MIDDLE EAST:Women are the main victims of increasing fundamentalism in Iraq, writes Michael Jansen
The decision of the Iraqi government to order policewomen to hand in their guns or risk having their pay withheld says volumes about a future for a country increasingly clouded by postwar religious and cultural conservatism.
The command was issued last month by the interior ministry which is run by the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC), a Shia fundamentalist faction founded by Iran in 1982.
Its justification was supposedly that there are not enough weapons to go round and that male members of the force need the arms more.
However, the central police arsenal in Baghdad contains more than 8,600 Glock pistols, the main sidearm issued to Iraqi police, and 120,000 are set to be delivered during 2008. Analysts argue that the real reason for the order is that men reject armed women in authority.
The measure involves all 1,000 female officers who graduated from the police academy. Brig Gen David Phillips, a US officer involved in training recruits from 2004, said about one-third had been women until early 2006, when the interior ministry took charge of recruitment and training.
Since then there have been no female admissions although hundreds have applied.
Disarming policewomen deprives them of the means to defend themselves, while pushing women out of the force creates problems in cases where women must be searched, and in investigations of rape and assault.
Women are the main victims of fundamentalists who have risen to power in postwar Iraq. Women and girls of all religious persuasions are compelled to wear the hijab or enveloping chador cloak by Shia and Sunni enforcers.
At least 40 women who did not adopt prescribed dress have been killed this year in Basra, once a liberal city, while women in Baghdad, who used to dress as they pleased and circulate freely, dare not leave home without covering their head and arms. The induction of the entire SIIC militia, the Badr Corps, into the police and army, and the re-emergence of the Mahdi army militia loyal to radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, are certain to increase discrimination against women.
Badrists and Sadrists have been implicated in violent crimes against women and can be expected to carry on imposing their conservative agenda as they consolidate their positions in the new Iraq.
The Sadrists are of particular concern to women's rights activists because they have imposed a ceasefire against US and government forces while they restructure their 60,000-strong militia, weed out undisciplined elements, and prepare to challenge SIIC-dominated government forces.
The hapless populace remains at the mercy of these militias, criminal elements and Sunni fundamentalist political and paramilitary organisations.
Meanwhile, Sadrist vigilantes round up men and women charged with breaking Islamic law and bring them before Sadrist courts while teenage Sadrists - who are taking over Shia urban neighbourhoods and submit to no one - assault and kill men and women accused of immorality.