One outreach organization for refugee children is the Good Shepherd Nunnery in Damascus' crumbling Old City. The nuns' observations of Syrian prostitution mirror Mulhem's, but they have also met a few Iraqi women in local prisons who've been sold into bondage by their husbands. Mostly, says Sister Mary Claude Naoldaf, "the girls tell me they don't like it but have to do it to support their families."

She adds that in the past year, many of the children that attended nunnery's learning center have "suddenly disappeared" -- most likely taken out of school, she believes, to earn for their families. Her colleague, Sister Therese Mosalam, explains that "to help prevent girls from turning to prostitution, the center offers them computer training courses and helps find them jobs in sewing and gold-manufacturing factories." But pay is usually about $50 a month --$100 in the best case -- compared with the $40 to $60 sex workers can make per night. "And the job opportunities are very rare," she adds. "I had one girl who waited for three years for the factory job."

The sisters' voices drop as they quietly recall visits to refugee families' homes. Empty refrigerators are common. Some kids have yellowish skin and many look gaunt. Malnutrition, they say, is starting to take hold.

Mouna Kurdy, general manager of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, which works in affiliation with the UNHCR, acknowledges that among Iraqi refugees, "parents don't have enough to eat, so they encourage their children to take these jobs."

She grows testy at recent inquiries by the press and humanitarian groups about Iraqi prostitutes in Syria. "And now people are asking about this issue? [The international community] was preparing this war for months. Now that Saddam Hussein isn't here anymore, the problems are supposed to be finished. No. They have been here before the war, during the war, and after the war."

"Somalian and Sudanese worked as prostitutes in Syria, but nobody cared about that," says Abdul Aziz Taha, who's in change of a Red Crescent health clinic in the Damascus suburbs.

Both Taha and Kurdy says that prostitution is a comparatively small worry in light of the basic health problems that Iraqi refugees face, including hepatitis C, diabetes and serious cardiac conditions. Major medical procedures cost on average $2,000, but the Red Crescent is only given a budget of $200 per family, Kurdy says.

Still, given the growing awareness of the problems facing Iraqi refugees -- violence, restricted mobility, diminishing finances -- one wonders why child prostitution in Syria hasn't garnered more attention. The answer might depend on whom you ask. To Mulhem, it's profitable for Syria as a tourist attraction. He believes "there's active collaboration between the club owners and police who turn a blind eye for payoffs." Landis, the American professor in Syria, says that if Syria publicly acknowledged prostitution, that would "mean sanctioning its existence" and expose the country to the sort of shame that an individual family would face.

In fact, Syria newspapers typically replace the word "prostitution" with the euphemistic " act against decency." Talk of drugs, HIV and religion is actively discouraged -- some would say censored -- by the Syrian authorities. And despite numerous inquires, no Iraqi women's organization would respond to questions about this issue.

But the emergence of Iraqi prostitution in Syria, especially among young girls, reflects the dire conditions of the local Iraqi refugee community. One U.N. official, who asked to remain anonymous, admits that the "conspiracy of silence" surrounding prostitution underscores the international community's larger failure to recognize the dire conditions of Iraqi refugees and provide them with a safe haven.

"Every social convention is splitting at the seams because of the implosion of Iraqi society," Landis says. "That place has been blown apart, so all the social barriers have collapsed."

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