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Promising Democracy, Imposing Theocracy:
Gender-Based Violence and the US War on Iraq

«Part One | Index | Part Three»

Part II. Iraq's Other War: Imposing Theocracy through Gender-based Violence

While the US State Department propelled Islamists and their appeasers to positions of state power in a "liberated Iraq," the US military allowed Islamist militias to perpetrate a wave of attacks on women throughout the country. As the occupying power, the US was legally obligated under the Hague and Geneva Conventions to provide security to Iraqi civilians, including protection from gender–based violence.¹⁸ But the military, preoccupied with battling the Iraqi insurgency, simply ignored the reign of terror that Islamist militias were quickly imposing on women.

Islamists Unleashed

Since the US overthrow of Iraq's authoritarian and powerfully centralized government, the country has been overrun by networks of criminal gangs, militias, and paramilitary units, including the complex of shadowy groups that comprise the anti–US insurgency. One senior US military official estimated in October 2006 that there were more than 23 militias operating in Baghdad alone.¹⁹

In March 2004, on the first anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, MADRE issued a report on the status of Iraqi women's human rights. Already at that time, women identified a breakdown in security and public order as their number one problem. A sharp rise in abductions, rapes, and sexual slavery made women afraid to leave their homes. It is estimated that more than 400 Iraqi women were abducted and raped within the first four months of US occupation.²⁰ Girls were being kept out of school and many women were by then forbidden by their families to be in public without a male escort.

Initially, Iraqi women attributed much of the violence to social disintegration and criminal activity triggered by the overthrow of the Ba'ath regime and protracted armed conflict between US and Iraqi forces. But within a few months of the invasion, women began citing the rise of Islamists as a primary source of violence. By summer 2003, Islamist "misery gangs" were patrolling the streets in many areas, beating and harassing women who were not "properly" dressed or behaved.²¹ According to a woman musician, "If the Islamists see me walking on the street with my flute, they could kill me."²² In a move reminiscent of the Taliban, male doctors were warned not to treat women patients and women doctors were threatened against treating men. Across Iraq, cities were soon plastered with leaflets and graffiti warning women against going out unveiled, driving, wearing make–up, or shaking hands and socializing with men. Islamist "punishment committees" sprang up, manned by the Badr Brigade²³ of the US–backed SCIRI Party²⁴ and its rival, the Mahdi Army.²⁵ These "committees" roamed the streets attacking people accused of flouting Islamic law. In Basra, the Mahdi Army ensured that women were virtually confined to their homes. Wearing pants or appearing in public without a headscarf became punishable by death.

Violence against Women as a Strategy for the Creation of a Theocracy

This campaign of gender–based violence was intended to subjugate women as a first step in the creation of an Islamist state. As Mithal Alusi, one of 30 Iraqi legislators who called for the protection of women's human rights in a 2006 declaration said, "These attempts to intimidate women are attempts to terrorize society."²⁶ In fact, violence against women is a primary weapon in the arsenal of fundamentalists of various religions, who seek to impose their political agenda on society. Often, the first salvo in a war for theocracy is a systematic attack on women and minorities who represent or demand an alternative or competing vision for society. These initial targets are usually the most marginalized and, therefore, most vulnerable members of society, and once they are dealt with, fundamentalist forces then proceed towards less vulnerable targets.

"This campaign of gender-based violence
was intended to subjugate women as a first step
in the creation of an Islamist state."

In Iraq, women, Christians, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual, and intersex (LGBTTI) Iraqis have been among the Islamists' first targets of violence. For example, the Mujahadin Shura Group vows to kill any woman seen in public without a headscarf. Mujahadin Shura listed among its reasons for opposing the January 2005 Iraqi elections the need to prevent Iraq from "becoming homosexual. " In the northern city of Mosul, the group has targeted Christian women with a campaign of murder, kidnapping, rape, and sexual enslavement. According to the Union of the Unemployed,²⁷ groups such as this use the most violent and inhumane methods to impose their will, targeting "anyone who disagrees with them and does not observe their way of living."²⁸

The Bush Administration has highlighted violence carried out by groups that, like Mujahadin Shura, are Sunni–based and part of the anti–US insurgency. But comparable violence is perpetrated by Shiite Islamists affiliated with US–backed political parties. For example, Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Sistani, the spiritual leader of SCIRI, has ordered all Iraqi women to wear headscarves. His edicts are enforced by beheadings and acid attacks.²⁹ In 2006, Sistanti also issued an order for the killing of gays and lesbians, which was publicized for several months on his website (www.sistani.org). Sistani, who advocates violence against Iraqi civilians rather than US occupation forces, is lauded in the US as "moderate"³⁰ and "mainstream."³¹

On both sides of the sectarian divide, attacks on women are committed in the name of religion. However, their purpose is fundamentally political: armed groups use gender–based violence to assert dominance over one another and over the population at large. As Yanar Mohammed said, "When an Islamist militia wants to take control of a neighborhood, imposing the veil on women is the first point on their agenda. It is their way of claiming power over the area. In Sadr City, you no longer see a single woman without the veil. Since the Americans came, the transformation is complete. It is not that these women have suddenly become more religious. It is because they will be killed if they do not wear the veil…When a political party gains control of an area, it puts its flag everywhere. The flag is a message to your opponents that this is your area and they should not dare to step into it. The veil on women is like a flag now. "³²

"On both sides of the sectarian divide,
attacks on women are committed
in the name of religion. However,
their purpose is fundamentally political."

While Iraqi women in general have been subjected to this reign of terror, certain groups of women have been specifically targeted: political leaders, professionals, academics and students, and those who publicly defend women's human rights. The overall pattern that emerges is one in which women are attacked and killed because they represent an obstacle to the establishment of a theocracy. As Yanar Mohammed said, "When I think of the women who have been beheaded, kidnapped, and gunned down, they have a lot in common: they are successful, educated, public people who represent a cosmopolitan lifestyle."³³

A Division of Labor

The US–backed Iraqi government has largely reinforced the Islamist call to restrict women's rights and bar women from the public sphere. For example, in 2005, Khdeir Abbas, the Secretary General of the Iraqi Ministers' Council, began requiring all women employees to wear headscarves or be fired.³⁶ The government also began providing a small benefits package to public sector employees whose husbands die in order to facilitate widows' departure from the workforce. Iraqi women's rights campaigner Hanna Edwar explained that the order reinforces "the interpretation of Sharia that commands a woman to stay at home after the death of her husband and not be in touch with the outside world."³⁷ Then, in 2006, the Iraqi Interior Ministry issued a series of notices warning women not to leave their homes alone and echoing the directives of religious leaders who urge men to prevent women family members from holding jobs. Thus, the violence carried out by militias in the streets is backed up by more respectable political leaders who support the call for a women–free public sphere. As one imam (Muslim religious leader) in a Baghdad mosque commented, "These incidents of abuse just prove what we have been saying for so long. That it is the Islamic duty of women to stay in their homes, looking after their children and husbands rather than searching for work."³⁸

Iraq's US–allied political and religious leaders clearly benefit from the reign of terror imposed by their followers, for as long as women are preoccupied with merely surviving, they are unable to demand accountability from the government for the broad range of economic, social, and political rights that they are denied. As Yanar Mohammed commented, "We cannot insist on separation of mosque and state and the drafting of egalitarian legislation now that women are afraid to even leave their homes to discuss such matters."³⁹ In December 2003, when the IGC attempted to repeal Iraq's family law through Resolution 137, women's groups took to the streets in vocal, visible protests that were instrumental in galvanizing opposition to the resolution. Today, such demonstrations are far too dangerous to even consider.

US Support for Islamists: Blunder or Blueprint?

The transformation of Iraq into an Islamist state is often characterized as one of numerous "unintended consequences" of US decision–making since 2003. But the US has long viewed the religious right as a strategic ally in the Middle East. During the Cold War, US funding, behind–the–scenes diplomacy, and military interventions helped strengthen Islamists in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Arab Gulf, Iran, and other countries. In the 1960s and 1970s, the US undertook its largest covert operation ever by arming, training, and funding Islamists in Afghanistan and Pakistan to combat its main economic rival, the Soviet Union. That alliance spawned civil war in Afghanistan, gave rise to the Taliban, and positioned Osama bin Laden to build al–Qaeda.

Since the end of World War II, US policy in the Middle East has been guided by an effort to control the region's energy resources. This economic interest has trumped ideological concerns about "freedom" or "democracy" (though US actions are always presented in these lofty terms at home). On the ground, the US cultivated Islamists as an alternative to the rule of socialists or Arab nationalists (like Saddam Hussein), who were less amenable to US control over their countries' reserves of oil and natural gas. Despite the myth of a "clash of civilizations" between Islam and "the West, " the US has been very comfortable with reactionary, theocratic leaders in the Middle East. As we can see in the cases of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, these men have made great business partners.

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18Article 43 of the Hague Convention obligates the occupying power to restore and maintain public order and safety. Articles 29 and 47 of the Fourth Geneva Convention obligate occupation authorities to respect the fundamental human rights of the inhabitants of the occupied territory.

19Sabrina Tavernise, "As Trust Vanishes, Many Iraqis Look to Gunmen as Protectors," The New York Times, Oct. 21, 2006.

20Agence France–Presse, "More than 400 Iraqi Women Kidnapped, Raped in Post–war Chaos," Aug. 24, 2003, http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/AllDocsByUNID/
c21efb4c4e3dda7e49256d8d0010bacb (accessed Dec. 13, 2006).

21Sarah El Deeb, "Iraqi Women Deal With Mixed Legacy,"The Los Angeles Times, Jan. 26, 2004.

22Kim Ghattas, "Iraqi Women Struggle to be Heard," BBC News, Aug. 18, 2003.

23The Badr Brigade changed its name to the Badr Organization of Reconstruction and Development in 2003, although they are still commonly referred to as the Badr Bridgade, or the Badr Corps.

24Stephen Zunes, "The U.S. Role in Iraq's Sectarian Violence," Foreign Policy in Focus, March 6, 2006, http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/3139 (accessed Dec. 14, 2006).

25Sabrina Tavernise, "As Trust Vanishes, Many Iraqis Look to Gunmen as Protectors," The New York Times, Oct. 21, 2006.

26The Miami Herald, "Iraq: Women Want Rights Pledge Honored," Aug. 4, 2006.

27On May 1, 2003, a group of labor activists founded the Union of the Unemployed in Iraq. The union has a membership of 150,000 people and has offices in Baghdad, Nasiriyah, and Kirkuk.

28Mark Osborn, "Iraqi Union Leader Murdered. 'Resistance' Targets Trade Unions, Women, Lesbians and Gay Men," Workers' Liberty, Jan. 12, 2005.

29Houzan Mahmoud, "Iraq Must Reject a Constitution that Enslaves Women," The Independent, Aug. 15, 2005, http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article305879.ece (accessed Dec. 13, 2006).

30Isobel Coleman, "Women, Islam, and the New Iraq," Foreign Affairs, Jan./Feb., 2006: 24–38.

31David Brooks, "Drafting Hitler," The New York Times, Feb. 9, 2006.

32Interview with Yanar Mohammed, April 25, 2006.

33Ibid.

34Isobel Coleman, "Women, Islam, and the New Iraq," Foreign Affairs, Jan./Feb., 2006: 24–38.

35International Women's Human Rights Law Clinic and Women Living Under Muslim Laws, "Shadow Report on Algeria to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women," Jan. 1999, p. 9.

36Monitoring of Human Rights in Iraq Network, "Second Periodic Report of Monitoring of Human Rights in Iraq," Nov. 20, 2005.

37Hanna Edwar, "Latest Update from the Iraqi Women's Network," Women's Human Rights Net, July 21, 2005, http://www.whrnet.org/fundamentalisms/docs/action–iraq–sitin–0507.html (accessed Jan. 29, 2007).

38Ruth Rosen, "The Hidden War on Women in Iraq," Global Policy Forum, July 13, 2006.

39Interview with Yanar Mohammed, April 25, 2006.

«Part One | Index | Part Three»