Women in Iraq

There has been a lot of news coverage devoted over the last few days to the ghoulish story of an employee of KBR (Kellogg, Brown and Root), a former subsidiary of Halliburton (Dick Cheney's private empire), and her vicious gang rape and imprisonment by her fellow colleagues.

As horrible as this story is, it's only the latest in a raft of stories about the catastrophic decline of the rights of women in Iraq. For all the rhetoric about liberating the Iraqi people, all the blase Bush administration propaganda about 'rape rooms' under Saddam, the endless litany of human rights abuses recited during the war, after our WMD excuse fell through, what does it say about the grand military experiment by the greatest power in the world when we sit by and allow this slide into the dark ages to occur?

Nothing good, that's for sure.

First, it's worth noting that since the United States took power, of a sort, in Iraq, women have been under ever-increasing pressure from the theocratic thugs who are seizing the reins of government.

The government under Saddam was a mostly secular dictatorship. It had little interest, in particular, in abusing or oppressing women. I mean, it had a great deal of interest in abusing and oppressing, well, everyone. And a definite focus on genocide against certain ethnic groups (say, the Kurds, Mash Arabs, etc).

Despite what your Neo-Conservatives might claim, it does not diminish these terrible crimes to note that under Saddam, Iraqi women had it better than they do today. The United States shares no small part of the blame for this sad state of affairs.

As the Shiite theocratic parties take control, women are being subjected to a reign of terror. Notably starting in the Shiite stronghold of Basra, in Iraq's south, but having spread north as society crumbles, women are targeted for torture, mutilation and death. Their crimes? Wearing makeup. Not wearing a veil. Seeking basic human rights and dignity.

BASRA, Iraq, Dec 5 (Reuters) - Women in Iraq's southern city of Basra are living in fear. More than 40 have been killed and their bodies dumped in the streets in the past five months for behaviour deemed un-Islamic, the city's police chief says.

A warning scrawled in red on a wall threatens any woman who wears makeup or appears in public without an Islamic headscarf with dire punishment.

"Whoever disobeys will be punished. God is our witness that we have conveyed this message," it says.

Good to know they have God on their side; just like every other lunatic killer in the world.

Funny how God never tells people to get along and respect civil rights, huh.

A group of tribal Shi'ite leaders told Reuters in October that Shi'ite Islamist political parties were imposing strict Islamic rules in southern provinces and using their armed followers to create a state of fear.

The sheikhs, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the conservative attitudes meant that only religious music was now allowed to be played in public places and dancing was forbidden, as was drinking alcohol.

You know the news is depressing when it reads like The Handmaid's Tale.

The United States meanwhile stands by and does nothing to stop this erosion of rights; hell, we even set the example, as with the recent KBR scandal.

The Kellogg Brown and Root scandal serves to illustrate both the complete lawlessness we have devised in Iraq and the low regard we hold, not just Iraqi women, but our own, when outside of the civilizing legal framework at home.  

The story is as simple as it is ghastly.

Jamie Leigh Jones, now 22, says that after she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she'd be out of a job.

"Don't plan on working back in Iraq. There won't be a position here, and there won't be a position in Houston," Jones says she was told.

In a lawsuit filed in federal court against Halliburton and its then-subsidiary KBR, Jones says she was held in the shipping container for at least 24 hours without food or water by KBR, which posted armed security guards outside her door, who would not let her leave.

Her co-workers raped her; her company decided to imprison her and try to shut her up. They held her against her will in a box, a literal god damned box, for being a rape victim. Because it was bad PR.

In the end, it took a minor miracle to even get out of this abduction alive.

Finally, Jones says, she convinced a sympathetic guard to loan her a cell phone so she could call her father in Texas.

"I said, 'Dad, I've been raped. I don't know what to do. I'm in this container, and I'm not able to leave,'" she said. Her father called their congressman, Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas.

"We contacted the State Department first," Poe told ABCNews.com, "and told them of the urgency of rescuing an American citizen" -- from her American employer.

Poe says his office contacted the State Department, which quickly dispatched agents from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad to Jones' camp, where they rescued her from the container.

That's right; we had to send the State Department to rescue a kidnapped rape victim from an American company. It sounds like the plot to bad movie, doesn

But this really happened.

Will the men who raped her face prosecution? Well, that's unlikely for two reasons. One is the fact that US military contractors in Iraq are exempt from Iraqi and US law, a legacy of Paul Bremer, Viceroy of Iraq.

The other is the fact that the Army ensured that the evidence of her rape would be conveniently disappeared.

Jones told ABCNews.com that an examination by Army doctors showed she had been raped "both vaginally and anally," but that the the rape kit disappeared after it was handed over to KBR security officers.

They handed over the evidence of a crime. To the criminals.

Gee Mr. Corleone, could you hold on to this pistol for us? We'd be EVER so grateful!

Even as we allow our contractors to run rampant, we let our 'allies' in the Iraqi government disarm and segregate women, driving them out of professional work and literally leaving them helpless second-class citizens.

BAGHDAD -- The Iraqi government has ordered all policewomen to hand in their guns for redistribution to men or face having their pay withheld, thwarting a U.S. initiative to bring women into the nation's police force.

The Interior Ministry, which oversees the police, issued the order late last month, according to ministry documents, U.S. officials and several of the women. It affects all officers who have earned the title "policewoman" by graduating from the police academy. It does not apply to men in the same type of jobs.

Of course it doesn't.

We've spent 800 billion dollars on this experiment in government by explosion, and what do we get for it? A LESS democratic, more violent, more religiously hostile society? Gee, what a value.

Critics say the move is the latest sign of the religious and cultural conservatism that has taken hold in Iraq since Saddam Hussein's ouster ushered in a government dominated by Shiite Muslims. Now, that tendency is hampering efforts to bring stability to Iraq by driving women from the force, said U.S. Army Brig. Gen. David Phillips, who has led the effort to recruit female officers.

Even better of course is the fact that this will end up getting more of our soldiers killed.

Without policewomen, Phillips said, there will be no officers to give pat-down searches to female suspects, even though women have joined the ranks of suicide bombers in Iraq. Last week, a female bomber killed at least 16 people north of Baghdad, at least the fifth such attack in Iraq this year.

Oh good, we had too much security going on. 

It's not so hot for the Iraqi women either, naturally.

Another U.S. advisor noted that forcing out female officers will hamper investigation of crimes such as rape, which stigmatizes women in Iraq, because few victims feel comfortable reporting it to policemen.

This of course assumes that you want such crimes prosecuted in the first place.

What about the women who have taken our side and taken up arms, literally, to try and put their shattered country back together?

Well guess what. It's not good to be a US ally in the Middle East (Israel excepted of course) -- just ask the Kurds.

Policewomen say the decree also will leave them unable to protect themselves at work or off duty. Scores of police employees, both officers and administrative workers, have been killed by insurgents. Men and women have traditionally been allowed to carry their Glock pistols with them after hours for security.

"We are considered policewomen. We face kidnapping. We could be assassinated. If anyone knew where we worked, of course they would try to do something to us," said a 27-year-old interviewed Sunday.

"How can I be a policewoman without a weapon?" she asked incredulously as three female colleagues nodded in agreement.

Well, you're not supposed to be one. That's the point. You're supposed to stay at home, wear a veil, shut up and pop out kids. If you get out of line, there's a Mahdi militia man ready to teach you the error of your ways.

With a power drill.

Phillips, who works closely with Interior Ministry officials, said he got wind of the latest move to rein in female officers last month. When he questioned the plan, Phillips said, he was told by one ministry official: "Females are taken care of by men in this country. They are not out there being police officers."

Oh, they're getting taken care of, all right. That's the whole frikkin problem.

What does out esteemed occupying Army have to say about this?

Phillips, though, said U.S. officials have limited options.

"It's a sovereign nation. We turned over the running of their own police force to them," he said. "We don't have a veto."

OH, SO **NOW** THEY ARE A SOVEREIGN NATION. THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN NICE TO KNOW FIVE YEARS AGO.

I... wow... I think I need to go lay down. I'm about to blow a blood vessel here.



Sources: ABC News
                The LA Times
                Reuters