In the Shaab district north of Baghdad, at the door of her home—long opened as a refuge for exhausted women and survivors of violence—the journey of Yanar Mohammed, one of Iraq’s most prominent feminist activists, came to an end.
On March 2, a motorcycle carrying two gunmen stopped nearby. In cold blood, one of them fired a muffled pistol.
Just two bullets were enough to kill the head of the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI) and close a chapter of feminist courage in the country.
Yanar was born in the heart of Baghdad in 1960. She earned a master’s degree in architecture in 1993, but her true architecture emerged after 2003.
She did not build towers of concrete; instead, she constructed “safe houses” to protect women from the guillotine of tribal violence, so-called “honor” killings, and human trafficking.
Her activism—recognized internationally with the Gruber Prize in 2008 and the Rafto Prize in 2016—placed her in direct confrontation with forces that see women’s independence as an “existential threat.”
Yanar protected hundreds, perhaps thousands, of women fleeing domestic violence and helped many of them rebuild their lives. But for years she was also the target of demonization campaigns.
Her path was far from easy. Yanar’s organization was involved in intense legal and political confrontations with official institutions. One of the most notable episodes came in 2020, when the Secretary-General of the Council of Ministers, Hamid al-Ghazzi, filed a lawsuit accusing her of sheltering “runaway” women—a case Yanar later won.
Activist Ahmed al-Amiri, a member of the Coalition for the Defense of Freedom of Expression, described the tragedy as “an immense and irreplaceable loss for the civil movement.”
Speaking to Alhurra, al-Amiri said the attack—carried out immediately after her return from travel—suggests “careful prior surveillance.”
Yet the bullets were not the beginning. Before her physical killing, Yanar had endured years of what many describe as “moral assassination” through coordinated smear campaigns on social media, led by accounts affiliated with armed factions.
According to al-Amiri, these campaigns effectively served as a “green light” and an explicit authorization for those who carried out the killing on the ground.
Linking human rights activism to foreign agendas and distorting the image of women’s rights defenders in the media, he said, created “an atmosphere charged with hatred that made Yanar’s assassination appear acceptable within circles of incitement.”
On the same day, Iraqi Interior Minister Abdul Amir al-Shammari ordered the formation of an investigative committee to examine the assassination of Yanar. The results have not yet been announced.
Today, fear is spreading among Iraqi civil society activists that Yanar’s assassination could mark the return of organized killings that previously targeted civic figures such as security expert Hisham al-Hashimi.
Human rights circles worry that such assassinations may become a “routine tool” for silencing bold voices—especially amid political crises that could be exploited to carry out new “elimination lists” targeting what remains of Iraq’s feminist and civil movements.
According to a security source in the Iraqi Interior Ministry who spoke to Alhurra, “a security report issued days ago warned of the possibility that some activists and journalists could be targeted in assassination attempts.”
The source linked the warning to the regional situation, in reference to the war against Iran.
Feminist activist Ruya Khalaf spoke to Alhurra with bitterness about the situation, describing the targeting of a figure of Yanar’s stature as a blatant assault on freedom of expression.
“It was clear to everyone that there was hate speech against feminist organizations in general and against the slain Yanar in particular across all social media platforms,” Khalaf said. “This kind of rhetoric is used to discredit and demonize—and it is a pattern that often precedes assassination.”
According to Khalaf, Iraq has repeatedly witnessed waves of assassinations targeting “national figures” during periods of tension—a pattern that has persisted since the October 2019 protests.
Some social media users have accused armed groups operating in what many describe as the “space of the non-state,” exploiting their influence to impose their ideological vision by force. These groups view women activists as a threat that could dismantle the traditional tribal power structures on which they depend.
Human rights advocates say the continued targeting of activists reflects an effort by these factions to keep the language of weapons dominant in Iraq’s political landscape.
Lawyer and activist Noor al-Shara believes that “the general climate of harassment Yanar faced without accountability is what threatens everyone’s safety. All activists are vulnerable to the same fate.”
Speaking to Alhurra, al-Shara warned of the possible return of assassinations targeting activists and human rights defenders.
The article is a translation of the original Arabic.
