Nadia Abdel-Qudoos, Iraq, “Sectarian violence is forcing me to choose my friends”

Nadia Abdel-Qudoos (not her real name), a 23-year-old dentistry student at Baghdad University, says she has been forced to keep away from her old friends because they belong to a different sect or religion.

[Read this story in Arabic]

“Shia militias from Kadhimiyah, the Baghdad neighbourhood in which I live, came to my house a couple of months ago and told my family that if I didn’t keep away from my Sunni and Christian colleagues in college, we were going to pay the price of what they called `betrayal’.

“My parents got scared and thought of taking me out of college but later they decided to let me continue my studies if I promised I would stay away from my friends of a different sect or religion.

“My best friends are Sunnis and we never had problems or differences before. We were a happy group, chatting about our daily lives and the country’s problems. We made sure we would never let sectarianism affect our relations. But perhaps it was silly of us to think that we young girls could change the reality of Iraq.

“I stayed away from college for over a week but the first day I returned… two men approached me as I entered the university building. They told me that if I spoke with any Sunni I would be beaten up and my friend killed.

“I got scared and entered the college a nervous wreck, shaking and sweating. My friends came running to me asking why I had not been at college for over a week and hadn’t answered the phone. I turned my face away without a word and ran to the classroom.

“They were shocked as I’m a very friendly girl. During the lecture I wrote them a message explaining what had happened. Thank God, they understood. I haven’t spoken with them face to face since February 2007.

“It’s only when I visit my grandmother in another part of Baghdad that I telephone them, because we believe the phone in my house is tapped.

“I discovered that many other girls are in the same situation. Some Shia girls are being threatened by militias, and Sunnis by insurgents.

“I miss the old Iraq where people never asked you about your sect and you were free to have any friends you wanted. But now sectarian violence is forcing me to choose my friends.

“This is the latest in a series of threats. First they [militias] forced me to use a veil, then to dress in traditional clothes and never to go to university alone without being chaperoned. Sometimes I think my country is entering a ‘Taliban’ style era and will soon become like the old Afghanistan.”

as/ar/cb