Living conditions for Iraqi women deteriorated dramatically after the 1991 Gulf War. US-enforced sanctions have wrecked Iraq's economy, depriving people of everything from medical supplies and school textbooks to the European beauty products that are still advertised on Baghdad's billboards.
Their capacity to organise has been severely restricted, not only by their own government but the harsh reality of survival under sanctions. However, Iraqi women are not passive victims who need to be liberated by Uncle Sam's misplaced chivalry.
The US and its allies, who pose as the liberators of women in the Muslim world, are the same powers which in the past funded and trained the Taliban, Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, without the slightest consideration for the impact on women.
After the war on Afghanistan, the media feasted on pictures of Afghan women throwing off their burqas, however they are far from liberated today. As Asthma Jahingir, special rapporteur of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, noted in November: "The lives of women [in Afghanistan] remain vulnerable and there are reports of killings... The authorities have taken no action to investigate them. Such gender-based impunity by any state is a clear discrimination of the right to life of women."
Women in Iraq will fare little better from a US invasion.
Women's standing in Iraqi society has suffered along with everything else under the impact of the 12-year US blockade. Iraq's economic collapse has reduced middle-class professionals to begging.
Due to Iraq's economic collapse, many women have lost their jobs and been forced to abandon their education, thereby losing both their financial independence and opportunities for future self-determination. Most women focus all their efforts to search for enough food and clean water to ensure their own and their family's survival.
The 1991 war, as well as almost daily US-British bombing raids over the last 12 years, destroyed food, water, electricity and sanitation facilities.
According to UNICEF and the World Health Organisation, sanctions have killed more than 1 million Iraqis. Nearly 60% of the dead are children under the age of seven. Up to 95% of pregnant Iraqi women suffer from anaemia, and give birth to weak, malnourished children. Birth defects have soared due to the 300 tonnes of depleted uranium from US shells and bombs leftover from the 1991 war.
The planned US bombing blitz on Baghdad, which will reportedly launch the US-British-Australian attack on Iraq, is to deliberately target the city's water, electricity and sanitation services, immediately putting the lives of 5 million people at risk. Such destruction of civilian infrastructure is a violation of Geneva Conventions.
Women are disproportionally affected by war. Women are primarily responsible for those made most vulnerable by war — children, the sick and the elderly.
Currently, there are underground women's networks operating inside Iraq, as well as international solidarity groups such as the Iraqi Women's League and the Committee in Defence of Iraqi Women. Medical centres and beauty parlours, where men are not permitted, provide a respite from vigilance and the opportunity for informal contact.
This is a crucial time for feminists to take a stand. Now more than ever, people need to come out and oppose this unjust and cruel war that is being hatched in Washington, London and Canberra. War is not the solution to women's oppression in Iraq or the Middle East. To offer solidarity to the women of Iraq, join the February 14-16 international protests against the war on Iraq.
International Women's Day, on Saturday March 8, will also be an opportunity for men, women and children to fight for peace, justice and gender equality.
BY HELEN SLANEY
& VIVIAN MESSIMERIS
From Green Left Weekly, February 12, 2003.
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