TERROR IS LOSING By PAUL WOLFOWITZ, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense

One such [web] site shows Iraqi women demonstrating against Resolution 137, passed by the Iraqi Governing Council, which threatened women’s rights.

These women – who were exercising their right of free speech to demonstrate for women’s rights – were dressed in very conservative Muslim fashion. Yet, as one of them put it: ”We didn’t wait all these years without the most basic rights to be denied them now.”

An Arab reporter asked if she were Sunni or Shi’a. She snapped: ”I’m an Iraqi citizen first and foremost, and I refuse to be asked such a question.”

In increasing numbers, likeminded Iraqi women – and men – are making it clear they expect basic rights. People are listening. Not only did this pressure force the repeal of Resolution 137, but, when the new Iraqi interim constitution was signed March 8, it contained assurances of equal rights – and substantial representation – for women.

It also provides for other fundamental pillars of true democracy, including separation of powers and an independent judiciary, rule of law, fundamental civil rights and civilian control of the military. That’s a significant step forward that came from heated and healthy political debate – debate that would have been impossible a year ago.

While such debates do show that Iraqis disagree among themselves, they demonstrate – more importantly – that Iraqis can debate those issues openly and democratically. Significantly, in a recent opinion poll of Iraqis, 56 percent said things were going better today than a year ago; 71 percent said they thought they would be better off a year from now.

This is a long and disturbing article about what we are dying for in Iraq. mjh

President George W. Bush says that for the Iraqi people, Saddam Hussein’s removal ”was the beginning of their deliverance”:

”The liberation of Iraq was good for the Iraqi people, good for America, and good for the world. The fall of the Iraqi dictator has removed a source of violence, aggression, and instability from the Middle East.”

Women Under Siege by Lauren Sandler, The Nation (Posted December 11, 2003)

Millions of women have found themselves living under such de facto house arrest since the coalition forces claimed Baghdad in April [2003]. …

[A]s women here will remind you, the advantage to living under a police state is that the streets feel safe. As demeaning, terrifying and tragic as life under a dictator was for Iraqis, threats were not random acts from random criminals but rather tightly controlled, deliberately deployed terrors. These days the sheer unpredictability of violence is what makes the fear so pervasive. Then, women may have been afraid to step out of line, but now they’re afraid even to step outside their homes alone. …

”All cases that have to do with kidnapping, they are lies, they are not real. And after the war we haven’t received any case of rape,” says a thickly mustached Lieut. Khalil Majid Ahmed, who manages the all-male-staffed precinct. My questioning of this assertion was met with livid bellowing. ”Has anyone tried to assault you? No? So how can you judge? This subject should be closed!” His second in command–with matching mustache–named Lieut. Col. Ra’ad Heider, elaborated vehemently, ”Iraqi society has customs and traditions that keep us very well served. No American values are practiced here. Things that have to do with women, rape, that kind of thing–we will never follow American values!” …

For women, moreover, the sad irony is that while many Iraqis would see any attempt to help them as a US ploy, the coalition is doing nothing to help them anyway. … [T]he coalition failed to grapple with the human rights consequences of a power shift in that direction, especially as far as women, who make up 65 percent of Iraq’s war-ravaged population, are concerned. While new governmental ministries were created to support various causes like the environment and displaced people, a ministry of women’s affairs was immediately rejected. … Over dinner in the palace cafeteria one night, when I discussed the accelerating crisis for women with two high-ranking American officials in the Interior Ministry–which oversees police and security–I was told with shocking candor as my pen perched over my reporter’s notebook: ”We don’t do women.” It’s hardly a dirty secret that our government abroad views women’s rights as at most a secondary concern, yet it was thoroughly sobering to hear this lack of interest so casually discussed. … The Americans’ utter lack of comprehension of what Iraqi women have to offer was apparent at a meeting about women’s work prospects, when one well-meaning camouflage-clad officer said to rows of female attendees, including many professionals such as judges and doctors, ”Under the occupation, you can think about what work is appropriate for women to do–you don’t have to just sew anymore.”

Sad State: The Status of Women’s Rights Throughout the World – American Jurist – Features By Angela N. White, American Jurist [WARNING: shocking photo at the previous link]

Ironically, before Hussein took over – and even during part of his reign – women in Iraq enjoyed an unusual amount of freedom in the Middle East. For the past 40 years, Iraq’s civil code protected women by prohibiting marriage below the age of 18, as well as outlawing arbitrary divorce and polygamy. But now in post-war Iraq, women are fighting simply to retain the rights they once had.

The Iraqi Governing Council – backed by the U.S. – approved Resolution 137, which places family law under the jurisdiction of Islamic law. This would allow polygamy and divorce at will available only to men, as well as guaranteed custody of children by men in the event of divorce.

Furthermore, feminist activists attempting to restore women’s rights in Iraq have received death threats. And last fall, Aquila Hashima of Iraq’s Governing Council was murdered, according to the Feminist Majority. She was one of only three women on the Council.

This sobering overview notes conditions for women in Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, China, Pakistan, Nigeria and elsewhere. mjh

From the article:
It’s a man’s world. And women are paying the ultimate price to live in it.

Despite efforts by the United Nations and international organizations like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, systematic (and often government-sanctioned) violence against women remains a problem throughout the world. As a result, women are treated as prisoners, as slaves, as punching bags and as property. And it appears as though no woman is immune.

The Daily Star – Politics – Iraqi women try to stay the course after an advocate’s killing By Annia Ciezadlo

KARBALA, IRAQ: Those in public roles often face death threats, assassination attempts. ‘We are all targets,’ says an outspoken feminist. ‘There are many activists, but they cannot speak out boldly against political Islam.’

For their new women’s center, the women of Karbala chose the name of a warrior: Zainab al-Hawraa. Sister of the Shiite martyr Imam Hussein, Zainab fought alongside him in 680 AD, saving his young son and his legacy for future generations.

When Fern Holland heard the story, she laughed and told the women, ”We want all Iraqi women to be just like her.”

Holland, a young lawyer from Oklahoma, was women’s rights coordinator of Iraq’s Shiite heartland for the Coalition Provisional Authority. She helped write the portion of the new constitution addressing women’s rights. To the women in Karbala, she was ”just like a sister.”

On March 9, after visiting the center, Holland and her deputy, Salwa Ourmashi, and coalition press officer Robert Zangas were killed, their car forced off the road and machine gunned. Investigators arrested six suspects, four with valid Iraqi police ID.

Coalition officials hesitate to conclude if the three civilians were targeted for promoting women’s rights….

Over the past few months, Iraqi women in public roles, especially those who work with the US or promote women’s rights, have been targets of death threats and assassination attempts. Many large international aid groups, including most of those with women’s programs, have already withdrawn international staff, and the few remaining women’s groups fear they will be next. …

[E]ven devout women who wear the veil aren’t safe: Raja Habib Khuzai, a Shiite member of the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, received threats after opposing a measure that would have replaced Iraq’s civil personal status laws with Sharia law. …

Under Saddam Hussein, women enjoyed civil protections relatively advanced for the Arab world, a legacy of the pre-Baathist monarchy. But after the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, Hussein began courting Islamic hard-liners, segregating schools and decriminalizing polygamy and ”honor killings.”

After the 1991 Gulf War, women in Iraq’s Kurdish-controlled north passed laws protecting their rights, including one outlawing honor killings. But elsewhere, Saddam’s regimed clamped down on women, especially in the south, where Saddam executed tens of thousands of Shiites.

Today, women make up about two-thirds of southern Iraq’s population. Yet they are largely absent from public life.

We ‘liberated’ Afghanistan. They wrote a constitution that many Bush supporters have suggested is a shining example of what the world will be like after Duhbya finishes remaking it. Back in your burkas, girls! mjh

Women banned on Afghan province’s TV and radio

JALALABAD, Afghanistan (Reuters) – An Afghan province has banned women from performing on television and radio, declaring female entertainers un-Islamic.

The ban in Nangahar, a southeastern province heavily patrolled by U.S.-led troops hunting for Islamic militants, took effect from Friday and also covers women presenters of news and other information, an official said on Saturday.

The decision echoes the strict imposition of sharia Islamic law imposed during the Taliban’s repressive five-year rule of Afghanistan when television was banned, women were forbidden from working and girls were kept out of schools. …

Diplomats said Nangahar’s ban would be seen as a setback for moderates in President Hamid Karzai’s government in their battle with conservatives opposed to liberalisation since the Taliban’s overthrow.

AFGHANISTAN: Local radio makes impact in conservative Kandahar

Established just two months ago with the support of the Washington-based Afghan Cultural Society (ACS), Azad Afghan has a more challenging task of promoting democracy in the conservative, male-dominated and poor security environment of the south.

While the station is well equipped, with funding for the next three years, according to Zeyarmal, they have yet to be able to attract female workers pending safety concerns for women heard on the media. ”There are no female reporters in Kandahar, even in state media. Due to security and cultural limitations even educated women wouldn’t dare be heard via radio or seen on TV,” Zeryamal noted.

StarNewsOnline.com: The Voice of Southeastern North Carolina

Mr. Brahimi, a veteran of peacekeeping operations, most recently was in charge of putting together a government in Afghanistan, for which he won widespread praise. The Afghan model of convening a council of notables from around the country to approve a new constitution is similar to the one he has proposed for Iraq.

Remarks By First Lady Laura Bush at Kilmer for Congress Luncheon

Thanks to my husband’s decisions and America’s actions, 50 million people are free from tyranny and oppression. (Applause.) Consider the women and girls of Afghanistan. During the long years of the Taliban regime, they were virtual prisoners in their homes, unable to leave their home without a male relative. And if they didn’t have a male relative, they were actually forced to have to beg, because they were outlawed from going to school or to work.

Now the people of Afghanistan have new leaders, new freedoms and a constitution guaranteeing the rights of women. And thanks to my husband’s leadership and America’s actions, the people of Iraq are free from the tyranny and the torture of Saddam Hussein and today they are building a free and democratic society.

Yeah, right, Laura. After your husband finishes liberating the women of the world, he’s going to free American women from the tyranny of choice. mjh

Cheney Tells NRA Kerry Will Target Guns
Speech an Effort to Regain Momentum Lost in Dispute Over Assault Weapons
By Mike Allen, Washington Post Staff Writer

Vice President Cheney worked to mend White House relations with gun activists yesterday by warning a National Rifle Association convention in Pittsburgh that Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) would roll back rights of gun makers and users.

”John Kerry’s approach to the Second Amendment has been to regulate, regulate and regulate some more,” Cheney said.

The NRA worked enthusiastically for President Bush in 2000, but the group disagrees with his willingness to sign an extension to the 1994 ban on military-style assault weapons, which is set to expire in September.

Some of the group’s 4 million members, concerned about personal freedoms of all kinds, have also complained about the USA Patriot Act, which makes it easier for the Justice Department conduct surveillance on suspected terrorists, and oppose additional restrictions that have been imposed on air travelers since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The Bush campaign is scrambling to be sure it can count on NRA muscle again this year, especially as some of the states in which hunting is most popular are also swing states, including Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan. …

Quoting selectively from past Kerry remarks about the NRA, Cheney said Bush is the only one of the two candidates who ”has shown you respect, earned your vote, and appreciates your support.” …

A Kerry campaign statement responding to Cheney’s speech said the senator ”is a lifelong hunter, supports the Second Amendment and will defend hunting rights.” … Kerry also supports closing a loophole that allows people to evade background checks by buying weapons at gun shows, and would ban the ammunition known as ”cop-killer bullets.” …

NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre said in a telephone interview that while the group has differences with Bush, most members “still consider him a friend.” LaPierre said Kerry is ”probably the most anti-Second Amendment candidate in the country’s history,” and would ”go after every semi-automatic firearm in the country.” … The NRA estimates that the nation has 80 million hunters.

Lord knows how important semi-automatic weapons are to hunters. After we have your machine guns, we’re going to steal your granade launchers, too.

I often wonder what NRA members think of Iraq, where every male over the age of 10 owns a semi-automatic weapon. The poster child for the freedom to defend yourself from tyranny. Oh, wait, they’re hunting us. mjh