More peace and democracy in Iraq
President George Bush justifies the entire illegal invasion of Iraq with the tired line that it will bring peace and democracy to the Middle East, and liberate Iraqis from repression.
But these claims to be fighting a war to establish a democracy in Iraq are belied by the fact that Iraq is more theocracy than it is democracy, where the “peaceful†laws of Islam trump universal civil rights.
I have no love for Saddam’s brutal and sinister regime, but at least under Saddam, Iraq was a secular nation, one in which Iraqi women enjoyed freedoms unheard of in the rest of the middle east. But along with the death, mayhem and economic depression wrought by the U.S. invasion, women’s rights are experiencing a slow, agonizing demise.
The International Campaign Against Honour Killings recently reported on the beating and stoning to death of 17-year-old Du’a Khalil Aswad, in northern Iraq. While law enforcement officials turned a blind eye, a mob of frenzied men murdered the young girl to death. Neighbors watched, recording the crime on cell phones.
What was Aswad’s crime? She fell in love with someone of a different religious sect her family did not approve of.
In the U.S., most people think this kind of brutality is exactly the kind of thing that U.S. democratization will stop,†says Yifat Susskind, communications director of MADRE, an international human rights organization. But, they’d be wrong.
“In fact, the opposite is true,†Susskind writes on the ICAHK blog. “Since the US invasion, “honor killings” have been on the rise across Iraq, due in large part to measures enacted by the US.â€
CNN released video footage of the attack, and it’s been widely circulated on internet sites.
After destroying the Iraqi state, religious powers amenable to the United States quickly filled the legislative and political voids. Although the U.S. is responsible for the protection of all Iraqi’s human rights, honor killings are still rarely prosecuted and if they are, only carry a sentence as little as six months in jail, versus life in prison for murder.
These same religious leaders who operate with the blessing of the U.S. promote honor killing as a religious duty. Women are killed to protect the “honor†of their families, even if they are raped. In October 2004, Iraq’s Ministry of Women’s Affairs revealed that more than half of the 400 rapes reported since the US invasion resulted in the murder of rape survivors by their families.
The next time you hear Bush praising the new democratic system in place in Iraq, think of the Du’a Khalil Aswads in Iraq, whose murders are a direct result of American empire-building.
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