The Iraq Legacy: Millions of Women's Lives Destroyed

Esther Mandelstamm/April 6, 2006/11:00pm/Gender Issues

In 2004 on International Women's Day, George Bush addressed 250 women from around the world. "The advance of women's rights and the advance of liberty are ultimately inseparable" he said. Bush was being supported by his wife, who praised the administration's success in achieving greater rights for the Afghan women Bushy said "The advance of freedom in the greater Middle East has given new rights and new hopes to women there" Claims such as advance, new rights, new hopes have all become empty claims. Iraq's women have been the biggest losers in the post-invasion disaster. Men have been victim to the direct armed violence, but women have been hit hard by poverty, malnutrition, lack of health care, and a crumbling infrastructure, not least chronic power cuts (in some areas Iraq see electricity only available for two hours a day). Four million people were forced our of their homes in the past five years and 70 percent of them have been women and children. Families are suffering rising tension over scarce resource because the women are seeking refuge with relatives who already have limited space, food, and supplies. Many of these displaced women ended up in overcrowded public buildings under constant threat of eviction. Women are not immune to violence, political violence has also engulfed women in Iraq. "Islamist militias with links to political parties in government and insurgent groups opposing both the government and the occupation have particularly targeted Iraqi women and girls. Islamist puritanism is seeing women and girls being violently pressured to conform to rigid dress code." Women are being victim of "acid attacks" (deliberately designed to disfigure "transgressive" women's faces" to regulate personal movement and social behavior, just one of the sanctions of the new moral guardians of post-Saddam Iraq. In 2006 a women who lives in Bagdad recalled "resisted for a long time, but last year also started wearing the hijab, after I was threatened by several Islamist militants in front of my house. They are terrorising the whole neighbourhood, 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."
Now in 2008 the threat by Islamist militias and extremist groups has grown farther than just dress codes and calls for gender segregation at universities. Women who hold the titles as teachers, doctors, academics, lawyers, NGO activists, or politicians are not threatened, targets for assassinations. The kidnapping of women for ransom, and for sex trafficking into prostitution outside Iraq, and for sexual abuse have all taken root in post-Saddam Iraq.

I think this is a perfect example of "empty promises" that George Bush has said since this war started. These women are becoming victim and losing freedoms for no reason. These needs to be some sort of awareness plan to help these women from being physically attacked in anyway. Women don't deserve to be targeted and especially because some of these women hold important titles and that threaten the men's superiority over women.

http://www.alternet.org/reproductivejustice/80609/?page=1