Collective crimes, collective victims: A case study of the murder of Banaz Mahmod

Abstract

The Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation (IKWRO) works to prevent ‘honour’ crimes and other forms of violence against women in the UK and to campaign for women’s rights in the Middle East. IKWRO advocates for women and girls (and occasionally men) who speak Kurdish, Turkish, Farsi, Dari and Arabic. In 2008-9, IKWRO intervened in 85 cases of potential ‘honour’-based violence or forced marriage. The majority of clients in these cases are young Kurdish women. The murder of Banaz Mahmod, a 20-year-old divorcee of Iraqi Kurdish origin, who was killed by order of her uncle (Ari Mahmod) and father (Mahmod Mahmod) because she had a romantic relationshipwith an IranianKurd calledRehmat Suleimani, thus relates very closely to our work and the experiences of our client base.In the spring of 2007, the Mahmod brothers stood in the dock attempting to portray themselves as progressive men with a respect for women’s rights, making a bold statement that ‘honour’ killings had not happened in Iraqi Kurdistan for ‘fifty years’. Meanwhile, the practice of ‘honour’ killing reached its nadir in the public stoning to death of 17-year-old Du’a Khalil Aswad in Bashiqa, Iraqi Kurdistan, in front of an audience of hundreds of men and boys cheering her killers. While this murder was particularly prominent, as the spectators filmed and distributed the grisly footage via their mobile phones, it was just one of many ‘honour’ killings in a country with a severe and increasing problem of femicide and female suicide. Over the first three months of 2007, UNAMI (the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq) was aware of 40 ‘honour’ killings in Iraqi Kurdistan, necessarily a tiny proportion of the real figure; Kurdish hospitals every day receive women and young girls who have been killed or committed suicide via the painful method of immolation with petrol or kerosene. The Mahmod family originated in Kaladiza in Pshdar, a mountainousregion which borders Iran. Austrian charity WADI e.V. (Verband furKrisenhilfe und solidarische Entwicklungszusammenarbeit)1 report that forced marriage, ‘honour’ killing, female genital mutilation, illiteracy, child marriage, compensation and exchange marriages are endemic in this area,2classing Pshdar as the worst region of Iraqi Kurdistan in which to be a woman. As in many predominantly agrarian economies, women’s value is located in their fertility. Children are valued for the economic value of their labour, and as a form of social security for old age. With a very high prevalence of exchange marriages (jin be jin), the trade in women’s bodies forms a parallel ‘ bride economy’. In 2006 women’s rights groups in Pshdar held a survey where people could come forward and register their marriages as having been conducted by exchange. Over five percent of the population of Pshdar came forward within just a few weeks, despite the attendant stigma and familial pressure (Mohammed 2007). According to WADI e.V., some men in the area also exchange their infant daughters in order to gain more wives for themselves. Exchanging women for money is also common through bride price. Jasvinder Sanghera identifies a strong correlation between societies that practice forced and non-consensual marriage and those which practice ‘honour’ killings (Sanghera 2006). According to the UK police, more than half of the cases of ‘honour’-based violence in the UK relate to forced marriage, which echoes IKWRO’s experiences. The Levi-Straussian relationship of exchange which constitutes traditional marriage is more than an extension of kinship under such circumstances; it becomes a transaction. In these circumstances, ‘honour’ is the convention that underwrites patriarchal marital transactions. Bourdieu explains how ‘honour’ in this sense represents a form of self-interest:

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