Monday February 4, 2008, 5:21 am
America now, like Roman Empire then, is moving from continent to continent, using lies and ''swords'' to create Slave Camps.

Monday February 4, 2008, 11:40 am
For centuries, Iraqi women struggled for their human rights. It wasn't until the 1960's that some improvements in constitutional women's rights were implemented. During the seventies and eighties, women's rights improved significantly, providing better educational opportunities, political involvement, equal job opportunities, health care and development of laws and regulations to ensure a better life for Iraqi women and girls.

Deterioration of women's rights in Iraq began during the US-UN comprehensive economical sanctions imposed on Iraqi during the nineties. In 2003, the invasion of Iraq by the USA and its allies resulted in the descent of the rights of women just like other elements in Iraqi society, infrastructure and the general quality of life.

To define the extent of the USA occupation impact on women's rights and living conditions, a survey composed of 21 questions was distributed in two major cities:
Inside Baghdad, Iraq in the Karada District, and
Kudsiya area in Damascus, Syria where more than 200,000 Iraqi refugees live.
The 150 women who answered the survey were a part of 150 families or households composed of a total of 502 Iraqis.

Statistical analysis of the questions of the survey indicated dangerous trends in the security status that drove Iraqi women out of their jobs, where 85% of the studied women are unemployed (taking into consideration that the large majority of this percentage have a formal education). The study also indicated that 36% of the studied families lived with no income or a very low income of $100/month or less which has lead to women and children doing menial labor or begging. Also, it was found that 87 families have a victim of either occupation forces or sectarian violence. The mortality rate among this targeted displaced population is 193 per 1000. this high mortality rate is an indication of genocide existing amongst the migrated and displaced population. Missing family members rate at 12.7, and it is also estimated that 20% of the students of the studied women's families are having difficulties and failing schools. A percentage of other students quit school altogether.

The occupation is totally responsible for the deterioration and destruction of women's lives and rights in Iraq. Iraqi women under occupation need the help of their sisters in international women's organizations abroad to help protect them and protect their rights. They also have the right to resist the occupier in every way available to reclaim their lost lives and ensure a better life for themselves and their families.

Introduction

Prior to 1920, Iraqi women’s rights were not truly recognized under the Ottoman Empire rule. Iraq was occupied for four centuries under this rule which saw virtually no advancement of rights for women. The situation did not improve much under the tribal, religious ruling during the British occupation and colonial period of 1920-1958.

In 1958, Iraq became a Republic and for the first time ever, women’s rights began to improve, when the government of General Abdul-Kareem Kasim supported by the Iraqi Communist Party amended Personal Status Law to grant equal inheritance and divorce rights. This Personal Status Law also relegated divorce, inheritance and marriage to civil, instead of religious, courts, andprovided for child support.

After that, Iraqi women and girls began enjoying relatively more rights than many of their counterparts in the Middle East.

The primary underpinning of women’s equality is contained in the Iraqi provisional constitution, which was drafted by the Ba’ath party in 1970.

Article 19 declares all citizens equal before the law regardless of sex, blood, language, social origin, or religion.

Enrolment of women and girls in rural areas in literacy centers under the illiteracy eradication legislation of 1979 transferred women in Iraq into a new level of education, labor, and employment. With other employment laws, the opportunities in the civil service sector, maternity benefits, and stringent laws against harassment in the work place allowed Iraqi women larger involvement in building their careers.

Women attained the right to vote and run for office in 1980. In 1986 Iraq became one of the first countries to ratify the Convention on Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

During the 1990’s, the (US-UN) sanctions imposed on Iraq had a great impact on women and children in Iraq. The financial crippling of families resulted in an increase of female illiteracy as many families could not afford to send their children to school.

To compare through numbers, according to (UNESCO) by the year of 1987, approximately 75 percent of Iraqi women were literate, but by end of 2000, the percentage of literate women dropped to less than 25 percent.

The criminal comprehensive economic sanctions imposed on Iraq not only prepared the situation in Iraq for the American aggressor to occupy the country and take over the oil reserves, but it also put a halt to the significant advancement in women rights and the improved living conditions they had struggled hundreds of years to earn.

By the end of the nineties, the economic constraints pushed women to leave their jobs and return to their traditional role in the home. The tremendous pressure and burden the Iraqi women have gone through since the illegal sanctions is indescribable, where she has had to feed the children with no food, take care of ill family members with no medicine, and bury her loved ones as an advanced sacrifice to the US invasion of Iraq.

Iraqi women proved to be reliable, enthusiastic and hard workers when given the chance to have a proper education and human rights.

By the end of the year 2000, many Iraqi women who worked as scientists, engineers, medical doctors, artists, poets, journalists, and educators proved that they not only can be equal to their counterparts, but more responsible to their historic challenge as an important integral half of society.

Iraqi Women Under Occupation:

Like other parts of society, Iraqi women lives, rights, and living environment was drastically changed by the military operations during the invasion of Iraq in March-April 2003.
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PLEASE READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE FOR COMPREHENSIVE STATISTICAL SURVEYS PROVING THESE POINTS MADE.

INSANE AS IT SOUNDS, I REMEMBER A CONGRESSWOMAN BEFORE THE WAR AND OCCUPATION OF IRAQ, JUSTIFYING IT AS "LIBERATING" IRAQI WOMEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

THIS SPURIOUS PROPAGANDA IS DESIGNED TO APPEAL TO SUPERFICIAL "FEMINISTS" AND THOSE WHO DON'T KNOW ANY BETTER. IT IS NOTHING BUT A VERSION OF THE OLD, OLD RACIST, SEXIST STEREOTYPE OF THE BRAWNY U.S. MARINE RESCUING THE DAMSEL IN DISTRESS.
RACIST, SEXIST, CHAUVINISTIC, MINDLESS...... to think that Middle Eastern women aren't CAPABLE OF HELPING THEMSELVES!

The SAME PROPAGANDA is now being used, against IRANIAN women! To stir up hatred against Iran -- again, Iranian women have their own problems, are dealing with them, and of course any bombing of Iran would make Iranian women's situation FAR WORSE also.

The U.S. public is being SOLD on the self-congratulatory image, that we are LIBERATING people, rather than ENSLAVING THEM TO CORPORATE CAPITALISM. {Please read Naomi Klein's book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. A MUST-READ for our times!}

Wars and disasters and community dissolution, LEAD TO MORE INFLUENCE BY FUNDAMENTALIST RELIGIOUS GROUPS. These groups may be the ONLY cohesive force in their communities, for protection, for relief, for shelter, for comfort. In exchange for these benefits, however, WOMEN LOSE MANY OF THEIR HARD-WON FREEDOMS AND ARE FORCED INTO RESTRICTIVE CLOTHING AND HANDING OVER THEIR CONTROL ENTIRELY TO MEN.
Just exactly the OPPOSITE of what this IDIOT CONGRESSWOMAN thought would happen!!!

Monday February 4, 2008, 11:53 am
When American soldiers find out the TRUTH about how they are being USED, and how the results are JUST EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT THE PROPAGANDA TOLD THEM, i.e., that they are actually DESTROYERS rather than "Liberators":

THEN, when they find out, U.S. soldiers {including female soldiers} ATTEMPT SUICIDE AT THE RATE OF FIVE A DAY. This is a MAJOR PROBLEM in the American Army. And the Military, OF COURSE, says NOTHING about the TRUE REASON for it.
Better the soldiers should DESERT when they find out the truth: to REDEEM the meaning of their lives, rather than to pointlessly TAKE their own lives.

Monday February 4, 2008, 2:43 pm
IRAQ: Violence Draws Veil Over Women
By Ahmed Ali and Dahr Jamail*

BAQUBA, Jan 31 (IPS) - Conditions are particularly difficult for women in Baquba, despite the relative lull in violence. The city, about 40 km northeast of Baghdad, is capital of Diyala province, amongst the most troubled regions of Iraq in recent months.

As in all conflict areas, women, along with children and the elderly, have suffered most. A large number of women have been killed or kidnapped during close to five years of occupation.

Before the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, women in Iraq had jobs and enjoyed civil rights they can hardly dream of any more.

"My neighbour was killed because she was accused of working in the directorate-general of police of Diyala," resident Um Haider told IPS. "This woman worked as a receptionist in the governor's office, and not in the police. She was in charge of checking women who work in the governor's office."

Killings like this have led countless women to quit jobs, or to change them.

"I was head of the personnel division in an office," a local woman speaking on condition of anonymity told IPS. "On the insistence of my family and relatives, I gave up my position and chose to be an employee."

Women's lives have changed, and they are beginning to look different. They are now too afraid to wear anything but conservative dresses -- modern clothes could be a death warrant. The veil is particularly dominant in areas under the control of militias.

"My friend could not recognise his wife when she passed him on her way to school because she had her face veiled," Najmidden Khamis, a local grocer, told IPS. "Earlier some liked it and others rejected it, but now it is dominant given the lack of law and government."

"The veil is undesirable in university society," an academic speaking on condition of anonymity told IPS. "I myself reject the idea because if I do not see the face of my student, how is it possible to tell who it is, or even whether it is a man or woman, especially at examinations?"

But many women do wear the veil because they choose to. "The principles of Islam are that a woman should cover her whole body including the face," said a local woman employee in a public office. "Uncovering the face is a sin."

"This matter is controversial," says the sheikh at a local mosque. "The majority of specialists say that the woman should cover everything except the face and the palm of the hand. Many may put veils on the face because they are forced to."

That the issue is controversial is clear. "This is a violation and transgression of women's rights," a local communist supporter told IPS. It comes on top of severe restrictions on women these days, he said. "A woman is not allowed out of home freely, and she has frequently to be escorted by someone like her husband or her brother."

Women are paying a price for the occupation in all sorts of ways.

"Women bear great pain and risks when militants control the streets," Um Basim, a mother of three, told IPS. "No man can move here or there. When a man is killed, the body is taken to the morgue. The body has to be received by the family, so women often go alone to the morgue to escort the body home. Some are targeted by militants when they do this."

Confined to home, many women live in isolation and depression.

"Women have nowhere to go to spend leisure time," Um Ali, a married woman, told IPS. "Our time is spent only at home now. I have not travelled outside Baquba for more than four years. The only place I can go to is my parents' home. Housekeeping and children have been all my life; I have no goals to attain, no education to complete. Sometimes, I can't leave home for weeks."

Before the invasion, she said, "we, the family, used to go to Baghdad or other provinces to visit friends and places. We used to go with the children for festivals and vacations."

"Iraqi women lack the freedom to do anything, and this, of course, depends on the cultural status of the society in which they live," a local woman told IPS. "The freedom given to women in Baghdad differs from that in Baquba or in the south of Iraq. But society in general and the family in particular enjoy absolute power over the woman nowadays."

"Women's status in Iraq needs a great revolution," the head of a division of the directorate-general of communications, and mother of two children, told IPS. "Things were going very well, but the absence of law that came with the occupation, which created the extremist militants, has ruined the prestige of woman. The bad status is a result of the bad security situation. Any improvement in women's status means an improvement in the political situation."

(*Ahmed, our correspondent in Iraq's Diyala province, works in close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who travels extensively in the region)

Monday February 4, 2008, 6:38 pm
to me, it's quite enlightning this situation.
Remember what happened in Afganistan? Paquistan?
Wherever these so called wars for peace and to end terrorism end up in empowering fanatics and making women loose the few rights they had conquered in those culltures.
I think we should stick our hand in our conscience and see what we are allowing some few to do.
It's in our hands too try to get them out of power positions. So lets stop crying over the hatchet that may fall, and start acting, using our rights.

Monday February 4, 2008, 7:22 pm
noted

Tuesday February 5, 2008, 3:13 am
Maria Cristina
BRAVO!!!