Liberating the Women of Iraq

Honor killings are giving way to “violations of Islamic teachings”, either way, the killing of women for not wearing a headscarf or for wearing blush is how the patriarchy has taken controlling women to new heights.

The women are killed, police say, because they failed to wear a headscarf or because they ignored other “rules” that secretive fundamentalist groups want to enforce.

“Fear, fear is always there,” says 30-year-old Safana, an artist and university professor. “We don’t know who to be afraid of. Maybe it’s a friend or a student you teach. There is no break, no security. I don’t know who to be afraid of.”

Her fear is justified. Iraq’s second-largest city, Basra, is a stronghold of conservative Shia groups. As many as 133 women were killed in Basra last year — 79 for violation of “Islamic teachings” and 47 for so-called honor killings*, according to IRIN, the news branch of the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Die because a man may perceive you as not being chaste enough or because a woman wore a colorful headscarf. Yet, this CNN report neglects that many of these cases are not, and never have been, a high priority for investigation, as we see in my notation. Yet, the manner in which the CNN report is written, you’d believed that the Iraqi police are doing something, but are more hindered by religious fanatics that infiltrated the ranks of the police force.

Iraqi security forces took over after British troops pulled back, but are heavily infiltrated by militias.

And tracking the perpetrators of these crimes is nearly impossible, Khalaf says, adding that he doesn’t have control of the thousands of policemen and officers.

Every year, we are given reports by several international organization, warning us against the increased violence against women in Iraq, and they are largely ignored.

Amnesty International has raised concern about the increasing violence toward women in Iraq, saying abductions, rapes and “honor killings” are on the rise.

“Politically active women, those who did not follow a strict dress code, and women [who are] human rights defenders were increasingly at risk of abuses, including by armed groups and religious extremists,” Amnesty said in a 2007 report.

This all contradicts the assertion of Bush that we were liberating the women of Iraq. As the war continues, Iraqi women are less and less safe.

Almost four years into the Bush Administration’s ill fated adventure in Iraq, Iraqi women are worse off than they were under the Baathist regime in a country where, for decades, the freedoms and rights enjoyed by Iraqi women were the envy of women in most other countries of the Middle East.

Before the U.S. invasion, Iraqi women had high levels of education. Their strong and independent women’s movement had successfully forced Saddam’s government to pass the groundbreaking 1959 Family Law Act which ensured equal rights in matters of personal law. Iraqi women could inherit land and property; they had equal rights to divorce and custody of their children; they were protected from domestic violence within the marriage. In other words, they had achieved real gains in the struggle for equality between women and men. Iraqi women, like all Iraqis, certainly suffered from the political repression and lack of freedom, but the secular — albeit brutal — Baathist regime protected women from the religious extremism that denies freedom to a majority of women in the Arab world.

Living in fear is so liberating!  Being killed in front of your children, for some perceived violation is so damn liberating!