and political agents, they acquired democratic rights and the
opportunity to put gender issues on the political agenda, and pursue
activities opposing the violation of women’s rights. There was space
for women to maintain their agency and to have an impact on soci-
ety, politics and public opinion. Joseph and Slyomovics highlight the
importance of space for action for women thus: “as the space for pub-
lic action opens during certain historical circumstances, women tend
to be more politically active, while they may appear or become more
passive/inactive as state regimes actively control or regulate more of
the public space” (2001: 15).
Although activists admit that they are very far from their goals and
much remains to be done, they believe that there have been changes
for the better, not least because the new political situation has pro-
vided the prerequisites for them to create their own spaces and carry
on their struggles. Y.I. argued:

We still have very much left to do and to achieve, but think that
Kurdish men cannot say “no, wait, we have other things to do now.”
 WOM E N O P P O S I NG V IOL E NC E 91

They cannot say that and it is thanks to women’s organizations’ strug-

gle . . . Our women’s shelters are great achievements. Just the fact that
they exist is a step forward. It used to be normal to kill a woman, but
now it is not like that. These shelters are proof that violence and killing
are no longer regarded as normal.

Like Y.I., all the activists emphasized that everything is not fine, but
that the situation is better when compared to the past. Women’s orga-
nizations and women’s rights activists, despite their many problems,
have brought about changes in the Kurdish society in Iraq by creating
a space to discuss gender issues, highlighting the situation of women
in different ways, establishing these issues in the public and political
debate, and providing concrete help and support to women who are
in need of it (see Al-Ali and Pratt 2011; Begikhani, Gill and Hague.
2010; Mojab and Gorman 2007). The women who began the work
on gender issues did not have much previous experience, but they
have grown with their organizations. They started to organize strug-
gles for gender equality while these issues were still taboo. R.F., who
has experienced the process of change over the years, said:

Women have become more conscious and have woken up. In 1991,
when we protested against killing in the name of honour, we were
regarded as immoral, bad and promiscuous. But ten years later, in
2001, women demonstrated against violence and killing in the name
of honour and made the government change the legislation. Now we
are recognized. Women do contact us: some publicly and some in
secret.

Another activist, N.O., who also had experience of political activism

during the Ba’ath regime, is proud of women and what they have
achieved. She said:

Almost all women’s organizations came together and organized a cam-

paign and protested against the family law and we succeeded in chang-
ing the law on killing in the name of honor in 2000 and 2001 . . . Besides
that, during the war between the PUK and the KDP [the two leading
Kurdish parties] in the 1990s, we women ignored this conflict and
came together from both sides to raise our issues. Even though the civil
war affected the women’s organizations belonging to these parties to
some degree, they joined the campaign without paying attention to the
political situation, and this was a great step forward.

Gender equality and a decrease in patriarchal violence are related to

and dependent on social and political transitions to democracy (Holter
92 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

2005). In addition, women’s movements and campaigns for equality

have had significant social and political consequences for society as
a whole. Mehdid states that “the women’s movement has been sig-
nificant in the emergence of civil society through the impact it has
had on the development of a culture of opposition” (1996: 99). This
corresponds to the situation in Iraqi Kurdistan, where women have
played a role in the development of a culture of nonviolent and civic
opposition, since, as soon as it became possible after 1990, women
were among the first groups in society to take the opportunity to
organize and mobilize for gender equality and against gender-based
violence. These are in themselves significant achievements for women
in relation to social power, since an important aspect of space and
spatiality is, according to Massey, its connection with social power.
Massey talks about “spatialized social power,” claiming that “it is the
power relations in the construction of spatiality, rather than the spa-
tiality alone, which must be addressed” (1999: 291). Discussing the
importance of “safe spaces” for black American women’s empower-
ment, Collins states: “While domination may be inevitable as a social
fact, it is unlikely to be hegemonic as an ideology within social spaces
where Black women speak freely. This realm of relatively safe dis-
course, however narrow, is a necessary condition of Black women’s
resistance” (2009: 111). In these spaces, women gain agency and
“resist objectification as Other” (ibid.).

WOMEN ’S O RGA NIZ ATIONS A ND

THEIR S TRUGGLE FOR S OCI A L C H A NGE

Women’s organizations and women’s rights activities, despite all

their problems and shortcomings, have contributed to change within
Kurdish society in Iraq by questioning gender norms and the roles
reproduced in the honor discourse. By spreading information and
knowledge on violence and killings, they have made the problem
highly visible. They have affected gender politics, brought about
reform in the law and helped women who are under threat of violence
and killing. It is possible to talk about change even though violence
and killings are still widely occurring. Change is not limited to dra-
matic political and structural transformations. Movements can also
bring about change by challenging and exceeding the boundaries of
the social system within which they act (Melucci 1991). The spread of
information and knowledge about oppression, producing alternative
knowledge, consciousness and self-definition, as well as support and
assistance to victims of violence are highly significant contributions
 WOM E N O P P O S I NG V IOL E NC E 93

made by women’s rights activists. Moreover, challenging the honor

discourse, as these activists do, demands much effort, sacrifice and
determination. Activists’ experiences show that challenging the pow-
erful, established and normalized discourse of honor and its powerful
proponents in Iraqi Kurdish society is not an easy task. The power of
self-definition, and the knowledge that exposes mechanisms of power
and oppression, empowers those who have been disempowered and
challenges the hegemonic ideologies and discourses that legitimize
and normalize oppression and violence in the name of honor in vari-
ous domains of power.
I asked S.T., a board member of a women’s organization who is
also responsible for their women’s shelter, about the kinds of prob-
lems faced by the women who seek their help. S.T. gave the following
summary:

Most of the conflicts are about forced marriage; for example, the fam-
ily wants to force a girl to marry somebody but she doesn’t want to.
Or sometimes it is about sexual abuse and rape. Sometimes we even
have cases of pregnancy as an outcome of rape, and then the problem
becomes even worse. Another problem is connected with exchange of
brides ( jin be jine), a form of marriage where two families exchange
their daughters. Or the problem may be that a family suppresses the
girl, does not allow her to go to school, to go out, to see people, and
then the only alternative for her is either to commit suicide or to flee.

The shelter where S.T. was working was set up in 1999. By 2007,
around 360 women had been accommodated in the shelter and given
help. Some of them would have been killed if they had not come to
the shelter. Some women stay for short periods and some stay longer,
even for years, depending on the conflict and the risk to their lives.
When I asked how they dealt with the problems, S.T. explained:

In the first place, we try to make the families understand that what they
are doing is wrong, and this has often been successful. They do not
understand that what they do may one day force the girl to leave them
or commit suicide. After we explain to them, they realize that they have
behaved badly toward her. There are those who insist that they have the
right and do not want to change their behavior. But the great majority
of them regret the way they have treated their daughter, sister, and so
on. This varies, of course, very much from family to family.

The shelters usually also carry on other kinds of activity, such as

seminars and courses. They also support women from neighboring
94 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

countries, such as Iran, Turkey and some Arab countries. They say
that they do not care about religion, language or nationality, but
work for all women. Another shelter was set up in 2002. By 2007,
according to its manager S.Y., it had saved lives of 500 women. S.Y.
also told how they first try to resolve the conflict through dialogue
and negotiation, but take the case to the police and the courts if they
are unsuccessful. They try to include the families in the process, aim-
ing to convince them to change their minds and their behavior, and
to reconcile them and the victim. When I asked S.Y. about the cases
they have and how they handle them, she elucidated thus:

Unfortunately, we also have those who have had relationships with

other men and betrayed their husbands. This is against the ideology
of our organization. Neither men nor women should be unfaithful
but, unfortunately, it does happen and many women come to us when
their extramarital relations have been revealed and they are in trouble.
Or sometimes the problem is about a girl who wants to study but her
family does not allow her, sometimes it is about what a girl should
wear . . . the problems are many. We try, in the first place, to save their
lives. Then we see if there is any possibility for negotiations and rec-
onciliation. We try to meet their families and listen to their opinions.
Many cases are easy to resolve. But even after they are resolved and the
women return home, we try to follow them up. Sometimes we follow
them up for two or three years or more. There are also cases that are
very complicated and in which it is even impossible to contact the fam-
ilies, or even to let them know where the woman is, because not only
the woman herself but also those who help her would be subjected to
the perpetrators’ anger and violence. In some cases, women have been
here for two or three years.

In the second shelter, there were a number of women who had been
threatened by their families because of extramarital relationships. S.Y.
expresses a dislike of and has moral judgment about the behavior of
these women, but says nothing about the fact that their marriage was
against their will. In fact, forced marriages, refusals of forced mar-
riage and/or love lie behind most cases of threats to kill and killings,
according to the narratives in chapters 6 and 7, as well as in other
studies (see Amnesty International 1999, 2004; Bakhtiarnejad 2009;
Dogan 2010; Greiff 2010; Husseini 2009; Ilkkaracan 2000).
Some of the activists, as well as some other women I met, com-
plained about conservative attitudes among some women’s rights
activists. Many people, including activists, who are aware of the prob-
lem, admit that there are many shortcomings, and think there is a
 WOM E N O P P O S I NG V IOL E NC E 95

great need for more information and feminist knowledge (see also
Al-Ali and Pratt 2011; Mojab and Gorman 2007). However, despite
such problems, the existence of shelters where threatened women can
receive help and support is, according to activists, a great step forward.
Shelters and women’s rights activities and organizations are spaces for
women where they feel empowered and where they develop as social
and political agents. Shortcomings and lack of knowledge are conse-
quences of the social and political situation, which activists have also
been living with, and which has deprived them of opportunities to
gain information and knowledge. The periods of war, sanctions and
destruction, and the dramatic change that society has gone through,
as well as numerous other political and structural problems, mean
that many functions of society still did not work as they should in
2007 and 2008, when these interviews were conducted. An example
that women mentioned was the lack of literature, new books and new
information, particularly, the lack of feminist literature and transla-
tions in Kurdish. They explained that they did not have access to
new research and theoretical resources, and they often had to learn
by trial and error, or through experience. Nevertheless, even though
these kinds of activities are quite recent in Iraqi Kurdistan, women
are doing well and making a difference. They have also gained many
valuable practical insights and much knowledge about conflicts, con-
flict resolution and how to help women and their families. They have
proved themselves good at transnational networking, forming con-
tacts and networks with women from other countries and exchanging
experiences.
It was striking that the women’s rights activists and shelters carried
out various kinds of social work, providing help and assistance not
only to the women but also to their families, who often belonged to
the least privileged social groups. They tried to make them aware of
the problems and consequences of the way they treated their female
family members. Activists themselves came from the same society and
were well aware of the intersecting oppressions, violence and the mul-
tiple problems that these families often faced. They saw the impact of
poverty, war, ethnic oppression, tribal structures, state violence, the
law, and so on. My experience of Swedish culturalist and ethnocentrist
debates and policies (Alinia 2011; Å lund and Alinia 2011) meant that
the perspective of these activists and the way in which they handled
the conflicts and related to people was refreshing. Their approach to
dealing with conflicts between women and their families was dif-
ferent, focused very much on dialogue and reconciliation but at the
same time on protecting the victims, saving their lives and protecting
96 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

their rights and interests. This approach shows the activists’ knowl-
edge and understanding of the society they live in, its history, and its
problems and conflicts. It also shows their understanding and care
not only for the victims, but also for the families, which usually con-
sist of people who have not had any opportunity to think differently
or learn new ideas.
Such an approach demands an idea of the conflict and the violence
as something more complex and multidimensional than just a prob-
lem of gender and sexuality. It demands a perspective that regards
the violence against women as part of a wider problem, where the
structures of gender-related violence intersect with violence of pov-
erty, ethnicity, sexuality, state violence, the law, and so on, in the
sociopolitical context in which people have been living and acting for
generation after generation.
C.O. is vice-chairman of a shelter that started operating in 2007,
and by 2008 had helped 80 women. C.O. gave some examples of
women they had worked with: a girl who loves someone but her fam-
ily does not let them marry; a woman who wants to divorce her hus-
band but her own family does not agree; and a girl who wants to
study but her family does not allow her. All these can lead to the kill-
ing of the women if they are not taken care of immediately, before the
conflicts become more complex. This shelter also tries dialogue and
negotiation, but once they realize that these will not help they send
the case to the police and the courts. C.O. says:

We follow them up until we are convinced that the problem is resolved.

We visit them, they visit us, and we keep ourselves informed . . . We also
have difficult cases, those who are threatened with death; they are very
difficult.

She said that in one case a woman was killed after returning home,
but that was an exception. I asked her if they had been able to resolve
any of the complicated cases. She says:

Yes, we have done it with the help of the police and the courts; then
the girl could marry the boy she was in love with, and she broke con-
tact with her family.

I asked whether the family continued to threaten her. This was her reply:

No, they pressed her hoping that she would change her mind, but
when we got involved and supported the girl we made their families
 WOM E N O P P O S I NG V IOL E NC E 97

understand and accept her marriage. They realized that if they did
not let her marry it would be a problem for them, and if they killed
her it would also be a problem for them. In the beginning her family
was very angry with her, and her mother was not allowed to visit her
because of the father. But now her mother visits her. But the father and
brothers still do not have contact with her. But I am sure that they too
will do it little by little . . . We try to make them meet halfway so that
nobody feels like the loser. We try to show them solutions and do not
let the conflict grow bigger. When they have a conflict, they do not
think about solutions, and we try to show them solutions.

P UBLICIT Y A ND C ONFLICT R ESOLUTION

Another related theme that activists raised was the problem of public-
ity, discussed in chapter 4, the resultant pressure on families and its
consequences, the possibility of violence toward women, even murder
(see also Dogan 2011; Fischer-Tahir 2009; Husseini 2009). I asked
C.T. about the chances of a conflict being resolved after it has become
public knowledge, and she told me about a case that illustrates the
problem of publicity very well:

You know that in Kurdish society social relations are very close and
people are very involved in each other’s lives. Families do not like their
problems to become public knowledge, and, therefore, a precondition
for the possibility of reconciliation is that their community does not
know about the case . . . There are cases we have been able to resolve
and the families have been easier to handle when the issue has not
become public knowledge. We have even had cases where girls have
been threatened by their families to be killed but the conflict has been
resolved and the girl has returned to her family, and we have followed
them up and they have started normal life again.

Publicity, as discussed in chapter 4, makes the conflict much more

complicated, and can make breakdown of relationships irreversible,
often excluding the possibility of conflict resolution and reconcili-
ation. In the eyes of the families, publicity affects the community’s
judgment of them and especially of their male members. It also affects
the families’ judgment of themselves and their self-esteem, because of
the powerful honor discourse in which fear of an imagined unified
community and of “what other people will think of us” becomes an
important component (see also Dogan 2011; Husseini 2009). This
has created a fear of society and the imagined unified community in
such a way that everybody polices their own and their family mem-
bers’ behavior. That is not to say that this fear is not justified, or that
98 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

the community does not interfere. However, the notion of a unified

and homogeneous community behind perpetrators is a policy mecha-
nism and a component of the powerful honor discourse that silences
and excludes contradictions and conflicts within the group. Thus,
as discussed in chapter 4, the problem of publicity, real or imagined,
is that it puts pressure on the family, especially its male members, to
act. It is a strong disciplinary mechanism and it often makes peaceful
resolutions difficult if not impossible (see also Dogan 2011; Husseini
2009). It becomes a challenge to male family members’ manliness and
forces them to act in order to maintain their manhood—it becomes
their personal concern. As discussed in chapter 4, men are also under
pressure and vulnerable in such a context (see also Dogan 2011;
Husseini 2009), but they direct their anger and frustration against
women and cause them suffering, violence and death in accordance
with the honor discourse and its imperatives.
There are many differences, depending on different individuals,
family situations, communities, and so on, and similar problems
can have totally different outcomes depending on these differences.
Nonetheless, the issue of publicity, because of the fear of the commu-
nity’s judgment, real or imagined, seems to be a significant aspect and
can make the conflict more complicated. C.T. gave an example:

A young girl of about 12 or 13 years old, from a very poor, single par-
ent family, where the mother was working and supporting the family,
became pregnant. The girl’s mother took her to a doctor because she
had pain in her stomach, and the doctor found that she was preg-
nant. The doctor realized that the girl’s life would be in danger if her
mother knew the truth. Hence, the doctor contacted me and told me
about her, and I contacted her teacher and, together, we contacted
the family and managed to resolve the problem. The boy agreed to
marry her and the boy’s family gave money to the girl’s brother for the
expenses. However, her family had to move from the village to avoid
people’s talk and gossip. But it ended well: she was not killed.

There are also cases where a woman’s family or a member of the fam-
ily brings them to the shelter and asks for help. It can be about very
serious problems such as pregnancy outside marriage, and so on.
Although these cases are rare, they are a sign of a large degree of
openness and understanding in such families. They also show that
people have trust in women’s shelters and organizations.
Activists make a difference and they are proud of this. At the same
time, however, they know that their struggle has just begun. The new
political situation in Iraq, and its impact on the Kurdish society, has
 WOM E N O P P O S I NG V IOL E NC E 99

not only brought about democratic change and opportunities, but

also enabled many previously ignored and subordinated social and
political issues to be raised. It has exposed many internal conflicts
and contradictions within the Kurdish society where the common
enemy, against which people were united around their Kurdish iden-
tity, is no longer in power. Women experience joy and pride over the
opportunities they have acquired, and over their achievements, but
at the same time are concerned and frustrated about the many prob-
lems, obstacles and difficulties they still face in their daily activities.
The conflicts and problems that activists discussed, however, were
not limited to issues of violence and the killing of women. They dealt
with many other social and political problems related to the state and
politics, the politics of gender, issues of citizenship, legislation, and
so on.
These are concerns that Kurdish women share with many women
across Iraq and in the region, and they need further discussion and
analysis that are beyond the scope of this study. In addition, prob-
lems related to political and religious interference in the legal system,
and to corruption and nepotism when implementing the law, were
among the main concerns that activists highlighted. These are dis-
cussed briefly below.

WOMEN, THE S TATE A ND THE L AW

The criminalization of violence and murder in the name of honor
is one of the most significant achievements of women’s rights activ-
ists and women’s organizations. As discussed in chapter 3, women’s
struggles and campaigns won a positive response from the Kurdish
political parties (the PUK and the KDP) and they both criminal-
ized killing in the name of honor in their respective areas of control
(Begikhani 2005; Fischer-Tahir 2009; Mojab and Gorman 2007).
Reforming the 1969 Iraq Penal Code, according to which defending
honor was earlier regarded as a “mitigating circumstance” (Begikhani
2005: 212; Begikhani et al. 2010), that in practice allowed the killing
of women, and the consequent criminalization of killing in the name
of honor, are seen by activists as a highly significant step forward and
as an important prerequisite for the struggles against violence and
for gender equality. However, they recognize that there is a big gap
between the law and its implementation—linked to corruption and
nepotism, and to the lack of a strong determination and any agree-
ment within government on gender equality issues. There are prob-
lems regarding political and religious interference in the legal system,
100 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

and also with the attitudes of individuals working within the police,
the courts, the government and other institutions. Here is how B.S.,
a women’s rights activist, puts across her views on this:

It is supposed that the courts should work according to the new law,
but you see that women are killed every day and nothing is done to
stop it. In those cases where the perpetrator is punished, it is because
he is not rich and/or does not have a powerful contact . . . I tell you very
clearly that those in power create obstacles to these issues. The political
power here in Kurdistan is the same as the political parties. They com-
mit crimes against women by protecting murderers and perpetrators.
When the issue goes to court we have problems with the legal system’s
lack of independence. I myself experience it all the time . . . They can
close a very serious case with a phone call. The lack of independence in
the legal system in Kurdistan is a real problem. For example, a person
who is not a member of one of the ruling parties cannot be appointed
a judge.

Such problems were mentioned by both victims and perpetrators (see

chapters 4, 6 and 7). N.O., another activist like B.S., complained
about the way the political parties in power handle violence against
women. She talked about corruption, tribal influence and political
influence in the legal system:

The political parties have given power and influence to the tribal lead-
ers by giving them money and positions in order to gain their loyalty.
This has led to the revival of kinship and a tribal mentality . . . Even if
we have a Kurdish regional government and better laws, our judicial
system is still not independent . . . A tribal leader can go to the par-
ties and get what he wants, like changing or cancelling a decision,
and so on . . . Political parties decide on everything and can affect all
decisions. For example, they can cancel court decisions. Parties are
everywhere and they have appointed their members to all institutions.
There is no place anywhere for people who are good, competent and
independent.

The significant role of the state and the legal and political system in
promoting gender equality and in increasing or decreasing violence
against women is recognized and discussed by many scholars (e.g.,
Abdo 2004; Amnesty International 1999, 2004; Bakhtiarnejdad
2009; Connel 2009; Gill et al. 2012; Greiff 2010; Hanmer 1990;
Hearn 1996b; Husseini 2009; Maktabi 2009; Rai 1996a,b; Sirman
2004; Waylen 1996a,b). The law is an absolute necessity but it is not
enough. A law does not solve problems if it is not backed up by the
 WOM E N O P P O S I NG V IOL E NC E 101

state and its institutions and is not accompanied by reforms in other

areas such as education, socioeconomic development and increases
in living standards. Another important factor is the legitimacy of the
state and people’s trust in the state and its institutions. As Stewart puts
it: “A strategy for empowerment based on legal concepts of equality
is of limited value if the dominant sources of legitimacy in society lie
elsewhere” (1996: 39). A major problem regarding the relationship
between women and the state in the Middle East, according to Rai,
is the state’s violation of their rights—it is about “fighting state vio-
lence” (1996a: 36).
Relations between the KRG and Kurdish women’s rights activists
can best be described as ambivalent. Many activists are highly suspi-
cious of the government. Being critical of or in agreement with the
state is often equated with being either inside or outside the KRG (see
also Al-Ali and Pratt 2011). However, the term “state,” as Rai puts it,
does not refer to “a unity of structure and power” but to a “network
of power relations existing in cooperation and also in tension” (1996a:
36). She argues that, “because of this fluidity and dispersal of power
we cannot regard the “touch” of the state as universally polluting”
(Rai 1996b: 5). Hence, the solution lies not in giving up on the state
but in finding strategies to relate to the state in a way that empowers
women and helps them to achieve justice and political support for
their demands. It can be a combination of struggle, opposition and
also “lobbying the state” (Stewart 1996: 39). Ambivalent attachments
to and relations with the state and political power were a recurrent
theme and a sensitive issue in activists’ accounts. Detachment from
the state was highly valued by many of them, at the same time as
they were all more or less critical of the government for not assisting
them and not giving them enough resources and for ignoring their
demands. This contradictory position, however, shows the dilemma
that activists face since, as mentioned above, they are suspicious of the
state due to their experiences but also realize that they need the state
in order to bring about real change.

V IOLENCE AGA INST WOMEN BEYOND

H ONOR A ND K ILLINGS
During my second trip to Iraqi Kurdistan, in 2008, the issue of
polygamy was discussed intensively in the Kurdish regional parlia-
ment, and was also the subject of heated debate among activists.
Polygamy is an issue on which Islamist women’s organizations, con-
nected to the two Islamist Kurdish political parties, and secular
102 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

women’s organizations that constitute the mainstream and absolute

majority of women’s organizations had totally different views—even
though they all agree and cooperate on issues concerning violence
and the killing of women. All the women’s organizations, except the
Islamist groups, protested against the legal recognition of polygamy
and demanded reform of family law in this regard. This did not hap-
pen, however, and the KRG and the women’s organizations were
clearly divided on the issue. Joseph and Slyomovics state that “fam-
ily law, covering marriage, divorce, child custody, and inheritance, is
one of the most critical areas of law for gender politics” (2001: 16).
The problems and controversies with regard to family law, however,
are not limited to Iraq or Kurdistan but, as Joseph and Slyomovics
note, occur throughout the Middle East (including Israel) and North
Africa, where “family law has been left in the domain of religious
law and religious courts” (ibid.; see also Efrati 2012). Maktabi, while
discussing family law reform in Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco and Syria,
in the past two decades, states:

The most heated debates regarding gendered citizenship have been

over changes in family laws, with different social forces advocating
competing notions of women’s civil rights in society and gender rela-
tions within the family. There are also competitions over the extent to
which religious clerics shall maintain or lose privileges in defining and
implementing personal status law. (2009: 1)

These kinds of conflict and contradictions around conservative reli-

gious interference in law, and especially in the legal regulation of
women’s rights and gender equality issues, have also occurred in
Jordan (Husseini 2009) and Iran (Bakhtiarnejad 2009, Fair family law
2011). It is also, as demonstrated in the activists’ accounts, a problem
in Iraqi Kurdistan, where Islamist women’s organizations supported
polygamy and opposed other women’s organizations’ demands and
criticisms. Islamist women’s organizations defended polygamy as an
Islamic tradition, contrasting it with what they labeled Western cul-
ture. They somehow equated gender equality with promiscuity and
saw polygamy as a necessity in order to prevent moral decadence in
society. Y.T. explained her defense of polygamy:

Why should we be ashamed of polygamy, which we have had for many

years. It has not led to Aids and we are not shamed by women having
sex with other women or men with other men. Why should we be
ashamed of polygamy but they are not ashamed of that? Why should
 WOM E N O P P O S I NG V IOL E NC E 103

we be against polygamy but not of the fact that so many women have
become promiscuous which is haram (forbidden according to the
Islamic law)? There are people who say that politics should not be
according to the Quran but we do not have any other options . . . We
cannot separate Islam from politics.

I asked her if she would like her husband to marry again and she
replied:

We must be solitary. What we wish for ourselves we must also wish for
other women. Now in Iraq many men are dying and there are many
widows. We cannot let them become promiscuous. It is to maintain
the nation’s sharaf and namus. You see in Europe there are many chil-
dren who do not know their own fathers. We do not want to have such
a situation . . . It is not good either for our husbands to go around and
date different women. It would be worse because diseases will spread.

B.T., a representative of a women’s organization, was very critical and

said that it is usually men, including religious clerics, who make laws
while women’s demands are neglected and their opinions excluded.
Many other activists share B.T.’s experience, saying that the family
law is very much influenced by the Shari´a (Islamic law), which does
not promote gender equality. This is how B.T. elaborates:

We see that women are discriminated against by the law and women
and men do not have the same rights. We [women’s organizations]
held several meetings with parliament about these things and we man-
aged to convince 40 members of parliament. This was very important
for us. We made them sign our proposals, but unfortunately the minis-
try of religious affairs did not accept them. Their comment was that it
is okay if it does not oppose Shari´a. Therefore it was stopped because
according to them it opposed the Shari´a. Then they organized a com-
mittee to discuss our suggestions, and the committee consisted mostly
of religious clerics and some legal experts, and all of them were men
and they were all quite old . . . The outcome was that our opinion was
totally disregarded and our demands were rejected.

The only thing the Kurdish government did, according to the activ-
ists, was place conditions on polygamy. According to the activists,
this was only a formality in order to silence the critics while in prac-
tice nothing would change. One of the conditions is that an already
married man who wants to marry must have the economic resources
to support two families. Another is that his current wife has to agree
104 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

with his second marriage. Activists believe that in practice these con-
ditions will not prevent polygamy, because there are many ways to
evade the law. They also mention existing parallel tribal and religious
laws that are often “privileged over official judicial institutions,” and
are often patriarchal and unfavorable to women (Begikhani 2005:
220; see also Mojab 2004a). B.S. gave an example of how the law can
be evaded:

People go to a mela [priest] and marry, and for the majority of the
people the religious marriage is more legitimate than a civil marriage.
They marry and then they go to court and pay a little penalty or get a
short prison sentence. That is all.

Activists also believe that while a poor man or a man with a low
income might not be able to marry for a second or a third time, men
with economic resources can. Thus, for rich men who want to marry
more than one woman, there is no problem in doing so. Regarding
the permission of the current wife, B.T. stated that the wife cannot
do anything because if she objects, her husband can easily divorce
her. For a woman who does not have any income of her own, this is
not an option. B.T. believed that in practice there had not been any
significant changes to the family law. She also highlighted what the
priorities of the government are and how political compromises are
made on gender issues and on family law:

So you see that nothing has changed. For example, the law on inheri-
tance is the same as before—that is, two women inherit as much as a
man, or a woman inherits half of what a man does . . . In their conflicts
with Baghdad they always make compromises on family law. They can-
not do much. They will not get any change in this legislation. The
government has to make clear to us whether it is secular or religious
legislation that we have. This is not clear.

Reinforcement of conservative norms and practices by the state and

its institutions can affect women extremely negatively and threaten
any attempt at change. This must be seen in the broader context of
Iraq described by Efrati (2012: 171) as recurrently retribalized, where
women have been regularly subordinated by the enforcement of reli-
gious and tribal laws after any new invasion or foreign domination (see
also Al-Ali and Pratt 2011). These problems are also connected with
the issue of the relationship between the state and civil society. Civil
society and the state, both as “spaces—of informal and formalized
 WOM E N O P P O S I NG V IOL E NC E 105

networks of power—are imbued with masculinist discourses” (Rai

1996a: 35) and are coercive in various ways. Rai problematizes the
“embeddedness” of most Third World states in civil society, arguing
that it leads to the oppression of women “from and in both areas of
their lives” (1996a: 35). Civil society in her view is not an “uncompli-
cated ‘space of uncoerced human association’” but a male-dominated
space with “hidden and explicit dangers, driven from national, reli-
gious and ethnic identities . . . as deeply masculinist as is the infra-
structure of state relations” (35–36; see also Efrati 2012; Husseini
2009; Joseph and Slyomovics 2001; Kandiyoti 2001; Maktabi 2009).
However, Rai argues that at the same time as civil society is “oppres-
sive” and “threatening,” it is also “fractured” and provides “spaces
for struggle and negotiations” (1996a: 32). The problem in Iraq as
well as other colonial and postcolonial societies, as Efrati (2012) also
notes, is that the state has been seeking alliances and support among
the most conservative and backward sectors of society, something
which has directly affected family law and the position of women in
society.
As Maktabi (2009) points out, personal affairs and family law have
been matters of political conflict and contradiction but also of politics
and compromise in “Arab societies,” but they have not been a prior-
ity area in higher education. Maktabi suggests that “more focus on
supporting educational and trainee programmes on family law issues
could well be seen as an avenue to internally generated and socially
supported change in Arab states” (2009: 26).

A NEV ER-E NDING S TRUGGLE

Violence against women in Iraqi Kurdistan is a widely known and
recognized problem, acknowledged by the KRG also. Legal reform
and the criminalization of murder in the name of honor have been
significant steps forward. Women’s rights activists and their support-
ers, including men, have played an important role in these processes.
Extreme violence and killing are often the ultimate stages of a long-
term conflict between individual women who have challenged the
normalized oppression and violence inherent in the structure of the
family and in their everyday lives and perpetrators who use violence,
threats to kill and killing in order to maintain the gender order and
their own power, and to silence women. Violence against women is
pursued on many levels and in different forms, in public and in pri-
vate, in the home and in society, and by the state and its institutions.
106 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

Violence has even been directed at women’s rights activists because

of their activities. Many activists have experienced various forms of
violence, such as threats through anonymous messages, telephone
calls, letters, and even face to face. They face humiliation, disparaging
comments and violent reactions. Despite all this, they remain opti-
mistic and see improvements and progress, even though huge prob-
lems persist. B.T. elaborates on this:

Ten or twelve years ago, the situation for women was even worse. The
way not only men but also women looked down on women made a
strong impact on you so that you lost all your self-confidence . . . They
tell you that you are nothing. You feel sorry for yourself . . . You have to
be a powerful man’s wife to be respected. Even for these women, the
respect society gives them depends on their men, not on themselves.
This discrimination made me more determined to create a place for
myself in this society. When they count on me, they have to do it
because of myself and not because of a husband, a father or a son. I
think I have achieved my goal and have been successful in making
them accept me because of the person I am and the work I do.

In nationalist imaginations, women are “represented as bearers of

national tradition, implicitly carrying its backward-looking aspects”
(Jacobs 2000: 226). However, these women and many anonymous
women who daily resist oppression do the opposite by questioning
and challenging these “backward-looking aspects” of the society and
its gender roles, relations and norms. They try to push the bound-
aries of the social system, increase their room for manoeuvre and
strengthen their social power. Despite all the difficulties they face,
they are also encouraged by the trust many people have in them and
the support given to them. Comparing the situation in late 2007 with
that a decade before, T.D., a leader of a small women’s organization,
said:

Fortunately our society has improved. Ten years ago they called us
bad or promiscuous, but today it sometimes happens that even fathers,
brothers and husbands bring their daughters, sisters or wives here and
ask for help.

However, the general impression among people, and even among

activists, is that violence against and the killing of women, and also
women’s suicide, have increased since the 1990s (see also Begikhani
2005; Fischer-Tahir 2009; Mojab 2004a). Activists give different
explanations for this perception or reality. These can besummarized
 WOM E N O P P O S I NG V IOL E NC E 107

into four points. First, people now talk about these issues more and
they are problematized, while in the past the violence was normal-
ized and surrounded by total silence. Second, because women are
more and more refusing to accept subordination and control, and
are more conscious of their rights, their resistance is more often
met with violence. Third, changes in society linked to increased lev-
els of urbanization and education and wider access to information
and communication technologies mean that younger generations
think differently, but the older generation cannot understand and
will not accept their demands. Fourth, it is now possible to discuss
these issues, while before the 1990s many other problems, especially
the struggle against ethnic oppression and state violence, were pri-
oritized. All these points are relevant since they highlight different
aspects of reality. As discussed in chapter 4, there are no proper and
systematic statistics from the past against which the current number
of suicides and murders, and the level of violence, can be compared to
see how the situation has changed. It is obvious from the various esti-
mates (see chapter 4) that we cannot talk about a significant decrease.
However, 10 years is a short period for any significant change in atti-
tudes, norms and traditions to take root after many decades of nor-
malized violence and the legalized killing of women. Together, the
four points outlined above describe a society going through a rapid,
and at times violent, transformation, in which “normal” and “taken
for granted” gender roles are being questioned by many more young
people. As mentioned in chapters 3 and 4, the killing of women is
now seen as a problem by a majority of the people who responded to
a recent survey. These transformations are not limited to gender rela-
tions, but also include many other social and political areas. Women
have been among the pioneers not only in raising gender issues, but
also in the new form of struggle for social change and social justice,
and this arouses anger and fear since it targets many of the oppressive
power structures. Many activists remain determined to struggle, as
strongly expressed by Y.I.:

When they refer to certain things as Kurdish people’s morals or cul-

ture, then I prefer to be immoral. When they defined these things as
moral they did not ask me—I have not agreed to that. Something that
is against me and even encourages the killing of me is not my morals
but Kurdish men’s morals . . . We have to break the taboos, break the
obligations imposed on us, and when we cause fractures in the patriar-
chal wall then it will crumble, but it is a continuous and never-ending
struggle.
108 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

S UMM A RY
This chapter discusses women’s rights activists’ experiences in the
broad political and historical context of Iraq and its Kurdish region.
It highlights the destructive impact of colonialism, ethnic oppression,
state violence, war and militarization on women’s empowerment. It
shows the complexity of intersecting oppression and its implications
and negative consequences for women’s struggle. It also highlights the
importance of democratic rights and democratic institutions, alterna-
tive and empowering knowledge, spaces for solidarity, and opportu-
nities for mobilization and collective action to women’s struggle. It
demonstrates the significance and important role of the state and the
legal and political system in either promoting or deterring violence
against women. The experiences of these women show the need for
transversal politics and struggles for social justice in a broad front
against all sites of oppression and all oppressive structures. Women’s
oppression and even the killing of women have been neglected and
even normalized in Iraqi Kurdistan for decades. The brutality of state
and ethnic oppression, on the one hand, and the incapacity of Kurdish
nationalism, on the other, have left women in the hands of their tribes,
kin and families. This at a time when killings were more or less legal,
and in a context of war and militarization where warlords and tribal
and religious leaders were given more and more power.
This chapter shows that women in Iraqi Kurdistan are not just
victims but can rise to being social agents struggling for empower-
ment, social power and social justice. The struggle is continuing on
a daily basis, led by anonymous women who can pay with their lives.
The above examples emphasize the need for organized and collective
action and struggle in order to bring about social change.
 6

FORC E D OR A R R A NGE D
M A R R I AGE A N D
W O M E N ’S R E S P O N S E S

I NTRODUCTION
This chapter is grounded in women’s experiences of the control and
oppression of their sexuality, of forced or arranged marriage, and of
their strategies for survival and their struggles. I came into contact
with a number of women through women’s organizations and the
shelters in which they had taken refuge. Their cases differed regard-
ing not only the cause of problem, but also the extent of the threat to
which they were exposed. However, common to all of them was that
their problems were, in different ways, related to the control of their
sexuality, mainly through a forced or arranged marriage that, in every
case, was against the woman’s wishes. Two categories of experiences
are discussed in this chapter. The first is about unmarried women
who face violence and threats to kill by refusing a forced marriage.
The second is about married women who are threatened because they
have an extramarital relationship. Many of these women had been liv-
ing in the shelters for months or even years. Far more women stay in
the shelters for shorter periods and return to their families after their
conflict has been resolved with the help and assistance of the women’s
organizations (see chapter 5). The women I met were among those
with more complicated cases, and the threats they faced were much
more serious. For many, there was no possibility of reconciliation.

K INSHIP, R EPRODUCTION A ND
WOMEN ’S S E XUA LIT Y
As discussed in chapters 2 and 3, violence in the name of honor
in Iraqi Kurdistan has a strong connection with tribal and kinship
110 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

structures and customs set in the context of war, state violence, pov-
erty and ethnic oppression in which the killing of women has not
been criminalized by the state. The tribal connection was mentioned
by all respondents (see also chapters 4, 5 and 7), although from dif-
ferent perspectives. Perpetrators made the connection as an excuse
and a justification for their crimes, saying: “This is our tribal culture
according to which we cannot accept such things” (see chapter 4),
while victims and women’s rights activists made a similar connection
to explain the causes of the problem. However, as discussed in chap-
ters 1–3, the problem is far more complex and cannot be explained by
a single factor. Prior to the fall of the Ba’ath regime, tribal organiza-
tions together with the state and, to some extent, the Kurdish leader-
ship made up the overall power regime or, what Collins (2009) calls,
the matrix of domination within which women’s oppression existed.
Notions of manhood and womanhood have been reproduced in
a context of war, ethnic oppression and militarization, where tribal
structures have been strengthened and tribal leaders have gained more
and more social and political power (see chapters 2, 3 and 5). In this
context, masculinity has become strongly connected to violence, and
the state and the law have sanctioned the killing of women. Gender
roles and relations, as well as notions of sexuality, have been repro-
duced in the honor discourse circulating in daily interactions, espe-
cially in rural and tribally dominated sections of society. Moreover,
these processes have been strengthened in intersection with socioeco-
nomic marginalization, low levels of literacy and a lack of education,
poverty and forced displacement (see chapters 1–3). However, repres-
sion and resistance are related, and repressive regimes also give rise to
resistance and struggle, in organized or individual forms (Aretxaga
2004; Collins 2009). Direct and subjective violence in the form of
threats, beatings and killings is a response to women’s resistance to
everyday normalized and hidden repression and violence in the form
of forced marriage and oppressive norms, traditions and discourses.
The threats and violence that women experience set out in this chap-
ter are a response to their demand for self-determination and their
rejection of reproduced patriarchal norms, moral codes and obliga-
tions. However, the struggles of these women were also individual,
and pursued in the interpersonal and domestic sphere of the families
within which they have faced oppression. As discussed in chapter 3,
a social measure for regulating and controlling female sexuality and
reproduction is the tight control and regulation of marriage. It is
also often—although not entirely—around issues of marriage or in
relation to the consequences of forced marriage that many conflicts
 FORCED OR A R R A NGED M A R R I AGE 111

and clashes arise, especially those between young women and their
families.
This violence and killing reveal crises of patriarchy and govern-
ing structures, and demonstrate an intense and ongoing conflict in
society and within families. Thus, I do not regard the women in this
chapter, or in chapter 7, solely as victims, since they are carrying out
anonymous, everyday resistance that challenges powerful oppressive
structures and their ideological and moral norms. They do this even
though they are well aware of the consequences.

THE S TRUGGLE FOR S ELF -DETERMINATION :

R EFUSING F ORCED M A RRI AGE
The tight control of marriage is a social measure for regulating and
controlling sexuality and reproduction. As discussed above, a char-
acteristic of violence in the name of honor is its strong focus on the
control of female sexuality. Respondents’ accounts (see chapters 4–7)
demonstrate that it is usually around issues of sexuality and marriage
that violence in the name of honor and killings occur. Throughout
all human societies, marriage in kinship systems has had various func-
tions such as building alliances, business, resolving conflicts, prevent-
ing incest, and so on (L évi-Strauss 1969). Marriage has also been a
way to maintain the group and to extend it. Exchange in marriage,
according to L évi-Strauss, has a social value in itself because “it pro-
vides the means of binding men together,” and in this kind of social
and political affair “the woman is the sole or predominant instrument
of the alliance” (ibid.: 480–483). Hence, control of female sexuality
and marriage becomes a prerequisite for the maintenance of patriliny
and its social organization.
Patriliny is the main concept for understanding the central-
ity of female sexuality, according to which “only males can keep a
category going from generation to generation, and every female is
potentially the bearer of offspring who do not belong to her own cat-
egory” (King 2008: 324). King defines a patriliny as “a male social
body extending through time” and asserts that having sex in patri-
liny is regarded, often literally, as “like the man plants a seed in the
woman” (325–326). According to “patrogenesis,” children of both
sexes belong to their father’s patriline, but women do not share lin-
eage membership with their children unless the father of the child
is a lineage mate (ibid.). Accordingly, control over reproduction and
lineage becomes a cornerstone and therefore control of female sexu-
ality becomes the concern of the group and its individual members
112 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

(female and male), especially as a strategy for survival and resistance

when the group is exposed to external threats and attacks. This can
affect social relations and even parents’ relations with male and female
children within the family. For example, this may be one explana-
tion for why boys are more wanted and loved (cf. Husseini 2009;
Kanaaneh 2002). As Chakravarti argues, reproduction “everywhere
has historically been a social rather than an individual act, but it is
also inextricably linked to the political economy of communities and
the ways these communities organize and reproduce themselves as
identifiable communities ” (Chakravarti 2005: 309). Studying issues
of reproduction in Galilee, in occupied Palestine, Kanaaneh shows
how reproduction is a factor in both nation building and resistance to
it. Kanaaneh writes: “In Galilee, too, there are significant links to be
traced among gender, reproduction, sex, health, nationalism, and the
state” (2002: 78–79).
A violation of marriage codes is regarded as an attack on the lin-
eage and social organization of the community, since marriage is a
means of maintaining tribal and kinship structures and their patriar-
chal power relations. The regulation of marriage operates primarily
through rules, regulations and norms in which a woman’s modesty,
“purity” and virginity are highly valued and necessary for the confir-
mation of the man’s manhood. Virginity “is a matter between men, in
which women merely play the role of silent intermediaries” (Mernissi
2000: 203). The aim of the institution of virginity, linked to codes of
marriage and honor, is, as Mernissi argues, “to prevent women from
producing children according to the rhythms of biology, the rhythms
of pleasure, and the rhythms of desire” (204). Thus, “love marriage”
is regarded as a threat to and a violation of these power structures (cf.
Chakravarti 2005; Kandiyoti 1988). It is women’s sexual desire and
love that are regarded as dangerous and polluting, inspired by conser-
vative religious interpretations and discourses (Dogan 2011).
One of the women who refused forced marriage is O.H., who was
20 at the time of our meeting. She attended primary school for a few
years. She had been living in the women’s shelter for two years. She
was very quiet and seemed very sad. I asked her why she was there
and she said:

My problem is about love. I was in love with a boy and my father killed
him . . . Our relationship was very simple. We only talked.

When O.H. told her boyfriend that her father planned to marry her
to a man that he had chosen, her boyfriend told both O.H.’s family
 FORCED OR A R R A NGED M A R R I AGE 113

and the man’s that he and O.H. loved each other, and begged them
to reconsider their plans and to let them marry. As is evident from
O.H.’s narrative as well as others in this chapter and chapter 4, men
can also be victims of this kind of violence when they exceed the
boundaries of other men’s property, break their rules and question
their power. O.H. elaborated on this:

My father wanted me to marry a man he had chosen for me but I

wanted to marry the man I loved. Therefore I broke the engagement.
This made my father furious and he saw the man I loved as responsible.
My father threw me out and I went to my grandmother’s. One night
they called my boyfriend and told him “Come, we want to discuss and
we want to give her to you.” But it was not true. They planned to kill
him. When he kept the appointment, they shot him dead.

I asked why her father acted as he did. She answered:

Because my father wanted me to marry the boy he had chosen for me.
He liked his family very much and when I said, No,” he said, “you
have insulted me and broken my word” . . . He was furious because I
opposed him and made claims and asserted my will. That is why he
threw me out and, after a while, killed him also. He had planned to kill
me too and he is still threatening me.

During her two years in the shelter, O.H. had not ventured out-
side because her father and brother had promised to kill her. All the
women I met in the shelters were more or less depressed because
they were like prisoners, had no hope and did not see any future for
themselves. A woman activist working at the shelter, who was present
during the interview, said:

O.H.’s case is very difficult. There is no solution . . . Her relatives con-

tact us and beg us not to let her go out because she will be killed. Even
those relatives who contact her and help her are threatened. That is
why nobody dares to visit her here . . . She thinks about suicide very
often and we talk to her every day and try to encourage her and give
her hope. But there is not much to do for her besides sending her out
of the country.

It is evident from this and other cases that, although the decision is
often taken by more than one person, there are very often conflicts
and contradictions within the family about killing. Family members
or relatives often help women to flee and support them in many ways.
114 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

Those who try to help can themselves be threatened by the perpetra-

tors and become targets of their anger and violence. This is why very
often they cannot do much. Women’s refusal awakens strong anger,
since it questions and challenges one of the foundations of patriarchal
power, as well as the patriarchal tribal social organization of which
the control of reproduction and thus control of the female body and
sexuality are a cornerstone (see chapter 3; see also Kanaaneh 2002).
Hence, the control of sexuality and marriage becomes a prerequisite
for the maintenance of patriliny and its social organization, where
women are regarded as the property of their families and as important
resources for exchange and reproduction, while men transmit and sus-
tain the family and its lineage (Kanaaneh 2002; King 2008; see also
chapter 3). O.H.’s refusal has been seen by her father as an insult and
a humiliation, and as a questioning of social organization, hierarchy
and his authority as a man and the head of the household. Hence, the
violence he commits is, as Long (2002: 4) argues, a “policing mecha-
nism” used “to establish, enforce or perpetuate gender inequalities
and keep in place gendered orders.”
Another young woman who had opposed her family’s control
and demand for subordination is A.F., aged 27 (see also chapter 7).
When I met her, she had been in the shelter for three months. She
was highly articulate and seemed to be a strong-willed person who
was very angry. She belonged to a family of farmers and they wanted
her to work on the family’s farm instead of studying. Her relatives
thought that it was shameful for a girl to study at school for more
than six years. She had to fight to persuade her family to allow her to
continue her studies but so she was not allowed to study beyond the
third year of secondary school. She said that she was one of the best
students in the class and among her friends. However, she was in the
shelter because of tight control and constant violence related to love
and marriage. A.F. said:

I was in love with a boy for three years. He is now living in Europe.
He wanted to come to my family and ask them for marriage with me.
He contacted my family and asked them and they said no. And then
they started to humiliate me because I loved that boy and they kept on
harassing me both physically and psychologically. They did not want
me to marry him and their harassment was a way of making me give
up and forget him . . . They wanted to decide themselves. It was not the
first time. But he was the only one I wanted.

I asked why she was in the shelter. This was her reply:
 FORCED OR A R R A NGED M A R R I AGE 115

My brother has sworn to kill me. But now he denies it. They come
here and try to exonerate themselves . . . Even if they do not batter you
or humiliate you, you are still under pressure and do not feel good.
They kept saying that the boy has done things with you. I did a medi-
cal examination and showed them that it was not true and that I was
pure. But they did not believe me. They also harassed his family with
accusations and slander. They beat me all the time and that is why I
came here. Here they have helped me and the situation has become
calm. I cannot return home to my parents and I am going to love that
boy in secret until we achieve our goal.

To be “pure,” as A.F. expressed, means to be a virgin. This meaning

of purity, according to Cindoglu (2000: 215), “signifies a woman’s
purity and her loyalty to her family” (see also Husseini 2009; King
2008; Mernissi 2000). Women who have, or are suspected of hav-
ing had, sexual relations outside marriage are considered “dirty” and
“bad.”
Crossing any vaginal, bodily and social boundaries, each of which
are enforced by a number of regulations and prohibitions reproduced
in the honor discourse, can lead to violence and even murder (Abu-
Odeh 2000: 372–373; see also Bakhtiarnejad 2009; Dogan 2011; El
Saadawi 2007; Husseini 2009; King 2008). Gender-based violence,
used as a policing mechanism (Long 2002), takes many more forms
than the purely physical. It can be sexual or psychological, or can
take the form of oppressive moral norms and obligations. It can also
consist of restricted freedoms, and coercion and/or threats in both
the public and the private spheres. Gender-based and other types of
violence, such as ethnic or racially based violence and the violence of
poverty, interact and intersect with each other and also shape each
other (ibid.). Therefore, gender-based violence takes different forms
and manifests itself in different contexts, depending on the matrix of
domination and intersecting violence and oppression. Moreover, as
Collins reminds us, the matrix of domination within which relations
of dominance and subordination exist is “much less cohesive and uni-
form than imagined” (2009: 109), as there are many contradictions
and nuances as well as many struggles continuing at different levels.
However, since these struggles too are taking place and are shaped
within the same system of power and domination, even they are full
of contradictions and nuances. For example, a man who experiences
class and ethnic oppression can himself be an oppressor or a perpe-
trator of violence in gender structures (see chapters 3 and 4). This
is because individuals are positioned differently in power structures,
116 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

and therefore their experiences of oppression and their relations to

these structures differ.

IN THE C AGE OF F ORCED M A RRI AGE

All the married women living in the women’s shelters I interviewed
said that their marriages had not been according to their own will
and desire. On the contrary, most had been in love with other men
and wished to marry them, but their families strongly opposed and
instead chose a husband for them, very often a cousin, as soon as pos-
sible. Married women accused of adultery are among those who have
definitely crossed the boundary of what is regarded as honorable.
Extramarital relations are an “absolute taboo for women” (Ilkkaracan
2000: 238), whereas men’s extramarital affairs “are widely accepted
and even socially ‘legalized’ in many cases through the institu-
tion of polygamy” (ibid.; see also chapter 5). Studies from Turkey
(Amnesty International 2004; Ilkkaracan 2000), Pakistan (Amnesty
International 1999), Iran (Bakhtiarnejad 2009) and Jordan (Husseini
2009) also show that forced or arranged marriages, extramarital rela-
tionships and violence against women are strongly linked (see also
Greiff 2010).
Drawing a clear and definitive dividing line between forced and
arranged marriage is difficult. It is important, however, to keep the
two phenomena separate (Siddiqi 2005). According to Gardner,
“most marriages are negotiated within and between family groups
in a variety of ways” but “often they end in a compromise” (quoted
in Siddiqi 2005: 290–291); and as Siddiqi puts it, “most marriages
would seem to fall somewhere in between, to a greater or lesser
extent” (Siddiqi 2005: 292; see also Behtoui 2010). However, the
question of the distinction between forced and arranged marriage
concerns how much freedom women have to express their opinions
and wishes, and to achieve their will, as well as how much attention
is paid to their desires. None of the married women in my study said
that they had been forced to marry when I put the question if their
marriage was imposed on them. However, it is much more compli-
cated when we depart from a broad definition of violence that is not
limited to the physical violence (see chapter 1). Thus, it became clear
that their marriage were forced when they went on to explain how
and why they married. The married women differ to the unmarried
women in my study; they had already given up all opposition and thus
did not resist the forced marriage and therefore there were no physical
violence and threat. They married because: (1) they could not see any
 FORCED OR A R R A NGED M A R R I AGE 117

other option and because they did not have the right to choose their
future husband; (2) they were not allowed to marry the person they
wanted; (3) they wanted to escape from their families’ control and
everyday violence they were subjected to; and (4) they were persuaded
by their families’ psychological and emotional pressure. Since they
were not allowed to choose their future husband and had to marry
the person they wanted, it did not matter who they married. The
women did not have the right to seek a divorce, which, like marriage,
is up to the family or the husband to initiate. Thus, even if the mar-
riage did not work they had to stay in a miserable relationship because
there was no alternative.
K.N. was 27 years old at the time of our interview in 2007. She
has two children and had been in the shelter for five months. She
attended the primary school in her village for four years and was mar-
ried to her cousin when she was 19. I asked her if she liked her hus-
band. She smiled and said: “Not really. I did not agree a hundred per
cent but fifty per cent. Now I have two children.” I asked her if she
loved somebody else. She replied:

Yes, I was in love with a boy for four years. He came several times and
asked my family if he could marry me but my father did not want to
give me to him. His motivation was that the boy belonged to another
kin which a long time ago had a conflict with our kin. Then, so to
speak, I married my cousin because I did not have any other choice.
He was not bad. I cannot say that he was bad. I did not want to stay at
home and live with my family any more. I wanted to leave them and
escape being at home.

Later K.N. came into contact with a man and became involved with
him. One day a relative of her husband found out about their meet-
ings. Before the police could be called, the man was killed. She was
taken to the police station, where she was humiliated and battered.
She was kept in jail for one month and then sent to a women’s shelter,
because her husband did not want her back and her father was deter-
mined to kill her. There had been no contact with her family at all,
and she was both sad and scared. K.N. said:

They do not know that I am here. If they knew they would come
and kill me. My father, my cousins and all my family are very power-
ful. They have good contacts with one of the political parties. They
can do anything . . . If they find out that I am here it will be danger-
ous for me. My father is very powerful and has many powerful con-
tacts and he is very rich. And you know if one is rich here one can do
118 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

anything . . . Believe me, I have tried more than 50 times to kill myself.
When I was in jail I didn’t eat for more than ten days and I hoped to
die . . . I don’t see any solution. Should I stay here all my life? How is it
possible not to be allowed to go out? Believe me, I can’t even go to a
hospital if it is not an emergency.

K.N.’s problem is with her father, not her husband. Even though she
is a married woman, her father feels responsible for her sexual behav-
ior. According to Kandiyoti (1988), this is one of the characteris-
tics of classic patriarchy. A woman’s bond to her natal family varies,
depending on the degree of endogamy in marriage. A higher rate
of endogamy implies “greater mutuality among affines and a wom-
an’s natal family retains both an interest and a say in protecting their
married daughter’s honor” (Meeker 1976, referred to in Kandiyoti
1988: 279). As van Bruinessen (2009) notes, endogamy is customary
among Kurdish tribes, and this explains why the married women I
met were often married to a cousin, and all were threatened by their
fathers and brothers.
Another issue raised in K.N.’s narrative is the problem of the corrupt
legal system. This was also highlighted by other respondents, who said
that the legal system, the courts and judges often discriminate against
women and support the perpetrators, especially those who are rich
and have powerful contacts. Problems of corruption and nepotism,
and the gap between the law and its implementation, were mentioned
by many respondents of all categories (see also chapters 4, 5 and 7).
N.S., a 20-year-old woman who attended primary school for six
years, said that her family wanted her to continue studying, but she
was not interested. She fell in love with a boy from the neighborhood
but her parents did not want her to marry him. Instead, they chose a
cousin of her mother to be her husband. N.S. said:

He liked me and my family said to me, “Marry him, he is good” and

such things, and they said “Do not say no to us.” I do not want to say
that they forced me to marry, but he was not the man I wanted to live
with. They persuaded me to marry him. I decided to marry him and
the boy I loved emigrated.

As Siddiqi (2005: 293) argues, it is difficult to define “force in the

idiom of love, concern, and discharging family obligations.” Thus, it
is not surprising that N.S. says that she was not forced. These wom-
en’s opinions were totally disregarded by their families. Moreover,
in such an environment it is seen as “gravely immodest for young
 FORCED OR A R R A NGED M A R R I AGE 119

women to discuss their marriage prospects openly” (291). There was

no way for N.S. to escape her unhappy marriage, since her family and
her husband were against divorce.

My husband and I did not agree. He was much older than me, almost
15 years. I can’t say that he was bad to me but he had a very bad tem-
per . . . I wanted a divorce but my family said no. I begged them but
they said no.

The problem for these women is not only the forced marriage but also
the impossibility and stigmatization of divorce. All the women who
shared their experiences with me would have divorced their husband if
they could, but they were not allowed, and did not have the right, to
decide. Moreover, as these women are not economically independent,
a divorce would mean returning to the home of their parents or to the
home of their brothers or other male relatives. This situation would not
be desirable for the women or their relatives, especially if they are poor
and are not able to support them easily. Furthermore, divorce is stig-
matized and would be degrading for them. Thus, marriage for many
becomes a cage from which they cannot escape, where they experience
daily violence and oppression. However, divorce is an option for men,
and they can decide whether and when a woman should be divorced.
Later, N.S. came into contact with a younger man and they
started to meet in secret. When her brother found out, he gathered
together some other male relatives and planned to kill her. Her par-
ents opposed killing her, but her father was very sick and did not have
enough authority to stop it. Her mother could not do much either,
except cry and beg them not to kill her. Her mother did have access
to a telephone, but she did not call the police or even allow N.S. to
do so. N.S. said:

I tried to access a mobile phone to call the police but my mother said
“no, don’t do that. If you do that they will arrest your brother” . . . Then
my mother said, “your aunt likes you very much so let us call her. She
may show us a way out of this.”

Her mother seemed to be more concerned about protecting her son,

who risked being arrested by the police, than about her daughter who
risked being killed. Similar attitudes are evident from other narra-
tives in this book and cases of killing in the name of honor in Jordan
(Husseini 2009). The ambivalent position of N.S.’s mother can be
explained by her conflicted interests and loyalties. On the one hand,
120 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

she loves her daughter and does not want her to be killed, while, on
the other hand, she understands her son’s anger, and she also shares
an interest in sustaining the patriarchal order through her son (see
Kandiyoti 1988; for more discussion, see chapter 7), even though she
does not actively take part in the violence. N.S.’s mother and her aunt,
both older women, enjoy a degree of respect, authority and autonomy
within the extended patriarchal family, something that N.S.’s mother
tries to use in order to resolve the problem.
It is the young woman who is most often blamed or seen as respon-
sible and guilty, while the man is only doing his duty. That is why
the anger of the brother is seen as legitimate and understandable (cf.
Husseini 2009; Shalhoub-Kevorkian 2005: 177). He is simply doing
what he is supposed to do. According to the norms and regulations
reproduced in the honor discourse, it is his responsibility to watch
over his sister’s sexual behavior and to make sure that she behaves in
a proper manner. These men perform their gender roles and display
their “masculinity” because, in the context of the honor discourse,
“to be a man is to engage in daily practices, an important part of
which is to assure the virginity of the women in your family” (Abu-
Odeh 2000: 373; see also Bakhtiarnejad 2009; Dogan 2011; Husseini
2009). Everyday practice can involve different types of psychologi-
cal and physical violence. Gender-based violence, according to Long
(2002), is a policing mechanism that can only be fully understood
“through the examination of masculinities.” Men are “indoctrinated
into violence” (ibid.: 4). They “predominate across the spectrum of
violence” however, it is not in men’s nature to be violent but the
problem is to be found in social constructions of masculinity (Connel
2000: 214; see also Nagel 1998).
The disciplining of female sexuality is pursued in different ways by
the family, kin and the community. It is carried out through gossip,
rumor, humiliation, control, threats and beating. If these do not help,
then killing is “the only way.” Resistance to forced and arranged mar-
riages, and breaking the rules of “honor” regarding marriage, love
and sexuality occur in various ways. Suicide is one of the most dra-
matic ways for women to protest against violence and control when
no other options are available (see chapter 7).

THE E XCH A NGE OF B RIDES A ND C HILD M A RRI AGE

Issues of marriage and divorce become even more complicated and
problematic in cases of marriage through exchange. The exchange of
brides still exists in Kurdish rural areas and among Kurdish tribes,
 FORCED OR A R R A NGED M A R R I AGE 121

especially those in underprivileged economic positions (cf. Avgerinou

1999; Van Bruinessen 2009; see also chapters 2 and 3). Marriage
through an exchange of brides is preferred by people who other-
wise might not have enough resources to cover the expense of get-
ting their children married. An exchange of brides, especially when
it involves the marriage of cousins, or “patrilateral parallel cousin
marriage” (Avgerinou 1999), is a practice that, according to van
Bruinessen (2009), is common within Kurdish tribes. However,
when the arrangement fails for any reason, it is the women who suf-
fer most. The bride, who is often very young, has no influence over
either marriage or divorce. H.K. was married by her family through
an exchange of brides when she was about 13 years old. Her family
gave her to another family of relatives in order to obtain their daugh-
ter, who was then only a child, for H.K.’s brother when she grew up.
After some years, however, the families could not keep the agree-
ment because H.K.’s husband’s family refused to give their daughter
to H.K.’s brother. As a consequence, H.K.’s marriage was dissolved
and she was sent back to her family. Her husband’s family kept her
baby, who was five months old. All this affected her psychological
condition so badly that she attempted suicide by setting herself alight
when she was about 15 years old. When I met her in 2007, she was
30 years old and working as a civil servant. She was also active in
a women’s organization. Her face was damaged and deformed but
it was still possible to see traces of her lost beauty. Her hands were
badly damaged and deformed. I asked H.K. why she had tried to kill
herself. She responded:

I did not think at all. The only thing I thought was that there was
no meaning to my life. I did not see any meaning in my life. I really
wanted to die. I thought my life did not mean anything and then I
poured petrol on myself and lit it. I regretted this strongly when all
my body was in flames, but it was too late . . . I was very young. I was
only 13 when I got married . . . I left my baby when he was five months
old. I had to leave the baby and return to my father’s house. Then I
was very sad and very depressed. People with their gossip and rumours
also pushed me to that, because all the time they wondered why my
husband and his family did not want me and sent me back. This made
me more depressed and confused.

Being a divorcee, as discussed above, is a stigmatized and degrading

position for a woman and puts pressure on women and their fami-
lies, “intense enough to even result in murder or suicide” (Begikhani,
Gill and Hauge 2010). The number of divorces in Iraqi Kurdistan
122 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

increased by 66 percent in 2010. Most of the women involved are

between 18 and 30 years of age, and they have to go back to their
relatives’ or parents’ homes (ibid.). Divorcees, especially when still
young, can easily be exposed to gossip and rumor, since they are no
longer virgins and it is therefore impossible to control and examine
their “purity” (cf. King 2008; Mernissi 2000). They are assumed to
be likely to have sexual affairs, and are therefore under the watchful
eye of the family and kin. In villages and small communities where
people usually have kinship relations, the control of women is even
tighter.
On the role of the community, Chakravarti states that the “idea of
women as the sexual property of their communities is deeply inter-
nalized, mobilizing not merely the family but also the community,
frequently accompanied by violence” (Chakravarti 2005: 311; see
also chapter 3). An act of control results from gossip and rumor, and
divorcees are especially vulnerable to these. H.K. talked about the day
she set fire to herself:

We grew tobacco and we were working there. When we had a break, it

was late afternoon and people started talking about divorce and such
things. When I was sent back home to my family after the divorce,
people talked so much about that. Divorce is very degrading for me
really. I had to leave school and my world for marriage and then when
they divorced me [here she uses a passive verb talagh dram which
means they divorced me] people humiliated me in different ways and
wondered why they did not keep me. They said different things and I
was fed up and realized that my life was not worth anything. At such
a young age they got me married, they got me divorced and my child
was kept away from me.

She was not seen as the victim, but as the one who should be blamed
and be ashamed. Shalhoub-Kevorkian places an argument in the case
of the killing of Palestinian women:

In essence, the murderer and society are reconstructed as victims, and

the victim is turned into the guilty party. The sexual, physical and
social lives of women become “hymenised” (Abu-Odeh, 2000), and
acts of violence against females become constructed as legitimate “pro-
tective” behaviour rather than criminal actions. (Shalhoub-Kevorkian
2005: 177)

Blaming the victim as a policy mechanism and as part of the honor

discourse for maintaining the oppression and subordination of
 FORCED OR A R R A NGED M A R R I AGE 123

women is also highlighted in other studies (Dogan 2011; Husseini

2009). Almost 15 years later, H.K., as a mature woman, seems to
have a strong position within her family and is respected by the com-
munity. But she is seen as an asexual body in the eyes of society, and
no longer a potential candidate for love and marriage. She has ceased
to be a potential danger to the family’s reputation (cf. Einhorn 2008;
Yuval-Davis 1997). She says that now the only feeling she arouses in
people is that they feel sorry for her. She says very sadly:

I wish I were dead. I do not enjoy my life because I have thousands of

diseases and problems. The reason is that I constantly think about my
destiny. When I think about my life I become very sad. I have lost my
beauty, lost my chance to study . . . I was a student when they took me
out of the school and got me married.

I was told by the women’s organizations that a large number of girls

are registered as married when they are just babies. In 2007, the KRG
announced that families could apply for the cancellation of these mar-
riages if they wanted to. The government even pursued a campaign
in schools, where girls who were engaged could register themselves in
order to cancel the engagement. I heard that many families had done
this, but also that many others had not for a variety of reasons. One
reason was their economic condition, since an exchange of brides was
the only way for many families to get their children married without
much expense. In 2008, the Kurdish Regional Parliament ratified law
number 15 and reformed article 188 of the Iraqi personal status law
in order to forbid early and forced marriages (Begikhani et al. 2010),
but these still occur because of the parallel religious and tribal laws,
and because of poverty, lack of information and lack of resources.

S UMM A RY
The individual experiences of forced or arranged marriage discussed
in this chapter and in chapter 7 reveal violence linked not only to
gender and sexuality but also to poverty and socioeconomic mar-
ginalization, although such violence does not occur only among the
poor. These individual experiences reveal the intersecting violence
and oppression of gender and sexuality, socioeconomic marginaliza-
tion and poverty in a larger political context impregnated by ethnic
oppression, militarization, war and tribal structures. As discussed in
chapter 1, the focus of violence in the name of honor is the control
of female sexuality, but its main concern is to maintain lineage and
124 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

kinship through a marriage system that guarantees existing kinship

and patriarchal structures. The control of reproduction and of female
sexuality through marriage is a cornerstone of maintaining the lin-
eage and the social organization of a community based on kinship as
the basis for the distribution of power and resources. However, the
violence that women face is, as An-Naím puts it, “a manifestation
of the failure or inadequacy of familial and communal regulation of
sexuality, rather than an indication that such regulation happens in
those societies and not in others” (2005: 68).
 7

SU ICI DE AS P ROT EST

I NTRODUCTION
Until about 20 years ago, the issue of women suicides in Iraqi
Kurdistan was shrouded in silence. However, thanks to the new
political situation—and especially to women’s rights activists and
media reports—these suicides and their relation to gender-based vio-
lence have become increasingly visible and more widely discussed.
During my visits to Iraqi Kurdistan in 2007 and 2008, there were
almost daily reports in the newspapers of suicides and the killing of
women. Despite improvements and reforms in Iraqi Kurdistan in
the past two decades, domestic violence against women, killings and
suicide remain widespread occurrences (see chapter 1). For example,
330 women committed suicide in the three governorates of Hewler,
Suleimaniah and Duhok in 2011 (Hawlati 2012); in the city of Kirkuk
between November 2011 and March 2012, 434 people attempted
suicide, 90 percent of whom were women, and 124 women died of
injuries (Warvin 2012). Women set fire to their own bodies, and in
many cases they die. In some cases, these are not genuine suicides but
murders portrayed as suicide or as kitchen accidents. The reason these
women choose fire could form the subject of a separate study and is
beyond the scope of this book. Nor does this study discuss the psy-
chological aspects of suicide. It focuses on sociological explanations
related to the overall aims of the study.
Through women’s organizations and women’s rights activists, I
came into contact with survivors of suicide attempts and met some
women who were close relatives or friends of women who had com-
mitted suicide. Interviewing these survivors and relatives and learning
about their stories gave me a picture of the total control and oppres-
sion and the unbearable situations that resulted in either successful or
unsuccessful attempts at suicide. The stories show the deep trauma
and desperation that gradually lead these women to a decision to end
their own lives because they see no other solution.
126 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

As discussed throughout this volume, violence in the name of

honor in Iraqi Kurdistan is a result of intersecting oppression and
violence related to gender, class, ethnicity, sexuality and generation,
on many levels and in all domains of power in society. Tribal struc-
tures, in which the control of reproduction and of women’s sexuality
are important, play a significant role in the oppression of women in a
context in which ethnic oppression, war, militarization and socioeco-
nomic marginalization, as well as the state’s gender politics have made
women extremely vulnerable. Such control and regulation, pursued
mainly through forced or arranged marriages, has been normalized
and legitimized through the honor discourse and its norms and rules.
However, many other acts of control are pursued by family members
against girls and young women in their daily lives in order to disci-
pline them, exclude them from the public sphere and limit their per-
sonal space. These practices are intended to force them to obey the
moral norms and obligations established by patriarchal structures and
the honor discourse. All this takes place mainly, but not exclusively, in
rural areas and in marginalized urban settings where social relations
and social control are very tight and lack of education, poverty, social
exclusion and tribal structures are much stronger.

S OCI A L D ISCIPLINING OF S E XUA LIT Y A ND

WOMEN ’S R ESPONSES
In his classic study of suicide in the late nineteenth century, Durkheim
draws the conclusion that suicide is a social phenomenon, and that it
is the social and psychological climate in a society that decides the
extent of suicide. He writes: “in each society there are collective
forces of certain strength that drive the individual to commit suicide.
Suicides that are regarded as an expression of individual characteris-
tics are in fact consequences of social situations, a certain social con-
dition in the society” (Durkheim 1983: 252).
Many researchers agree with Durkheim on this conclusion, despite
their critical views toward some aspects of his analysis. Tomasi states
that suicide “is always socially determined and is always socially
explained” (2000: 17). Baudelot and Establet assert that “society
does not shed any light on suicide, but suicide does shed some light
on society” (2008: 8). Thus, they draw our attention to social factors
that either encourage or discourage it. Proceeding from this point of
view, I follow Davies and Neal (2000) who examined female suicides
in rural China. Although critical of Durkheim, they further devel-
oped his concept of altruistic and fatalistic suicide, both of which
 SUICIDE AS PROTEST 127

are common in societies with high degrees of social integration and

regulation. According to Davies and Neal, these aspects were margin-
alized in Durkheim’s study since his data and analysis concentrated
on the European context and thus on egoistic and anomic suicide,
which are common in societies with low degrees of social integra-
tion and regulation. However, I would assert that it is not only the
degree of social integration and regulation but also their character
and complexities that must be considered. As discussed throughout
this book, social integration, regulation and control are much stron-
ger in contexts of tribal and kinship relations. Human relationships
in these societies are mainly organized around family and kinship.
Hence, Davies and Neal assert that “if we abandon the Eurocentric
point of view taken by Durkheim and many of his successors” (2000:
41), we can understand fatalistic and altruistic suicide. They men-
tion as a “striking example” (ibid.: 41–45) women’s suicides in rural
China “with its traditional and restricted sex roles for women.”

The higher male relative to female suicide rates in Europe reflect

Durkheim’s notions of egoism and anomie. By contrast the higher
female and exceptionally high young female suicide rates in rural
China are best explained in terms of Durkheim’s categories of fatalistic
and altruistic suicide. The suicide of young Chinese women is indeed
“suicide deriving from excessive regulation, that of persons with
futures pitilessly blocked and passions violently choked by oppressive
discipline” (Durkheim 1897a/t.1951a:276), i.e. it is fatalistic suicide.
(Davies and Neal 2000: 44)

If individuals in a society are strongly integrated and strongly regulated,

their behavior, including suicidal behavior, according to Davies and
Neal, depends on the nature of the group and its rules and regulations.
They argue that the issue is not whether the group forbids or encour-
ages suicide. It is rather an issue of the “entire ethos of the group, its
values, lifestyle and patterns of internal interaction that are involved”
(2000: 48–49). Referring to another study (Mosher 1984:196), Davies
and Neal describe the situation of young rural Chinese women:

A woman in the age group 15–24 in rural China is and always has
been expected to marry a husband chosen for her by her family; she has
had very little choice (Butterfield 1982: 167). She can neither refuse
to marry this person, nor refuse to marry at all, nor marry someone
else. The family has been all and all-powerful. On her marriage she
has traditionally entered her husband’s household and lived under the
tyranny of her mother-in-law. (Davies and Neal 2000: 44)
128 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

The situation of rural Chinese women described by Davies and Neal

corresponds well with the experiences of women in this chapter and
also in chapter 6. In addition, the fact that not only the rural connec-
tion but also poverty is an important aspect of violence against women
and of their suicides in rural China closely matches my respondents’
experiences.
Forced or arranged marriages and their consequences are discussed
in chapter 6. However, marriage is not the only way to control female
sexuality. Control is also exercised through various psychological
pressures and physical violence, as well as limitations and humilia-
tions directed at both married and unmarried women. Moreover, as
discussed above, suicides are not entirely the consequence of violence
based on gender. There is often a combination of gender-based oppres-
sion and violence with the oppression of poverty in varying degrees
that affect families, especially young women, in different ways.
The story behind the suicide of a 17-year-old girl was told to me
by H.B., a very close friend of hers. The girl was the second in her
family to die by suicide. Her older sister burned herself to death only
a few years before because of an unhappy marriage. H.B.’s friend
had been tightly controlled by her mother and her brother for a long
time. When her brother found the telephone number of a boy in her
mobile phone, the physical violence, threats, humiliations and con-
trol became even worse. The family was, according to H.B., highly
conservative, with strong patriarchal and tribal norms and customs.
They lived in the city but were originally from the countryside, had
very close contacts and bonds with their village, and were even partly
settled there. H.B. told me:

In their eyes, she was judged for a crime. Even when she wanted to meet
her girlfriends, her mother followed her. Her psychological condition
was very bad. Her soul was wounded and she was very angry . . . After
she burned herself, she was in hospital for six days before she died.
Even in the hospital, she was always scared and thought that somebody
would come to kill her. She always felt that she would be attacked. She
said she had attempted suicide because they took her mobile phone
from her. Her soul was deeply wounded and she was very angry. Until
she died, she talked constantly about her mobile phone. She also talked
about fear . . . She was facing so much violence and they had taken her
mobile phone from her. They had taken her rights, rights and needs
that she had in her life they took from her. When she saw that nobody
defended or protected her, nobody who loved her, she decided to com-
mit suicide.
 SUICIDE AS PROTEST 129

Of course this did not happen only because they took her mobile
phone. It was the result of a long period of violence and oppression.
H.B.’s friend was living under strong pressure for a long time and her
psychological condition was affected as a consequence of continuous
harassment. She was deeply depressed and traumatized after many
years of oppression and physical and psychological violence. Suicide,
as Durkheim (1983: 252) puts it, can never be caused by a single
incident. It is dependent on factors that encourage suicide and the
strength they have to influence the individual. In all the cases in this
chapter, control and oppression of women and the denial of their
individual freedom and agency in a way that has become unbearable
for them are those factors.
This does not mean that human activities can be, or ever are, totally
free from social coercion and restrictions. There is, as Durkheim
(1983: 211) puts it, “no social phenomenon that is of such a char-
acter.” The individual is never totally free since, as social beings, we
need to be part of a society, a group and a community, and to identify
with them, which entails mutual effects, interactions and adjustments.
Thus, what is at issue is the character and degree of the social con-
trol, not total freedom and detachment from society. As Durkheim
puts it, the individual’s “feelings and activities are to various extents
directed towards the society or the group. The society on the other
hand exercises a certain social control upon the individual. There is
a connection between the social control’s extent and character and a
society’s suicide rate” (197).
This complexity in the relationship between individuals and soci-
ety is also highlighted by many other scholars when they address the
complexity and multidimensionality of women’s identity and belong-
ing (Collins 2009; Yuval-Davis 1997). In other words, the issue is
whether the individual woman agrees with the rules and controls
that society places on her by various moral, political and institutional
means. These women were like prisoners under the control of their
all-powerful families and kin, without any influence over their own
lives. They did not agree with the rules and obligations that subordi-
nated them, and they did not feel that anybody cared about them or
paid any attention to them, their feelings, and their opinions. Their
womanhood, sexuality, needs and desires were defined not by them,
but by patriarchal power structures preserved and strengthened in
the shadow of struggles based on ethnic oppression, nationalist dis-
courses and tribal structures. The disciplining of female sexuality has
been increasingly legitimized, normalized and encouraged through
130 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

these processes by the honor discourse and in the name of the nation
and culture.
Talking about her friend, H.B. said:

She needed love from her family more than anything else. She felt that
she was excluded from their love and that she was hated; she felt that
they had stopped loving her. The love that girls are used to receiving
from their families suddenly bows out as soon as they reach 11 or
12 years of age. She finds herself suddenly without love and starts to
feel that nobody loves her any more. You grow up with that and know
that you are loved only until you are 11 or 12 years old, and then it is
all over.

H.B. talked about something that seems to be a pattern in the dis-

ciplining of women’s sexuality and turning them into obedient and
docile subjects. The control of girls’ sexuality, especially in tribal
and rural contexts, begins when they reach an age at which they are
regarded as sexually mature and reproductive. Their sexual desires
and activities are then regarded as a potential threat to the family’s
reputation and to the social organization on the whole. This is clearly
demonstrated in Dogan’s study of killings in the name of honor in
Turkey, in which he notes that all the victims were of reproductive
age. His study shows that “women’s vulnerability to being victims
of honour killings starts when they begin to menstruate, and con-
tinues for as long as they menstruate, which reflects their ability to
produce a child” (2010: 117). A child must not be produced based
on individual desire. It is the family that decides with whom women
should produce a child (Mernissi 2000). As discussed above, the
“symbolic constructions of women as the embodiment of nation”
(Einhorn 2008: 200), group or family, decisively affect the situation
of “actual women” by limiting their social and private space. This is
very much related to their sexuality, since women’s sexuality “is seen
as threatening the idealized vision of women-as-nation” (201), and as
“polluting” and “threatening” (Dogan 2011) the purity and honor
of the collectivity and questioning its male members’ manhood. In
the context of the honor discourse, women are seen as the outward
face of the group or family toward society and the community, and
they are thus responsible for their reputation and for society’s judg-
ment of them and their families (Fischer-Tahir 2009). The control
of women’s sexuality is especially strong within tribal and kinship
structures since, as Sirman (2004) argues, relations of domination
and subordination as well as those of production and distribution in
 SUICIDE AS PROTEST 131

such structures are organized around kinship. These relations based

on genealogy and origin are the ideological bases for the control of
reproduction, and consequently for the control of female sexuality
(see also chapter 3). A violation of the codes of chastity and “purity”
reproduced in the honor discourse, which are means of maintain-
ing the tribal and kinship structures and their patriarchal power rela-
tions, is regarded as an attack on honor, on the lineage and prestige
of the family, and especially on the position of its male members in
relation to the community with which they identify. “Violation of
the marriage codes is regarded as an attack upon izzat (‘honour’ or
‘prestige’), a wide-ranging masculine concept underpinning patri-
archal practices” (Chakravarti 2005: 309). The aim of this control
and oppression can be described as “to prevent women from produc-
ing children according to the rhythms of biology, the rhythms of
pleasure, and the rhythms of desire” (Mernissi 2000: 204; see also
Husseini 2009; King 2008). As discussed in chapters 3–6, women
are expected to subordinate their sexual desires to the needs of the
family and the kin.

I NTERSECTING O PPRESSION A ND THE

MULTIPLE X OF V IOLENCE
In the Kurdish context, female suicide exists both in rural as well as
urban areas among groups of rural origin and with strong rural con-
nections. However, this does not mean that everyone in this category
would necessarily either commit or face such violence. This depends
on the social and political circumstances and the intersecting oppres-
sion of various power structures, rather than individual or group
characteristics. It also depends on family backgrounds and histories.
As discussed above, an outcome of the destruction and depopula-
tion of the Kurdish countryside during the Ba’ath regime was that
many people were forced to leave their farms and their lives in the
countryside and move to cities and towns, a process which led to
rapid urbanization, the disintegration of social relations and tradi-
tions and the establishment of large socioeconomically marginal-
ized urban populations (Begikhani 2005; Hardi 2011; Fischer-Tahir
2009: 26; Mojab 2004a). The mass bombing of villages, persecution
and systematic destruction of rural areas, as well as ethnic cleansing
and forced displacement, dramatically changed the demography of
the cities. For example, in the governorate of Suleimaniah, 53 per-
cent of the inhabitants lived in rural areas in 1977 but only ten years
later that proportion had decreased to 28.5 percent (Fischer-Tahir
132 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

2009: 27). A sudden disintegration of the old social structures, which

were not replaced by new ones, caused a clash between generations
and value systems. Together with poverty and social and economic
marginalization, this led to a variety of social, individual and fam-
ily problems, traumas and tragedies (cf. Fischer-Tahir 2009; Hardi
2011). Moreover, all this took place in a political situation in which
the family became more and more the location of power and a place
of refuge against state violence and brutality. Furthermore, women
lacked any security since violence in the name of honor was supported
by the state and its legal system (see chapters 3–5).
The vast majority of the respondents said that the problem of vio-
lence and the control of women occurs mostly among families with
rural and tribal origins. In all the cases of suicide and attempted sui-
cide I came into contact with, the families were either living in a vil-
lage or had recently migrated from a village. H.B., whose close friend
committed suicide, said:

I can say that among those who are from the city, I mean the real city
folk, this happens seldom compared to those who have migrated from
the countryside to cities . . . I can say that this occurs mostly among
people originating from the countryside. Irrespective of whether they
like it or not, technology has developed. In cities, there are commu-
nication facilities that people in the countryside do not have access to.
Things like satellite channels, mobile phones, the Internet, and things
like that . . . They get a wrong notion about women through commer-
cial television channels, and think that all women in the cities expose
their bodies or sell their bodies. They become scared and then they
start to control their sisters and daughters very tightly. It is about these
families’ ignorance and lack of knowledge and education.

The new means of communication technology, especially mobile

phones, which are accessible to almost everybody, have become a
source of conflict in Iraqi Kurdistan. Mobile phones are seen as a
threat and as a means to undermine the power and control the fam-
ily has over its female members. They have also been used by people,
especially men, who want to “dishonor” other men or as a way to
pressure people for money, by filming their female relatives in various
private situations (see chapter 4).
Another woman, H.K., who is discussed in chapter 6, lived in a
town that used to be a very small community but grew rapidly in
the past two decades because of the high levels of migration from
the countryside, caused by the destruction of villages during the
 SUICIDE AS PROTEST 133

Anfal campaign. The area is known for having been hit hard by the
Anfal and also for the high number of women suicides and killings of
women. H.K., herself a survivor of suicide, says:

I am talking especially about this area. It is a tribal community and

our men are very harsh. I will give you an example. When we in our
women’s organization have meetings for women, men do not allow
their wives or sisters to come to those meetings. You have to go to their
homes one by one and many times try to persuade fathers, brothers
and husbands to allow the women to come to the meetings. There are
many who have burned themselves, killed themselves, and many have
problems at home. We also want to be free. Our women want freedom
and independence . . . Such things happen frequently, especially in our
area. We want to have freedom and pride like the women in cities.

As noted above, Durkheim argues: “There is a connection between

the extent and character of the social control and society’s suicide
rate” (1983: 197). Women who commit or attempt suicide find them-
selves in a state of absolute powerlessness and do not see any support,
any solutions or any hope. They have no other means but their bodies
to resist their families’ violence and harassment. Their suicide might
be regarded by some as an expression of irrationality or madness,
but it can illustrate how subjectivity, gender and power are articu-
lated under such conditions. The violence in all its forms (subjective,
objective and symbolic) to which these women have been exposed
is a disciplinary mechanism pursued by the state, by the tribe/kin/
family and in interpersonal and daily interactions and communica-
tions, through the honor discourse and by oppressive rules and regu-
lations. In particular, physical violence and threats to kill have been
used when all other means have failed and women have refused to be
obedient and to subordinate themselves.
Foucault sees “punishment as a political technology of the body
aimed at the production of submissive subjects.” However, violence
and oppression also give rise to resistance and opposition, and thus
the “technology of normalisation breaks down” (Aretxaga 2004:
244) when those who are targeted will no longer obey and start
rejecting allotted roles and normalized rules (cf. Chakravarti 2005;
Collins 2009).
However, the women who have attempted suicide express concern
about and care for their families despite their experiences of family
violence. This chapter and a report on violence against women in Iraqi
Kurdistan prepared by Heartland Alliance (2009: 16) both show how,
134 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

even as they are dying, these women do not want to tell the police
or a judge the truth, and try to protect their families. The question
arises: Why do these women direct their anger against themselves
rather than their tormentors? I did not put this question directly to
my respondents, but an answer of sorts emerged during the research
and writing process. One reason could be that they could not foresee
any support from the law or their communities if they were to use vio-
lence against a family member, while by attempting suicide they might
somehow be hoping that their families would hear their cry for help
and their frustration. Another answer, at least theoretically, could be
found in the relationship between gender and violence, and the con-
struction of manhood and womanhood that emerged in the process of
Kurdish identity construction. As discussed in chapter 3, the issue of
the Kurdish homeland symbolized by the figure of a deprived mother
occupies a central place in Kurdish nationalist discourse and its nar-
ratives (Ahmadzadeh 2003). Like many other nationalist discourses,
the caring and suffering woman/mother symbolizes the homeland
(cf. Yuval-Davis 1997). Kurdish men, by contrast, are often portrayed
as those who defend the Kurdish homeland, their “honor,” women
and children. Thus, these nationalist discourses, widely reproduced
in oral stories, popular culture and literature, give rise to certain
kinds of knowledge, identity, and gender roles, and portray certain
perceptions of reality shared by people within society. Women are
constructed in this way as representatives of the collective’s identity,
symbols of the suffering nation and bearers of its honor, and the ones
who care for the men and the family. This “burden of representation”
(Yuval-Davis 1997: 47) and these allotted roles have deprived many
women of their lives, some of whom are presented in this study. Many
of the women who were driven to suicide because of the harassment
they were exposed to by family members did not bear witness against
them because they did not want to cause them any harm. It would
be against their identities as caring and suffering women. They pains-
takingly cared for their families and even for their tormentors, and
sometimes felt guilty for tarnishing their reputations by attempting
suicide.
Another consideration is that women who attempt suicide know
that if they survive, they will still be dependent on their families and
will have no alternative but to return to their families. Making accu-
sations against family members would therefore not be wise. It is
common for both the woman and her family to claim that the suicide
attempt was an accident. All suicides in Iraqi Kurdistan are not the
same. They differ according to the victim’s situation, and that of their
 SUICIDE AS PROTEST 135

families, as well as the context from which they emerge. They usually
have a combination of causes, when gender issues and sexual oppres-
sion combine with tribal traditions and customs as well as poverty
to make women extremely vulnerable in a situation where they have
little or no security and the state and the law have long been on the
side of the perpetrator.
M.S., one of the women who set fire to herself, acted because of
extreme poverty and because of her husband’s constant violence and
harassment. She was willing to take part in the study and to meet me
for an interview, but could not keep our appointment because she was
not allowed to leave her parents’ house. Instead, she answered my
questions briefly in a telephone conversation with her contact person
at a women’s organization, who transcribed her answers for me. M.S.
was a 24-year-old mother of two children. Her husband divorced her
after her suicide attempt, and she returned to her parents’ house to
live. She was badly injured and, according to her contact person, her
wounds were infected. M.S. said:

My life story is very long. They got me married when I was a child and
my husband and his family were not kind to me. We were also very
poor. My husband did not have a proper job and my children did not
have enough food to eat. I tried much to change the ways of my hus-
band but he did not change. He battered me almost every day and his
family was also very bad to me. That is why I wanted to die, because
I could not stand to see my children suffering from hunger. I set fire
to myself but I survived and my body is badly damaged. My husband
took my children away and said that they were afraid of seeing me. I
am now left only with my injuries.

M.S.’s contact person from the women’s organization said:

Poverty, her husband’s assaults, and the children’s situation drove her
to that decision. Often her neighbors took her to the hospital when
she was battered by her husband. She left her husband many times and
went back to her family, but each time they sent her back to her hus-
band. They told her: “Everybody wants to get rid of their daughters
and you are coming back with two children? What should we answer
people who are going to wonder why your husband divorced you?”
She is now like a prisoner in her father’s house.

As discussed in chapter 6, divorce is not an option for such women.

The reasons are many: women’s dependence on others for their sur-
vival, their families’ lack of economic resources to support them and
136 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

the fear of “what people would say” force them to stay with their hus-
bands. Despite some variations, the stories of suicide that I came into
contact with revealed two trends. First, all these women share expe-
riences of hopelessness and helplessness in relation to violence that
seems total, to the extent that no space is left for their individuality,
dignity and human agency, and they see no future or hope. Second,
especially but not exclusively in the case of unmarried suicide victims,
the control and violence seem to become totally unbearable when
their mothers are actively involved in committing the violence or even
initiating it. Women who are suppressed by their mothers seem to
be much more vulnerable and they are exposed to much greater vio-
lence and tighter control than other women. The actions of these
mothers and their relationships with their young daughters illustrate
the articulation of gender, power, subjectivity, generational difference
and sexuality in a context of patriarchal hierarchies and rules aimed
at subordinating and objectifying women of reproductive age within
tribal structures. Here we see the generational aspect alongside sexu-
ality, gender, class and ethnicity. The generational aspect is closely
related to sexuality and reproduction, as women of reproductive age
are regarded as a threat (see chapter 3; see also Dogan 2010) and thus
often become the object of strict control not only by men but also by
older women.

V IOLENT M OTHERS : G ENDER , G ENER ATION,

S E XUA LIT Y A ND P OW ER
Women’s involvement in violence against women is not new (Jacobson
et al. 2000; Mukta 2000). Lentin states that “viewing women as
homogeneously powerless and as implicit victims does not allow us to
theorize women as the benefactors of oppression, or the perpetrators”
(quoted by Jacobson et al. 2000: 13).
Similarly, the respondents’ experiences of violence in the name of
honor demonstrate that women are not only victims or opponents
of violence—they too can be agents of violence (see also Begikhani
2005; Dogan 2010; Sen 2005). In particular, the involvement of
older women in violence against younger women can be explained
by Kandiyoti’s (1988) concept of a “patriarchal bargain.” Kandiyoti
regards older women’s involvement in violence against and the control
of younger women as a strategy and a coping mechanism within “clas-
sic patriarchy” related to the “operations of a patrilocally extended
household, which is also commonly associated with the reproduc-
tion of the peasantry in agrarian societies” (E. Wolf 1966, referred
 SUICIDE AS PROTEST 137

to in Kandiyoti 1988: 278). An explanation for this, according to

Kandiyoti, can be found in “women’s life cycle in patriarchal extended
families.” This means that the hardship that women experience when
young will eventually be replaced by power and authority that they, as
older women, will have over younger women in the household. Thus,
“for the generation of women caught in between,” transformation of
the patriarchal order “may present genuine personal tragedy, since
they have paid the heavy price of an earlier patriarchal bargain, but
are not able to cash in its promised benefits” (1988: 282).
A.F., a young woman aged 27 years (see also chapter 6) who had
fled from her family and was living at a shelter, was very critical of
her mother. According to A.F., her mother, who is very conservative
and strongly influenced by patriarchal and tribal values, encouraged
her father and brothers to be violent toward her and to oppress her.
She said:

It is mostly mothers who actually do that. It is mostly mothers who

push the men. My mother is very ashayer (tribal) and she pushed my
father and my brothers against me. The men are outside and do not
know what is going on at home, but when they come home she tells
them that the girl has done this and that. I have not done anything
bad or immoral. She always criticizes me for each and every thing I
do: “Why have you put on that dress? Why do you have make-up on?,”
and so on. She ridicules me, shouts at me so that all our neighbors
can hear her saying: “She has got such fancy dresses, she has make-up,
she is always in front of the mirror looking at herself, she is washing
herself, sleeping,” and so on. But what should I do? What should I do?
I wanted to get rid of her. I wanted to get away from that family, get
married with the boy I wanted and never go back there again. I just
want to live independently . . . They want you to behave according to
old morals and traditions from the past.

The tight control, humiliation, and physical and psychological vio-

lence that women are exposed to at home seems to become utterly
unbearable to the extent that it can result in severe depression,
unhealthy psychological conditions and finally suicide. H.B., who
shared with me the story of a very close friend’s suicide, complained
about the active role of mothers in controlling their daughters while
giving freedom to and adoring their sons. She says:

Mothers are very guilty for the problems that girls face. They are
involved in the oppression. There are mothers who give boys so much
freedom and cut off girls’ freedom. Fathers are not at home so much
138 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

and they do not know what is going on at home and how the children
behave. It is the mother who is with the children and must protect
them. But these families mostly protect their boys . . . Ever since I can
remember, my family, like all other ashayer (tribal) families, adored
its sons. These families worship their sons. It means that they give
their sons total freedom and power while they subordinate the girls
to them. Because of this problematic situation in her family and the
pressure that girls were facing, my friend’s older sister preferred to get
married to escape her family. She did not do it because she wanted to,
or because she loved the man, but because it was the only way for her
to escape her family. After four years and even though she had a child,
she was so unhappy and depressed that she committed suicide by set-
ting fire to herself.

The superior position of boys in the family and preference for sons are
also mentioned by Husseini (2009) and Kanaaneh (2002). Kanaaneh
notes that “the desire to have sons is central to family planning in
Galilee” (2002: 229). However, she argues that preference for sons is
based more on pragmatism than ideology, which means “many peo-
ple distance themselves ideologically from primitive son preference
even when they are trying to have a boy” (233).
Another young girl, N.I., who survived a suicide attempt, was also
highly critical of her mother. Aged 17, highly intelligent and articu-
late, she seemed very strong-willed and determined, but was also very
sad and angry. N.I. was attending the final year of upper secondary
school when I met her, and she said that she was one of the best in
her class. She had to try hard to persuade her family to let her study.
She is from a very poor family and her contact from the women’s
organization told me that N.I.’s mother has a very difficult life and
works hard to support her family. N.I. and her parents did not appear
to understand each other and were not in agreement. She was a strong
and ambitious girl who wanted to study and to become independent,
something that her parents could neither understand nor handle. Her
view of life and her plans for the future did not fit with her parents’
way of thinking. N.I. had felt unwell and been very depressed for a
long time, and had tried to harm herself in different ways on several
occasions to attract her mother’s attention, but her mother did not
care. Finally, one day she set herself on fire in the presence of her
mother and her brothers and sisters. Many parts of her body were
severely burned. She was still in pain when I met her, despite several
operations. She repeatedly assured me that she did not want to die
but wanted to make her parents change their attitude and respect her.
 SUICIDE AS PROTEST 139

She felt that her parents did not love her. She also kept saying that her
mother was responsible for what had happened to her.

I am never allowed to go out of our home alone . . . My mother is not

so confident herself and does not dare to go out with me. She does not
even trust herself and her own child. She sees it as a problem if some-
body looks at me in the street. Let them do it, so what? What would
happen? What do I lose or what do they win by looking at me? Let them
look . . . Now the only light in my life is my studies and nothing else.

N.I. was not even allowed to come to the women’s organization for the
interview without her mother. Her mother followed her and waited in
the next room until the interview was over. N.I. was very frustrated
by her parents, especially her mother’s lack of understanding, love
and knowledge, and the way she ignored her. N.I. said repeatedly that
she felt that her parents did not love her and did not care about her. I
asked N.I. if she felt that they treated boys and girls differently. After
a short silence she said:

Yes, to some extent . . . yes, there is a difference. There is a difference

in everything. What I do the boys should not do and what they do I
am not allowed to do. There is a big difference . . . I am glad that this
happened to me and not my brothers and sisters . . . If I were a boy this
would never happen to me. If I were a boy I would never ever experi-
ence this.

N.I. talked about the same problem that H.B. mentioned above,
namely how young girls after a certain age feel that nobody loves
them or cares about them. They seem to become in many ways a bur-
den for their families when they become sexually mature.
In relation to son preference, sexuality and vulnerability in Galilee,
this is what Kanaahen writes:

A son can supposedly take care of himself in any situation he is thrown

into . . . Girls, on the other hand, are considered vulnerable—they eas-
ily suffer injustice, they can be abused, and respectable sources of
income are hard to come by for the uneducated. Moreover, a girl’s
sexual reputation, unlike that of a boy, can easily be “destroyed”: “a
girl is like a glass, throw one rock at her and she’s broken.” These
constructions of girls’ economic and social vulnerability and boys’
resilience are deployed in rationalizations of modern son preference.
(2002: 237–238)
140 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

Control of girls’ and young women’s sexuality becomes a prerequisite

for the maintenance of the family’s reputation, of its men’s manli-
ness, and of patriliny and its social organization, in which women are
regarded as the property of their families and as valuable resources
for exchange and reproduction. Any act that questions girls’ “purity”
and modesty can destroy the family’s reputation and also ruin a girl’s
chances of marriage. Boys, on the other hand, are supposed to con-
tinue the line, and to sustain the family and kin (Husseini 2009;
Kanaaneh 2002; King 2008; L évi-Strauss 1969; Siddiqi 2005).
Hence, they enjoy freedom and respect and receive their families’
love and care. Women actively participate in both the commodifica-
tion of women and son preference while they themselves may have
been victims of the same system. Hence, Kanaaneh concludes that the
active participation of women in son preference “speaks to the sim-
plistic notion of women as victims of male dominated society” (ibid.).
Kanaaneh’s conclusion that gendered forms of discrimination “are
practiced by both men and women” corresponds with my respon-
dents’ experiences. However, son preference, as Kanaaneh also notes,
is much affected by the socioeconomic status of the family and educa-
tion. Especially when their resources are limited, parents invest more
in sons who are supposed to give them economic and social support
when they grow up.
The resistance of these young girls and their claims for self-deter-
mination evoke the anger and detestation of their perpetrators since
they go against and threaten their control. Their will to decide on
their own lives is seen as a threat to and a questioning of existing
power structures sustained, among other things, by moral rules and
norms reproduced and established by the honor discourse in which
women are, as Chakravarti argues, “repositories of ‘family honour’”
(2005: 310). Identifying different forms of patriarchy should, accord-
ing to Kandiyoti, proceed “through an analysis of women’s strategies
in dealing with them” (1988: 275). Women’s strategies “reveal and
define the blueprint” of the “patriarchal bargain” that not only dem-
onstrates women’s “rational choices” but also shapes their gendered
subjectivities (275–285). Hence, Kandiyoti states that women who
belong to the in-between generations would rather “adopt interper-
sonal strategies that maximize their security through manipulation of
the affections of their sons and husbands” (280).
For N.I. and other women, suicide was the only way to com-
municate their subjectivity and to resist and question their oppres-
sors’ power and violence. However, the problem does not end for
those who survive. N.I. says that her situation has worsened since her
 SUICIDE AS PROTEST 141

suicide attempt, since she is now also blamed for the shame she has
brought on her family and she feels guilty about it. She is stigmatized,
suspected and branded because of her burned body.

B L A MING THE V ICTIM

As discussed throughout this volume, the victims are the ones who
are blamed. According to the values and norms produced in the hege-
monic, patriarchal honor discourse, a woman’s body is the property
of her family and kin, and women are expected to accept their roles
and behave accordingly, although not everybody would go so far as
to kill to maintain this. A woman’s sexual behavior is not just her
personal concern, but her family and kin’s business in relation to their
community. Thus, the community’s positive or negative sanctioning
(real or imaginary) as a link in the process of the social disciplining of
women is also a way to maintain patriarchal rule. One manifestation
of community control is gossip and rumor, which were mentioned
by a number of respondents, including survivors of suicide attempts.
Women who try to commit suicide are often branded and suspected
of having done “something bad,” which implicitly means something
related to sexuality or sexual behavior. Avoiding gossip and rumor
can be a reason why families try to hide a suicide attempt. Another
reason is to avoid justice and punishment. They usually claim that the
injuries happened by accident in the kitchen, although nobody really
believes this. N.I. says that she is now branded “a bad girl,” some-
thing that affects her family also.

Nobody understands me. Even if the traces of injury and the wounds
disappear from my body, I would still be branded as a bad girl . . . Even
if I were to explain to people, they still wouldn’t listen and instead they
would say: “Ah, she has burned herself and she has done it because
maybe she has done something; she may have been with boys and who
knows what she has done” . . . My female cousins, for example, have
said that “N.I. may have been with boys and done something bad and
that is why she has set fire to herself.” When my close relatives say such
things, what can I expect from others? . . . As soon as people see that
I am burned, many of them say she is xirap (loose). Okay, but think
about the reason why I did it. Burning yourself is like digging your
own grave and climbing into it.

The women who are the victims of violence are seen as perpetra-
tors and traitors and as those who have caused the problem, while
the perpetrators and their families are seen as victims who must be
142 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

defended and protected (cf. Chakravarti 2005). This is sometimes

even the position of officials. When H.B.’s friend committed suicide,
the policemen who came to investigate and write the initial report
informed some men from the village that they were going to report
the cause of death as an accident in the kitchen. They sent a message
to the victim’s father, who they knew, to inform him that he should
say the same. H.B. said that the policemen did so because they were
from the same area where people knew each other and sometimes
could even be related. H.B. added that her friend’s brothers tried to
put pressure on their sisters, who were very upset, not to tell the truth
in court. The brothers of the victim were very violent toward their
sisters, warning them about telling the truth. Other male relatives
also tried to persuade the girls not to tell the truth about their sister’s
death. Thus, the truth never came out. This is probably what happens
in most cases and can also affect the statistics.
It also happened when N.I. burned herself. Before she was taken to
hospital her mother instructed everybody, even N.I., that they should
all say that it happened by accident, caused by a heater. N.I. says:

When the judge asked me what happened I did not tell him the truth.
I was still in the emergency ward, which meant that I was still not out
of danger, and I thought: “Now when I am going to die, why should
I cause lots of problems for my family?” If I told them that I did it
because of my mother, then they would put her in jail . . . The judge
asked me to swear on the Qur’an, and asked me two or three times,
and after that he believed me.

Suicide reveals conflicts within the family, and especially the family’s
failure to discipline its female members. As discussed in chapters 4
and 5, publicity is a problem that families want to avoid since, once a
conflict has become public, the family can feel pressure to act (Dogan
2011; Fischer-Tahir 2009; Husseini 2009). Moreover, revealing con-
flict within the family, and especially disobedience by its women,
which suicide does, is not flattering to the family—and especially its
male members (cf. An-Na ím 2005; Baxter 2007; Chakravarti 2005;
Dogan 2010, 2011; Husseini 2009).

S UMM A RY
What do these suicides and attempted suicides say about the soci-
ety they arise from? These individual experiences reveal ongoing
everyday violence against women in a context of intersecting and
 SUICIDE AS PROTEST 143

multiple oppressions of class, ethnicity, gender, generation and sexu-

ality. Women often face violence not only as women but also as poor
people, as members of an oppressed national minority, and as young
women of reproductive age in tribal, patriarchal households. They
often experience extreme violence from their families, and even from
their mothers, but do not receive enough support from any corner.
In many cases, those who would like to help them find themselves at
risk. These experiences show that high degrees of social integration
and regulation in a society where tribal and kinship structures are
strong for historical and political reasons make women vulnerable.
The social disciplining of women and their sexuality according to
honor discourse is carried out in Iraqi Kurdistan by the family, the
state and its institutions and the community. It is in such a context
that these young women’s experiences of violence, but also their pro-
tests against that violence, and their decision to commit suicide must
be seen.
This chapter also highlights the role of mothers as perpetrators of
and participants in violence against their daughters, something that
demonstrates the strength and influence of patriarchal structures
and norms. However, as mentioned in chapter 6, the violence young
women face is a response to their refusal to accept oppression and
their allotted subordinate roles. As An-Naím (2005) rightly argues,
it demonstrates the “failure or inadequacy” of the social organization
and its system of norms and values built on women’s subordination.
Moreover, the way these cases of suicide are handled by the justice
system highlights a serious political problem, which is also mentioned
in other chapters in this volume.
 8

C ONCLU DI NG R E M A R K S

H ONOR , B ODIES , A ND B OUNDA RIES

Departing from the perspectives of victims of violence, perpetrators
and activists, and from the specific historical and political contexts
of Iraqi Kurdistan, this book discusses the experiences of violence,
killing and threats to kill made against women in the name of honor,
as well as women’s resistance and struggles. The focus of the study is
on men’s violence against women, who constitute the vast majority of
victims, but, as demonstrated throughout the book, women and men
can be found on both sides—as victims and as perpetrators.
This book criticizes the culturalization of violence in the name
of honor for its normalization, essentialization and racialization of
the violence. It is also critical of universalist notions that define the
violence only in terms of gender and sexuality but neglect its particu-
larities connected to other sources of oppression such as ethnicity,
class and generation. Taking an intersectional perspective, this book
argues that violence in the name of honor is not only connected to
gender and sexuality but also a problem closely related to the for-
mation of collective identity, boundary making and community
maintenance in surroundings that are regarded as hostile. The main
features of violence in the name of honor are identified in this book.
Its primary characteristic is its strong focus on the control of female
sexuality, which is organized and maintained in various ways through
discourses, policies and practice. The second characteristic, which is
directly connected to and lies behind control of female sexuality—
and can be seen as a significant aspect of violence in the name of
honor—is the control of reproduction, or the maintenance of the
biological, social and political boundaries of the collectivity and its
social organization. This is particularly prevalent in contexts in which
power and resources are distributed around kinship, and therefore
the control of sexuality, mainly through the control of marriage,
becomes a cornerstone of the existence of such social organization.
146 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

The third feature is that this control and regulation are motivated,
normalized and maintained through the honor discourse and the
system of norms and moral obligations connected to it. When these
norms are questioned or rejected, violence and even killing can result
since by rejecting forced marriage and by protesting against the con-
trol of their bodies, their sexuality and their lives, women are ques-
tioning an entire social structure based on their subordination. The
fourth characteristic, and a significant aspect of violence in the name
of honor, is that it is connected to a notion of manhood and mascu-
linity, produced by the honor discourse, which is bound to the con-
trol of female sexuality and to violence. Any questioning of the norms
of the honor discourse is regarded as a challenge to the manhood or
masculinity of male members of the family and kin, whose gender
identity is connected to the control of female members’ sexuality.
In Iraqi Kurdistan, these processes have been negotiated and shaped
in a situation in which family and kin had become the centers of power,
and family relations increasingly important to people’s survival and
safety, in a context marked by state terror, national oppression, war
and militarization, destruction, ethnic cleansing, mass violence and
socioeconomic marginalization. Furthermore, like many other places
in the post-Ottoman Middle East, social structures based on tribal
and kinship relations not only remained with the formation of colo-
nial nation states, but were actually strengthened and granted more
social and political power. It was state policy to make alliances with
the most conservative and backward-looking sectors of society in all
the colonial states in the region. This policy also targeted family law
and women, creating a situation that has been described as the retrib-
alization of society and the resubordination of women (Efrati 2012).
Thus, state-sanctioned, gender-based violence, on the one hand, and
a lack of interest in and the ability to achieve gender equality within
the Kurdish nationalist movement, which was also closely integrated
with the tribal system, on the other, left women totally in the hands
of their oppressors. Accordingly, the control of women’s bodies and
sexuality became a cornerstone of these processes because the main-
tenance of biological and social boundaries through the control of
reproduction and marriage are central to kinship- and tribally based
social organizations. Women were also seen as symbols and biological
reproducers of the nation, group or collectivity, and became extremely
vulnerable as the struggles around collective identity formation and
the drawing of boundaries continued for almost a century.
As a number of other studies have noted (Bakhtiarnejad 2009;
Dogan 2011; Ertürk 2009; Husseini 2009), violence in the name of
 CONCLUDING R EM A R K S 147

honor occurs among people of all religious faiths but is not a religious
phenomenon. It is connected neither to Islam nor to any other reli-
gion. However, it has been favored by religious conservatism in all its
forms, with its notion of women’s sexuality as a threat and a danger
to society (see Dogan 2011). Such violence is discussed and analyzed
in this book in relation to, and within the overall organization of,
power and dominance and the intersecting oppressions of gender,
class, ethnicity, generation and sexuality in Iraqi Kurdish society,
with a particular focus on their implications for the construction of
gender identities and relations, for women and for violence against
women in the name of honor.
This book argues that references to honor and the use of honor as a
motive constitute a discourse—a narrative that has been constructed
and shaped to explain and normalize violence and killing. The control
of reproduction and of women’s sexuality—both strongly connected
with violence in the name of honor—are maintained by the prohibi-
tions and limitations produced, normalized and legitimized by the
honor discourse. However, it is important to note that this does not
occur in a vacuum, but in the specific sociopolitical and historical
contexts and under the power relations that have made them possible
and even necessary.
Taking an intersectional perspective, this book argues that eth-
nicity, sexuality, gender, class and cross-generational relations have
outlined the oppression of Kurdish women in Iraqi Kurdistan within
a framework of global, national and local power hierarchies. Women,
their bodies and their sexuality have become the battleground for
clashes between various political projects and masculinities. The con-
trol of female sexuality and reproduction by a patriarchal tribal system
that affects primarily young women (although they are not the only
ones to be affected) is reproduced and maintained mainly in rural
areas in a wider context characterized by socioeconomic marginal-
ization, low levels of literacy and the lack of a proper education sys-
tem, poverty, state violence, ethnic oppression, and state-sanctioned
gender-based violence.
This book uses a broad definition of violence to focus not only
on subjective violence but also on systemic and symbolic violence.
Subjective and directed violence and killing are pursued when the sys-
tem of norms, the power structures behind them and the discourses
that legitimize them are challenged and questioned. Resistance to
oppressive patriarchal power structures awakens anger and leads to
violence and the killing of women. These clashes and conflicts, not
least between different generations, increase when that society goes
148 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

through socioeconomic, structural and political transformations in

which new and empowering knowledge emerges and becomes acces-
sible, spaces for movement and mobilization open up and demands
for change occur. This is what can be seen, to some extent, in Iraqi
Kurdistan since the early 1990s—and especially since 2003, with the
demise of the Ba’ath regime and the ending of dictatorship and eth-
nic oppression. This demonstrates that crimes committed in the name
of honor are, as An-Na ím puts it, a “manifestation of the failure or
inadequacy of familial and communal regulation of sexuality, rather
than an indication that such regulation happens in those societies and
not in others” (2005: 68). As discussed throughout this book and
also shown by other studies (Husseini 2009; Ilkkaracan 2000; Sevér
and Yurdakul 2001), violence against women in the name of honor
decreases with improvements in socioeconomic conditions, livings
standards, education, economic development, and the political and
legal measures to combat such violence.

M ASCULINIT Y M ATTERS
As discussed in chapter 4, defending and maintaining masculinity
and manhood is one of the central motivations of perpetrators of vio-
lence in the name of honor. When I asked men who had killed women
to define honor, they did not have a concrete answer. The only thing
all of them said was that honor is above everything else, even above
life and death. As we discussed and I asked them further questions,
I realized that their most important motive had been to defend and
maintain their own manhood, which had been questioned and chal-
lenged by their victims. Having internalized the honor discourse,
they believed that they were obliged to act, and that they needed to
demonstrate their actions to their network, with which they iden-
tified and shared norms reproduced by the honor discourse. Thus,
an important question arises when studying violence in the name
of honor: What are those circumstances and contexts within which
notions of manhood and masculinity are shaped around the control
of female sexuality and violence and why do they appear?
As noted above, in Iraqi Kurdistan, gender identities and notions of
manhood and masculinity have been constructed in a context of eth-
nic oppression, militarized national freedom movements and milita-
rization in a society marked by strong and powerful tribal structures,
socioeconomic marginality, and so on. The perpetrators’ accounts in
this book demonstrate how honor is an excuse for oppression, vio-
lence and the killing of women as part of a discourse and narrative
 CONCLUDING R EM A R K S 149

closely connected to notions of manhood and masculinity. In Iraqi

Kurdistan, this discourse has been supported and institutionalized by
the state and its state-controlled legal system, in collaboration with
conservative religious and tribal structures and institutions.
Notions of manhood and womanhood in Iraqi Kurdistan are
closely related to the historical, social and political processes that arose
out of the formation of nations and nationalities in the aftermath of
the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and the formation of colo-
nial states in the Middle East, including Iraq. As discussed through-
out this book, sexuality, gender roles and gender relations usually
become highly problematic in contexts of national, ethnic and sec-
tarian conflict and war, in which—as Connel (2009), Dolan (2002),
Enloe (2000), Yuval-Davis (1997) and many others have shown—
notions of manhood and masculinity become increasingly connected
with violence. In such contexts, there is no possibility of developing
alternative masculinities (cf. Baxter 2007; Dolan 2002; Saigol 2000).
In Iraqi Kurdistan, gender roles, gender relations and gender hier-
archies were reproduced in an almost century-long armed national-
ist struggle against state violence, ethnic cleansing and dictatorship.
Furthermore, in such a violent political context, violence emerged as
the only way to resolve conflicts and achieve results, since nonviolent
alternatives were not available. This context of political violence and
militarization has affected the whole of society and all social relations,
making violence a large part of everyday consciousness. Family and
kin became more and more the center of power, and in the tribal con-
text, kinship- and family-based identities and loyalties became essen-
tial to people’s survival. Being treated by the nationalist discourse as
symbols and biological reproducers left women deeply affected and
highly vulnerable. Their bodies and sexuality became battlefields in
the struggles and competitions between various political projects and
for defending and maintaining various masculine aims.

THE H ONOR D ISCOURSE : P OW ER ,

K NOW LEDGE A ND V IOLENCE
Three types of violence—objective or systemic, symbolic and
subjective—make up the different dimensions of violence that exist
within the power structures, based on class, gender, ethnicity, gen-
eration and sexuality, that define Kurdish women’s oppression. They
occur and exist especially in those social relations based on power and
subordination, and affect everyday life at the individual, institutional
and structural, as well as the local, national and global levels. Subjective
150 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

violence usually receives the most attention, not least because there
are always concrete victims with whom to identify, empathize and
sympathize. It is visible and directed and it is committed by concrete
and identifiable agents, such as individuals, institutions, and so on
(Žižek 2009). Objective or systemic violence, by contrast, tends to be
hidden within social structures and institutions and therefore operate
unnoticed. It is inherent in the system and structures of power and
takes the form of more subtle coercion to maintain relations of domi-
nance, exploitation and subordination. The problem with objective
violence, as Žižek puts it, is not that we either do not see it or ignore
it, but that we actively participate in it through our social relations
and interactions, in our private and professional roles, and through
language and communication (2009: 8). Thus, it is a more effective
form of violence, since, as Foucault argues, the primary feature of
power is not oppression but rather how effectively its mechanisms are
hidden (Nilsson 2008: 89).
Symbolic violence, which is mainly related to the hegemonic
domain of power, is pursued through knowledge, ideology and dis-
course, and operates through language in everyday interactions and
communications. The most fundamental form of violence through
language is that it produces knowledge, interpretations, and “truths”
in society through discourse. Knowledge produced, among other
things, through discourse has potentially strong power since it affects
society’s and individuals’ perceptions and thoughts by producing
social knowledge that is shared by members of a society or group
(Fairclough 1992, 2003; van Dijk 1997).
Control occupies a central place in van Dijk’s definition of social
power, since having power over a group makes it possible to control
the way the group thinks and acts (van Dijk 1993, 1997). This con-
trol occurs through processes of mental influence such as thoughts,
conceptions and intentions. Pursuing control requires access to
power resources, such as having the power of definition, social posi-
tion, status and authority, that provide legitimacy and authority to
the discourse and make it appear as truth. The relationship between
power and knowledge is also central in Collins’ (2009) analysis of
intersecting oppression, and of activism and the politics of empower-
ment. A discourse never exists without power and therefore it can-
not be studied without considering its inclusionary and exclusionary
effects. The knowledge reproduced in the discourse is decisive for
the reproduction of social and cognitive structures (Van Dijk 1993).
Members of a group or a society share not only mental perceptions and
ideas, but also different interpretations, conclusions, categorizations,
 CONCLUDING R EM A R K S 151

comparatives and definitions. In a wider sense, knowledge is some-

thing that people must possess or think they possess in order to act as
competent members of a collectivity, community, nation, and so on
(ibid: 36–37). In this respect, discourses can be regarded as a frame
of reference or a comprehensible fund, against which our statements,
perceptions and actions can be interpreted (Burr 1995: 48–51). Thus,
studies of discourses—their social and political effects and their rela-
tion to the reproduction and maintenance of social power, and to
inclusionary and exclusionary practices—should also focus on the
symbolic violence that can be inherent within them. Moreover, the
focus should be not only on what is said but also on what the dis-
course excludes and what is kept silent about in a discourse. Control
and the exercise of power, however, are never absolute or total, since
power is relational, that is, it exists within human relations and thus
it can be resisted, negotiated and changed. Oppression initiates con-
flict, opposition and struggles as soon as people begin to question it
(Collins 2009). The individual experiences related in this study show
that extreme violence, threats to kill and killings occur mainly as
punishments and disciplinary practices against women who resist and
object to the everyday, normalized, systemic and symbolic violence
inherent in oppressive values, norms and practices related to sexuality
and marriage. Women resist and cross the mental and social bound-
aries reproduced in the patriarchal honor discourse, which aims to
transform them into to docile subjects who obey their oppressors and
even participate in the maintenance of their own oppression. The way
perpetrators in this study as well as in studies from Jordan (Husseini
2009) and Turkey (Dogan 2010, 2011) refer to honor and man-
hood, and the striking similarities in their discussions and explana-
tions about their crimes exposes and clearly demonstrates the honor
discourse and its components. Moreover, all the contradictions and
nuances, with respect to killing as well as the critical and oppositional
voices of victims and their supporters, are totally absent from their
narratives. The honor discourse creates the notion of a homogeneous
community that supports the killing of women. The honor discourse
therefore encourages, normalizes and legitimizes the killings by label-
ing them the culture of the group, community, nation, and so on.
As discussed in chapter 4, the term honor as reproduced in the honor
discourse can be distinguished from the general meaning of honor by
its central features. First, it is gender-specific or, in other words, it is
a masculine concept since it is strongly connected to notions of man-
hood and masculinity. It can be said that it is a man’s problem that has
violent consequences for women, since it is always about men’s honor
152 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

that is closely connected to and dependent on the control of women’s

sexuality. Second, it is collective, since it is constructed around col-
lective identity formations, community maintenance and the drawing
of the boundaries of the collectivity, tribe, kin, family, and so on. It
is related to belonging, identification and group solidarity, in social
contexts with a high degree of social integration and control. Thus,
this concept of honor tends to be strengthened in contexts character-
ized by ethnic, religious, tribal and sectarian conflicts and by oppres-
sive power hierarchies. This concept of honor becomes connected to
violence in contexts and surroundings that are perceived as hostile
and where the boundaries between various groups and collectivities
are a matter of power, oppression and struggle. As discussed through-
out this book, defining violence and killing in the name of honor as
culture is a discourse of power and oppression that aims to mask or
justify the violence. It is a discourse that aims to hide the patterns
of intersecting violence and the oppression behind it. The cultural-
ization of violence against women, like the culturalization of other
social and political problems, naturalizes and neutralizes “political
differences . . . into cultural differences” (Žižek 2009: 119) and hides
mechanisms of power and oppression.
Thus, by reproducing such knowledge, the honor discourse com-
mits “symbolic violence,” since it normalizes and legitimizes the
oppression and violence structured and maintained in social struc-
tures and institutions at the same time as ignoring the critical voices,
conflicts and contradictions that exist within the same community
and society around violence and killings in the name of honor. In
Iraqi Kurdistan, the patriarchal honor discourse has been systemati-
cally reproduced and maintained by its powerful proponents: the Iraqi
state, conservative tribal and religious leaders, and Kurdish political
actors. In so doing, they have reproduced and maintained power hier-
archies based on gender and presented the exclusion of women from
social power and their subordination as part of a culture that must be
defended against outsiders.

THE C ULTUR A LIZ ATION OF V IOLENCE A ND THE

I NTERPL AY OF R ACISM A ND S E X ISM
The “racial discourse of cultural pathology” (Werbner 2007: 170) and
its culturalization of violence against women has been part of racial-
izing processes in many Western countries and especially intense in
Sweden since 2002 (see Alinia 2011; see also chapter 1). Like the
perpetrators’ honor discourse, the racist and sexist honor discourse
 CONCLUDING R EM A R K S 153

produced in multicultural Western contexts defines the violence in

terms of culture and ethnicity, and thus normalizes and legitimizes
racism and the subordination of migrants, especially those from the
Middle East and North Africa, who are collectively described as
bearers of the “honor culture.” Terms like “honor killing,” a con-
cept reproduced in culturalist explanations of the violence, relate, as
Chakravarti puts it, the violence “with the ‘uniqueness’ of Asian cul-
tures, with irrational communities and aberrant and archaic patriar-
chal practices refusing to modernise” (Chakravarti 2005: 309).
As an outcome of my study of violence in the name of honor as a
phenomenon, and also of my study of the racializing honor discourse
in Sweden (Alinia 2011), I present three tightly related problems of
the culturalization of the violence and three arguments in favor of
abandoning cultural explanations. First, to define violence as culture
is to reproduce the sexist and oppressive honor discourse in which
killings and violence in the name of honor and the subordination of
women are presented as culture. It is to reproduce perpetrators’ nar-
ratives that attempt to justify and normalize violence and killing, and
to present themselves as representative of their communities, nations
and countries. None of the women I interviewed who had experienced
violence and threats to kill talked about their experiences in terms of
honor. They did not say that they were exposed to violence because
they dishonored their families or because of “honor culture.” They
talked instead about concrete acts of violence, humiliation, threat,
prohibition and killing committed in the name of honor. These wom-
en’s “crimes” were that they did not accept forced marriage, did not
subordinate to oppressive rules and norms, and demanded the power
to decide over their own lives. They crossed the boundaries set by
the honor discourse and its powerful proponents. This large group
as well as all the other critical voices from the same society are totally
excluded from the honor discourse in which the community, soci-
ety, nation, and so on, are presented as unified and homogeneous
supporters of violence and killing. In contrast to the victims, the
perpetrators in Iraqi Kurdistan who I interviewed, and also those
in Jordan (Husseini 2009) and Turkey (Dogan 2011), gladly, will-
ingly and repeatedly spoke of honor or namus. It is striking that, as
my study and the two above-mentioned studies show, perpetrators
depart from the same discourse and, irrespective of their nationali-
ties, speak as if reading from identical manuals. Defining violence
in terms of the culture of a whole society or community excludes
all the people within the same countries, region or community who
do not agree with the violence or the killing of women and do not
154 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

recognize it as their culture. Hence, culturalization in sexist and rac-

ist honor discourse hides, excludes and silences all critiques, conflicts,
nuances and contradictions within society in favor of oppressive and
violent power structures. Consequently, as discussed above, it acts
as a policy mechanism as it creates fear of an imagined, unified and
watching community that forces everybody to police themselves, and
in this way actively takes part in the oppression and subordination of
women.
Second, to define violence against women as cultural is to mask
or hide the political, that is, to hide the mechanisms of power and
oppressive structures that intersect and interact in the reproduction
and maintenance of women’s subordination. Culturalization means
normalizing and essentializing women’s subordination and the vio-
lence against them in the name of culture. Moreover, in the cultural-
ist discourses in Sweden and elsewhere, culture is perceived as a unity
with objective and distinguishable values, as well as homogenous and
unchangeable traditions that lack nuance and political or historical
background (see Alinia 2011; Eduards 2007; Scott 2007). It hides
political and historical processes such as colonialism and national-
ism and power structures such as gender, class, ethnicity, generation
and sexuality and their intersecting oppression that contributes to the
violation of women’s rights and to violence and the killing of women.
Combating the “culturalization of politics” demands, according to
Žižek (2009: 119), the “politization of culture” (ibid.), that is, bring-
ing back politics and the political, and a refocusing on power when
analyzing social phenomena.
Third, defining the violence as culture prevents any possibility of
political action to achieve constructive change, since culturalization
offers only two options: either to tolerate violence against women
because it is perceived as cultural, or from a nationalistic point of
view to single out and stigmatize categories of people, regions and
countries as bearers of an “honor culture” and as aliens who are hos-
tile to “our modern Western culture” in general and gender equality
in particular. The former is what happened in Sweden before 2002,
when Fadime Sahindal, a young woman of Kurdish background from
Turkey, was killed by her father. As discussed in chapter 1, gender-
based domestic violence against women within migrant communities
was more or less either ignored or tolerated by the Swedish authorities
in the name of multiculturalism and tolerance toward cultural differ-
ences. After the murder, the minister of integration, other politicians,
the media and the authorities suddenly changed their policies and
their discourse. They argued that Sweden had been “cowardly” and
 CONCLUDING R EM A R K S 155

now must be “brave” and loudly proclaim that this “honor culture,”
is unacceptable in Sewden’s “open, gender equal and modern soci-
ety.” What they did not say and still do not admit is that the problem
was not about being cowardly, but about political decisions and poli-
cies based on racial and Orientalist discourses. The policy of tolerance
toward gender-based violence, which discriminated against women
with a migrant background in the name of cultural rights—based
on the belief that violence against women is “in their culture”—
was replaced by another policy which discriminates against migrants
and minorities in the name of gender equality—based on the same
racial and Orientalist discourse that violence against women is part
of their culture. Thus, the second option was adopted, which like
other similar discourses, according to Scott, embraces a worldview
based on an antagonism between good and evil, and “civilization
and backwardness,” and a morally superior “us” and an ideologically
degraded “them.” From such a perspective, as Scott puts it, there is
no space for self-criticism, no possibility of change, and no way for
“us” to open up toward “them” (2007: 22).
Since 2002, concepts such as “honor killing” and “honor cul-
ture” related to migration, migrants, Muslims and the Middle East
have regularly appeared in Swedish public debate, media discourses,
policy documents and even academic texts. These concepts have also
become more powerful elements in the discourse of racist and right-
wing populist movements and parties, all of which play as agents for
the liberation of migrant women and Muslim women. The racist and
sexist honor discourse in Sweden has created a gray zone in which it is
legitimate and justified to discriminate against and racialize migrant
minorities in the name of gender equality (Alinia 2011). The honor
discourse in a Western context, including Sweden, must be seen in
the political context of the post-9/11 era and issues of belonging
and the politics of belonging in a distinct way, as explained by Yuval-
Davis:

“Strangers” are seen not only as a threat to the cohesion of the politi-
cal and cultural community, but also as potential terrorists, especially
the younger men among them . . . Politics of belonging have come to
occupy the heart of the political agenda almost everywhere in the
world, even when reified assumptions about “the clash of civiliza-
tions” . . . are not necessarily applied. (2011: 1–2)

“Honor killings” and “honor culture” have come to embody the

idea of the barbaric other in the political climate of post-9/11 where
156 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

Christianity and Islam, and the West and the East are presented as
opposites in a clash between civilization and barbarism. As discussed
above, this kind of crime is encouraged and strengthened in situations
of ethnic and sectarian conflict and contradictions, set in a context of
power and subordination. The culturalization of violence in Sweden
and elsewhere according to a number of studies (see chapter 1) has
led to a racialization of society and the stigmatization and exclusion
of the “othered,” and thus has contributed to social divisions and
mutual exclusion based on ethnicity, nationality and religion. This
situation makes women who are at risk of violence even more vulner-
able, since their bodies and sexuality become the battlefield in such
political conflicts and in clashes between various masculinities shaped
in such a climate.

I NTERSECTING O PPRESSION, THE C ULTURE OF

R ESISTA NCE A ND V IOLENCE AGA INST WOMEN
The concept of culture is highly ambiguous and problematic, since
it has acquired different meanings. Thörn identifies three different
definitions of culture. In the wide anthropological definition, culture
is “a way of living” (2002: 75). The “narrowest definition,” often
used within the humanities, regards culture as synonymous with
art (ibid.). An alternative definition of culture—which I also start
from—is based on cultural sociology:

Culture, in addition to the political and economic, is a dimension of

society. According to this point of view, culture’s most fundamental
social function is to give meaning, consistency and coherence to social
life. A significant aspect of studying and analyzing the social life’s cul-
tural dimension is to study the processes through which people create
and maintain collective and individual identity. It also includes analyz-
ing symbols, values and norms in order to see firsthand how they get
their meaning within the framework of a comprehensive knowledge
system or pattern, which is usually denominated as a discourse or ide-
ology. (Thörn 2002: 57) [Translated from Swedish by author]

Collective identities are highly significant for holding together com-

munities as “without collective identities there will be no communi-
ties” (Thörn 2002: 76). The construction of culture and identity and
the way they are articulated in different discourses and narratives can
be used in boundary setting practices in both inclusionary and exclu-
sionary ways ( Anthias and Yuval-Davis 1992; Collins 2009; Yuval-
Davis 2011). Thus, from this perspective, culture must be studied
 CONCLUDING R EM A R K S 157

through processes of and practices around the formation of collective

identity and community maintenance, related to processes of oppres-
sion and resistance, and inclusion and exclusion. This book highlights
from an intersectional point of view the processes and dynamics of
gender construction, and the formation of notions of sexuality, man-
hood and womanhood in relation to notions of identity, community
and the politics of belonging. Intersectionality, as Collins argues, is
not only about the multidimensionality of oppression but also about
the multidimensionality, complexity and contradictory of resistance,
since it too takes place within a matrix of domination where the
intersecting oppression and multipositionality of individuals make “a
simple model of permanent oppressors and perpetual victims” impos-
sible (2009: 292). Although class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and
generation have framed oppression within Kurdish society, it is only
the struggle against ethnic oppression that has been recognized and
prioritized. Other kinds of oppression and also the struggle against
them have been subordinated to ethnic oppression or even totally
neglected. In these processes, struggles against gender-based violence
in particular have been opposed, as they have been regarded as divid-
ing the nation and weakening the movement for national liberation.
Intersecting oppression and violence exist within all domains of
power—the structural, disciplinary, hegemonic and interpersonal—
and within the overarching framework of the organization of power
and domination in society. Moreover, the Iraqi state, tribal organiza-
tions and the Kurdish nationalist leadership were often in conflict or
at war with each other, but were in silent agreement over patriarchal
gender politics, the subordination of women and violence in the name
of honor. Violence has been reproduced and institutionalized by the
state, the state-controlled legal system and other state-controlled
institutions, by conservative and patriarchal religious and tribal lead-
ers, by kin and family, and by the Kurdish nationalist movement. The
subordination of women and violence and killing have been repro-
duced, maintained, legitimized and naturalized through language
(Fischer-Tahir 2009; Hassanpour 2001), various discourses and nar-
ratives, and a popular culture that produces norms, rules, images
and moral obligations that normalize and legitimize such violence.
Whenever women have questioned these oppressive rules and norms
or refused to obey them, they have either faced violence or been told
to wait for the freedom of Kurdistan (Alinia 2004).
Since men have had a duty to defend the nation and to participate
in armed struggle, their notion of manhood has been very much
connected to violence in a political context in which violence has
158 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

been the only way to communicate and to struggle for social jus-
tice and for political power. To be tough and uncompromising has
been central, according to the proverb qisey piaw yeke (a man does
not change his word). During almost a century of ethnic oppres-
sion and armed struggle, family and kinship became the center of
power and the key to the safety of individuals. Moreover, in a soci-
ety where tribal and kinship structures have gained more and more
power and influence, collective and individual identities as well as
notions of manhood and womanhood have been strongly influ-
enced by tribal norms and ideals. In these sociopolitical and histori-
cal processes, notions of “we,” a collective identity and the Kurdish
identity have become strongly linked with opposition toward the
control and domination of outsiders. In processes led by tribal and
religious leaders, maintaining the collectivity/nation and its bound-
aries has included the preservation of all the traditions and rules
defined as national culture, including the honor discourse, its rules
and its perceptions of manhood and womanhood. Thus, a culture
of resistance around the struggle against outsiders’ control and
domination was shaped and led by “reactive movements” (Entessar
1992) or “autonomy movements” (Vali 1998), often under the lead-
ership of tribal and religious leaders and based on local power and
loyalties (see chapters 2 and 3; see also Bozarslan 2004). Thus, it can
be said that discrimination and violence against women have long
been inherent in the culture of resistance against ethnic oppression
that was shaped in Iraqi Kurdistan, because the control of biologi-
cal boundaries and therefore control of female sexuality and mar-
riage have been a cornerstone of these influential tribal and kinship
power structures that target not only young women of childbearing
age in the first instance, but also young men. It can be said that
the resistance to outsiders’ domination and the struggle for con-
trol and the maintenance of the collectivity, its biological and social
boundaries and the power structures based on kinship have taken
place over women’s bodies and their sexuality. Notions of manhood
have become more and more connected to controlling and defend-
ing the community and its boundaries, and men have been given
the role of guardians of the system. This has created a situation
in which resistance to ethnic oppression and outsiders’ control has
dominated the whole of society and undermined all other social
and political issues, including internal conflicts, contradictions and
oppressions based on gender, class, generation and sexuality. This
situation has brought about what Collins calls a “cohesive cultural
context,” which she describes thus:
 CONCLUDING R EM A R K S 159

The culture formed by those experiences and ideas that are shared with
other members of a group or community give meaning to individual
biographies. Each individual biography is rooted in several overlap-
ping cultural contexts—for example groups identified by race, social
class, age, gender, religion, and sexual orientation. The most cohe-
sive cultural contexts are those with identifiable histories, geographic
locations, and social institutions . . . [as in] the situation of traditional
societies with customs that are carried on across generations, or that
of protracted racial segregation in the United States where Blacks saw
a unity of interests that necessarily suppressed internal differences
within the category “black.” (2009: 304–305)

This and many other studies have shown that human ties and cultural
contexts can be both empowering and oppressive. Empowerment
achieved through the acquisition of counter-hegemonic knowledge
and the emergence of a free mind is, according to Collins, the key
to breaking with cohesive cultural contexts: “Empowerment in this
context is twofold. Gaining the critical consciousness to unpack hege-
monic ideologies . . . [and] constructing new knowledge” (2009: 305).
This can perhaps be seen to some extent in Iraqi Kurdistan, espe-
cially since 2003. As discussed in chapter 5, the removal of the Ba’ath
regime and the achievement of political power and influence by the
Kurds have produced a political climate in which space has emerged
for social and political issues other than ethnicity and nationalism
to become the center of political discourse and campaigns. The new
political situation has broken the total dominance of the struggle
against ethnic oppression, and the culture of resistance shaped by it.
Accordingly, internal divisions, differences and conflicts around, for
example, gender, sexuality, generation and class have become increas-
ingly visible. Ethnic oppression is no longer such an issue, even though
the sharing of power and resources in the country has not yet been
finalized, and thus various social and political issues that were previ-
ously ignored have now been put on the agenda. The issues of gender
relations and violence against women have become among the most
discussed problems, and women’s rights activists were among the first
groups in society to take the opportunity to raise women’s rights
when it became possible. Moreover, state violence and ethnic oppres-
sion are no longer an excuse for the Kurdish nationalist leadership to
deny women their rights or ask them to postpone their demands. The
new political situation has opened up a space for democratic insti-
tutions and nonviolent movements, collective action and alternative
knowledge production, and women’s rights activities are playing a
significant part in this process (see also Al-Ali and Pratt 2011).
160 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

K ILLING FOR H ONOR A ND THE

V IOLENCE OF E V ERY DAY S E X ISM
Killing is the ultimate and the most extreme form of violence in the
name of honor. In Iraq, it was more or less legalized and permitted by
the state, and was institutionalized in the legal system. As discussed in
chapter 4, new legal measures, criminalization and punishment have
been significant in achieving a decrease in the level of violence and
killings. However, as this book demonstrates, the killings must be
seen within a broader spectrum of violence in everyday life, motivated
by the honor discourse. The vast majority of people in Iraqi Kurdistan
do not kill and would never consider killing, but they may, to vary-
ing degrees, share the system of norms, beliefs and moral prohibi-
tions and obligations that subordinate women and encourage their
oppression and even killing. Many people may even express support
for gender equality and women’s rights while, at the same time, hold-
ing oppressive and sexist views and ideas that they may not be aware
of or have not critically reflected on. Criminalization can gradually
reduce the killing, but it cannot erase the existence of the everyday,
hidden, systemic and symbolic violence of sexism, which many people
may subscribe to, reproduce and participate in. This situation can be
compared to racism and racist violence. There are a small minority
of racists who perpetrate violence against migrants, for example, in
Sweden, and even kill, while a larger number of people who do not
like immigrants and vote for racist parties are not willing to go so far
as to kill but share the same system of values and ideology. Many more
people who do not agree with racist ideologies, and even reject and
criticize them, can, at the same time, hold normalized and taken for
granted racist ideas, beliefs and perceptions without being aware of it,
and in this way take part in their reproduction and maintenance.
Hence, inspired by the concept of “everyday racism,” I conceptu-
alize the hidden, normalized and everyday violence pursued in the
name of honor experienced primarily by young women and also by
many young men as “everyday sexism.” In her discussion of every-
day racism, Essed (1991) departs from Barry Adam’s analysis of the
importance of seemingly trivial behavior that becomes routine and
taken for granted in the reproduction of various types of social domi-
nation and subordination. Discussing the main features of everyday
racism, Essed argues that the concept links micro-experiences to the
structural and ideological context in which they are shaped. This
means crossing the boundary between structural and interactional
approaches to racism (Essed 1991: 52). By replacing the word racist
 CONCLUDING R EM A R K S 161

in Essed’s definition with the word sexist, everyday sexism can be

interpreted as follows:

(A) Socialized racist [sexist] notions are integrated into meanings that
make practices immediately definable and manageable, (B) practices
with racist [sexist] implications become in themselves familiar and
repetitive, and (C) underlying racist [sexist] . . . relations are actualized
and reinforced through these routine or familiar practices in everyday
situations. (1991: 52)

The direct and subjective violence against women in the form of kill-
ings and threats to kill as well as other forms of subjective violence
must be seen as part of the everyday and ongoing systemic and sym-
bolic violence inherent in the structure of everyday life, within families
and in society, structured, reproduced, maintained and normalized
by the honor discourse. The concept of everyday sexism highlights
the hidden and taken for granted daily discrimination and oppression
of women connected to the control and regulation of their sexuality
and of marriage, and formulated and normalized by the moral norms
and obligations of the honor discourse.
Direct and subjective violence and the killing of women show
that everyday sexism and its system of norms and values are being
questioned and challenged. They also reveal that the claim honor
discourse makes of unity around such violence and killing is not com-
patible with the reality. As shown in the respondents’ accounts in
chapters 4–7, threats, beatings, humiliation and killings occur when
women refuse to subordinate themselves to the normalized rules and
obligations in their daily life. The violence that individual women
face is a response to their resistance and their struggle against ongo-
ing, hidden, everyday sexism. Hence, the occurrence of violence, the
killings and women’s suicides reveal the existence not only of hidden
and everyday violence, but also of violent contradictions and conflicts
primarily between young women and oppressive structures, ideolo-
gies, discourses, politics and individuals in a society where customary
patriarchal norms are increasingly being questioned.
While they are part of the same society and share the collective
identity shaped in a long process of resistance to national oppres-
sion, Kurdish women, through their persistent efforts and “latent
feminism” (hooks 1990), have challenged the structure of patriar-
chal power built on their subordination. Women and men who reject
forced marriage and the various kinds of control reject and question
not only gender roles in their own families, but also a whole system
162 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

of knowledge, power and domination that has emerged in the inter-

secting violence of class, gender, ethnicity, sexuality and generation
in a historical context permeated by colonialism, brutal ethnic and
national oppression, poverty and mass violence. By questioning and
challenging power relations and gender hierarchies in their own fam-
ily and community, anonymous individual women become involved
in a wider political struggle for social justice in their society, even
if they themselves do not define it in these terms. As discussed in
chapter 5, Kurdish women have benefitted from the social and politi-
cal transformation and democratization in Iraq, and have also con-
tributed to it. Thus, any change in the situation of women in Iraqi
Kurdistan also implies a change in the sociopolitical structures of the
whole of society, and vice versa.

WOMEN, K NOW LEDGE , S PACE A ND THE

P OLITICS OF E MPOW ERMENT
After the introduction of the no-fly zone over the Kurdish region of
Iraq in 1991, women’s rights movements and women’s organizations
were steadily formed and the silence around violence against and the
killing of women was broken. Since 2003, women in Iraqi Kurdistan
have to some extent been included in positions of social and politi-
cal power, which is a step forward compared to the past. A space has
emerged for women’s campaigns against violence and killing, and for
organized struggles for gender equality. As discussed above, this has
been made possible by and within wider political transformations.

Iraqi Kurdish nationalism has been transformed over the last few
decades as the Iraqi-Kurdish movement has changed from a move-
ment of self-determination, struggling against the Iraqi government,
to the institutionalized leadership of a “quasi-state” . . . involved in
protracted struggles over power and resources within Iraq. Alongside
this, women activists in Iraqi Kurdistan have continued to expand
their demands for gender equality, perceiving this as part of building
Iraqi Kurdistan rather than in opposition to this process. (Al-Ali and
Pratt 2011: 353)

Women’s organizations and even individual activists are divided by

ideology and politics, but mostly by their degree of (official or unof-
ficial) dependence on the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) and
the Kurdish political elite. The women’s organizations and activists
that are more independent, as highlighted in chapter 5, have a more
 CONCLUDING R EM A R K S 163

ambivalent relationship with the Kurdish leadership since, according

to them, the KRG has shown that like other governments elsewhere
in the region, it is ready to compromise women’s rights in order to
attract socially conservative groups such as tribal and religious lead-
ers, and to compromise on family law and women’s rights in its nego-
tiations with Iraq’s central government (see chapter 5; see also Al-Ali
and Pratt 2011).
In Iraqi Kurdistan, killing in the name of honor has been crimi-
nalized since 2002, even though there is a big gap between the law
and its implementation. In addition, there are shelters and women’s
organizations that help women who face violence and threats to kill.
However, alongside struggles for the full implementation of the law
is a more demanding and long-term struggle to produce empower-
ing knowledge and expose the way in which the honor discourse has
for many decades legitimized and normalized the atrocity against
women, namely, the killing of and violence against women, by pre-
senting it as cultural and as an honorable, masculine act. As Collins
suggests, the “power of a free mind” is an “important area of resis-
tance” since the significance of the hegemonic domain of power “lies
in its ability to shape consciousness through the manipulation of
ideas, images, symbols, and ideologies” (2009: 304). The formation
of a free mind is related to and conditioned by two “important con-
tributions concerning the significance of knowledge for a politics of
empowerment.” The first is, as Collins puts it, to think about unjust
power relations through the paradigm of intersecting oppressions,
as well as women’s “individual and collective agency within them.”
The second is to address the power dynamics around what counts as
knowledge. In this regard, “activating epistemologies that criticize
prevailing knowledge and that enable us to define our own realities
on our own terms has far greater implications” (Collins 2009: 291–
292). It is therefore necessary to produce knowledge and conscious-
ness based on Kurdish women’s experiences of oppression outlined by
class, gender, ethnicity, sexuality and generation, and located within
historical and political contexts and the overall organization of power
and dominance in their society. Furthermore, this must go hand in
hand with exposing the sexist and racist honor discourse and its cul-
turalization of violence.
Thus, in regarding women’s oppression and especially violence in
the name of honor as an integral part of an overall and complex sys-
tem of intersecting oppressions, this book asserts that struggles for
women’s rights in Iraqi Kurdistan should be seen as part of an ongo-
ing movement and struggle for social justice and against all kinds of
164 HONOR AND VIOL ENCE AG A INST WOM E N

oppression and violence. As such Kurdish women’s struggle must be

seen within a “complex notion of empowerment”, which confirms
Collins’ important suggestion that the “dialectical relationship link-
ing oppression and activism is far more complex than simple models of
oppressors and oppressed would suggest.” (2009: 308). This insight
about the very complexity and multidimensionality of oppression and
struggle and their interconnectedness enables us:

to avoid labelling one form of oppression as more important than oth-

ers, or one expression of activism as more radical than another. It also
creates conceptual space to identify some new linkages. Just as oppres-
sion is complex, so must resistance aimed at fostering empowerment
demonstrate a similar complexity. (ibid.)
 NOT E S

1 L OC ATING THE B OOK

1. In this edited volume, a number of scholars discuss, among other things,
the relationship between gender, “race”/ethnicity/nationalism and mili-
tarization in contemporary US wars. Authors demonstrate the multiple
meanings of the phrase “women’s liberation” connected to the specifics
of religion, culture, history, nation and how they are presented within the
discourses and politics of current US conflicts (Riley et al. 2008: 6).
2. Davis 2008; Enloe 2000; Eisenstein 2008; Keskinen 2009; Al-Ali 2008;
Werbner 2007; Baxter 2007; Welchman and Hossain 2005; Ert ü rk 2009;
Å lund and Alinia 2011; Carbin 2010a,b; Alinia 2011, 2006; Gruber
2007; Eduards 2007; Chakravarti 2005; Korteweg and Yurdakul 2010;
Razack 2004.
3. For more discussion, see the volume edited by Sandra Harding (2004)
where leading scholars discuss feminist standpoint theory.

2 F R A MING THE H ISTORIC A L A ND

P OLITIC A L C ONTE X T OF O PPRESSION A ND
R ESISTA NCE IN I R AQI KURDISTA N
1. Previously, tree and solar cults, Zoroastrianism, Judaism and Christianity
had competed in the region (McDowall 1992a: 13).
2. “The term Al-Anfal means ‘the spoils of war’. It is the name of the
eighth chapter of the Qur’an, and relates to the first jihad against non-
believers. Anfal consisted of a series of eight military offensives that
annihilated Kurdish rural life between February and September 1988”
(Hardi 2011: 13).

3 I NTERSECTING O PPRESSION A ND THE

MULTIPLE X OF V IOLENCE AGA INST WOMEN
1. In South Kurdish, also known as Sorani.
166 NOT ES

4 P OLICING PATRI A RCH Y : H ONOR , V IOLENCE A ND

M A NHOOD
1. In some Kurdish regions, and in some tribes, there is a customary conflict
resolution mechanism that is recognized and tolerated. When a man and
a woman are not allowed to marry, they run away and take refuge in the
house of a respected family, usually the head of the tribe, and obtain his
blessing to marry. Their marriage will then be recognized by the family
and the community.
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 I N DE X

Accad, Evelyne, 87 crossing, 74–5, 113, 151, 153

Adams, Barry, 160 culture and identity and, 156–8
Ahmadzadeh, Hashem, 19 Bozarslan, Hamit, 33–4
Al-Ali, Nadje, 85, 90 British mandate in Iraq, 16–18, 20,
Alavi group, 14 23, 27, 75
Amnesty International, 24, 38, 43 burning, 80, 121–2, 125, 128, 135,
Anfal campaign, 21, 37, 56, 133 138–9
Anfal widows, 21, 37–8 see also suicide
An-Naím, Abdullahi Ahmed, 60, Burr, Viven, 66
124, 143, 148
Arabic language, 60 Canada, 4
Arabs, 13, 18, 21, 94, 105 center-periphery relations, 17
Armenia, 13–16 Chakravarti, Uma, 58, 112,
Assyrians, 13 140, 153
Aswad, Doa Khalil, 1 Chaldeans, 13
autonomist movements, 17, 26 child marriage, 14, 39, 120–3
Azadi hospital, 1 China, 126–8
Azerbaijan, 15 Christianity, 14, 156
citizenship, 9, 40
Ba’ath regime, 21, 37, 66, 85, 91, civil society, 75, 104–5
110, 131, 159 “clash of civilizations,” 2, 48, 156
Baghdad Province, 20 Cockburn, 7
Bakhtiarnejad, Parvin, 38, 43 collective identity, 5, 31, 156–8
Barzani, Masoud, 56 Collins, Patricia Hill, 8–10, 40,
Barzani, Mustafa, 22, 56 42, 88, 92, 110, 115, 157–9,
Basra, 20, 49 163–4
Baudelot, Christian, 126 colonialism, 7, 16–22, 25–6, 35,
Baxter, Diane, 35, 59, 60 37, 58, 75, 108, 146, 149,
Begikhani, Nazand, 38, 39, 77 154, 162
belonging, 18, 42–4, 69, 155–7 common origin, 18, 24, 43
Benjamin, Walter, 5 community, 5, 31, 81, 112, 156–8
Beşikçi, Ismail, 27 honor discourse and imagined,
black American women, 8, 9, 42, 60, 66–70, 73, 97–9, 151, 154
88, 92, 159 social disciplining and, 141
Böhm, Tomas, 36 woman as property of, 122
boundaries, 5, 31–2, 42–6, 145–8 Connel, Raewyn, 34, 59
182 I N DE X

control empowerment, 9
honor discourse and, 62 activism and, 93, 95
social power and, 150–1 cohesive cultural contexts and, 159
suicide and, 128–30 knowledge and, 40, 108, 162–5
see also social integration and state and, 101
control endogamy, 25, 118
corruption, 25–6, 80, 99, 118 Enloe, Cynthia, 34, 57, 86, 89
courts, 94, 96, 100 Entessar, Nader, 17
Crenshaw, Kimberlé, 8, 51 Erbil, 3, 13, 37, 53, 83
culturalization, 2–7, 47, 68, 77–8, Eritrea, 86
95, 145, 152–6 Ertürk, Yakin, 7, 43
culture, 9, 40 Essed, Philomena, 160–1
“cohesive context” and, 158–9 Establet, Roger, 126
definitions of, 156 ethnic cleansing, 23, 38, 85, 131
“politization of,” 5, 154 ethnic discrimination, 2, 28, 155
of resistance, 156–9 ethnic oppression, 3, 5, 6, 9, 11, 32,
42, 110, 129, 147, 162
Davies, Christie, 126–8 family as safe haven and, 36–40,
democratic institutions, 75, 91–2, 132, 158
99, 108, 159, 162 masculinity and, 52–4, 58–60, 148–9
dialogue, 94–6 resistance to, 18, 20, 23, 25–6,
discourse 29, 157–9
legitimation and, 157 everyday sexism, 160–2
social control and, 150–1 exchange of brides, 39, 93, 111, 120–3
see also honor discourse extramarital relationships, 94, 109,
displacement, 6, 11, 37–8, 131–2 116–20
divorce, 38, 43–4, 77, 96, 104, 117,
119, 121–2, 135–6 family, 24, 32, 70–2, 87, 157
Dogan, Recep, 38, 45, 47–8, 58, conflicting attitudes within,
61, 65, 73, 130 113–14
Dolan, Chris, 33, 35–6, 59, 86 conflict resolution and, 93–9
domination-subordination perpetrator and, 69–71
relationships, 71–2, 87, 130–1 as safe haven, 36–9, 132
see also matrix of domination suicide and protection of, 133–6
Duhok province, 1, 13, 37, 80, 125 family law, 48–9, 54–5, 102–4,
Durkheim, Emile, 69, 126–7, 146, 163
129, 133 fasl marriage, 49
female sexuality, 5, 141, 151
economic sanctions, 83, 90, 95 boundaries and, 41–5
education, 13–14, 24, 28, 32, 38–9, changing attitudes and, 87
44, 55, 57, 64, 67, 84, 96, 101, control of reproduction and,
105, 107, 110, 140, 147 109–12
Efrati, Noga, 20, 22, 23, 43, 48–9, culture of resistance and, 158
75, 85, 104 danger of, and religious
Egypt, 102 conservatism, 28, 47–8, 61,
Einhorn, Barbara, 41 112, 147
 I N DE X 183

extramarital affairs and, 120 see also masculinity and

female puberty and, 130 manhood; womanhood
honor discourse and violence genealogy, 40, 43, 52
against women and, 5, 23–4, generational differences, 5, 32, 38,
45–7, 56, 58–9, 61–2, 145 41, 66–7, 107, 136–41, 147–8
intersectionality and, 42–4, 88 Germany, 4
masculinity and, 31–3, 35, 37, Ghasem regime, 21
52, 54–5, 59 Gill, Aisha K.,77
patriliny and, 111–12, 123–4 Gökalp, Deniz, 6–7, 38
son preference and, 139–40 gossip and rumor, 98, 120–2, 141
suicide and, 126–31 guerrilla warfare, 20, 35
feminism, 48, 87, 95
“latent,” 161 Hadith (Prophet Mohammad’s
Fischer-Tahir, Andrea, 57–9, 74 sayings), 47, 61
forced marriage, 10, 11, 14, 25, 39, Haeri, Shahla, 74
46, 109–24, 153, 146, 161–2 Halabdja, bombing of, 21
arranged marriage vs., 116, Hanmer, Jalna, 54, 77, 78, 79
118–19 Hardi, Choman, 21, 37
suicide and, 127–8 Hashemite monarchy, 21, 22, 49
women’s shelters and, 93–4, 116–20 Hassanpour, Amir, 15
see also child marriage; exchange Hawlati (newspaper), 1
of brides Hearn, Jeff, 53, 71, 79
foreign rule, 44, 55, 58, 104 Heartland Alliance, 133
Foucault, Michel, 133, 150 Hewler, 1, 80, 125
France, 16, 17, 22, 83 Hijaz, 16
“free mind,” 10, 163 homeland, 19, 58–9, 134
honor discourse, 11, 81, 93
Gardner, 116 boundaries and, 145–8, 152
gender equality, 155 collective identity and, 45–6, 60,
family law and, 100, 102–5 152, 158
Kurdish leaders and, 24, 28 control of female sexuality and, 45,
nationalism and, 88–92 74, 115, 126, 130–1, 146, 152
space for struggle for, 162–3 culturalization and, 2, 4–6, 152–6
see also women’s rights definitions of, 11, 45, 60–3,
organizations and activists 73–5, 151–2
gender oppression, resistance to, everyday sexism and, 160–2
107, 110–11, 151, 157 extended family and tribe and,
intersectionality and, 8, 88, 157, 164 40, 69–72, 110
knowledge and, 163 gender-neutral honor vs., 45,
suicide as, 133–6, 140–1 61–2, 73, 151
violence against women as legal system and, 49–51, 78
response to, 110, 147–8, 161 masculinity and, 45–6, 54–60,
gender roles 72–5, 81–2, 120, 148–9, 151–2
nationalism and, 40–1 patriarchy and, 46, 52, 118
power hierarchies and, 152 perpetrators and, 46–7, 57,
war and, 35–6 56–72, 151, 153
184 I N DE X

honor discourse—Continued legal status of women and, 49–52

power, knowledge, and violence limited autonomy of, 21
and, 149–52 political parties in, 22, 48
publicity and, 97–9 power structures in, 22–8
religious laws and, 70–1 resistance to ethnic oppression
subordination of women and, 20–2, 88–90
normalized by, 56, 147, 163 women’s oppression in, 22–8,
suicide and, 133, 140, 143 31–40
see also killing in name of honor; see also ethnic oppression;
namus; violence in name of honor Kurdish nationalism; Kurdistan
“honor killing,” problems with, as Regional Government; law and
term, 5 legal system; state; and specific
Hossain, Sara, 4 events; issues; organizations;
Hussein, Saddam, 20–2 and political parties
Husseini, Rana, 38, 39, 65, 67, 68, Iraqi Penal Code (IPC), 49–50, 99
70, 72, 77, 78, 138 Islam, 47–8, 56–7, 101–3, 147, 156
see also religious conservatism
identity, 38, 43, 52, 69, 145, 156–8 Islamic Empire, 15
see also collective identity Islamic law, 49, 64, 103
Ilkkaracan, Pinar, 38, 39, 43 see also religious law
intersecting oppressions and Islamists, 48, 78, 84, 101–3
intersectionality, 3, 5, 31, 54, Israel, 44–5
126, 145, 147 see also Palestinians
culture of resistance and, 11, 156–9
defined, 7–11 Jamous, 74
knowledge and empowerment Jordan, 38, 39, 46, 58, 61, 66,
and, 40, 162–4 70, 72, 77–8, 102, 116, 119,
sexuality as site of, 42–4, 88 151, 153
suicide and, 131–6, 142–3 Joseph, Suad, 85, 90, 102
women’s rights activists and, 95
Iran, 13–16, 21, 38, 39, 94, 89, Kanaaheh, Rhoda, 38, 44–5, 112,
102, 116 138–40
Iranian Kurdistan, 16, 21, 35, 46 Kandiyoti, Deniz, 118, 136–7, 140
Iran-Iraq War (1980–88), 21, 27 Kaplan, Suzanne, 36
Iraq, 41, 37, 44, 157, 163 killing in name of honor
parliament, 49 compensation to family of victim
US invasion of 2003, 22–3, 49 and, 71
see also Ba’ath regime; Iraqi criminalization of, 61–2, 76,
Kurdistan; Kurdistan Regional 78–9, 99–101, 160, 163
Government fear of community and, 65–8
Iraqi Family Health Survey, 13–14 legal system and, 23–4, 49–51
Iraqi Kurdistan masculinity and, 56–60
attitudes on violence against migrants in West and, 1–2
women in, 67–8 normalization of, 28, 52, 58, 61–5
historical and political context of, state and, 23–4
13–29 symbolic violence and, 63–5
 I N DE X 185

violence of everyday sexism and, Kurmanji (Kurdish dialect), 14

160–2 Kuwait, Iraqi invasion of, 21, 83
King, Diane E., 45, 111
kinship structures, 12, 20, 32, 75, Latin America, 41
157–8 Lausanne, Treaty of (1923), 16, 20
domination and subordination law and legal system, 9, 11, 23–4,
and, 43–4 28, 31, 49–52, 65, 72–3,
female sexuality and, 43, 46, 52, 75–82, 96, 110, 135, 149, 157
109–11, 130–1, 145–6 criminalization of violence in
forced marriage and, 111, 118, 124 name of honor and, 57–8, 61–2,
as safe haven, 38–9 76, 78–9, 99–101, 160, 163
suicide and, 127, 130–1, 143 implementation of, 80, 99–101,
Kirkuk, 1, 125 118, 163
knowledge, 9, 62–3, 66, 108, 148, League of Nations, 20
150–2, 159, 162–4 Lebanon, 14, 102
situated, 6–8 Lentin, 136
women’s rights activists and, 93, literacy, 13–14, 32, 39, 40, 42, 75,
95–6 110, 147
Komala party, 22 “lobbying the state,” 101
komelayeti (tribal conflict Long, James, 114
procedure), 71 Lorde, Audre, 9
Korteweg, Anna C., 4 love marriage, 96, 112–15, 117–18
Kurdish identities, 17–19, 26, 28–9,
40, 46, 52, 55–6, 158 Mai, Mukhtar, 74
Kurdish language, 3, 14, 60 Maktabi, Rania, 102, 105
Kurdish nationalism, 6, 11, 14, Mama, Amina, 88
17–19, 22–4, 26–9, 35, 40, 54, marriage, 38
56, 60, 86–90, 134, 149, 157, control of, 24–5, 43–4, 54,
159, 162 110–11, 145–6, 158
Kurdish novels, 19, 35 cost of, 39
Kurdish political parties, 22, 27–8 Kurdish tribes and, 24–5
Kurdistan, history of, 14–19, 21 pregnancy and man’s refusal of, 74
see also Iranian Kurdistan; Iraqi to save victim’s life, 73
Kurdistan; Turkish Kurdistan tribal law and, 71
Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), violation of codes of, 112, 131
21–2, 27–8, 49–50, 56, 83, women’s shelters and, 96
90–1, 99 see also child marriage; divorce;
Kurdistan Regional Government exchange of brides; fasl
(KRG), 13, 22, 28, 37, 105, marriage; forced marriage; love
162–3 marriage
child marriage and, 123 Marxism, 22, 87
family law and, 48–9 masculinity and manhood, 6, 11,
parliament, 48, 50, 123 34, 134, 148–9, 151–2, 163
personal status law and, 51 boundaries and, 157–8
polygamy and, 101–2 control of female sexuality and,
women’s rights activists and, 84, 101 35–6, 52–4, 58, 65–6, 112, 140
186 I N DE X

masculinity and women as icons of, 55–9, 130,

manhood—Continued 134, 149
culturalization and, 156 women’s participation in, 7, 86–9
honor discourse and, 56–8, women’s rights subordinated to,
72–4, 81–2, 146, 151–2 11, 157
nationalism and, 35, 40, 55–60, see also Kurdish nationalism
87, 88, 157–8 nation state, 6, 17, 19, 24–6, 85
patriarchy and, 131 Neal, Mark, 126–8
perpetrators and, 56–60 nepotism, 80, 99
publicity and, 72–5, 98 Netherlands, 4
social production of, 53–60 no-fly zone, 22, 83, 85, 162
violence and war and, 33–7, 52, nongovernmental organizations
54, 59–60, 72, 86, 110, 120, (NGOs), 50, 84
157–8
Massey, Doreen, 10, 92 Orientalism, 36, 155
matrix of domination, 6, 8–9, 88, Otherness, 18–19, 155–6
110, 115, 157 Ottoman Empire, 15–16, 18–20, 149
McDowall, David, 18 Owen, Roger, 16
McKay, 84
media, 4, 9, 23, 24, 80, 125 Pakistan, 38, 39, 74, 116
Mernissi, Fatima, 112 Palestinians, 35, 38, 40–1, 44,
Middle East 59–60, 112, 122, 138–9
colonialism and, 16, 18 patriarchal bargain, 136–7, 140, 143
family law and, 102 patriarchy, 11, 23–4, 28, 39, 45–7,
nation state in, 11, 25–6, 87 52, 58, 62, 118, 147, 157
violence and, 33 decrease in violence and, 91
Midhat Pasha, 20 older vs. younger women and, 136–7
migrants, 2, 4, 153, 155 refusal to marry, as threat to, 114,
militarism, see war and militarism 161–2
Mohanty, Chandra Talpade, 37 rejection of, and suicide, 128–31
Mojab, Shahrzad, 27, 38 rejection of, and violent response,
Morgan, David, 53 110–11
Morocco, 102 son preference and, 120, 137
Mosul province, 16, 20 state and law and, 75–82
mother, 11–12, 119–20 “patrilateral parallel cousin
daughters controlled by, 136–43 marriage,” 121
son preference and, 137 patriliny, 111–12, 114, 140
as symbols of nation, 35, 55, 134 Patriotic Union of Kurdistan
mustashars (militia commanders), 27 (PUK), 22, 27–8, 49–50, 83,
90–1, 99
Nagel, Joan, 17, 34, 53, 55, 57, 88 perpetrators of violence, 3, 11,
namus (sexual honor), 45–6, 58, 65–75
60–3, 70, 74–5, 103, 153 community attitudes and, 65–8
nationalism, 34, 47, 52, 106, 112, culturalization and, 153
149, 154 honor and manhood and, 5,
defined, 40–1 46–7, 53–5, 64–6, 148–9, 151
 I N DE X 187

self-perception of, as victims, 68, legal system and, 79, 99–100, 102
141–2 women’s rights activists and, 163
state and law and, 51, 61–3, 75–81 religious law, 70–1, 102, 104, 123
tribal influence and, 110 see also Islamic law
Persian empire, 15–16 reproduction, control of, 24, 31,
Persian language, 60 42–7, 54, 109–12, 124, 130, 145
personal status law, 50–1, 85, 123 resistance
peshmerge (Kurdish guerrillas), 55–7, 80 culture of, 156–9
Philippines, 86 matrix of domination and, 6, 11
police, 94, 96, 100, 142 power and knowledge and, 8–10
polygamy, 101–4, 116 see also ethnic oppression,
positioning, 7–8, 115 resistance to; gender
postcolonialism, 9, 25, 38, 75, 85 oppression, resistance to
poverty, 12, 28, 32, 38–9, 41–2, retribalization, 20, 27, 75, 104–5, 146
96, 147, 162 Ruggi, Suzanne, 40
exchange of brides and, 120–3 rural areas, 39, 41, 69, 126, 131–6
suicide and, 128, 132, 135
power structures and hierarchies, Safavids, 16
5–7, 9–10, 147, 152, 162–3 Sahindal, Fadime, 2, 154
hidden mechanisms and, 150, Saigol, Rubina, 59
152, 154 Scott, Joan Wallach, 155
intersectionality and, 8–9 Seldjuk Turks, 15
Iraqi Kurdistan and, 24–5 self-definition, power of, 10, 93
see also matrix of domination; September 11, 2001 attacks, 2, 155–6
social power; and specific sites Sévres, Treaty of (1920), 16
of power sexism
pregnancy, 73–4, 93, 98 everyday, 160–2
publicity, 73, 97–9, 142 racism and culturalization and, 152–6
purity, 115, 130–1, 140 Shalhoub-Kevorkian, Nadera, 122
see also virginity sharaf (honor), 60–1, 63–4,
71–3, 103
qeyre kich (old girls), 39 Sharoni, Simona, 89
Qur’an, 47, 48, 61 Shi’a Muslims, 14
Siddiqi, Dina M., 116, 118
racism and racialization, 2, 4, 36, Sirman, Nukhet, 43, 130
54, 152–9 Slyomovics, Susan, 85, 90, 102
Rai, Shirin M., 36, 101, 105 social integration and control,
raparin (repression of Kurdish 68–72, 152
uprisings of 1990s), 83–92 suicide and, 127, 129, 133, 142–3
rape, 37, 55, 66, 74, 93 social power, 62, 66, 106, 150–1
Razack, Sherene H., 2–3 spatialized, 92
reactive movements, 17, 26, 158 socioeconomic marginalization, 6,
religious conservatism, 11, 28, 52–3, 11, 12, 17, 28, 32, 38–42, 55,
57, 61, 147, 149, 152, 157 67, 75, 101, 110, 123, 126,
danger of female sexuality and, 132, 140, 147
28, 47–8, 61, 112, 147 see also poverty
188 I N DE X

sons, preference for, 119–20, 137–40 child marriage and, 123

Sorani (Kurdish dialect), 3, 14, 60 colonialism and war and, 19–20,
spaces of power, 92 23–9, 37–8
civil society and, 104–5 defined, 14
women’s empowerment and, exchange of brides and, 121
10–11, 95, 159, 162–4 family law and, 55
state, 11, 23, 28, 75–81 female sexuality and, 25, 43–4,
civil society and, 104–5 46, 52, 130–1
legitimacy of, 39, 101 forced marriage and, 114, 123
masculinity and, 149 honor discourse and, 69–71,
subordination of women and, 75, 152
24, 146 identity and, 69
violence against women sanctioned law and, 79, 100–101
by, 110, 135, 152, 157 masculinity and, 148–9
women’s rights activists and, nationalism and, 19
99–101 patriarchal gender politics and, 157
state violence, 6, 28, 52, 72, 85, 96, reactive movements and, 17
101, 133, 147, 149, 159 state and, 25, 163
refuge from, 26, 36–40, 132 suicide and, 127–8, 132–6, 143
Stewart, Ann, 101 violence against women and, 25,
Sufi Muslims, 14 64, 109–10, 157–8
suicide, 118, 120–2, 125–43 women’s rights and, 38, 49, 55, 163
intersecting oppressions and, Turkey, 13–16, 18, 26, 27, 38–9, 41,
131–7, 142–3 58, 61, 89, 94, 116, 151, 153
mother’s violence and, 136–41 Turkish Kurdistan, 2, 21, 35, 46
prevalence of, 80, 125 Turkish language, 60
social control and, 126–8, 130,
142–3 Uganda, 35, 59
victim blaming and, 141–2 United Kingdom, 4, 22, 77, 83
women’s shelters and, 93 see also British mandate in Iraq
suicide survivors, 125, 140–1 United Nations Population Fund
Suleimaniah, 1, 3, 13, 37, 80, 83, (UNFPA), 1
125, 131–2 United Nations Security Council
Sunni Muslims, 14 Resolution 688 (1991), 22, 83
Sweden, 2–3, 5, 95, 152, 154–6, 160 United States, 4, 41, 83
Sykes-Picot Treaty (1916), 16 Iraq invasion of 2003, 22–3, 49
Syria, 13, 14, 16, 102 universalist approach, 3, 85, 145
urbanization, 16, 37–9, 41, 67, 69,
Tafsir (exegesis of Qur’an), 47 84, 107, 131–3
Talabani, Jalal, 22 us-them construction, 2, 155
Tamil women, 86
tehedda (attack), 57, 74 Vali, Abbas, 19
Thörn, Håkan, 156 van Bruinessen, Martin, 25, 27,
Tomasi, Luigi, 126 45, 118
tribal structures, 5, 11–12, 25–7, van Dijk, Teun A., 150
32, 52, 58, 69, 126, 146–7 victim blaming, 122–3, 141–2
 I N DE X 189

victims of violence, 3, 46, 51, 67, prevalence of, 1, 106–7, 125

69–70, 92–3, 109–24, 153 religion and, see religious
violence conservatism
definitions of, 10–11, 147, socioeconomic marginalization
149–50 and, see education; literacy;
macro vs. micro level and, 59 poverty; socioeconomic
objective or systemic, 10, 147, marginalization
149–50, 161 state and, 23–4, 75–81, 100–101,
as only option, 59, 72 132, 147, 157; see also state;
subjective, 149–50 state violence
symbolic, 10, 62–3, 147, 149–50, suicide as response to, 125–43
152, 161 victims’ view of, 109–24
violence in name of honor, 4–5 women’s rights organizations
bodies and boundaries and, and, see women’s rights
145–8 organizations and activists
community attitudes and, 66–8, virginity, 112, 115, 122
97–9, 151, 154
concepts of honor and, see honor war and militarism, 6, 7, 11, 15,
discourse 19, 21, 23, 26–8, 32–6, 38,
control of female sexuality and, 44, 48–9, 52–3, 55, 57–9, 72,
see female sexuality 76, 85–6, 95, 108, 110, 126,
culturalization and, 2–5, 152–6 148–9, 157–8
defined, 5, 31 “war on terror,” 2
ethnic oppression and, see ethnic Waylen, Georgina, 41
oppression Welchman, Lynn, 4
extramarital relationships and, West, 2, 4, 7, 48
116–20 Widerberg, Karin, 6
everyday violence against women womanhood, 6, 34–5, 40, 47–51,
and, 9–10, 43, 62, 110, 117, 110, 112, 157–8
120, 142–3, 149–51, 160–2 women
forced marriage and, 109–24 context of pervasive violence and,
intersectionality and, see 32–4
intersection of oppressions and legal status of, 48–52
intersectionality as property of family, 48, 114,
law and, 23–4, 59–62, 75–81, 140–1
99–101, 160 as symbol of nation, 19, 37, 41,
located experiences and situated 43, 55–9, 86, 130, 134, 146,
knowledge and, 6–7 149, 156
masculinity and, see masculinity triple oppression of, 59–60
and manhood see also female sexuality
mothers vs. daughters and, 12, women’s rights, 38–9, 48, 102
119–20, 136–41, 143 marginalization of, 54–5
nationalism and, see Kurdish migrant women and, 2
nationalism; nationalism national oppression and, 52, 85–8
perpetrators’ view of, 3, 11, 63, state, tribe, and Kurdish
65–75 leadership and, 22–8
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women’s rights—Continued suicide prevention and, 125

struggle for social justice and, threats vs., 106
163–4 tribal influences and, 110, 133
women’s rights organizations and women’s shelters, 3, 11, 73, 83,
activists, 3, 11, 23, 28, 47, 84, 93–7, 109, 113–15,
83–108, 159, 162–3 117–20, 163
before and after reparin, 85–92 World War I, 16, 17
early, 26 World War II, 17
KRG and, 101
legal system and, 49–51, 76, 80, Yezidi group, 14
99–101 Young, Frank, 17
polygamy and, 101–4 Yurdakul, Gökçe, 4
publicity and, 73, 97–9 Yuval-Davis, Nira, 4, 7–9, 18, 24–5,
struggle for social change and, 92–5 34–5, 40, 44, 48, 84, 155
struggle vs. violence against
women and, 105–8 Žizžek, Slavoj, 4, 5, 10, 62, 150, 154