Back in Iraq: Women are paying a heavy price in the lawlessness that pervades Iraq. But some women are fighting back and demanding equal treatment and rights, reports Lara Marlowe
Nine-year-old Zeina staggered into the lobby of the al-Fanar hotel one night in late summer, whimpering and limping, her grimy jeans and T-shirt dishevelled. She had been raped. Again. Iraqi women among the hotel's clients took pity on the child and took her to hospital, where doctors said they could do nothing without a police report. So Zeina was sent back onto the streets of Baghdad, to sleep under bushes and no doubt face further molestation.
It was through friends at the al-Fanar that Zeina came to the attention of Mr Michael Birmingham, an Irishman with the humanitarian group Voices in the Wilderness. "She was probably in an orphanage before the war," he says. "She's skinny, with short hair, very friendly. But there's a broken look in her eyes. It's pre-Dickensian on the streets of Baghdad - the children are at the mercy of criminals who exploit them."
A UNICEF-funded programme that might have saved children like Zeina was shut down after the UN's headquarters at the Canal Hotel was bombed on August 19th. Mr Birmingham is also attempting to help some of the thousands of Baghdad families who are being evicted by landlords hoping to make a quick buck from the city's sudden conversion to capitalism.
"They hire criminal gangs, 10-strong, many of them convicts who were freed by Saddam Hussein last year," he explains. "Several women have told me the gangs came to their apartment. They threaten to rape the women and kill the men if they don't leave."
The combination of lawlessness, Islamic fundamentalism and tribalism in post-war Iraq is making life even more dangerous for the weakest members of society - girls and women. Though it is impossible to obtain reliable statistics, Ms Leila Mohammed, the director of the Organisation for Women's Freedom in Iraq (OWFI), which is affiliated to the Communist party, estimates at least 400 women have been kidnapped, raped or murdered across the country since the US invasion. Sheikhs in the Shiite district of Ath-Thawra have threatened her and other feminists, and Ms Mohammed is accompanied everywhere by two pistol-bearing bodyguards.
"Only about 20 per cent of Iraqi women venture outside now," she says. "And they travel in groups of two or three, or with a brother to protect them."
Ms Surah Hamid (24), an editorial assistant at the Iraq Today newspaper, says she lives in constant fear. "At any moment, I can be attacked, by anyone. I can be raped or robbed or kidnapped, and no one will do anything to stop it. I'm a stubborn girl, so I still walk around my own neighbourhood in the daytime, but I go home well before dark. If any of my family have to leave the area, all five of us go together."
OWFI's newsletter relates terrifying stories of violence against women. One young woman was kidnapped from a beauty salon near the Swan Lake Hotel in middle-class Karrada as she was having her hair done for her wedding. She, like chubby-faced Ms Ammouda Haddi Hassan (33) simply disappeared without trace. Ms Hassan went out one morning to buy groceries, wearing a black Islamic robe and headscarf, and was never seen again.
"Anyone who knows anything should contact the nearest police station," says the newsletter.
In another article, a taxi driver recounts a wild car-chase through the streets of Baghdad, as a mini-van filled with gunmen attempted to kidnap a pretty passenger. The driver had the presence of mind to go to a political party office surrounded by armed guards, and the gunmen gave up.
Sh. M., identified only by her initials, was not so lucky. The university engineering student was walking with her mother in al-Saaydiyah, in southwest Baghdad, when gunmen knocked her mother over and grabbed her. She was dumped in the street four days later, her body and face so badly bruised that she could neither sit nor walk. "Luckily," the newsletter notes, "her family were educated and did not carry out an honour killing."
"Sometimes, a women is 'only' raped, and then she is discreetly killed by her family to 'reclaim its honour'," Ms Mohammed explains. Though Sh. M.'s family was understanding, she refuses to leave her room and cannot speak.
In late August, OWFI sent a letter to Mr Paul Bremer, the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, to alert him to what it called "an explosion of unprecedented violence against women ... without attracting the least attention of your troops".
The women's group demanded round-the-clock security guards and patrols, heavy sentences for sex offenders and "an administrative and legislative process that grants dignity and self-esteem for women". In particular, OWFI denounced as outrageous "your co-operation with backward political groups such as tribal heads or political Islamists ... the first price paid being the freedoms of women".
Five weeks later, the group has not received a response from Mr Bremer. Ms Mohammed says that tribal honour killings, which were conducted in secret under Saddam Hussein's regime, have become more widespread. Nearly half of all Iraqi marriages are between cousins, and women are sometimes murdered simply for refusing to marry their family's choice of bridegroom.
One of the cases reported by OWFI is that of Annahid, a teacher in her mid-20s who, since the US invasion, tried to marry against her family's wishes. Annahid's own father - incredibly, a lawyer - shot her dead, and male relatives allegedly took turns firing bullets into her body, then burned down the house of her boyfriend's family.
Ms Mohammed's assistant, Ms Hedeen Jowad, is an escapee from the tradition of honour-killing. She ran away from home, and has lived under an assumed name with her husband since her parents threatened them.
"If they found us, I really think they would kill us," she says. "It's because I wanted to marry outside my tribe, the Obeidis, and my husband is from the Alamis."
After she eloped with her boyfriend, her sister-in-law's family forced their daughter to divorce Ms Jowad's brother on the grounds that the family's honour was stained. One of her six sisters was forced to marry an old man she did not want. "This is our society," Ms Jowad says with a tinge of despair. "Girls must marry the man their parents choose for them."
In the West, apologists for the former Baathist regime used to claim the relative freedom of Iraqi women proved the dictator was progressive.
"Iraqi women lived well in the 1960s and 70s because of the Soviet influence," Ms Mohammed says.
"But Saddam never did anything for them. As his regime crumbled, he tried to exploit religious feeling. The 1991 family code deprived women of free choice in marriage and freedom to travel. It legalised polygamy. In the mid-90s, Saddam declared that women should stay home and raise children, and that jobs should be reserved for men. After the 2001 law on the public execution of prostitutes, more than 200 women were beheaded with swords across Iraq by Fedayeen Saddam. Some of them were not prostitutes, just women who annoyed Baathist officials."
Though the Provisional Authority and occupation troops have so far failed to provide basic security for the weakest members of this brutal society, the Americans are, in their way, attempting to promote women's rights. Three of the 25 members of the US-appointed Governing Council were women. But one, Ms Akila Hashemi, was assassinated in late September. No one is sure whether she was killed by fundamentalists because she was an unveiled Shiite woman, because she had worked for Saddam's diplomatic service, or simply because she refused US protection and was an easy target.
Now the authority has adopted an affirmative action policy, replacing men in the Iraqi foreign ministry with less-qualified women. "Some of the men are angry, and they're suffering," says Mr Mustafa Alrawi, the managing editor of Iraq Today. "It's a blanket policy - like de-Baathification. Akila's assassination brought women's issues to the foreground."
At this stage, Leila Mohammed and her colleagues at OWFI are far more concerned about staunching the violence against women than promoting gender equality in government. They blame Sheikh Muqtada Sadr, the radical young cleric in Najaf, for a ban on women attending university without veils in Basra.
Iraq is in the preliminary phases of drafting a new constitution. One crucial question is how the document will deal with tribalism and fundamentalism. Mr Bremer admitted last month that the coalition is paying Iraqi tribesmen to guard oil pipelines and electric power. In those areas, Iraqis say, tribal law now prevails.
"There must be a secular government based on separation of mosque and state," says Ms Mohammed. "If, as Mr Bremer said, Islam will be the religion of the state, everything will be controlled by Sharia.
"We are working to raise people's awareness. We want the end of occupation, and we want a secular government - it's the only hope for the rights of women."
Police opened fire yesterday to break up crowds of angry jobless Iraqis - including former soldiers - demonstrating in Baghdad and Mosul, as frustration at the country's economic woes boiled over.
In another of the virtually daily attacks on occupying forces, a female US soldier was killed and three of her colleagues were wounded by a bomb, near a former palace of ousted leader Saddam Hussein used by the US military as an army base.
The violence formed an uneasy backdrop to the start of the first school year since the fall of Saddam in April. The occupying powers are keen to present the return to school as a step towards normal life, although many lack textbooks and equipment.
The US soldier killed in Tikrit, Saddam's hometown, was the 82nd to die from hostile fire since President Bush declared major combat in Iraq over on May 1st. The remote-controlled bomb exploded 300 metres from the base as a military convoy passed by, the Army said. - (Reuters)