A motorcycle, a gun and another hero is silenced in Iraq

In Iraq today, militias speak loudly about resistance while practicing the politics of fear. They launch drones and missiles toward neighboring countries and threaten regional stability. At the same time, they have turned their weapons inward, attacking and intimidating people inside their own country.

These groups answer neither to the Iraqi people nor even to the Iraqi state. They attack government buildings, defy state authority and act as if the law does not apply to them, behaving in many parts of Iraq as though the country belongs to them.

Yet, when an Iraqi woman is assassinated in Baghdad, the world barely notices.

That woman was Yanar Mohammed. Her assassination is not just a tragedy. It is a brutal reminder of what Iraq has become.

Last Monday morning, two men on a motorcycle pulled up outside Yanar’s home in Baghdad and opened fire. In a few cruel seconds, her life was taken. The woman who had spent decades standing beside the most vulnerable in Iraqi society, defending women who had no one else to defend them, was gone. Her voice was silenced in the same brutal way so many voices in Iraq have been silenced. But behind the headlines was a human being, a woman who chose courage over fear and dedicated her life to helping others live with dignity.

The killers disappeared. And in Iraq, everyone already knows what comes next: nothing.

This is the formula of assassination that has haunted Iraq for years. A motorcycle. Two men. A gun. The murder takes seconds. The investigation drags on and the killers are rarely found. Case closed.

Human life in Iraq has become tragically cheap.

Activists have been murdered this way. Journalists have been murdered this way. Protest leaders, scholars, lawyers and voices on social media have all been hunted down the same way: a motorcycle, a few shots and another life erased. Some were killed for exposing corruption. Others for daring to criticize the militias and their leaders. Many were targeted simply for demanding something basic: a country ruled by law, not by fear.

The message has always been clear: step out of line, challenge them or do anything they dislike and you will be silenced. These crimes rarely dominate headlines anymore because they have become part of Iraq’s daily reality. Iraq now lives in the shadow of a system in which weapons speak louder than the law.

The country is divided into two very different worlds.

The first world belongs to the political class and those protected by power. It is a world of armored vehicles, armed bodyguards and heavily fortified homes. Politicians and militia leaders travel in convoys and live behind walls guarded by men with big guns. They are “the protected.”

Then there is the other Iraq, the one where most Iraqis live.

In this Iraq, ordinary citizens have little protection. Armed groups decide who may speak and who must be punished. Everyone knows that challenging corruption, criticizing militias, defending the vulnerable or confronting extremist ideology can turn you into a target overnight.

In this Iraq, justice does not arrive. Instead, motorcycles do. Yanar chose to stand with this second Iraq.

Born in the 1960s to a teacher mother and an engineer father, she grew up believing that education and courage could change society. After 2003, as Iraq struggled to rebuild in the years following dictatorship and war, she emerged as one of the most fearless defenders of women’s dignity.

Yanar was a woman who chose courage over fear and dedicated her life to helping others live with dignity.

Dalia Al-Aqidi

At that time, Yanar made a decision that required extraordinary courage. She left her home in Canada and returned to Baghdad, a country still shaken by war and instability, because she believed Iraqi women needed someone to stand with them.

She co-founded the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq and devoted her life to protecting women whose suffering rarely reached public attention. She established the first shelters in Iraq for women and girls fleeing trafficking, domestic abuse, forced marriages and so-called honor killings. For many of them, these safehouses meant the difference between life and death.

Some arrived terrified after escaping violent husbands. Others fled families who had threatened to kill them for refusing forced marriages. Some were rescued from trafficking networks. Others were young women whose only “crime” was wanting control over their own lives.

In a society where shame and silence often hide such cruelty, Yanar refused to look away. She opened doors when the world had closed them. She gave these victims protection, dignity and a chance to start again.

Hundreds of women and girls are alive today because of those safe houses.

Many went on to rebuild their lives, continue their education and raise families free from fear. The courage of one woman created a lifeline for many others. But defending women in Iraq means confronting powerful forces.

Her work angered extremists, tribal authorities and political actors who believed women should remain silent and obedient. In 2020, even the Iraqi government filed legal action against her and her colleagues, accusing them of sheltering women who fled their tribes and defending women who chose independence over forced marriages or abuse. In other words, she was attacked for defending freedom. Despite threats, she refused to retreat.

For more than two decades, she spoke out against violence toward women and warned about armed groups operating above the law, confronting both fundamentalism and corruption with courage.

And her voice carried beyond Iraq. International human rights organizations recognized her work and activists around the world saw in her a symbol of courage in the face of intimidation.

Yanar had returned to Baghdad from Canada only days before she was killed. In a matter of seconds, Iraq lost one of its bravest voices. Her organization later announced that the safe houses she created would remain open, now without the woman who built them.

A credible investigation is needed, along with real protection for those continuing her work. But Iraqis have heard promises like this many times before, while too many murders remain unsolved and too many brave voices are silenced.

Because Yanar was an Iraqi-Canadian dual citizen, Canada must demand an independent and transparent investigation. Ottawa must not simply rely on assurances from the authorities in Baghdad, which have repeatedly failed to solve similar crimes.

Justice for Yanar will not bring her back. But it would affirm that the lives of activists, journalists and defenders of human dignity still matter. She refused to abandon the vulnerable. She opened doors for the forgotten and protected those marked for violence.

The women whose lives she saved are now her living legacy.

The men on the motorcycle may have taken her life, but they cannot erase her courage, the lives she saved or the truth she sacrificed her life defending.

Rest in peace, Yanar.

• Dalia Al-Aqidi is executive director at the American Center for Counter Extremism.