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Activists Confront Religion, Tribalism

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The Washington Post

Published: December 21, 2008

IRBIL, Iraq - Hawjin Hama Rashid, a feisty journalist in jeans and a frilly blouse, had come to the morgue in this Kurdish city to research tribal killings of women.

"A week doesn't pass without at least 10," the morgue director said, showing Rashid pictures of corpses on his computer screen.

First, a bloated, pummeled face.

Next, a red, shapeless, charred body. "Raped, then burned," the director said.

Then, another face, eyes half-closed, stab wounds below her neck. Rashid leaned closer to the screen.

It was the bloody corpse of her best friend, Begard Hussein. Hussein had complained to police about her ex-husband, who had threatened to kill her if she refused to annul their divorce. Rashid had wanted to publish a photograph of her friend's body after she was killed in April, but officials said none existed.

"They lied to me," Rashid said as she left the morgue, her sorrow fusing with anger.

From the southern port city of Basra to bustling Irbil in northern Iraq, Iraqi activists are trying to counter the rising influence of religious fundamentalists and tribal chieftains who have insisted that women wear the veil, prevented girls from receiving education and sanctioned killings of women accused of besmirching their family's honor.

In their quest for stability in Iraq, U.S. officials have empowered tribal and religious leaders, Sunni and Shiite, who reject the secularism that Saddam Hussein once largely maintained. These leaders have imposed strict interpretations of Islam and enforced tribal codes that female activists say limit their freedom and encourage violence against them.

"Women are being strangled by religion and tribalism," said Muna Saud, a 52-year-old activist in Basra.

The activists' struggle is part of a broader battle over the identity of a nation in transition. Driving the debate are questions central to Iraq's future: What role should Islam play in government, politics and society? And to what extent should Western attitudes and ideas influence the country?

"Without changing the way society thinks, changing laws on paper is useless," Rashid said.

Since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, satellite television, cell phones and Internet access have deepened the West's imprint on the Kurdish region known as Kurdistan. Today, many urban women wear Western clothes and eschew Islamic head scarves. Women make up more than a quarter of the parliament.
Rashid grew up in a secular Kurdish family in Sulaymaniyah, the main city of eastern Kurdistan. In high school, she read socialist writers and joined the student union. When Saddam's Baath Party tried to expel the school's female dean, Rashid led a demonstration to protest the expulsion. The dean was reinstated.

She Writes Mostly About 'Honor Crimes'

After college she became a journalist, covering women's issues. Today she lives alone, unconventional for an Iraqi woman. A Jennifer Lopez poster hangs on her living room wall.

Rashid, 36, writes a column for a magazine run by Shawushka, a women's group named after a Kurdish goddess. The bimonthly publication has 2,000 readers, but its Web site provides a wider reach. Rashid also appears frequently on Kurdish television networks, where she routinely criticizes the government.

Such pressure helped push the regional Interior Ministry to launch a task force to combat violence against women, but it is also seen as a threat to traditional values.

"Women are trapped in a moral and cultural tug of war," said Pakshan Zangana, a lawmaker. "There are forces trying to pull women into the 21st century. Then there are other forces pulling women backward, to keep them as second-class citizens."

In her columns, Rashid has railed against forcing women to wear head scarves and battled for the rights of imprisoned women. Mostly, Rashid writes about "honor crimes" - tribal killings and burnings of women accused of engaging in premarital sex or adultery. Iraqi laws allow for leniency in such killings, but Kurdish authorities have made the crimes equivalent to any other murder. Yet the violence has mounted since the invasion. Activists say police rarely enforce the law, fearing tribal disputes, and when they do, perpetrators are handed light punishments.

In the first six months of this year, 206 women were killed in Kurdistan, 150 of them burned to death. The killings were up 30 percent from the previous six months, according to the Kurdish Human Rights Ministry. Activists say many honor crimes go unreported or are portrayed as accidents. They also say that some women have immolated themselves out of despair.
Rashid has received numerous death threats. In an e-mail, someone threatened to rape her for being un-Islamic. When Rashid complained, a police officer told her to stop fighting for women's rights. The ex-husband of her friend Hussein, Rashid said, vowed to kill her after she published her article.

"The police didn't pursue him because they considered it an honor killing," Rashid said. "He is still free today."

Repeated efforts to reach him were unsuccessful.

Ari Rafiq, an Interior Ministry official who heads its task force on women, said his men were searching for the ex-husband.

"There are eyewitnesses who saw him murder her," Rafiq said.

New Protection Laws In The Making

Iraq's constitution states that men and women are equal under the law. But it also states that no laws can be passed that are inconsistent with Islam, allowing for ultraconservative interpretations, female activists say.

Kurdish lawmakers are trying to enact regional legislation that would outlaw forced and early marriages, female genital mutilation, and honor killings. The laws would also give women greater rights and status in marriage, divorce and inheritance. But the lawmakers acknowledge that such measures will be difficult to pass and even harder to enforce.

"We're still suffering from the past," said Jinan Ali, the minister of women's affairs. "You can't say the government and police are not doing their job. To transfer a society from a violent one to a peaceful one won't happen suddenly."

With violence falling across Iraq, urban women have gained some freedom. They can drive, wear makeup or walk in some areas without head scarves - actions once forbidden by religious vigilantes. Muna Saud helps lead the Iraqi Women's League, an activist group whose members teach women computer skills and English.
Saud recalled the late 1970s, when Iraqi women were among the most liberated in the Arab world and were employed as doctors, engineers and civil servants. After the U.S. invasion, she and 30 Women's League members started their workshops. But by 2005, Iraqi women were being attacked for not covering their faces or for being too educated. Some had acid thrown in their faces. Many feared leaving home.

In a nationwide survey of 1,500 Iraqi women released this year by Women for Women International, a Washington-based nonprofit, nearly two-thirds of women who were questioned said violence against them had risen; slightly more described the availability of jobs as "bad."

The Women's League has 280 members. Only five showed up recently to plan a workshop, despite a government crackdown on militias that had made Basra safer. "Women got killed in the streets," Saud said. "They are still afraid."

She said she watched with apprehension as the U.S. military backed tribal groups to fight Sunni insurgents.

"In the beginning, the United States gave power to religious parties. Now, giving power to tribal leaders is also a mistake," Saud said. "They consider the women as nothing."

Anwar Indalel Shubbar, a local government official with the ultra-religious Fadhila Party, said that women are entering "illegal relationships" if they have premarital sex and that honor killings are sanctioned by tribal laws.

"Our religion rejects the honor killings, but we can't stop the habits and traditions we have inherited," Shubbar said. She said she favors the imposition of Islamic law.

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