Women in Iraq

I know that we're entering the postwar period in Iraq and all, but just for giggles, let's take a look at what's happening in the country, shall we? The government we birthed into being has engendered a powerful fundamentalist strain that has made the country extremely dangerous for women (and not just KBR employees). Policewomen are being disarmed, officially, by the Iraqi government.

The Iraqi government has ordered all policewomen to hand in their guns for redistribution to men or face having their pay withheld, thwarting a U.S. initiative to bring women into the nation's police force.

The Interior Ministry, which oversees the police, issued the order late last month, according to ministry documents, U.S. officials and several of the women. It affects all officers who have earned the title "policewoman" by graduating from the police academy. It does not apply to men in the same type of jobs [...]

Without policewomen, Phillips said, there will be no officers to give pat-down searches to female suspects, even though women have joined the ranks of suicide bombers in Iraq. Last week, a female bomber killed at least 16 people north of Baghdad, at least the fifth such attack in Iraq this year.

Another U.S. advisor noted that forcing out female officers will hamper investigation of crimes such as rape, which stigmatizes women in Iraq, because few victims feel comfortable reporting it to policemen.

This is a death sentence for policewomen in Iraq. Police forces are often targeted by insurgents, and are subject to kidnapping and assassination. This undermines a four-year effort by the US military to integrate the police force by gender. An Interior Ministry official told an Army Brigadier General the following:

"Females are taken care of by men in this country. They are not out there being police officers."

Meanwhile, in the heavily Shiite south, women are being gunned down because of how they dress. Over 40 of them have been found this year.

Maj. Gen. Jalil Khalaf blamed sectarian groups that he said were trying to impose a strict interpretation of Islam. They dispatch patrols of motorbikes or unlicensed cars with tinted windows to accost women not wearing traditional dress and head scarves, he added.

"The women of Basra are being horrifically murdered and then dumped in the garbage with notes saying they were killed for un-Islamic behavior," Khalaf told The Associated Press. He said men with Western clothes or haircuts are also attacked in Basra, an oil-rich city some 30 miles from the Iranian border and 340 miles southeast of Baghdad.

"Those who are behind these atrocities are organized gangs who work under cover of religion, pretending to spread the instructions of Islam, but they are far from this religion," Khalaf said.

Not to mention the fact that gays and lesbians are singled out for murder in the country as well.

This is the country that we have pieced together with paper clips and tape. While we are walling off the country with 17 foot-high barriers and balkanizing the country into competing power groups of warlords and militias, we are blinding ourselves to the subjugation of women. They cannot serve in positions of power and authority. They cannot personally express themselves. The increasingly have nowhere to turn in the event of rape or assault.

This is a problem that doesn't get nearly enough coverage. We hear more about sectarianism (which has forced the police forces off the street beat), or the struggle to provide services, or the political stalemate. But the plight of Iraq's women is actually part of the larger story about how we've irreparably broken this country. This is a society now ruled by fundamentalists and willing to subjugate half their population. It's a direct result of the invasion, and it's being tacitly approved by a military occupation that reasons it should turn a blind eye and let this suppression play out. That this is a war being defended on the grounds that we've "liberated" the Iraqi people is the cruelest of ironies.