Our sanctions managed to kneecap a secular, woman-friendly state and turn it into a fundie breeding ground:
As independent journalist Rania Khalek explained earlier this year:
Contrary to popular imagination, Iraqi women enjoyed far more freedomunder Saddam Hussein’s secular Ba’athist government than women in other Middle Eastern countries. In fact, equal rights for women were enshrined in Iraq’s Constitution in 1970, including the right to vote, run for political office, access education and own property. Today, these rights are all but absent under the U.S.-backed government of Nouri al-Maliki.
Prior to the devastating economic sanctions of the 1990s, Iraq’s education system was top notch and female literacy rates were the highest in the region,reaching 87 percent in 1985. Education was a major priority for Saddam Hussein’s regime, so much so that in 1982 Iraq received the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) award for eradicating illiteracy. But the education system crumbled from financial decay under the weight of the sanctions pushing over 20 percent of Iraqi children out of school by 2000 and reversing decades of literacy gains. Today, a quarter of Iraqi women are illiterate, more than double the rate for Iraqi men (11 percent). Female illiteracy in rural areas alone is as high as 50 percent.
Women were integral to Iraq’s economy and held high positions in both the private and public sectors, thanks in large part to labor and employment laws that guaranteed equal pay, six months fully paid maternity leave and protection from sexual harassment. In fact, it can be argued that some of the conditions enjoyed by working women in Iraq before the war rivaled those of working women in the United States.
Years of devastating sanctions followed by war, occupation and the U.S.-backed government of Nouri al-Maliki brought devastating effects to women in Iraq.
In “Iraqi women lament costs of U.S. invasion,” part of Reuters‘ special coverage with the poll,they report that since the U.S. invasion,
Domestic abuse and prostitution have increased, illiteracy has soared and thousands of women have been left widowed and vulnerable. Many women also rue the political leaders that came to power after Saddam was overthrown and the growing social conservatism that has diminished their role in public life.
“If you talk to women in war zones anywhere, they’ll tell you that domestic violence increases in war-time,” Yifat Susskind and Yanar Mohammed wrote at Common Dreams in March. “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.”
