Iraq, interrupted

The Daily News - Egypt
By Kate DanniesFirst Published: February 27, 2009

Iraqi writer and artist Haifa Zangana.

CAIRO: Haifa Zangana remembers a time before war, sanctions and occupation, when Baghdad was a vibrant Arab capital. In those days, Iraq had a flourishing civil society, an empowered female population and big plans for translating the country’s vast oil wealth into economic and social progress.
Zangana, a noted writer and artist, and currently a distinguished visiting professor in the department of English and Comparative Literature at the American University in Cairo, spoke about her country’s past, present and future during a lecture entitled “Iraqi Women and the ‘New Iraq’” at Oriental Hall last week.
Author of a number of books and a frequent contributor to publications including the Guardian, Al-Quds Al-Arabi, Al-Sharq Al-Awsat and Al-Ahram, Zangana is a trained pharmacist and longtime activist who was imprisoned and tortured in Iraq as a student under the Baathist regime in the 1970s. Escaping execution, Zangana completed her studies before leaving Iraq to work with the Palestine Liberation Organization in Lebanon and Syria. She then moved to London in 1976 where she has focused on her artistic pursuits while vocally protesting events taking place in Iraq and the Arab world.
Addressing an audience of students, professors and local intellectuals, Zangana discussed the issues faced by women in a “new” Iraq, emphasizing the importance of citizenship and good governance over the concerns of individual groups as Iraq struggles to rebuild itself.
“Iraqi women are facing serious issues, but this cannot be addressed outside the context of war and foreign occupation that all Iraqis are experiencing right now. Women have to be viewed as citizens first,” she said.
The state of citizenship in a tumultuous Iraq is not a good one, however, according to Zangana, who rejects claims by western governments that the 2003 invasion has brought “democracy” to her country.
“The Iraqi government is subject to the neo-colonial measures imposed upon it by the Americans and the British. They might pull their troops out one day, but that doesn’t mean their control over Iraq will end, there are plenty of economic, political and military agreements that ensure that,” she explained.
Furthermore, politicians are being silenced and those who dare to speak out are forced to leave government, as in the case of Dr Nawal Al-Samarraie, the former minister for women’s affairs who resigned her post in protest over her inability to address the problems faced by Iraqi women.
As minister, Zangana explained, Al-Samarraie saw her monthly budget slashed from an already paltry $7,500 per month to $1,500, a laughable sum considering the fact that 65 percent of Iraq’s population is female and that the country has an estimated 3 million widows. Adding to the hopelessness of the situation is the reality that the numbers of female war casualties and detainees is rising daily and that women continue to face serious threats to their safety including rape. Unemployment among women is at 80 percent.
Zangana maintains that Al-Samarraie and other politicians are being silenced, and their role as supposed democratic policymakers undermined by American hegemony in Iraq.
“Dr Al-Samarraie was the only person in government brave enough to vote against the proposed security agreement with the United States and now she is under house arrest after resigning from the ministry — that doesn’t sound like democracy to me.”
For Zangana “divide and conquer” is a more accurate term than “democratize” for what is being done in Iraq.
“When I was growing up, we all used to live together without questioning the religion or ethnicity of our neighbors. Now, the coalition forces are building walls around neighborhoods and whole cities to divide us, to make us easier to control and ignite sectarian tensions. Falluja and Samarra are completely walled in — citizens have ID cards with retina scans and fingerprints and need permission to travel.”
As for the security these measures are supposedly bolstering, Zangana calls it a myth.
“Heightened security is measured by a drop in the number of American casualties, nothing else. The 2007 surge, for example was called a success because less American soldiers were being killed during that time, but for Iraqis the surge meant more bombings, more raids, more killing. Security is not improving, it’s deteriorating.”
In short, while the coalition forces claim to have brought freedom, democracy and progress to Iraqi society, Zangana sees things a bit differently.
“Iraq has become a country of queues: women swathed in black queuing in front of prisons, in food lines, and in front of morgues.”