Women in Iraq

Autor: Patricia Rich

Originally Published at Peace and Conflict Monitor on: 03/05/2009

Category: Essay

Aspart of the United States led, so-called and on-going “war on terrorism”, the
US government has used a discourse of women’s liberation as a moralistic
justification for their actions.[1]

Tales of the Taliban’s treatment of women in Afghanistan emerged from the White
House and the western media fixated on the image of the veil;[2] the west
became obsessed with women oppressed by fundamentalist Islam. Indeed many
feminists pledged their support for the “war” upon the basis that these women
needed to be saved from the palms of tyranny.

The main purpose of this paper is to re-frame analysis of the Iraq war with the
issue of women brought to the fore. I propose that the invasion and subsequent
occupation of Iraq by coalition forces has hindered the empowerment of the
women who live there. Practically, the implications of this paper stretch
beyond Iraq and should resonate among all readers. The recommendations that I
shall make will be based on changing perceptions and re-framing analysis and
therefore should apply to all conflict situations, in the broadest
understanding of the term conflict.

Two models of conflict analysis that are useful to bear in mind whilst reading this
paper are the conflict spiral model and Galtung’s conflict triangle model (for
visual representations, please see appendix). The conflict spiral model (see
diagram 1) contends that conflict escalation forms a “vicious circle of action
and reaction.”[3]

Actors on all sides consider themselves to be the victims of aggression on the
part of the other party. This self-perception of victimhood breeds further and
increasingly violent behaviour spurred by fear and a desire for revenge.
Although designed specifically for two party conflicts this model is useful for
the Iraqi conflict, despite the plethora of actors. The coalition forces, the
Iraqi population and the insurgent movements (both local and foreign) comprehend
themselves as the victims of attacks perpetrated by others. Fear and the
perception of insecurity have fed into the escalation of violence in Iraq
throughout the occupation.

Galtung
describes cultural violence as “those aspects of culture, the symbolic sphere
of our existence … that can be used to justify or legitimize direct or
structural violence.”[4]

The conflict triangle model (see diagram 2) offered by Galtung highlights the
intimate relationship of the three manifestations of violence (direct,
structural and cultural), and serves to remind us that for positive peace to be
achieved, the elimination of all these forms must be realised.  Further, this
model clearly shows how cultural understandings inform the action and policies
of all conflicting parties and explains to us how direct and structural
violence become understood as justified.

The phenomenon of utilising the rhetoric of women’s rights is not new: British
colonial propaganda stated “female emancipation”[5] as an aim of the project of empire. The language served to moralise
colonisation, spurring western women to enter into the “service of colonisation,”[6] the
civilisation of local women.[7]

The recent employment of a discourse of women’s liberation within the “war on
terror” is comparable to that used during colonisation. As a result, the
perception of the “hegemonic western feminist” has created division between the
“west” and those they declare themselves to be saving.[8] It is an
attitude of saviour or protector which feeds the division and indeed runs
concurrent with established gender stereotypes; it is the woman that needs to
be saved, as with every western fairytale, there is a damsel in distress. This
stance denies the equality of the “oppressed” woman, rejects her agency, pities
her and elevates to a pedestal the western woman’s conception of liberation. It
must also be remembered that the rhetoric of women’s rights is indeed precisely
that, mere rhetoric, there has been no effort to address or highlight issues of
gender beyond the stereotyped ‘women oppressed by fundamentalist Islam’ image
presented to the public in order to “moralize and justify.”[9] Women have
largely been left out of the ‘reconstruction’ process in Iraq, despite the U.S.
being a signatory to United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325, which
calls for the inclusion of women in the peace and reconstruction process.[10] La
manipulation of the “oppressed woman” rhetoric can be described as “embedded
feminism”, which Hunt defines as the “incorporation of feminist discourse and
feminist activists into political projects that claim to serve the interests of
women but ultimately subordinate and/or subvert that goal”;[11] it is with
this definition in mind that we should turn to the case of Iraq.

Under Saddam Hussein, women in Iraq had begun to make some progress in the
improvements of their rights and empowerment. 1978 saw the introduction of a
national literacy campaign which legally obliged all illiterate adults, men and
women, to attend literacy classes. Primary education is compulsory for both
boys and girls and indeed “the majority of girls in urban areas go on to
secondary school and many to higher education.”[12] Most forms
of employment were open to women from “lorry- and bus-drivers … to doctors,
university professors and the top executive positions in ministries.”[13] As a
result of the Iran-Iraq war, which took so many men to the battlefield, women
stepped up to fill their posts. Whilst this did not represent the emancipation
of women in Iraq, the onset of change had begun. However, as a result of the
Gulf war of the 1990s, Hussein began to solicit support from his neighbours on
the basis of “Arab and Muslim solidarity”[14],
a by-product of which was the hindering of the women’s movement. The 1980s
provided women, of a certain generation in Iraq, with the experience of the
initiation of change in their societal position. Whilst the younger generation,
which had not been privy to the leaps made by their mothers, are generally more
conservative, there exists a generation in Iraq which continues to mobilise for
women’s rights.

The ideology of honour and shame carries much weight in Iraqi society. There exist
two main dimensions to honour, that of the sharaf and the ird:
whilst sharaf refers to honour in a more general sense, something which
can be ascribed at birth or attained through action, the other, ird, is
related to sexual conduct, the safeguarding of women’s purity.[15] [16] Primary
importance is granted to the ird as it reflects upon “male circles”[17], although
its preservation is held by the women.

Women’s honour is tied up with the honour of their birth family, as it is to them that
she “belongs”; Al-Khayyat describes women as “possessions of their natal family.”[18] After
marriage a woman retains her “natural” family’s name and if she was to be
divorced it would be to them that she would return. If an honour killing is to
be carried out it is “usually her brother or father, uncle or cousin”[19] who would
carry out the act. Further, it is to them that she would turn for protection. Honour
in Iraqi society is not individually held but bound within kinship and societal
relations. Therefore dishonour is communally held. An individual woman’s honour
is a matter for her family; collective women’s honour is a matter for society.

In May 2003, U.S. and British led coalition forces invaded Iraq, and since the “end”
of the war, they have been an occupying force in the country. Relations between
the coalition forces and the local population have been notoriously fragile, to
say the least. Since 2003 the country has witnessed spiralling levels of
violence; each conflicting party became increasingly fearful of the other, thus
stepping up their level of retaliation and entering into a cycle of violence.
The mindset of fear which is rife with regards to either side has served to
further polarise the conflicting parties, and led to a dire situation. The
treatment of women was never brought to the fore of public attention – it was
not perceived to be an important issue in comparison to security and weapons of
mass destruction, for example. However, as Victoria Fontan states, this was a grave
error as “gender represented the symptom of what was to come in terms of
insurgency.”[20]

Through a re-framed analysis of the conflict with specific reference to gender, I
intend that the consequences of the war and occupation for women in Iraq and the
conflict as a whole can better be understood. Further, this action in itself is
a recommendation for practice; as Enloe states, “Once you make inequities
visible you are also likely to make visible the power dynamics that create
those inequities.”[21]
This is the first step to dealing with any situation: acknowledgement and
visibility.

The importance of honour and shame, analysed above, allows us to understand the war
and occupation of Iraq as a humiliation for Iraqi society, as Fontan highlights
in Voices from Post-Saddam Iraq. The toppling of Saddam itself was
viewed as a point of humiliation from the perspective of the Iraqi citizenry:
“The greatest humiliation of all was to see foreigners topple Saddam, not
because we loved him, but because we could not do it ourselves”[22],
construing a sense of disempowerment. Occupation itself must be understood as
shameful for Iraqi society, the coalition forces came to save the population of
Iraq from tyranny, removing a dictator through military force in a display of
what the ‘west’ could do but the people themselves could not.

With regards to gender, practices carried out by the coalition forces served to
humiliate the carrier of honour, the woman and therefore society as a whole.  Following
the invasion of Iraq:

 

rumours of rape and abductions
increased because of unverified and inflated media coverage of the issue, fewer
and fewer women chose to leave their houses unaccompanied, and more resorted to
wearing a hejab, or scarf, over their heads when they ventured outside
their homes.[23]

 

Whether or not these rumours were “true” is not of importance here; what is fundamental
is the belief that they were true, and perception is reality. People reacted to
the rumours as if they were true, the rapes and abductions existed in
hyper-reality;[24] a communal feeling of insecurity was fostered. As a response to this fear women
withdrew from the public sphere, “reverted back to being that of a creature to
be protected from herself for the sake of family and collective honor”[25] and the
fires of insurgency were further fuelled.

Soldiers on the ground seemed to have a distinct lack of cultural training which led to
gendered humiliation. One example is that, following a rocket-propelled grenade
hitting a Military Police patrol, killing one, in June 2003, a raid was carried
out on a road in Fallujah. It is important to understand that the soldiers who
were carrying out the raid would have been the same as those who would have
cleared up “the remains of their colleague scattered on the road.”[26] Este
information is key. Bearing in mind the conflict spiral model we must seek to
understand that the soldiers would have been fearful and angry; these emotions
will have guided their actions. One woman who was alone in her house refused to
allow the soldiers to enter her home brandishing an AK-47 to protect herself. Within
the context of honour in Iraqi society, it would have been unacceptable for
these men to enter her home whilst she was there alone, “their intrusion would
tarnish her honour and that of her family.”[27]

She was arrested and taken to Abu-Ghraib prison, upon her release she
disappeared, neighbours professed that “she was thought to have been raped
during her time in prison, and that she was killed in order for her family’s
honour to be cleansed.”[28]

Here again the issue of hyper-reality becomes important, the suspicion of rape
– the rumour – led to actual consequences. Coalition forces throughout Iraq act
out of fear and anger, whilst remaining simultaneously ignorant of the cultural
context of their actions, thus feeding the perception that women are not being respected
by coalition forces and further entrenching the idea that women need to be
afforded protection.

Despite the rhetoric regarding women’s liberation in the discourse surrounding the “war
on terror”, there exists a stark lack of gender awareness in the policies and
actions of the U.S. led coalition forces in Iraq. In August 2003 the
Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI) sent a letter to Paul Bremer,
the head administrator of the occupation in Iraq, asking that he “use his
authority to address the ‘unprecedented violence against women’”.[29] They
never received a reply.

Vast numbers of women are trafficked out of Iraq and sold into prostitution in other
Gulf States. It is arguable that the routes these women are forced to follow
are the same used by foreign insurgency movements to enter the country. The
issue of trafficking is overlooked by the media and coalition, and they are
therefore blinded to the link between gender based violence and insecurity in
Iraq.[30]

Violence against women is considered to be a private, individual matter, not
constituting a security threat to the same extent as man-fighting-man-with-gun,
and is thus absent from the policy-makers’ agenda. The sidelining of gender has
held negative consequences for both the women in Iraq and the coalition forces.

In order to address the situation of women in Iraqi society and beyond we must
seek to work for the empowerment of society as a whole upon the basis of
equality. Rather than further polarising women and men by solely focusing on
women’s empowerment, efforts should be made to enter into a peaceful
empowerment process aimed at the transformation of societies scarred by
conflict.

One of the ways that this could be approached is to avoid the masculinised language
of security and instead adopt a discourse of peace. Issues of security are
associated with the masculine image of militarism; therefore in order to
address insecurity policy tends to focus on the men-with-guns issue. To achieve
peace however we must address all manifestations of violence: cultural,
structural, and direct.[31]
By changing the language through which we understand conflict we can start to
avoid the male dominated image that is most apparent.

Violence against women is largely attributed to the private sphere, where acts are
presumed to be individual and are rarely placed in the public realm. Sana Al-Kayyat’s
analysis of women in Iraq reveals that this perception is internalised by women
themselves who consider the violence to which they are subject a personal issue
rather than connecting it with the wider societal level problems.[32] In the
U.S. violence against women is also “treated as private matters with little
public consequence”[33]and is thus ignored at the policy level. Violence against women
needs to be elevated to a central socio-political issue, and afforded the attention paid to
insurgency and weapons of mass destruction, for example.

By re-framing our analysis to centralise gender issues and re-focusing our
language within the paradigm of peace, women can no longer be dismissed as an
issue to be sidelined, until “security” is achieved.

It is important to realise that primarily what is needed in terms of change is
self-reflection. Throughout history the white feminist has alienated herself
from her fellow woman by working within the patriarchal “western”
establishment. “Western” feminism must no longer enter into the discourse of
saving majority world women, but rather note that women in all societies are
not afforded emancipation. Often, the “western” woman is blind to her own
situation, believing herself to be “free”. One way to self-reflect is to change
all language which refers to males and females to that of race. In this way it
becomes clearer where oppression and discrimination are still rife.

As a British female, dare I say, feminist writer, it is important for me to turn to
my own culture, question and critique it, and fight against the continual
ignorance of gender issues in my own society. Further it is important to attempt
to understand how my society could be perceived as a threat to women in Iraq. The
commodification and sexualisation of women in western societies, when
understood in relation to honour and shame in Iraq, could be perceived as
threatening. The “western” feminist coming to save the oppressed majority world
woman, compounds with the “western” model of women’s liberation marketed as “progress”.
We need to recognise the need for gender to become a mainstream issue beyond
individual societies if we intend to empower society as a whole.

Whilst women were by no means “free” in Iraqi society under Saddam Hussein, this paper
has sought to show how a lack of gender awareness and a pattern of violence and
humiliation have served to repel women from the public sphere: “chained [women]
… back to the Iraqi kitchen floor”.[34]

Insecurity is understood in a masculinised light, and must be re-framed and
viewed through a gender sensitive lens. A gender aware analysis of a conflict
must not remain an area of specialisation and indeed should be apparent in
every analysis of conflict. It is only through gender issues becoming “mainstream”
that we can hope to empower society as a whole on the basis of equality. Until
then, women in Iraq and the world over will not break free of the direct,
structural and cultural manifestations of the violence inflicted upon us.

Footnote: