As women face escalating violence and exclusion in Iraq, activist Hanaa Edwar Busha brings news from the frontlines to a major international conference on women in reconciliation and security.
The women of Basra have disappeared. Three years after the US-led invasion of Iraq, women's secular freedoms - once the envy of women across the Middle East - have been snatched away because militant Islam is rising across the country.
Across central Iraq, there is an exodus of people fleeing for their lives as sectarian assassins and death squads hunt them down. At ground level, Iraq is disintegrating as ethnic cleansing takes hold on a massive scale.
The invasion of Iraq heralded promises of freedom from tyranny and equal rights for the women of Iraq. But three years on, the reality of everyday life for women inside Iraq is a different story.
"There is chaos in Iraq now, and there is danger everywhere," 27-year-old Nora Ahmed told IPS. The situation has gone "from bad to worse, and only when the occupation ends, women in Iraq will be in a better situation," said Fatima al-Naddaf.
