[WCUSP] [womeninblack] Iraq's women under pressure

[yvonne simmons]

>> Le Monde diplomatique ~~ May 2007
> Iraq's women under pressure
> 
> The lives of many Iraqi women have become
> appreciably harsher
> following international sanctions and the US-led
> invasion. Although
> pleased to see Saddam toppled, some look back on the
> prosperity and
> social liberation of the Ba'athist years with
> nostalgia
> 
> By Nadje Sadig Al-Ali
> 
> Iraqi women sometimes remember that they have lived
> in a multi-ethnic,
> multicultural national entity with a prospering
> economy and rapid
> modernisation; at other times they recall
> repression, discrimination,
> declining living conditions and sectarian tensions.
> 
> I have tried to document the diversity of
> experiences during the
> monarchy, the years after the revolution of 1958,
> the economic boom
> (and the expansion of the middle class) in the
> 1970s, the Iran-Iraq
> war from 1980-88, the first Gulf war of 1991 and the
> economic
> sanctions of 1990-2003.
> 
> Since the United States invasion many
> under-represented sections of
> society fail to acknowledge these experiences as
> different. I feel
> uneasy when people say "Iraqi women think." or
> "Iraqi women want."
> because how can that represent such a wide variety
> of views? The
> difference in perspectives is historically based and
> cannot simply be
> reduced to ethnicity and religion.
> 
> The period after the first Ba'athist coup of 1963 is
> associated with
> increased political violence, greater sectarianism
> and a reversal of
> progressive laws and reforms. Yet many women
> remember relative social
> freedom and cultural vibrancy during the rule of the
> Arif brothers,
> 1963-68, and the early Ba'ath period, 1968-78.
> 
> Many secular, apolitical middle-class Shia, Sunni,
> Kurdish and
> Christian women appreciated the achievements of the
> early Ba'ath
> period in education, modernisation of
> infrastructures and welfare
> provisions. While those who actively opposed the
> regime remember
> political repression, mass arrests, torture and
> executions, even some
> who had first hand experiences of the regime's
> repressive practices
> retrospectively appreciated its developmental
> policies.
> 
> Cosmopolitan Baghdad
> Women's memories show that an urban middle-class
> identity, especially
> the cosmopolitan Baghdadi identity, subsumed ethnic
> and religious
> differences even throughout sanctions. A
> middle-class Shia family in
> Baghdad had more in common with its Sunni Arab and
> Kurdish
> middle-class neighbours in mixed neighbourhoods than
> they did with the
> impoverished Shia living in Madina al-Thawra
> (renamed Saddam city, now
> Sadr city) or with Shia in the south. Baghdadi
> families were often
> multi-religious and multi-ethnic, and mixed
> marriages were common
> among the urban Baghdadi middle classes.
> 
> Zeynab, a sympathiser of the Islamist Shia Da'wa
> party who now lives
> in Dearborn in the US, said: "We were all friends.
> We celebrated
> holidays together. When we had the [Shia]
> celebration in commemoration
> of Imam Husein, even Jews and Christians joined us.
> We never thought
> about race or religion. Schools were open to
> everybody. In schools, we
> had Jewish, Christian, Sunni and Kurdish classmates.
> There were no bad
> feelings towards anyone."
> 
> >From the late 1970s differences between secular and
> Islamist political
> positions started to matter more, influencing
> experiences of the
> regime. Members or sympathisers of the Da'wa party
> were targeted not
> so much for their religious affiliation but because
> of their
> opposition to the regime and their aim to establish
> an Islamic state.
> No one wants to diminish the suffering that members
> of the Shia
> Islamist opposition parties endured, but they were
> not the only
> targets of state repression; Kurds and others,
> including Sunni Arabs
> who actively resisted the regime, all suffered.
> 
> The Shia Islamists' claim to having been singled out
> because of
> religious affiliation rather than political
> conviction contributes to
> the current atmosphere in which rights, privileges
> and power are
> linked to sectarian divisions and arguments over who
> suffered most. Of
> course, specific atrocities committed by the
> previous regime should
> not be swept under the carpet for the sake of
> national unity. The
> trial of Saddam Hussein was a missed opportunity to
> initiate a
> credible truth and reconciliation process.
> 
> Many Iraqi women gained socially and economically
> during the 1970s
> despite political repression. Living conditions
> improved for most of
> the population as the state relied not only on force
> and its power to
> control, but also devised generous welfare
> programmes and opened
> opportunities for investment and capital
> accumulation that helped many
> in the expanding middle classes.
> 
> Yet, from the 1980s on, political repression, the
> Iran-Iraq war, then
> the first Gulf war and the militarisation of society
> began to affect
> women, through the loss of family and economic
> decline. Under
> sanctions there was a radical shift; women had less
> work or access to
> education, and health care and social services
> declined. As
> unemployment worsened and infrastructure collapsed,
> women were pushed
> back to their homes.
> 
> 'All this was cut'
> 
> Sawsan, an Assyrian woman from the north, worked as
> a teacher in a
> high school until 1995. She said: "We did not feel
> it so much during
> the first years of sanctions, but by 1994 it really
> hit us. Social
> conditions had deteriorated. The currency had been
> devalued while
> salaries were fixed. Many women started to quit
> work. Some of my
> friends could not even afford transport to the
> school. Before
> sanctions, the school made sure that we were picked
> up by a bus, but
> all this was cut. For me, the most important thing
> was my children. I
> did not want them to come home and be alone in the
> house. It became
> too unsafe. And I know from my own work that schools
> deteriorated
> badly; teachers had to quit work and there was no
> money for anything.
> So I felt that I had to teach them at home."
> 
> Since the 2003 invasion, survival is a priority as
> lack of security is
> accompanied by difficult living conditions. The
> infrastructure has
> further deteriorated; lack of electricity, clean
> water, sanitation and
> a proper health system are part of everyday life.
> Intisar, who is a
> doctor in a teaching hospital in Baghdad, says: "We
> only have
> electricity for three to five hours a day. There
> isn't enough clean
> drinking water. Lack of sanitation is a big problem,
> one of the main
> causes of malnutrition, dysentery and death among
> young children."
> 
> According to recent reports published by Unicef and
> the British-based
> charity Medact, the occupation has led to a
> deterioration in health,
> malnutrition, a rise in vaccine-preventable diseases
> and increasing
> mortality rates for children under five (from 5% in
> 1990 to 12.5% in
> 2004 according to Unicef). As during the sanctions,
> women suffer -
> often the last to eat after feeding children and
> husbands. They have
> to stand and watch while their sick, malnourished
> children fail to get
> the care they need.
> 
> Even so, women have been trying to improve
> conditions. Locally-based
> women's initiatives and groups flourish, answering
> practical needs
> related to poverty and the lack of health care,
> housing and social
> services. Women have pooled resources to address the
> need for
> education and training (such as computer classes) as
> well as income
> generation. Many initiatives filling the gap in
> state welfare and
> health are associated with political and religious
> bodies, but
> independent, non-partisan professional women have
> also mobilised.
> 
> Leila, a woman's rights activists still living in
> Iraq, said:
> 'Initially many of us were very hopeful. We did not
> like foreign
> soldiers on our streets, but we were happy Saddam
> was gone. Once the
> general chaos and the looting settled down a bit,
> women were the first
> to get organised. Women doctors and lawyers started
> to offer free
> services to women. We started to discuss political
> issues and tried to
> lobby the American and British forces. But the
> Americans sent people
> to Iraq whose attitude was: 'We don't deal with
> women.' [Presidential
> envoy Paul] Bremer was one. Iraqi women managed to
> get a woman's quota
> despite the Americans who opposed it. Their idea of
> women's issues was
> to organise big meetings and conferences and build
> modern women's
> centres. Do you think anyone went to visit these
> centres?"
> 
> Threats to women
> 
> Although bombings of residential areas caused many
> deaths, Iraqis have
> also been shot by US or British troops. Whole
> families have been
> killed approaching a checkpoint or through failing
> to recognise
> prohibited areas. There are many documented accounts
> of physical
> assaults on women at checkpoints and during house
> searches. Several
> women I talked to said they had been verbally or
> physically
> threatened, and assaulted by soldiers as they were
> searched at
> checkpoints. US forces have also arrested wives,
> sisters and daughters
> of suspected insurgents to pressure them to
> surrender (1); in effect
> taken hostage by US forces and used as bargaining
> chips. Such arrests
> cause a sense of shame associated with detention.
> There is mounting
> evidence of torture and rape; women identified
> become potential
> victims of honour crimes.
> 
> Women's organisations have also documented Islamist
> violence to women,
> including acid thrown into faces, even targeted
> killings. In 2003 many
> women in Basra reported that they were forced to
> wear a headscarf or
> restrict their movements because men began to harass
> or shout at them.
> 
> Women of all ages are now forced to comply with
> dress codes and be
> careful when they go out. Suad, a former accountant
> and mother of
> four, lives in a neighbourhood of Baghdad that used
> to be mixed before
> sectarian killings in 2005 and 2006. She told me: "I
> resisted for a
> long time, but last year I started wearing the
> hijab, after I was
> threatened by several Islamist militants in front of
> my house. They
> are terrorising the whole neighbourhood, behaving as
> if they were in
> charge. And they are actually controlling the area.
> No one dares to
> challenge them. A few months ago they distributed
> leaflets around the
> area warning people to obey them and demanding that
> women should stay at
> home."
> 
> The threat of Islamist militias now goes beyond
> dress codes and calls
> for gender segregation at university. Despite,
> indeed partly because
> of the US and British rhetoric about liberation and
> rights, women have
> been pushed into the background and into their
> homes. Women with a
> public profile (doctors, academics, lawyers, NGO
> activists,
> politicians) are threatened and targeted for
> assassination. There are
> also criminal gangs who worsen the climate of fear
> by kidnapping women
> for ransom, sexual abuse or sale into prostitution
> outside Iraq.
> 
> It isn't a surprise that many of the women I
> interviewed remember the
> past nostalgically.
> 
> Original text in English
> 
> * Nadje Sadig Al-Ali is senior lecturer in social
> anthropology at the
> Institute of Arab & Islamic Studies, University of
> Exeter and author
> of Gender, Secularism & the State in the Middle
> East: The Egyptian
> Women's Movements (Cambridge University Press,
> 2000). Her latest book
> is Iraqi Women: Untold Stories from 1948 to the
> Present (Zed Books,
> March 2007).
> 
> (1) Those suspected of being involved in both the
> resistance as well
> as in terrorist activities are regularly detained
> without informing
> their families about their whereabouts and their
> wellbeing.
> Disappearances, random arrests, torture and abuse in
> prisons are
> common phenomena in post-Saddam Iraq
> 
> __._,_.___ 
> 
>  
> 
> > _______________________________________________
> womeninblack mailing list
> womeninblack at listas.nodo50.org
>
http://listas.nodo50.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/womeninblack
> this is the international WiB mailing-out list, for
> the INTERACTIVE WiB e-list, go to
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/interactiveWiB



       
____________________________________________________________________________________Luggage? GPS? Comic books? 
Check out fitting gifts for grads at Yahoo! Search
http://search.yahoo.com/search?fr=oni_on_mail&p=graduation+gifts&cs=bz
-------------- next part --------------
_______________________________________________
womeninblack mailing list
womeninblack at listas.nodo50.org
http://listas.nodo50.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/womeninblack
this is the international WiB mailing-out list, for the INTERACTIVE WiB e-list, go to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/interactiveWiB