by Huda Jawad

Unlike other parts of the Middle East, Iraq was a country with significant advances in the spheres of health, education and academia, business, the arts and an expanding middle class: that is, up until the imposition of UN sanctions. Women's status and accomplishments in every sphere of life was something that was noted as a beacon for all the Middle East and the West to aspire to. Not only did they excel at the traditional roles of employment such as nursing, teaching and administration, but were found in significant numbers in non-traditional roles such as engineering, pharmaceuticals, medicine, science, the telecommunications industry, politics, the military - and they were entrepreneurs in their own right.

Huda Jawad is Program Director of Forward Thinking

As war gripped the country and the vacuum of power created opportunities for all kinds of desperate and fundamentalist doctrines, the horrors being inflicted on women and girls became increasingly apparent. But the violence and oppression of women in Iraq is not a new phenomenon. Whether administered by the state or ‘the clan' directly against women, or indirectly through violence committed against their husbands and sons, the often cited progress of women in Iraq was made despite such violence, not because of its absence.

Violence and fear aimed specifically against women was a form of torture that was professionalised and refined by the regime of Saddam and some Western countries are implicated in the supply of torture ‘products' and training to the regime. It is notable that the silence of Saddam's former allies on such abuses did not break until late 2002 when the drums of war were being heard.

Violence against women did not start with Saddam, but it certainly didn't end with the removal of his regime, something that was explicitly and implicitly promised to the Iraqi people by the orchestrators of war. Since the war we have heard evidence of countless cases in all parts of Iraq where women have been the victims of horrific and appalling violence at the hands of all sectors of society whether religious or tribal. Women too have been implicated in such heinous acts. The violence ranges from planning the assassination of women politicians and the ‘moral policing' of various militias using acid, guns, kidnapping or rape to terrorise schools, colleges and neighbourhoods - to terrorizing women who violate the previously unobserved code of dress and the actions of community leaders against women who have ‘dishonoured' the family or clan. This along with the increasing ‘Talibanization' of Iraq makes living as a woman in Iraq a physical and psychological nightmare.

What is truly appalling about this is not only that this is taking place and that it is happening under the watch of the ‘coalition of the willing' but that those who cited these very reasons as justifications for war are washing their hands of this responsibility and colluding with the perpetrators of violence partly for political capital ‘back home'. There is also the increasing realisation that the trouble resulting from the careless shattering of Pandora's box can't be quite contained through ‘soft' policing or throwing reconstruction money at the shattered social infrastructure of Iraq.

Coalition forces such as the British Forces in Basra have chosen to hand over power to ‘local leaders' who are intimately connected with the two main militias: that of the Hizbul Fathila and Jeyshul Mahdi. Jeyshul Mahdi have split into a number of factions that are either loyal to Muqtada Al Sader or anyone that can afford their services. To make matters worse, a number of militias funded by various political parties such as Dawah or others doing the work of Kuwait or Saudi Arabia, such as the Tha'irulallah malitia and Seyyid Al Shuhaddah militias are among many that have mushroomed right under the nose of the ‘liberators' and in some instances have been given the authority to govern. What is inexcusable is creating an environment where matters are made worse than before the war, where chaos reigns and reinforces oppression by empowering the very factions that make it their business to terrorise Iraqi women and civilians.

In the face of stark political choices, it appears that women's emancipation is not a priority in the West as well as the east after all.