Iraq poised to legalize marriage for girls as young as 9 Decades ago, in the years after Iraq gained independence, a tradition of child marriage persisted in its hills and plains. Upon their fathers’ orders, Iraqi girls were betrothed to strangers and rivals alike to resolve tribal disputes or incur favor. But in the mid-1970s, such acts — called “fasliyah” — were prohibited as the nation moved toward secularization and modernity. “This decree [banning fasliyah] constituted the first step toward a civilized Iraqi community,” reports the Middle East publication Al-Monitor, “which would put an end to the failures of the tribal… society.” In the years that followed, rates of child marriage plummeted. By 1997, only 15 percent of Iraqi women were married as children, according to the Central Organization for Statistics. This figure was the same in 2004. But as the country plunged into the darkest days of the Iraq War, traditions emerged anew — including child marriage. In 2007, Al-Monitor says, 21 percent of young Iraqi women reported they were married as children. Six years later, the Population Reference Bureau determined that “the decline in early marriages has stopped.” In fact, the rate had risen. By mid-2013, more than one-fourth of females were married as children, and 5 percent had been wed before age 15. This rate of child marriage placed Iraq ahead of many nations in the region. Now the Iraqi government is poised to legalize child marriage for the nation’s majority Shiite Muslim population. But the law, which some expect to pass before this month’s parliamentary elections, would do significantly more than that. Called the Jaafari Personal Status Law, it would prohibit Muslim men from marrying non-Muslims, prevent women from leaving the house without their husband’s consent, automatically grant custody of children older than two to their father in divorce cases and legalize marital rape.

The law, which proponents say will save women’s “rights and dignity,” would also permit boys to marry as young as 15 and girls to marry as young as nine. Girls younger than nine would be permitted to marry with a parent’s approval....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/04/10/iraq-p...

Via a systematic campaign of false flag attacks on iraqi civilians, blamed on one islamic faction or another, the US and UK very deliberately imposed sectarian division and tribalism on the once modern and secular iraqi society (albeit ruled by a CIA asset who was double crossed by his handlers, see Saddam Started Out as CIA Assassin and APRIL GLASPIE TRANSCRIPT ) in a continuation of the empire's decades-long strategy of using fundamentalist islam as a tool of social control both here (9/11) and in the mideast. Imposing mass rape on iraqi girls is going to set the stage of a self-perpetuating cycle of "self" traumatization of iraqi families and society that will help keep it subdued and cooperative with western corporate interests for the forseeable future. State-sanctioned child abuse is an important form of social control which is of course also heavily used in the USA (circumcision, obstetrical abuse, miseducation, imposed neglect and impoverishment, state sanctioned drug running etc). The self-perpetuating nature of child abuse is a key aspect of the power of this tactic. Iraqi society has internalized the identity imposed on it by its oppressors, a form of trauma-based mind control on a national level which was imposed on the USA decades ago under the Great Ripoff and the mirage of democratic empire.

And lest you think the Iraq war had something to do with controlling oil prices, well, you're right, but not in the way you think: http://thoughtcrimeradio.net/2013/04/the-real-purpose-of-the-iraq-w...

More on western tactics to lobotomize and dissociate iraqi history, culture and intelligentsia: Iraqi academics assassinated during the US-led occupation http://www.globalresearch.ca/crimes-against-humanity-iraqi-academic...

Details of U.S. False Flag Attacks in Iraq Revealed and More http://www.opednews.com/articles/Details-of-U-S-False-Flag-by-Wayne...

http://thoughtcrimeradio.net/2013/02/false-flags-in-iraq-the-trail-...

False-flag operations in Iraq https://web.archive.org/web/20140706041755/http://100777.com/node/1416

US Troops Looting Iraqi National Museum

Iraq today, the world tomorrow