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A Decade of Occupation
By Yifat Susskind and Yanar Mohammed
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
A decade after the US invasion of Iraq, only one of the straw-man arguments for going to war remains standing: “We did it for democracy and women’s rights."
And yet we hear the same thing again and again from women in the shelters we operate throughout Iraq: “Why are we living in these violent times?” They don’t mourn the fall of Saddam, but women here have suffered 10 years of spiraling abuse, including a spike in ‘honor killings,’ forced veiling, and a growing tolerance for beating women into subordination.
If you talk to women in war zones anywhere, they’ll tell you that domestic violence increases in war-time. But in Iraq, violence against women has also been systematic. And unknown to most Americans, it has been orchestrated by some of the very forces that the US boosted to power.
Like religious fundamentalists everywhere, these sectarian militias and clerics have a social vision for their country that depends on subjugating women. But because the US wagered that they could deliver stability, these men were cultivated as allies in Iraq. As we now know, they never even got the stability they traded women’s rights for.
And yet we hear the same thing again and again from women in the shelters we operate throughout Iraq: “Why are we living in these violent times?” They don’t mourn the fall of Saddam, but women here have suffered 10 years of spiraling abuse, including a spike in ‘honor killings,’ forced veiling, and a growing tolerance for beating women into subordination.
If you talk to women in war zones anywhere, they’ll tell you that domestic violence increases in war-time. But in Iraq, violence against women has also been systematic. And unknown to most Americans, it has been orchestrated by some of the very forces that the US boosted to power.
Like religious fundamentalists everywhere, these sectarian militias and clerics have a social vision for their country that depends on subjugating women. But because the US wagered that they could deliver stability, these men were cultivated as allies in Iraq. As we now know, they never even got the stability they traded women’s rights for.
Full Article: http://www.zcommunications.org/a-decade-of-occupation-by-yifat-susskind