Iraqi
Women:Four Years
After The Invasion
By Dr. Nadje Al-Ali
16 March, 2007
fpif.org
The Humanitarian
Crisis
Every-day
survival is a priority in a context where lack of security goes side
by side with incredibly difficult living conditions. The Iraqi infrastructure
which was already severely debilitated as a result of economic sanctions
and a series of wars has deteriorated even further since 2003. Electricity
shortages, lack of access to potable water, malfunctioning sanitation
systems and a deteriorating health system are part of every-day lives
in post-2003 Iraq. Intisar K., who works as a doctor in a teaching hospital
in Baghdad, summed up what has also been documented in several UN-related
documents: “We only have electricity for three to a maximum of
five hours a day. There is not enough clean drinking water. Lack of
sanitation is a big problem and continues to be one of the main causes
of malnutrition, dysentery and death amongst young children.”
It is not only lack of electricity,
clean water and petrol that affects the very-day lives of Iraqi civilians.
According to recent reports published by the United Nations Children’s
Fund (UNICEF) and the British-based charity organization Medact, the
2003 invasion and ongoing occupation has led to the deterioration of
health conditions, including malnutrition, rise in vaccine-preventable
diseases and mortality rates for children under five. Iraq’s mortality
rate for children under five rose from 5 percent in 1990 to 12.5 percent
in 2004.1 Similar to the humanitarian crisis during the sanctions period,
women suffer particularly as they are often the last ones to eat after
feeding their children and husbands. They often watch powerlessly as
their often sick and malnourished children do not obtain adequate health
care.
Despite incredibly difficult
circumstances, Iraqi women have been at the forefront of trying to cope
with and improve the exceedingly difficult living conditions and humanitarian
crisis since 2003. There has been a flourishing of locally based women’s
initiatives and groups, mainly revolving around practical needs related
to widespread poverty, lack of adequate health care, lack of housing,
and lack of proper social services provided by the state. Women have
also pooled their resources to help address the need for education and
training, such as computer classes, as well as income generating projects.
Many of the initiatives filling the gap in terms of state provisions
where welfare and health are concerned are related to political parties
and religiously-motivated organizations and groups. However, independent
non-partisan professional women have also been mobilizing to help.
Violence against
Women
While aerial bombings of
residential areas are responsible for a large number of civilian deaths,
many Iraqis have lost their lives while being shot at by American or
British troops. Whole families have been wiped out as they were approaching
a checkpoint or did not recognize areas marked as prohibited. In addition
to the killing of innocent women, men and children, the occupation forces
have also been engaged in other forms of violence against women. There
have been numerous documented accounts about physical assaults at checkpoints,
and during house searches. Several women I talked to while conducting
research, reported that they had been verbally or physically threatened
and assaulted by soldiers as they were searched at checkpoints. American
forces have also arrested wives, sisters and daughters of suspected
insurgents in order to pressure them to surrender.2 Female relatives
have been literally taken hostage by U.S forces and used as bargaining
chips. Aside from the violence related to the arrests, those women who
were detained by the troops often suffer as well from the sense of shame
associated with such a detention. There has been mounting evidence not
just of physical assaults and torture but also of rape. Women who have
been detained may even become victims of so-called honor crimes.
Islamist militants and terrorist
groups also pose a particular danger to Iraqi women. Many women’s
organizations and activists inside Iraq have documented the increasing
Islamist threats to women: the pressure to conform to certain dress
codes, the restrictions in movement and behaviour, incidents of acid
thrown into women’s faces and even targeted killings. After the
U.S. invasion in 2003, many women in Basra, for example, reported that
they were forced to wear a headscarf or restrict their movements in
fear of harassment from men. Female students at the University of Basra
reported that since the war ended groups of men began stopping them
at the university gates, shouting at them if their heads were not covered.3
Not only students, but women
of all ages and walks of life are nowadays forced to comply to certain
dress codes and well as restrict their movement. Suad F., a former accountant
and mother of four children who lives in a Baghdad neighborhood that
used to be relatively mixed before the sectarian killings in 2005 and
2006 was telling me during a visit to Amman in 2006: “I resisted
for a long time, but last year I started wearing hijab, after I was
threatened by several Islamist militants in front of my house. They
are terrorizing the whole neighborhood, 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.”
By 2007, the threat posed
by Islamist militias as well as the mushrooming Islamist extremist groups
has gone far beyond imposed dress codes and calls for gender segregation
at universities. Despite -- or even partly because of the U.S. and U.K.
rhetoric about liberation and women’s rights -- women have been
pushed back even more into the background and into their homes. Women
who have a public profile, either as doctors, academics, lawyers, NGO
activists or politicians, are systematically threatened and have become
targets for assassinations. Criminal gangs have increased the general
”climate of fear” by kidnapping women for ransom as well
as to sexually abuse them and to traffic young women outside of Iraq
to sell them into prostitution.
What kind of Liberation?
UN resolution 1325/2000 aimed
at reducing gender inequality by appointing women to the government
and all ministries and committees dealing with systems of local and
national governance in Iraq. However, appointing women within political
parties and government institutions constitutes only one element of
political transition. More significant action would be the inclusion
of women’s presence and activism within the judiciary, policing,
human rights monitoring, the allocation of funds, free media development,
and all economic processes. Also important is the creation of independent
women’s groups, NGOs and community based organizations. Female
illiteracy rates and the general deterioration of the education system
would need immediate and urgent attention.
Unfortunately any discussion
about women’s rights and women’s inclusion in reconstruction
processes remains a theoretical exercise as long as the condition on
the ground remains. For the majority of women, basic survival for themselves
and their families overshadows any other concerns. Iraqi men and women
are nowadays known to leave their houses and say goodbye to their loved
ones as if they will never return. Depending on where you live in Iraq,
in which town and which part of a city like Baghdad, for example, the
chances of being killed by a U.S. sniper or missile might be high. In
other places, the risk of a suicide bomb or militant attack might be
greater. For women, the lack of security often results in severely restricted
mobility, generally only in the company of at least one male guardian.
“Gender Mainstreaming”:
A Failure in Post-Conflict Zones
The international community, including the U.S. and UK governments,
have increasingly supported the idea of “gender mainstreaming”
in post-conflict reconstruction and peace-building as stated in UN Resolution
1325/2000. However, a stated commitment to promoting women’s participation
does not guarantee that women are empowered to participate. Indeed,
the case of Iraq demonstrates that gender concerns may be sacrificed
to “greater priorities” -- namely, security and the political
agendas of different actors. It is necessary to examine how and when
gender-sensitive policies are pursued in post-conflict situations and
with what results for women and for men.
Most significantly in the
context of post-9/11 interventions -- the so called war on terror --
is the way women and human rights are being severely compromised by
the type of foreign military interventions, the ”internationalization”
of reconstruction and state building as well as the instrumentalization
of development and humanitarian aid as tools of global security. Feminist
activism within the UN framework has been discredited by the inability
of the UN to uphold international law and in some instances even rubberstamp
illegal operations. Women’s rights and gender mainstreaming have
become part of transferable packages driven not only by women’s
rights agendas but by neo-liberal international organizations, institutions,
and government agendas.
As is evident in both Iraq
and Afghanistan, ”post-conflict” political processes and
reconstruction are severely curtailed by escalating violence, and increasing
sectarian or ethnic conflicts. Similarly, women and women’s rights
have taken center stage. Democracy initiatives imposed from outside
and above inadvertently consolidates and possibly even legitimizes social
forces that oppose women’s equal rights and participation in public
life.
Despite all these severe
restrictions, there are still Iraqi women activists who are trying to
continue to provide services and humanitarian assistance as well as
mobilize politically to safeguard their shrinking rights. It is these
women who risk their lives on a daily basis who deserve the support
of the international community through solidarity activities, funding
and training. Rather than sending Western “gender experts”
to train Iraqi women, Western governments and international organizations
should facilitate encounters and exchanges with women from comparable
conflict and post-conflict situations, such as Bosnia-Herzegovina and
Afghanistan, for example. As it is impossible to organize meetings in
Baghdad and most other cities in Iraq, except for the Kurdish North,
international organizations and governments should also help more intensely
facilitate Iraqi women to meet in safe spaces such as Amman or Erbil.
However, as long as the U.S.
and British occupation lasts, there will be Islamist forces that, in
the name of fighting the occupation, will severely restrict women’s
participation in public life. Although I am under no illusion that the
violence will subside or that women will be better off immediately after
troop withdrawal, it will have to be a necessary step on the way to
create a sovereign state in which women’s rights can be discussed
without creating a bigger backlash for women inside Iraq.
Dr. Nadje Al-Ali is a professor at the Institute of
Arab & Islamic Studies, University of Exeter, UK and a Founding
member of Act Together:
Women’s Action for Iraq. She is the author of the
recently published book, Iraqi
Women: Untold Stories from 1948 to the Present, 2007.
Sources
1. See http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry
/iraq_statistics.html and
http://www.medact.org/content/
wmd_and_conflict/Medact%20Iraq%202004.pdf.
2. 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 well-being. People disappearing, random arrests as well as
torture and abuse in prisons are ironically common phenomena in post-Saddam
Iraq.
3. "Iraq: Female Harassment
from Religious Conservatives," IRINNews.org, April 14, 2004.
Published by Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF), a joint project of the
International Relations Center (IRC, online at www.irc-online.org) and
the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS, online at www.ips-dc.org). ©Creative
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