Sarwa Abdul Wahab Al Darwish was a 36 year-old Iraqi journalist from Mosul. On May 4th, Sarwa was in a taxi returning from the market with her mother. The car was stopped and she was dragged out by two men who attempted to kidnap her. Sarwa screamed and struggled against her would-be abductors. So they shot her twice in the head and drove away.

We first met Sarwa in December 2006 when she came to Damascus with 11 other Iraqi women from 5 different cities - Baghdad, Basra, Mosul, Kirkuk and Falluja. They were there to take part in Open Shutters Iraq, a UNDP funded participatory photography project.

For a month we all lived together in a house in the Old City, where participants learned to take photographs so they could return to Iraq and make photo-stories about their lives there. Everyday, they went out onto the streets to practice their photography and attended slideshow sessions where their work was analysed. At the same time, they were asked to draw huge maps of their lives to present to the rest of us.

Sarwa talked about her childhood in Mosul, a city she loved. Growing up as a girl in this most conservative of cities, however, she often suffered. She was of that generation of Iraqis whose lives were devastated by the sanctions imposed on Iraq in 1990, when she was just 18. And from the time she was 8 years old, Sarwa lived in the shadow of war – first the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88), then the Gulf War (1991) and then the 2003 invasion, occupation and ongoing murderous, chaotic violence of which she eventually became a victim, like so many other Iraqis.

Sarwa studied law in Mosul and began working as a journalist for a small television station after the occupation of the country. She was remarkably brave and determined to make something of her life. She was also the only woman from Mosul who appeared as a reporter on television and she was proud of that fact, but she was also worried.

After the month in Damascus, the Open Shutters participants returned to Iraq and, under very difficult circumstances, shot pictures for their stories. Sarwa was a very supportive partner to another woman from Mosul with whom she was attending the workshop. After 6 weeks, the women returned to Syria to edit their photographs and write accompanying biographies and essays.

Sarwa arrived brandishing a piece of paper. “Look what they’ve written – they can’t even spell, and here they’re supposed to be quoting the Koran, but it’s a mis-quote, they got it wrong”. She had found the note on her doorstep that morning and it was a death threat. Another woman in the project, from Basra, had received similar threats and we were very worried about both of them.

Sarwa’s death – the fact and the manner of it - is shocking for us who knew her and an unspeakable loss for her family – especially her long-widowed mother, but this kind of thing is happening to women on a daily basis all over Iraq. Since the invasion and occupation of the country, there has been an exponential rise in the violence against women: whether it is people like Sarwa, working as journalists and activists, or doctors, professors, or simply women killed in so-called ‘honour crimes’.

It is a credit to Sarwa and typical of many Iraqi women, that although she tried to protect herself as best she could, she was not willing to give up her work and to cave in under the threats she received. In its long history and despite all the catastrophes that have befallen Iraq, you find this spirit of dogged resistance in the face of destruction – and especially among the women.

Sarwa was her family’s only breadwinner.
We are collecting money to send to them.
If you can contribute, we would be very grateful.
Please make cheques out to:
MAYSOON PACHACHI
and send them to:
55 Windsor Road
London, N7 6JL
UK

With many thanks
Eugenie Dolberg
Maysoon Pachachi

Sarwa Abdul Wahab al Darwish
Born 1972, Mosul, Iraq
Died 4 May 2008, Mosul, Iraq