Are Iraqi coffee workers inviting more explosive devices?

“His eyes looked me up and down, asking me to turn around. Are these the qualifications needed for this job? I wonder silently. He pursed his lips and asked me, “Are you married?”

Moj (19) started working this year at a youth café on the outskirts of Baghdad province. She says she opens her doors from ten in the morning until two in the morning, and the owner insisted that her shift be in the evening under the pretense of “attracting more customers”, telling her to take shisha and scolding her not to try to change the time of her shift.

Rasal lost her husband a month after the wedding, when he was killed in clashes with ISIS. Her family of 10 forced her to marry early to free herself from responsibility, leaving her alone to look for work.

All the places she wanted to work required a “strong” CV and a university degree to work in a cosmetics store, but she ended up working in a cafe for a daily salary of 24,000 Iraqi dinars (US$17).

Rasal believed that the place required her, as she claimed, to only practice as a waitress. She says: “I had no instructions explaining what awaited me: verbal and visual harassment, which then turned into physical harassment when I tried to leave my job. The owner threatened to kill me if I damaged the reputation of his establishment and then asked me to come back, threatening me as well.”

Social norms in Iraq have long dominated exclusively women, preventing them from pursuing certain professions, including working in cafes and restaurants as waitresses. One of the café patrons told us: “Society doesn’t want a girl to give a guy juice, it’s against tradition” and warned me while writing the report about “incitement to spread corruption.”

Some coffee shop owners take advantage of this social pressure to offer jobs to women desperate for any work in order to sexually and financially exploit them. Some outdoor cafes have turned into public spaces, but behind them lie the worlds of slavery and sex trafficking.

Rasal says: “I had to give the boys shisha, then prepare it for them and sit next to them. Some of them deliberately dropped something to start exploring my body and even touching me. I usually try to ignore it, but one time I couldn’t stand it and screamed. Customers were laughing as they took shisha, and the manager thought this behavior would attract more customers.”

Partners in molestation!

Under the pressure of blackmail and threats of dismissal, some cafe owners force employees to give their customers their personal numbers, comply with their demands and harassment, and sometimes even return home with them.

Marwa, 20, says: “If I refuse to give someone my number, they fire me immediately. What can I do? I have no other place to work. On the contrary, if some workplaces discover that I previously worked in a youth café, I will only have doubts about my morality.”

There is no official data on this issue, but the Iraqi Forum of Women Journalists (an independent organization) managed to conduct a comprehensive survey of over 5,000 women. The results showed that 77 percent of Iraqi women were victims of direct harassment, and more than 90 percent of them called for laws that could deter harassers.

Most importantly, 78 percent of women surveyed said they had experienced workplace harassment and were unable to leave their job for economic reasons.

Social surveys show that 57 percent have experienced verbal harassment and 20 percent have experienced “attempts or sexual harassment at work.”

Customers ask a female café employee to sit with them and smoke shisha in a certain way, and the men exchange obscene and sexual words in front of her, some delighting in describing their desires in the bedroom, waiting for their laughter. Marwa says, “We laugh; we have to laugh at the end and then go to the kitchen and cry. I wanted to leave my job, but I came back. I had to risk the life of my child whose father left without providing us with support.”

Marwa says the first question the café owner asked her was: “Are you married? We prefer divorced women, widows, people without a family or living only with their mother. We are not in the mood for problems.”

She adds that the owner of the café tells her to approach young men whom she knows are wealthy, and she must lure them and bargain with them. If the “deal is done,” half the money will go to the establishment. “We are being trafficked,” he says, confirming that he employs women from other provinces, especially those he knows have no one, to exploit them. She continues: “Many women who are forced to leave school and marry prematurely lack social, health and economic security. What can a woman do when faced with neglect to support herself and her children?”

Laws supporting harm

Wasit Provincial Council has voted to ban girls from working without men in “cafés” in the province. Although the local government ordered the security authorities to immediately implement the decision, citing that the profession “does not enjoy social acceptance”, the café workers appealed to the local authorities to “provide employment opportunities.” However, the voivode stated that women’s work in cafes is unacceptable and violates the values ​​and customs prevailing in the voivodeship.

Sanaa, who works as a waitress at a cafe in Baghdad, says: “They did it in many cities, including Baghdad. In the Amiriya area, west of the capital, Cafe Mazaj was repeatedly closed under the pretext of violating instructions.” She adds: “They don’t do it out of concern for women from harassment, but they manage to put the blame solely on women instead of passing laws that protect them and give them the right to work.”

Sanaa believes that some cafe owners are secretly involved in sex trafficking and that male customers are aware of this. He says: “My constant complaints were met with the same response from my employer who said he couldn’t control them all. Between his clients and me, we know who he will choose. If I refuse, someone else desperately needs the money.

Lawyer Maha Ahmed says: “There is no specific Iraqi law on harassment, but there are articles that impose penalties for physical and sexual assaults in the workplace under the Iraqi Penal Code No. 111 of 1969. Maximum penalty, after a wide range of evidence is proven and directions, does not exceed one year in prison, which is one of the lightest penalties in the world. Furthermore, Articles 400-404 of the Iraqi Penal Code limit harassment to the issue of indecent acts in public spaces.”

Explosive devices against women in cafe

Bride of Basra Casino is one of six tourist cafes and casinos that were attacked with homemade explosives in 2016 because of the women working there, resulting in the death of one person. Basra also witnessed the bombing of the Coffee Time café. A leaflet was found at the scene warning against the continued operation of these cafes, which an unknown entity described as “devils’ houses”, threatening employees with murder. This led to women quitting their jobs.

Two years earlier, the Classico Cafe, located in the center of the Karrada district, east of Baghdad, was attacked by gunfire, leaving one person dead and others injured. The province of Baghdad then formed the Baghdad Rescue Regiment, which, according to their testimony, is responsible for closing down clubs and cafes that violate public customs and traditions.

Sanaa says: “The disaster is that they close them not because they refuse to work for minors, traffic them and exploit them, but out of contempt for women working in cafes to such an extent that everyone sees them as deserving of death or physical abuse.” “exploitation.”

No role for local authorities

Women’s rights activist Saja Mohammed points out that women are blackmailed by influential figures, officers and soldiers. She adds: “One of the women we tried to help was blackmailed by an officer who frequented the cafe where she worked. She rejected his advances and he began harassing her, causing the owner to threaten to fire her. She had nowhere to go, but she continued to refuse until he framed her for a malicious case that resulted in her being sentenced to eight months in prison. She was laid off and we are trying to find her a place to work.”

Local authorities do not monitor these places, the nature of interactions with employees, or the toxic work environment. Moreover, many working people are minors who support their mothers and younger sisters on their own.

Saja says: “Some of these shop owners maintain strong relationships with security officers and police and pay them bribes in exchange for the services of these girls and to keep their jobs. Sometimes there are fights in the cafe that spread outside, but the police close the case (after receiving) a handful of money. There are also mafias employing girls, most of whom come from outside Baghdad province and other areas of Iraq.”

A study conducted by the International Labor Organization in cooperation with the Iraqi Ministry of Planning and the Central Statistical Organization found that there are approximately 13 million women of working age. Nevertheless, fewer than one million women are employed, representing 10.6 percent compared to 68 percent for men. Statistics also show that the unemployment rate for women (28.2%) is almost twice as high as the unemployment rate for men (14.7%).

Layers of injustice

One of the waitresses was asked for a relationship by a customer, and when she refused, he began threatening her. She ran away from work, but he followed her with a group of people, beat her, stole her phone and blackmailed her.

Nada (pseudonym), a city police officer, explains that “society is contributing to the destruction of these women. Most of them were forced by life circumstances to finish their studies early and reluctantly enter the labor market. Many of them have younger sisters who fled persecution from their brother or father, not to mention molestation or attempted murder. The number of complaints we receive is very low and does not exceed five per day. This is understandable because no one treats them like people, either in the cafe or outside of it.”

It is worth mentioning that according to the latest report for 2024, Iraq ranks last in the world in terms of women’s participation in the labor market.

According to a report prepared by C World, Iraq ranks 195th out of 195 countries, and the percentage of women in the labor market in Iraq is only 10.7%.