extremophile

Since the invasion of Iraq, previous protections for womens’ rights have been cancelled by conservative religious political coalitions intent on abolishing those protections:

In summer 2003, L. Paul Bremer, the top administrator of the US occupation, assembled the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC), described by The Washington Post as, “a body that will cooperate with [the occupation] and support policies that are generally in line with US interests.”⁴ The members of the IGC were hand–picked by Bremer, who retained final veto over the Council’s decisions. Among those who Bremer appointed were Islamists who openly declared their intent to restrict women’s rights._⁵ These same men are the architects of Iraq’s civil war. One of the first acts of the US–installed IGC was a harbinger of things to come: the Council replaced Iraq’s observance of International Women’s Day on March 8 with a celebration of the birthday of the daughter of the Prophet Mohammed.

Then, on December 29, 2003, the IGC held a quasi–secret vote to replace Iraq’s 1959 family law—among the most progressive in the region. The family law (also referred to as the personal status law) was enacted in 1959 by the left–leaning government of Abd Al Karim Qasim, who was later overthrown by the Ba’athists (with support from the United States). According to Huibin Amee Chew, “Aspects of the progressive family law persisted until the eve of the US invasion, when Iraq still remained exceptional in the region. Divorce cases were to be heard only in civil courts, polygamy was outlawed unless the first wife consented, and women divorcees had an equal right to custody over their children. Women’s income was recognized as independent from their husbands’.”_⁶ The law also restricted child marriage and granted women and men equal shares of inheritance._⁷

Through Resolution 137, IGC planned to replace the 1959 law with arbitrary interpretations ofSharia, or religious law. In January 2004, MADRE warned that, “If upheld, Resolution 137 could give self–appointed religious clerics the authority to deny women the rights to education, employment, freedom of movement and travel, inheritance, and custody of their children. Forced early marriage, polygamy, compulsory religious dress, and wife beating could all be sanctioned under the Resolution.”_⁸ Iraqi women took to the streets in protest of Resolution 137. Facing mounting pressure from US Congress members and women’s organizations, including MADRE, Bremer chose not to ratify the resolution.

Yet, despite the Bush Administration’s rhetoric about liberating Iraq, occupation authorities consistently undermined Iraqi women’s efforts to secure their human and legal rights. During the first year of US occupation, Iraqi women’s organizations appealed directly to Bremer, demanding that the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) that he headed train and dispatch security guards to help prevent violence against women and that the CPA prosecute crimes against women. These demands were ignored._⁹ Under Bremer, the US refused to honor a series of demands by women’s organizations, including calls to create a women’s ministry; appoint women to the drafting committee of Iraq’s interim constitution; guarantee that 40 percent of US appointees to Iraq’s new government were women; pass laws codifying women’s rights and criminalizing domestic violence; and uphold UN Security Council Resolution 1325, which mandates that women be included at all levels of decision–making in situations of peacemaking and post–war reconstruction.

“MADRE and other women’s organizations around
the world warned that right-wing, religious extremists
would be the greatest beneficiaries of a US invasion.”

Indeed, rather than support progressive and democratically minded Iraqis, including members of the women’s movement, the US threw its weight behind Iraq’s Shiite Islamists, calculating that these forces, long suppressed by Saddam Hussein, would cooperate with the occupation and deliver the stability needed for the US to implement its policies in Iraq.