By Dr. Shermeen Yousif

In Iraq, the pursuit of truth unfolds within a violent scene, where voicing the truth and knowledge production itself become a site of contestation. For activists, human rights advocates, and journalists, particularly those challenging patriarchal, sectarian, and state-aligned paramilitary structures, speaking out against systemic injustice is not merely risky, but often life-threatening.

Particularly for those who interrogate the state’s sectarian architecture, entrenched corruption, and the informal sovereignty of paramilitary actors, the terrain is fraught with danger. These actors deploy violence not merely as a tactic of control, but as a disciplining mechanism against epistemic resistance. The abduction of Elizabeth Tsurkov, a doctoral researcher at Princeton University, in Baghdad in March 2023, exemplifies how patriarchal-militarized regimes punish those, especially those racialized as outsiders or marked by non-normative allegiances, who dare to expose or unsettle dominant narratives.

A Pattern of Violence Against Truth-Seekers

Since 2003, Iraq has witnessed a disturbing trend: those who challenge powerful entities or expose systemic issues frequently become systematically targeted. Violence against journalism, free speech, or research is not incidental but rather part of a broader apparatus of silencing that serves to maintain intersecting structures of sectarian and racialized domination. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, at least 282 journalists have been killed in Iraq since 2003, with many others abducted or threatened. Activists have not been spared; examples include hundreds of cases. For instance, in August 2020, Dr. Riham Yaqoub, a prominent advocate for women's rights, was assassinated in Basra. Similarly, in April 2021, civil society activist Hassan Ashour was gunned down in Dhi Qar Governorate.

These incidents are not isolated. They reflect a broader environment where dissent is met with violence, and perpetrators often enjoy impunity. Often, Iran-aligned militias within Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) are to blame; they deploy targeted assassinations, enforced disappearances, and other forms of organized violence as tools of political and economic preservation. These tactics are not incidental; they serve to safeguard the vast revenue streams these groups extract from Iraq’s deeply entrenched systems of corruption, including control over state contracts, border crossings, and smuggling networks. By eliminating critics and suppressing investigative scrutiny, these militias fortify their grip on a shadow economy that sustains both their material power and impunity. Human Rights Watch has documented numerous cases where activists and protesters were killed or disappeared in Iraq, with little to no accountability.

The Case of Elizabeth Tsurkov

In a related and important case, Elizabeth Tsurkov, a Russian-Israeli scholar and doctoral candidate at Princeton University, was abducted in March 2023 in Baghdad by Kataib Hezbollah, an Iran-aligned paramilitary group. At the time, she was conducting field research on sectarianism and its sociopolitical repercussions in Iraq, with a particular focus on its gendered impact on Iraqi women. In a recent and cautiously optimistic turn in the case of Elizabeth Tsurkov, reports have surfaced indicating that negotiations for her release may be nearing a breakthrough, potentially through a high-stakes prisoner exchange.

Tsurkov’s kidnapping underscores the acute peril faced by scholars and activists who engage critically with the intersecting forces of sectarianism, militarization, and state-fragmentation in Iraq. Her case is emblematic of the broader risks confronting those who challenge dominant power structures or seek to document the lived realities of marginalized populations. While diplomatic efforts to secure her release have reportedly advanced, the situation remains unconfirmed. Her family continues to press for transparency and international pressure to ensure her safe return.

The Broader Implications

The targeting of individuals such as Elizabeth Tsurkov exerts a profoundly chilling effect on academic, journalistic, and activist inquiry in Iraq. When researchers, activists, and truth-tellers are silenced through coercion, violence, or disappearance, critical sites of knowledge production are extinguished, and the structural injustices they seek to expose remain unexamined and unchallenged.

This pervasive climate of impunity, where perpetrators of such acts rarely face consequences, further corrodes public trust in state institutions and undermines the very foundations of accountability and rule of law. In the absence of robust protections for those engaged in truth-seeking work, Iraq risks not only intellectual and civic stagnation but the perpetuation of instability, as the cycle of repression deepens societal fractures and forecloses the possibility of meaningful reform.

A Call to Action

The international community must urgently center the protection of journalists, activists, and researchers in Iraq, not as a peripheral concern, but as a core imperative in the fight against structural violence. Those who engage in truth-telling routinely confront intersecting threats rooted in sectarian and militarized regimes of power. The call for accountability must therefore extend beyond generic appeals for justice; it must be grounded in a transnational ethic of care and solidarity that recognizes how gender, race, and political identity shape the risks individuals face when confronting hegemonic authority.

The case of Elizabeth Tsurkov exemplifies this dynamic. As a woman conducting fieldwork on sectarianism and its impact on Iraqi society, particularly its effects on women, her abduction by an Iran-aligned militia is not only a personal tragedy but a political act of silencing. Securing her safe return must therefore be understood not only as a humanitarian necessity, but as a feminist imperative: an affirmation of the right to produce knowledge that challenges dominant narratives and centers the lived experiences of the oppressed.

In an era increasingly defined by misinformation, epistemic suppression, and the resurgence of authoritarian rule, the defense of intellectual freedom, especially that which is rooted in feminist and anti-colonial critique, has never been more urgent. Iraq’s complex and multilayered conditions deserve to be studied with nuance, care, and critical engagement. But such inquiry cannot flourish unless the international community demands and ensures the safety of those who undertake it, particularly those whose work makes visible the injustices that powerful actors would rather conceal.

Until Iraq becomes a place where the act of asking hard questions is no longer punishable by death or disappearance, its future will remain hostage not just to militias, but to silence. It is that silence, more than any one actor, that poses the gravest threat to justice.

Shermeen Yousif is an assistant professor at Florida Atlantic University. As a female academic who witnessed women’s rights issues in the civil unrest of post-war Iraq, she escaped to the United States, where she earned her doctorate. Yousif is an activist and writer who focuses on social and political change in Iraq and the Middle East, as well as feminism and increasing awareness of women's rights in the region.