Author: Helena

Last August, there burst into the blogosphere a shining new light by the name of Riverbend. In her very first post, August 17, 2003, she told us:

A little bit about myself: I’m female, Iraqi and 24. I survived the war. That’s all you need to know. It’s all that matters these days anyway.

Since there is, understandably, quite a lot of interest these days in what has happened to Iraq’s women before, during, and since the US/UK invasion, I thought it would be good for JWN readers to do some good reading of the great blog that Riv provided us with between then and mid-June. (Some of us are quite worried about what has happened to Riv since then… Please, if anyone knows, tell me. meanwhile, do join us in beaming some good thoughts her way…)
Maybe the best thing you could do, if you have a bit of time and access to a good web connection, is to go cruise in River’s blog yourself.
However, in case you don’t have those great commodities, Adela of Abundance Alliance has helped us all by picking out some of the posts in which Riv comments and reflects most perinently on the situation of women in Iraq.
By August 23, Riv was giving us a first really great overview of women’s situation in post-invasion Iraq. In this post, titled We’ve only just begun, she wrote:

Females can no longer leave their homes alone. Each time I go out, E. and either a father, uncle or cousin has to accompany me. It feels like we’ve gone back 50 years ever since the beginning of the occupation. A woman, or girl, out alone, risks anything from insults to abduction. An outing has to be arranged at least an hour beforehand. I state that I need to buy something or have to visit someone. Two males have to be procured (preferably large) and ‘safety arrangements’ must be made in this total state of lawlessness. And always the question: “But do you have to go out and buy it? Can’t I get it for you?” No you can’t, because the kilo of eggplant I absolutely have to select with my own hands is just an excuse to see the light of day and walk down a street. The situation is incredibly frustrating to females who work or go to college.
Before the war, around 50% of the college students were females, and over 50% of the working force was composed of women. Not so anymore. We are seeing an increase of fundamentalism in Iraq which is terrifying.
For example, before the war, I would estimate (roughly) that about 55% of females in Baghdad wore a hijab- or headscarf. Hijabs do not signify fundamentalism. That is far from the case- although I, myself, don’t wear one, I have family and friends who do. The point is that, before, it didn’t really matter. It was *my* business whether I wore one or not- not the business of some fundamentalist on the street.
For those who don’t know (and I have discovered they are many more than I thought), a hijab only covers the hair and neck. The whole face shows and some women even wear it Grace Kelley style with a few locks of hair coming out of the front. A ‘burqa’ on the other hand, like the ones worn in Afghanistan, covers the whole head- hair, face and all.
I am female and Muslim. Before the occupation, I more or less dressed the way I wanted to. I lived in jeans and cotton pants and comfortable shirts. Now, I don’t dare leave the house in pants. A long skirt and loose shirt (preferably with long sleeves) has become necessary. A girl wearing jeans risks being attacked, abducted or insulted by fundamentalists who have been… liberated!
Fathers and mothers are keeping their daughters stashed safe at home. That’s why you see so few females in the streets (especially after 4 pm). Others are making their daughters, wives and sisters wear a hijab. Not to oppress them, but to protect them.
I lost my job for a similar reason. I’ll explain the whole depressing affair in another post. Girls are being made to quit college and school. My 14-year-old cousin (a straight-A student) is going to have to repeat the year because her parents decided to keep her home ever since the occupation. Why? Because the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq overtook an office next to her school and opened up a special ‘bureau’.
Men in black turbans (M.I.B.T.s as opposed to M.I.B.s) and dubious, shady figures dressed in black, head to foot, stand around the gates of the bureau in clusters, scanning the girls and teachers entering the secondary school. The dark, frowning figures stand ogling, leering and sometimes jeering at the ones not wearing a hijab or whose skirts aren’t long enough. In some areas, girls risk being attacked with acid if their clothes aren’t ‘proper’…

Continue reading “Riverbend on women in Iraq”

The Institute for War and Peace Reporting has put some very good pieces up in the past couple of days.
In its Iraq collection, it has this story from an un-named IWPR trainee who was taken to a training camp for a group calling itself the ‘Iraqi Resistance’. He (she?) writes:

A photograph of Saddam Hussein and his two sons hung on one wall, while the other displayed an old Iraqi flag and a sword.
This insurgent leader identified himself as a former intelligence officer who transferred to the paramilitary Saddam Fidayeen organisation before the war last year.
He explained his movement’s goal, “If we do not hold authority in Iraq, then we will allow no one else to hold authority.”

That latter statement seems to sum up the thinking behind a lot of what’s been going on in Iraq in the past few weeks: a campaign to try to make the country “ungovernable”, pure and simple.
The piece has a lot of other interesting tidbits, too.
This story, about the claimed finding of the body of former Iraqi president Abdel-Karim Qassam, and popular reactions to it, is somethng I hadn’t seen elsewhere.
Their Iraqi Press Monitor for July 19 refers to a story in Adalah that quotes Special tribunal chief Salim Chalabi as saying that two former Saddam henchmen–including former Foreign Minister Tarek Aziz–have agreed to testify against Saddam. Interesting. I hadn’t seen a reference to that anyplace else.
In IWPR’s Balkans collection, there’s a good think-piece by their editor in The Hague, Rachel Taylor, asking “Was Milosevic Charge Sheet Too Ambitious?”
Taylor recounts the whole history of how the three cases against Slobo–for Croatia, forBosnia, for Kosovo–all got joined into one. She quotes some people who have supported handling the case that way, and some who now criticize the stragey. For example:

Marieke Wierda, senior associate at the International Center for Transitional Justice and a former law clerk to Judge May, told IWPR that having one massive case is a ‘high stakes’ approach, because “if the accused is deemed unfit or dies during the case, then you are left with nothing”.
On the other hand, she said, if the prosecutors had gone forward with the Kosovo indictment first, they “could have had a conviction on Kosovo under their belts by now”.

Taylor also quotes Richard Dicker, head of Human Rights Watch’s International Justice Program, thus:

In the end, he said, people’s hopes for what such a trial can accomplish may just have been too high.
“Going forward, it is important that we have realistic expectations about the trial process and what is going to come out,” he explained. “Prosecutors should focus on a limited set of charges, or counts, for which the proof is strongest even though important incidents may not be included.
“The trials shouldn’t attempt to be a history book.”

The latest stories on Afghanistan on the IWPR site are worth reading, too.