Overthrow! Liberation! Freedom! We have been shown ‘the Iraqi people’ in exhuberant celebration over the fate of Saddam and his Baathist regime. But study the TV pictures closely. Notice anything? The people at the party are almost all men. Woman are almost entirely missing and those that are there are hidden under burqas.
We have rid the country of an evil dictator, but will the freedom that the Iraqis are to enjoy be accessible to everyone? Or will half the population continue to languish behind the veil?

We cannot congratulate ourselves on freeing a people if we continue to allow half the population to be oppressed – it is not enough to explain it as culture, tradition, religion something we should not get involved in. If we care enough about democracy to launch a war on Saddam then we must care enough that women are not allowed to continue to be victims of oppression.

Are the brave men and women of the UK and US armies putting their lives in danger so that Iraq can become another middle Eastern West-friendly regime which naturally and unnoticingly oppresses women? Does the UK or US government care enough to make sure that this is not the case? The noises about a truly democratic Iraq are already getting fainter and fainter, what chance is there that woman will be equal partners in the rebuilding of Iraq?

Other Muslim states give an indication of what women have to look forward to under Islamic freedom. In Saudi Arabia women are not allowed to drive cars. In forgotten Afghanistan the Northern Alliance’s treatment of women differs from that of the Taliban only in that their oppression is not actually enshrined in law. In Pakistan the testimony of one man is equal to that of two women. To prove rape a woman needs to produce four male witnesses. Is this the freedom for which over a hundred coalition troops have sacrificed their lives?

If it was a minority race that was being treated in this way then the world would speak up. Bur we should also speak out about sexual apartheid. If we are serious about human rights and a life of freedom then it must apply to all Iraqis. No oppression must be allowed to continue after the war in Iraq, otherwise we will have failed 50% of the Iraqi people.

I Jarrold

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