WUNRN
IRAQ - DECADE OF OCCUPATION FOR
IRAQI WOMEN
March
19, 2013 by Common Dreams
by Yifat Susskind and Yanar Mohammed
A decade
after the US invasion of Iraq, only one of the straw-man arguments for going to
war remains standing: “We did it for democracy and women’s rights."
And yet we
hear the same thing again and again from women in the shelters we operate
throughout Iraq: “Why are we living in these violent times?” They don’t mourn
the fall of Saddam, but women here have suffered 10 years of spiraling abuse,
including a spike in ‘honor killings,’ forced veiling, and a growing tolerance
for beating women into subordination.
If you talk
to women in war zones anywhere, they’ll tell you that domestic violence
increases in war-time. But in Iraq, violence against women has also been
systematic. And unknown to most Americans, it has been orchestrated by some of
the very forces that the US boosted to power.
Like
religious fundamentalists everywhere, these sectarian militias and clerics have
a social vision for their country that depends on subjugating women. But
because the US wagered that they could deliver stability, these men were
cultivated as allies in Iraq. As we now know, they never even got the stability
they traded women’s rights for.
The dynamic
was clearly at work in the drafting of Iraq’s constitution, heavily brokered by
the US. To pass it, the US needed support from Islamist parties. They got it by
trading away women’s rights. In fact, the current constitution is a huge step
backwards for Iraqi women. It replaces one of the Middle East’s most expansive
laws on the status of women, dating from 1959, with separate and unequal laws
on the basis of sex. They subjected Iraqi women to a newly introduced Sharia
law promoted in an article in the new constitution.
When Yusra*
arrived at one of our shelters, she told a harrowing story of brutal abuse at
the hands of her husband and her father. The shelter was the one place she
could turn. Under the new constitution, she knew she wouldn’t get justice from
the religious courts, where her testimony is worth half of her husband’s and
where the laws allow the husband to “discipline” his wife.
At our
shelter, Yusra bonded with other women, who had also escaped violence. They
shared their dream of living in a country that guarantees them equal rights.
And they began organizing to demand those rights.
Like women
and men throughout the region, Yusra and her friends have filled the public
square in Baghdad every Friday for two years now, demanding the freedom to
assemble peacefully, and calling for equal protection under the law. These
women are fighting for the same democratic principles we all believe in. They
know from hard experience that there is no democracy without women’s rights and
that women’s rights will not be delivered by foreign troops.
For women in
Iraq, the past 10 years have been filled with war and violence. They want to
move beyond mere survival and build the country they dream of. Help us build
that dream. And let’s remember what strong-willed people can accomplish in the
face of injustice and impunity.
*Name
changed to protect her identity.