Despair of Baghdad turns into a life of shame in Damascus

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Young women fleeing war and poverty fall prey to sex traffickers

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Unable to return to her family due to the perceived shame she had brought upon them, Mona began her new life in Syria as a prostitute working for Um Ahmad, dancing in bars outside Damascus and having sex with clients.

As pressure mounts on President George Bush to announce a significant change of direction to the disastrous military occupation of Iraq, the stories of Mona and others like her are a sobering reminder of the consequences of the other Iraq that war has created: a place away from bombs and beheadings, but where the daily struggle for existence is still desperate, and where young lives continue to be torn apart.

Mona had become another victim of the growing sex trade among an Iraqi refugee community in Syria that local NGOs now estimate at 800,000 people, and to whose plight aid agencies say the international community continues to turn a blind eye.

Laurens Jolles, acting representative for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Damascus, told the Guardian that international donor funds for the agency's Iraq programme have been drastically reduced for 2007, roughly halving an office budget he said was already "totally insufficient to provide tangible results".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1929814,00.html