Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

‘Bad’ Women Raped and Killed in Southern Iraq - by Ali al-Fadhily, IPS, December 19, 2007

BAGHDAD - Women are being killed by militia groups in southern Iraq for not conforming to strict Islamic ways, the police say. And increased threats from militia groups are driving many women away from their homes.

Basra police chief Gen. Jalil Hannoon has told reporters and Arab TV channels that at least 40 women have been killed during the past five months in the southern city.

“We are sure there are many more victims whose families did not report their killing for fear of scandal,” Hannoon said.

The militias dominated by the Shia Badr Organization and the Mahdi Army are leading imposition of strict Islamic rules. The enforcement of these rules comes at a time when British troops have left Basra, the biggest town in the south, to the Iraqi government.

The Shia-dominated Iraqi government is seen as providing tacit and sometimes direct support to militias. The Badr Organization answers to the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC), the Shia bloc in the Iraqi government. The Mahdi army is the militia of anti-occupation Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

Women who do not wear the hijab are becoming prime targets of militias, residents say. Many women say they are threatened with death if they do not obey.

“Militiamen approached us to tell us we must wear the hijab and stop wearing make-up,” college student Zahra Alwan, who fled Basra for Baghdad, recently told IPS.

(Warning: The film accessible by clicking on this article’s title contains graphic images.)

Mona Mahmoud, Maggie O’Kane and Ian Black, UK has left behind murder and chaos, says Basra police chief, Guardian, December 17, 2007

In an ITV film on the Guardian Unlimited website , Basra’s police chief lists a catalogue of failings, saying:

· Basra has become so lawless that in the last three months 45 women have been killed for being “immoral” because they were not fully covered or because they may have given birth outside wedlock;

· The British unintentionally rearmed Shia militias by failing to recognise that Iraqi troops were loyal to more than one authority;

· Shia militia are better armed than his men and control Iraq’s main port.

Mark Lattimer on the brutal treatment of women in Iraq, Guardian, December 13, 2007

Khanim’s organisation sees cases from across Iraq, including from Baghdad and as far away as Basra. She tells me of a man from Kirkuk who accused his sister of adultery. “When we asked him why he wanted to kill his sister, he said, ‘Because it is now a democracy in Iraq’. He thought that democracy meant he could do whatever he wanted.” But the man’s stupidity hid an important point: under the new system of government developing in Iraq, family disputes are increasingly settled not in state courts but by local tribal or religious authorities. “Not that any religion allows such abuse - it is the culture,” says Khanim. “And we see cases from all the communities, including the Christians. It is even worse outside Kurdistan.”

An Iraqi staff member at the UN mission agrees. “As there is no state authority in Iraq, everyone turns to the local sheikh. Every year since 2003 honour killings have increased.” In just one month last year, 130 unclaimed women’s bodies were counted in the Baghdad morgue, a representative from the Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq has told the BBC. Another women’s activist tells me why she refuses all media interviews: “The work has to be secret. In Kurdistan it is possible, but in Baghdad we couldn’t open a shelter for women, we would just be attacked.”

In a nondescript building on a busy road in the north I visit one of the few secret shelters in Iraq for women fleeing violence. A broom-cupboard door is unlocked to reveal a hidden staircase, leading to a two-room apartment where the morning sunshine and the hum of traffic filter through high-set windows. A pile of thin mattresses show that up to 20 women can stay here at any one time. The most recent arrivals are a woman and her two children from the local area. The woman, Zaynab, says she wants to divorce her abusive husband, a drunk, but he has refused. She had gone to live with her mother but he had come to threaten her. “I love my children. My family wanted me to marry again but I don’t want to marry anyone, I want to be with my children.” She stretches her arm out towards the room next door where her curly-haired daughter, eight, and son, seven, are playing.