In the beginning, in 2003, there was the Iraqi resistance, which didn't want the US occupation, then they developed Al Qaeda, but even then it was never this monstrous, this inhumane and as misogynistic as what we're seeing now under ISIS.

The leading members of ISIS were either tortured in US military prisons or in the prisons of the Shi'a government which the Americans put in place.

I would like to see the Iraqi government guarantee social insurance for the Yazidi women who were enslaved and to recognise their status as prisoners of war.

In Iraq, we did have dictators, we did have times of war but it never reached the point where one person, or a group, would be attacking another group and would be enslaving all the women of that group.

Young women growing into situations with no parents are usually material for exploitation in the brothels.

Polygamy was not a problem in the '80s. I do not remember one single woman in Baghdad who was the second or third wife. Now it's a very common story. Sometimes two wives living with a man in a 5 by 10 foot room. It's a very miserable economic situation.

What has ISIS done to the women in the cities they have conquered? Direct enslavement, humiliation and turning women into concubines to be bought and sold. This was something nobody expected to see in Iraq.