Human trafficking is one of those under-reported stories that seems to continue getting little attention year after year. In reality it's happening world wide and right under everyone's noses. The UN can hardly get a handle on it since their own forces can hardly be trusted to keep their pants on. The European Union is too busy downgrading "Islamic Terrorism" to "terrorists who abusively invoke Islam" (see EU draft calls to reject 'Islamic terrorism' term) to notice there are real problems in the world that can't be fixed by their own blowhard, unelected bureaucrats.
So Time Magazine runs an article on human trafficking in Iraq this week, which is good, except for the fact that it starts out blaming the fall of Saddam Hussein on the problem:
Safah is part of a seldom-discussed aspect of the epidemic of kidnappings in Iraq: sex trafficking. No one knows how many young women have been kidnapped and sold since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. The Organization for Women's Freedom in Iraq, based in Baghdad, estimates from anecdotal evidence that more than 2,000 Iraqi women have gone missing in that period. A Western official in Baghdad who monitors the status of women in Iraq thinks that figure may be inflated but admits that sex trafficking, virtually nonexistent under Saddam, has become a serious issue. The collapse of law and order and the absence of a stable government have allowed criminal gangs, alongside terrorists, to run amok. Meanwhile, some aid workers say, bureaucrats in the ministries have either paralyzed with red tape or frozen the assets of charities that might have provided refuge for these girls. As a result, sex trafficking has been allowed to fester unchecked.
The quote above reads more like the typical MSM Iraq War hit piece than something that provides context to the human trafficking issue. It's sickening because what could have been a very powerful piece about the world-wide human trafficking problem isolates it to Iraq and puts a political spin on the issue when the perpetrators have nothing to do with politics. They are the most vile of criminals. They swarmed into Iraq, taking advantage of the chaos of war. Giving credit to Saddam for the lack of slavery in Iraq is like giving Hitler credit for the low crime rate in pre-war Germany. I hate that human trafficking started in Iraq, but this problem was already all over the Middle East and Asia. It's only natural that it would spread when there was a change in power. In addition, the article doesn't mention the horrible treatment of women under Sharia law, including honor killings.
The human trafficking trade is not a huge public consideration in US foreign policy, but the way it works is eerily like terrorism with a collective of criminal cells all over the world. Until recently, there was little pressure on the UN to deal with this issue. John Bolton is starting to shake up the UN, but we all know the UN has a history of doing nothing and doing it smugly.
With all of the other knee-jerk news media stories, human trafficking rarely makes the headlines. When 600,000 to 800,000 people per year are enslaved and trafficked around the world, you would think this would be a problem worthy of serious attention. You'd be wrong since most Americans think slavery disappeared with the Emancipation Proclamation (if they even know what that is). "Slavery" has been misused so much, I doubt the average westerner still has connotations of physical capture and extreme abuse in relation to the term. Slavery is consistently presented in the media as a social issue to pander to poor minorities by politicians. The reality is that while media-hungry, self-appointed black leaders make race an issue out of everything in America and pandering politicians call the US legislative branch a "plantation", women and children are kidnapped, enslaved, raped, sold, and discarded like garage sale junk.
This is a world-wide problem not just an Iraq problem. Time should have provided more context to the issue. The State Department, while being nearly as bad as the UN as an ineffectual organization, has a good reference on human trafficking here. Download the PDF of the 2005 report and read about countries that deal in humans like second-hand clothes. Many of these countries, I will add, receive financial support from the United States, United Nations, and the European Union.
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Long Way From Home by The Heavy