The first study, on mental health, reveals the effect violence has had on the Iraqi people. On Saturday, the Iraqi government and the World Health Organization released a survey of 4,332 adult Iraqis which found that 17 percent suffered from mental disorders, such as depression, phobias, post-traumatic stress disorder, and anxiety, according to The New York Times. Women were particularly affected, with 19 percent of women reporting mental health problems compared to 14 percent of men. A higher proportion of women suffering from severe depression, phobias, and anxiety - and 70 percent of men and women with mental health issues - reported contemplating suicide.

Another study, conducted by Oxfam and Al-Amal Association, an Iraqi women's organization, conducted interviews with 1,700 women and reports (unsurprisingly) that over the past two years their condition has worsened. The BBC reports that a third of the women surveyed had three hours or less of electricity per day, 25 percent had no daily access to drinking water, and 45 percent said their income was worse in 2008 than in previous years. Almost half said their access to health care had worsened in the past two years, 20 percent are victims of domestic violence, and more than 30 percent had family members die violently. As the Oxfam report puts it: "Iraqi women are suffering a silent emergency', trapped in a downward spiral of poverty, desperation and personal insecurity despite an overall decrease in violence in the country."

The survey also reports that there are an estimated 740,000 widows in Iraq, and three quarters do not receive pensions. These women have great difficulty providing for their children and extended family and are often beaten by family members. Women's rights campaigner Hana Adwar tells the BBC it's hard to convince the widows that they deserve better. "The majority feel that this is the will of God, they have to obey the right of their families," she said.

On Saturday, Time also reported that women's rights in Iraq have actually regressed since the fall of Saddam Hussein and sex trafficking is now rampant in the country. Women's rights advocates in the country estimate that tens of thousands of Iraqi women and children have been sold into sex slavery since 2003. Trafficking takes place within the country and internationally, mostly to Syria, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates. Women can easily be taken across the border with forged passports or by being forced to marry and then divorced and put to work when they reach their destination.

Even more disturbingly, it's often impoverished mothers who sell their daughters into slavery. Girls as young as 11 and 12 are sold for anywhere from $2,000 to $30,000. "The buying and selling of girls in Iraq, it's like the trade in cattle," says Hinda, an undercover human rights activist. "I've seen mothers haggle with agents over the price of their daughters."

According to the 2008 U.S. State Department's Trafficking in Persons Report, the Iraqi government is ignoring the problem. The report says the government "offers no protection services to victims of trafficking, reported no efforts to prevent trafficking in persons and does not acknowledge trafficking to be a problem in the country."

Iraqi Surveys Start to Unveil the Mental Scars of War, Especially Among Women [NY Times]
Iraqi Women "Lack Basic Services [BBC]
Iraq's Unspeakable Crime: Mothers Pimping Daughters [Time]

For years, Iraqi women were seen as more vulnerable to violence than men. Many men carried weapons, and some harassed or even threw acid at women without headscarves. But now, twenty-five-year-old driving student Hadeel Ahmed says, "It bothers me to have to depend on my brother or father to take me everywhere. [...] I want to be independent." She adds that, "driving means someone is brave. [...] They're strong. Not only in their body but in their spirit." And bravery is an important quality for drivers in Iraq, who must deal with U.S. checkpoints, blast walls around many buildings, and the complete absence of traffic lights.

Some women have a motivation beyond independence. Leila Muhaibis needs to learn to drive the blue Honda parked outside her parents' house. It's her brother's; he has been missing for three years, ostensibly taken by U.S. forces. With her brother's return increasingly unlikely, the car is her responsibility now.

As more women get behind the wheel, more women are directing traffic as well. Many are entering the police force, both because they want to help their country and because limited education for women has left them with few other career options. But female police officers make less than men — the equivalent of $500 a month to men's $600. And most of them are not allowed to carry guns.

As Turmoil Ebbs, Iraqi Women Seek Freedom Of Road Again [Washington Post]
Female Officers At Risk In Iraq [UPI]

• Two women have been charged in the murder of a British couple honeymooning in Antigua and Barbuda. • The Maricopa County Sheriff in Arizona has violated a ruling that he is not allowed to require female inmates to receive a court order before they are granted an abortion. • In (somewhat) related news, there is a new program at the Ohio Reformatory for Women that allows inmates to raise their children in their cells and in in-house prisons to keep the bond between mother and child tight. • More than 80% of women in the Air Force in Iraq reported persistent fatigue, difficulty concentrating and nearly 20% reported one symptom of PTSD. • Meanwhile in the region, a man has been arrested in Jerusalem for helping beat, threaten, and rob a divorced Israeli woman under the self-proclaimed title of "chastity guards." •

Generally speaking, if I commit (or try to commit) suicide in this country (generally done for personal reasons), that's considered a criminal act so that they can lock me up and get my the psychiatric help I need. When a person of either gender straps explosives to their body and kills him or herself and as many other people as possible — is that a rational act? Can it be a rational act? Is it any less of a sign — regardless of gender — that the person in question is in need of a mental health intervention?

By now, male suicide bombers are de rigueur in the Middle East (if not in other countries where suicide bombings are common). The stories are played out, the irrationality of the situation accepted, the coercion and indoctrination involved go without saying. And so the question for the Western media, tired of "yet another" suicide bomber story is — why women now and why not all along?

Obviously, the recruiting and coercion is different, given that much recruiting of men is reportedly done in sex-segregated religious settings. The personal reasonings are probably also different — given that men and women have significantly different and entrenched roles in those societies, and what they lose by making an early exit from them is going to be different. The rationale of the clothing provides a stepping-off point to understand why a male-dominated terrorist organization would think of recruiting women (or more women than ever before) when they come from a supposed religious ideology and secular background in which women are not normally allowed in combat situations.

On Sunday, Lindsey O'Rourke argued in her New York Times OpEd that the media is sexist in the way it reports female suicide bombings because the political context in which men and women choose to become suicide bombers is the same, while admitting that recruiting tactics for men and women remain significantly different. If men and women are recruited differently, then doesn't it stand to reason that the differing recruitment works because men and women have different person motivations that they are more likely to share with others in their gender? The external motivating factors — or, if one accepts the premise that suicidal impulses are inherently irrational, the rationale given for an inherently irrational act — might be similar but, at the end of the day, the personal reasons for getting involved in a situation are going to be different and in a society in which gender plays a huge role on your place in that society, it's probably going to be gendered, at least in part.

While there is no shortage of other string of female suicide bombers — particularly in a secular context — through which we can contextualize the recent spate of Iraqi suicide bombings committed by women, the fact remains that such bombings are an anomaly in that country at this time. There is obviously something driving the increase, and understanding why Chechnyan women or Tamil women agreed to participate in suicide bombings in their respective countries doesn't really get us that much closer to understanding why Iraqi women are doing it now — or how to stop it. And that, really, is what the media and our governments are trying to understand — why women, why now, why there, and how do we stop it.

If, as Faith suggests, the sexism comes from the world is wondering what is making women irrational enough to start becoming suicide bombers, what they're actually proposing is that women have been more rational all along. And that might be sexist, but it might also be aimed at men.

Three Women Held In Iraq Suicide Bomb Plots [CNN]
The Vulnerable Robed Women: Coverage Of Women Suicide Bombers [Muslimah Media Watch]
When The Suicide Bomber Is A Woman [Marie cCaire]
Behind The Woman Behind The Bomb [NY Times]

But who are "they" exactly? In the case of one Sunni-Shia couple, college sweethearts deeply in love with one another, "they" was her (Shia) family, under pressure from Shia religious leaders, leaders under pressure from any number of forces — the famed Moqtada Al-Sadr, insurgents, local officials, it's never quite clear. The couple divorced; he shot himself two weeks later.

Stories like this go generally unreported in Iraq today; as for Rand's honor killing, it warranted 15 seconds on the local news, according to Sarhan. Everybody is too fucking scared. There is no shortage of good men in Iraq, but to be a good husband these days, as with many basic things we take for granted, can require an inordinate amount of bravery, as in the case of the husbands of a couple women in Basra who took it upon themselves to start an NGO promoting women's rights.

Thanks to some help from the Guardian, you can help those women and their husbands, along with six other women who work for the NGO, by emailing my PayPal account with funds so they can get the hell out of Basra and into Jordan. But what of the women — and men — who stay? If you can't fuck, what is there to live for? "TV, funerals and bad news," says Sarhan, with whom I spent the past few hours Skype-chatting.

Sarhan, who is 29, is not a participant in the Love Drought — he's taken; she's also Brazilian — but he does need work, if any editors are listening. He was kind enough to entertain my stupid questions, which I'll do you the courtesy of not transcribing here, but in summary:

Everyone in Iraq hates America but loves Obama. They hold out hope he will change things. Sarhan, a Lebanese Brazilian raised in Brazil, is one of those "moderate" Muslims the right wing press keeps telling us don't exist. He drinks liquor and is, by most definitions anyway, a feminist, though he keeps his personal views quiet when interviewing the upholders of honor killers and the like. He says the disastrousness of the invasion has almost thoroughly discredited anything smacking of "Western Values" but that, change being the one constant, that could change. In addition to an Obama presidency ushering in a new less audaciously harmful era of US foreign policy, Iraqis harbor hopes planted in them by Egyptian soap operas that they will someday not be dirt poor. They also like soccer, which is one of the many reasons Sarhan, sharing a birthplace with Ronaldo and Ronaldinho, is more popular than the US Military, despite his radical feminist views. (Also he speaks like 90 languages.) "Poverty is the main issue that takes people to crimes and terrorism," he says. "If people had stable lives, work and education, our world would be much better…Iraqi people are good, really good."

If you're interested in Iraq Sarhan recommends the book Mayada

And if you're interested in adding to the Jezebel Exile In Jordan Fund, PayPal a donation to tips@jezebel.com. We'll keep you updated on its size and status.

Afif Sarhan: The Blog [Blogspot]

Earlier: Mom Who Fled Her Honor Killing Husband Shot Down On Street; How You Can Help
Welcome To Basra, Where Beating Your Daughter To Death Gets You High-Fived By Cops

• Bobby Brown says "I'm dating so it's not like I'm single." Defensive much, Bobby? [People]
  
• The Yankees are tied for last place. Mwahahaha! At least they can console themselves with the knowledge Carl Pavano is still hot. Hot looking, that is. [SportsIllustrated]
  
• The Fug Girls love Sarah Polley, hate the outfit. [GoFugYourself]
  
• Female Iraqi refugees are resorting to selling their bodies in Syria to make ends meet. [Salon]
  
• 28 new planets have been spotted by astronomers. [BBC]
  
• Don't even ask us about the whales. [CNN]