Are Women Worse Off in Post-Saddam Iraq?

That’s the not-so-subtle contention of the latest Amnesty International report. The report, titled "Iraq Decades of Suffering: Now Women Deserve Better," limns a cheerless portrait of life in liberated Iraq. The introduction explains that:

Women and girls in Iraq live in fear of violence as the conflict intensifies and insecurity spirals. Tens of thousands of civilians are reported to have been killed or injured in military operations or attacks by armed groups since the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. The lawlessness and increased killings, abductions and rapes that followed the overthrow of the government of Saddam Hussain have restricted women’s freedom of movement and their ability to go to school or to work. Women face discriminatory laws and practices that deny them equal justice or protection from violence in the family and community. A backlash from conservative social and political forces threatens to stifle their attempts to gain new freedoms. The general lack of security has forced many women out of public life, and constitutes a major obstacle to the advancement of women’s rights.

Sounds grim, right? But wait just a second. Amnesty International would have us believe that there has been no discernible improvement in the condition of Iraqi women since the U.S.-led intervention. But of course we cannot accept this judgment without a basis for comparison. So does the report tell us how Iraqi women fared under Saddam Hussein? Fortunately, it does. Some lowlights:

• There were…indications that senior Iraqi security officials had been involved in the trafficking of Kurdish women and girls for the purposes of sexual exploitation as part of the government’s repression of the Kurds.
  At the beginning of the [Iran Iraq war], the [Iraqi] government deported thousands of women, men and children to Iran, solely on the basis of their actual or alleged Iranian descent. They included Shi‘a Muslim Arabs and Feyli Kurds. Women and their children were said to have been tortured in front of their husbands and fathers.
  Some women were tortured and spent years in prison because of their own or relatives’ political activities.
• Rape was used as a form of torture on women in custody because they were relatives of opposition activists or in an attempt to force Iraqi nationals abroad to cease political activities. In 2000, women were publicly beheaded in a campaign against prostitution.

Make your way through these horrifying bullet points and you will not escape the conclusion that there is no credible comparison to be made between the manifestly horrendous mistreatment of women under Saddam Hussein and the lamentable, but by no means comparable difficulties faced by Iraqi women in the freshly free country. And yet Amnesty International—even as it maintains that it is “independent of any political ideology”—is clearly attempting to pass off its attacks on U.S. policy as detached humanitarian research. So what exactly does Amnesty International dislike about U.S. policy. Well, it notes that:

Since the announcement by US President George Bush of the end of "major combat operations in Iraq" in May 2003, the violence has not ended. Since then, thousands of civilians – women, men and children – have been killed in military operations by the US-led forces and in attacks by armed groups.

The report’s unmistakable implication is that U.S. forces and “armed groups” bear equal responsibility for this violence. Trouble is, the report itself gives the lie to this claim. Without spelling it out, the report makes clear that the biggest threat to Iraqi women’s liberties comes from Islamist terrorists, a.k.a. “armed groups,” and not U.S. troops. Thus:

Women campaigning to protect women’s rights have been threatened, kidnapped and killed by members of armed groups in Iraq.

Indeed, women killed in Iraq are more often than not victims of Islamist terrorism than American military force, a point the report concedes, albeit obliquely, by noting that U.S. forces target men—that is, terrorists—rather than women. Small wonder, then, that:

Different sources suggest that among the civilian population women are less likely than men to be killed by the US-led forces.

And there’s more. In yet another revelation, the report points out, indirectly to be sure, that so far from being blamed for the continuing struggles of women, the U.S. deserves much of the credit for the advancements in opportunities that have accrued to Iraqi women:

Several women’s centres established by the US authorities to provide support for women, including literacy programs, IT training and political awareness raising, have had to reduce or review their activities following threats and attacks.

Moreover:

…since the overthrow of Saddam Hussain’s government, new job opportunities for women have opened up in the security sector, including in the police force and army, which had been the domain of men.

Again, difficulties remain for Iraqi women. Again, however, the blame properly rests with Islamist groups and their campaign of violence:

The widespread fear of violence affecting all Iraqis has restricted the participation of women in civil society since the 2003 war, particularly in education, employment and political decision- making. Women continue to be forced to wear headscarves by threats and harassment from members of Islamist groups.

Oh, and there’s yet another obstacle to progress for Iraqi women:

The US authorities have frequently announced their support for women in Iraq, which has included the allocation of US$10 million for the Women’s Democracy Initiative for Iraq.(29) However, some women’s rights activists have expressed uneasiness about women’s organizations receiving financial or other support from US government bodies. (emphasis added)

Read that again. Next to terrorists, Amnesty International identifies—even if it does not dwell on the revelation—that the leading opponents of support for women’s groups are leftwing (we can safely assume) women’s rights activists! Notwithstanding abundant evidence that that quality of life for Iraqi women has been drastically improved by the U.S. intervention, despite the sustained efforts of Islamist reactionaries and activist obstructionists, Amnesty International is bent on shrouding the silver linings. Thus, with an eye toward disparaging the improving situation in Iraq, the report conjures up the evil specter of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). By the fact that this is included in the report, we are to understand that this abominable practice mars what improvements have been made in the lives of Iraqi women. Once again, however, the report fails to make the charge stick:

“In a 2003 survey on women’s health in southern Iraq, FGM was not identified as a common practice.”

In the end, Amnesty International’s report is so riddled with contradictions that it is clear that it is intended less as a contribution to the annals of serious human rights research than as another addition to the library of leftwing polemic maligning the U.S. efforts in Iraq. This portrayal of the vastly improved conditions of women’s rights in post-Saddam Iraq as an uninterrupted continuation of the systematic brutality of women under Saddam would be execrable no matter what its source. But coming from an organization that professes to uphold human rights it is a stunning abdication of moral responsibility. How shameful, how immeasurably shameful, that leftwing politics have supplanted genuine humanitarianism as Amnesty International’s chief commitment.