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.