For Kurdish Girls, a Painful Ancient Ritual

The Widespread Practice of Female Circumcision in Iraq's North Highlights The Plight of Women in a Region Often Seen as More Socially Progressive. Launch Photo Gallery

Sheelan Anwar Omer, a shy 7-year-old Kurdish girl, bounded into her neighbor's house with an ear-to-ear smile, looking for the party her mother had promised.

There was no celebration. Instead, a local woman quickly locked a rusty red door behind Sheelan, who looked bewildered when her mother ordered the girl to remove her underpants. Sheelan began to whimper, then tremble, while the women pushed apart her legs and a midwife raised a stainless-steel razor blade in the air. "I do this in the name of Allah!" she intoned.

As the midwife sliced off part of Sheelan's genitals, the girl let out a high-pitched wail heard throughout the neighborhood. As she carried the sobbing child back home, Sheelan's mother smiled with pride.

Read more at: washingtonpost.com

Kurdish Women Fighters

Kurdish women fighters on the Iraq Turkish border

Iraqi Kurd women fighters cross a street in the front of Chamchamal's military headquarters near the frontline with Saddam Hussein's troops on March 21, 2003.

"We want a natural life, a society that revolves around women, where women and men are equal, a society without pressure, without inequality, where all differences between people are eliminated," says Rengin, the head of a female battalion of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK.

PEJAK Kurdish woman fighter, (PEJAK - Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan), PEJAK fights against the Iran regime for self-rule in the country's mainly Kurdistan province northwestern of Iran

A Kurdish woman fighter has said in the 30's that "a lion is a lion, neither male nor female."
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