Morning fire

It was my great pleasure to hear Suhad Ali and Amjad Al Jawhary of the Iraqi Freedom Congress (IFC) speak in Osaka last month. Although the presence of the left in the ongoing sectarian violence sweeping Iraq is negligible, the IFC has at least attempted to bridge ever-deepening sectarian chasms in the name of classic social democratic ideals (freedom of speech, freedom of women, a free press, opposition to discrimination, and so on). Much of the IFC's activity is by now outside of Iraq, not surprising given that 15% of Iraq's population has become refugees in Jordan, Syria and other states. I had seen a representative of the IFC speak in Tokyo about two years ago, and she was based in Australia at the time. So it was refreshing to hear direct perspectives from Suhad Ali who is a young university student in Iraq (in one of Mosul or Baghdad...can't remember).



The topic of the evening was 'standing in solidarity with Iraqi women' and so Suhad's speech focused on the plight of women in Baghdad, who are daily confronted with a snaking civil war waged by sectarians whose only commonality may be there desire to control and subjugate the women of Iraq. Below, I reproduce some of my notes from the talk, which are by no means complete and do not give justice to the descriptions of internecine mayhem that Ali and Jawhary were able to give the audience.

• Since the war has begun, over 3.5 million Iraqis have become refugees.
• Amid the chaos borne by armed factions vying for post-occupation power, rapes are widely reported and in Baghdad no neighborhoods are safe for women to go out at night. Death penalties by stoning have been enforced against women judged to have breached chastity, betrayed their husbands, or otherwise failed to perform feudal duties.
  
• The IFC has a variety of events worked out for March 8th, International Women's day.
• Some Shiite groups are practicing what are known as 'temporary marriages', which Suhad Ali described as a form of prostitution in which a woman is sold into a household where she is expected to perform domestic responsibilities and 'serve her husband'. This practice had been banned in Ba'athi Iraq and was practiced in Islamic Iran, but has now became widespread in central and southern Iraq in the chaotic social setting.
• The IFC has created several social centres (mainly in Kurdistan) which instruct women and others in the use of computers, job skills, English language, seminars in culture, politics and so on.
• There are no effective shelters for women in distress to utilize and so IFC offices in the country have become default places of refuge. Women are sheltered there for several days until they can be sent north or even out of the country and resettled. In Kirkuk and other cities they are often received by families working with the IFC who help them put a life together in the north. Those who seek asylum in other countries, especially Turkey and Jordan face a long and uncertain wait for status.
• Much of Muqtada Al Sadr's power stems from the huge unemployment rate prevailing in Iraq, in place of which his Mahdi Army provides an income for those who will take up the armed struggle.
• Discrimination by sectarian affiliation has reached the point of separatism in public schools enforced by various militias but especially the Mahdi Army.
• The ministry of health is controlled by the Sadrists. 1018 doctors have fled the country and an additional 3,000 have fled to Kurdistan.
• Religious militias see fit to determine to determine what subjects women are allowed to study (where they are allowed to study).
• Women are used as cannon fodder in the ongoing sectarian conflict. 1,000s of cases have been reported of Shiite and Sunni gangs or tribes kidnapping a woman and raping her, ruining her 'honor', which in turn dirties the 'honor' of the tribe. The tribe then follows the obligations of tradition which requires that such a woman be executed.
• Much of the fundamentalist violence against women stems from their position within the Sharia which ranks women in a hierarchy from man-->children-->woman, placing her at the very bottom of the family and therefore society.
• In one such case, in which a woman was kidnapped, raped and tortured for three days and then returned to her family, the IFC intervened to prevent her execution. She relocated to Kurdistan.
• Students at universities in Basra and other cities have been directly requested not to go to school by the Sadrists. When students did not obey this order, a woman was isolated and shot in the head of front of hundreds of students. Zeyad at Healing Iraq has written an account that goes much beyond this particular anecdote.
  
  "Sucked up in a sectarian vortex they can never escape, students in Iraq face enemies from all sides. Sadrist militias took over this particular university a long time ago. Posters of religious symbols filled lecture halls. A black religious flag flew above the university’s main tower. Girls were told to cover up, not just in veils, as was the case last year, but in ‘abayas, or full Islamic body garb. College texts were tampered with. Student unions became fronts for militiamen, who replaced former Ba’athist unions and threatened students and professors alike for any reason. Professors were kicked out, because they were of the wrong sect or political ideology, and many were abducted and assassinated. Just days ago, there were rumours that three female students from the university were kidnapped, tortured and raped before they were killed by militiamen. However, some students insisted to complete their studies, even though attendance rates in Baghdad have fallen to less than 30%. Dozens of academics were abducted and went missing in one recent incident when gunmen in police uniform stormed an educational institution.
  
  As if all that was not enough, Sunni insurgent groups distributed pamphlets recently, calling on college students and professors to boycott their universities. Ironically, they called it a “campaign to support our scientists and students in Baghdad universities.” Students were warned not to attend their classes because universities have turned into headquarters of militias and death squads. “Save the lives of our professors and dear students from the rejectionist government of Maliki and their death squads,” one pamphlet said. “It is prohibited to attend after this announcement.” Another one featured a photo of the very main gate of Mustansiriya University, where the bombings took place yesterday, reading, “From these universities, our scientists graduated. And today they are killed on their gates. There is no solution to stop the bloodshed except by boycotting.” “God willing,” said another, “we will work to cleanse universities from these filthy groups.”

It was made obvious during Suhad Ali's speech and Jawhary's subsequent remarks that there is no excuse (and has never been) for supporting either the anti-imperialist faction in Iraq, which is dedicated to establishing the men's society over all of Iraq, nor the imperialist faction of the coalition which has effectively functioned as a patron of the worst fundamentalist Shiite militias in the country i.e. the Badr brigades and SCIRI, even tolerating Moqtada Al-Sadr's imposition of Islamic dictatorship in Najaf and other parts of the south, not to mention the coalition's tight relationship with the 'progressive' fundamentalist Al-Sistani (who has declared "that men and women should not mix socially, that music for entertainment is prohibited and that women should veil their hair") and which, by embracing the social forms that bourgeois democracy should in its classical form abolish, has done much to restore and reinforce the twin barbarisms of the tribe and Islam across Iraq. There remains perhaps no alternative to the current impasse than critically supporting left elements in Iraq as well as the diaspora. Perhaps it will fall to the diaspora to organize itself in retaking the cities from which it has been expelled.