18.ali - Fragmentation Gender Iraq

The Fragmentation of Gender in Post-Invasion Iraq
Oxford Handbooks Online

Zahra Ali
The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Middle-Eastern and North African
History
Edited by Amal Ghazal and Jens Hanssen
Subject: History, Gender and Sexuality Online Publication Date: May 2017
DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199672530.013.42
Abstract and Keywords
This chapter explores the evolution of gender and women’s rights struggles in Iraq since
the establishment of the Personal Status Code in 1959 and shed light on the
ethnosectarian fragmentation of women’s legal rights in post-invasion Iraq. The chapter
argues that in order to explore women’s rights and conditions of lives in Iraq it is
essential to explore the evolution of women’s rights and gender issues historically and
through a complex lens of analysis rather than applying a predefined argument involving
an undifferentiated “Islam” or age-old gender-based violence. It seeks to show that
gender issues have been entangled with issues of nationhood, religion, and with the
nature of the political regime since the very foundation of the Iraqi Republic in 1958.
First, the chapter examines the debates and mobilizations around women’s legal rights in
Iraq. Secondly, it highlights the development of political, economic, and military violence
since the 1980s and its impact on gender norms and relations. Finally, it analyzes the
specific context of ethnosectarian fragmentation in which Iraqi women have lived and
mobilized since 2003.
Keywords: Iraqi women, women’s rights and gender issues, war, Ba‘th regime, US-led invasion and occupation.
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Since the invasion by ISIS in June 2014 of parts of northern and western Iraq, images of
women brutalized by the terrorist group, especially from minority communities such as
Yazidis, were spread across the global media and social networks. The systematic use of
enslavement and rape of women and girls from ethnic and religious minorities by ISIS
soldiers characterized one of the most horrific forms of sexual violence. These terrible
images can easily lead to a simplistic reading of women’s rights and gender issues in Iraq
that would reduce gender-based violence to issues of religious fundamentalism. However,
instead of limiting the reading of the Iraqi context to the rise of ISIS, it is essential to look
carefully at the structural social, economic, and political dimensions that allowed this
extreme version of religious fundamentalism to exist. Gender and women’s rights issues
in Iraq need to be looked at through a complex lens and a historical analysis that goes
back, for the purpose of this discussion, to at least the establishment of the first Iraqi
Republic in 1958. The fact that gender and ethnic issues intersected with one another in
the enslavement of Yazidi women by ISIS reveal deep social, economic, and political
dynamics that have evolved historically and therefore demand further analysis.
Considering Islamic fundamentalism in Iraq or elsewhere in Muslim majority countries as

the main root of women’s oppression and gender-based violence is perhaps another way
of stating that “Islamic culture” is patriarchal in essence and to blame for women’s
oppression. It also means considering one variable—religion—as the unique medium of
gender-based violence. In line with robust postcolonial feminist literature, the first point
to be made is that “Islamic culture” does not exist as a homogeneous reality and in a
vacuum, neither does “Islamic fundamentalism.”1 Furthermore, “Islam”—if we want to
use this word to refer to a very diverse religious and cultural frame—has been practiced
and interpreted very differently throughout time and space, as well as in diverse social
and economic contexts.2 By now, it is clear that religion does not exist as an essence
outside social, political, and economic transformations but rather in complex relations
with these. In this regard, Iraq is an instructive case that shows how much “Islam” has
been interpellated and turned into jurisprudence in the context of postcolonial state-
building processes. My research on women and gender issues in Iraq shows how religion
has long been imbricated with matters of nationhood and that this overlapping has been
very much gendered. Thus, taking a more historical and intersectional approach to this
matter will provide a better understanding of women and gender issues in Iraq today.
This chapter takes a reflexive approach as I explore women’s rights and activism
ethnographically, relying on fieldwork conducted within women’s rights groups in Iraq3,
and historically through a study of the evolution of women’s social, political and economic
experiences since 1958. I argue that when looking at the social and political mobilizations
around women’s rights in post-2003 Iraq, it is essential to explore the very concrete
realities in which Iraqi women live and the broader social, political and economic
contexts that shape their experiences, rather than applying a priori argumentation
involving an undifferentiated “Islam”. In this chapter, I outline three essential dimensions
to consider when looking at this matter. First, looking at the evolution of the struggles
around women’s legal rights in Iraq, I show the importance of going beyond a simplistic
analytical frame involving gender issues to religion. Secondly, I highlight the importance
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of considering violence, especially the development of political, economic, and military

violence in Iraq since the 1980s and its impact on gender norms and relations. Then,
looking at the specific context in which Iraqi women lived and mobilized since 2003 will
provide key elements for understanding the general social and political fragmentation of
the country and its gender dimensions.
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Beyond “Gender in Islam”: The Evolution of

Women’s Legal Rights in Iraq
The Personal Status Code (PSC) also known as the Family Law is the main legal frame
based on Muslim jurisprudence and adopted by many Muslim majority states at the time
of their independence from European imperial powers. This code gathered legislation
regarding private matters such as marriage, divorce, child custody, inheritance,
effectively most of women’s legal rights.4 The PSC represents a field of struggle between
different social and political groups: the state, the ‘ulemas, the tribal leaders and social
and political movements including the women’s movement.5 In Iraq, the adoption of an
openly pro-women’s rights PSC in 1959 (in the form of Law no. 188) was not only due to
the political culture of the revolutionary elite that came to power through ‘Abd al-Karim
Qasim (1914–1963)’s 1959 coup, but also signaled the questioning of ‘ulemas’ and tribal
leaders’ dictates over private matters. Crucially, the adoption of this code marked the
beginning of women activists’ inclusion in the process of negotiating for their rights. As
an example, Naziha al-Dulaymi (1923–2007) gynecologist by trade, a prominent figure of
the League for the Defense of Women’s Rights,6 the first Iraqi and Arab female minister,
and prominent communist activist participated to the drafting of the PSC. The PSC
adopted in 1959 put certain intestate inheritance rights for male and female heirs under
Civil Code and thus granted through an undirect mechanism gender equality in certain
cases in that matter.7 This one of the most sensitive and sacrosanct issues within both
Sunni and Shia fiqh (Muslim jurisprudence), along with the severe limitations placed on
polygamy, and the adoption of 18 years old as the minimum legal age for marriage for
both sex, represented a strong political statement by the new Iraq Republic, that directly
challenged the power of ‘ulemas in urban areas. As for rural areas, the abolition of the
Tribal Law, which had given tribal sheikhs the power to decide over personal matters,
constituted an essential part of the new state’s modernization project. The text of Law no.
188 was clearly inspired by different schools of fiqh and operated within sharia, thus
eliminating the differential treatment of Sunnis and Shi’as and allowing state-trained and
appointed judges to rule on personal matters without consulting the ‘ulemas. Thus, the
new PSC gathering both Sunni and Shi’a jurisprudences provided a legal frame
applicable equally to all Muslim Iraqis. This makes the Law no. 188 a symbol of both the
new nation’s unity beyond ethno-sectarian lines and the inclusion of women’s rights
activists’ demands through their participation in the legislative process itself.8 This shows
the strong relationship between issues of nationhood and gender in postcolonial Iraq: at a
time when the political culture was marked by the anti-imperalist left both ethno-
sectarian unity and pro-women’s rights aspirations were linked to one another. The
revolutionary regime aspired to provide, and even more importantly determine the rights
of its citizens in linking issues of nationhood with issues of gender.
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In comparison with most Muslim majority contexts, it is crucial to understand the PSC as
a field of struggle between newly independent states, political elites, and social and
political movements, especially when considered within the political context of contesting
European imperialism, which resulted in the discursive claim of authenticity and
resistance to Western models. During early independence the landed Iraqi nationalist
elite attempted to build a strong state that would be the arbitrator of all matters
pertaining to civil law undermining its direct competitors—tribal leaders and ‘ulemas-.
However in this postcolonial context marked by the western/indigenous modern debate in
which women were deemed as “bearer of the nation” and through which issues of
“cultural authenticity” were played, the field of family and women’s legal rights remained
the only field submitted to the so-called “authentic” authority of sharia in the frame of the
PSC. The “authenticity” and “indigeneity” of the emerging “nation” relied on the
compliance of women and family issues to “Islam”.
Women activists, therefore, were forced to operate in the spaces between state-building
and nation-building projects. They were, and are still, caught between these two separate
but entwined projects that together reinscribed or reproduced patriarchal structures and
practices legitimized by a so-called “Islam” used as symbol of an “authentic” culture. As
Suad Joseph’s research has demonstrated, from the 1970s to the end of the 1980s, the
centralized Iraqi political power—unified around the authoritarian Baath Party and
supported by oil revenues—came to impose state authority at every level of society,
including at the community and family level.9 Joseph contrasted the situation of Iraq with
that of Lebanon which is a country as religiously and ethnically diverse but whose elite
was even more heterogeneous, factionalized, and supported by fewer resources and thus
with a weaker state. The Lebanese republic had passed a community-based PSC, as the
non-interventionist state deferred to religious institutions matters regarding women and
the family. In Iraq in contrast, the Baath regime attempted to subordinate family to the
state by taking over family functions—child socialization, healthcare, and social control—
and to transform the family from a unit of production to a unit of consumption. Until the
mid-1980s, the Baath regime subsidized the nuclear family in order to shift tribal,
religious and sectarian allegiances to the state.10
In the 1970s, women activists who mobilized for their legal rights in the very limited
political pluralism of the increasingly authoritarian Baath regime, were able to push for
even more progressive reforms. Their efforts were supported by full employment and the
regime ideological narrative promoting a pro-women secular socialism. However, by the
mid-1980s, with the country at war with Iran, the women’s movement was reduced to the
General Federation of Iraqi Women (GFIW), which became a mouthpiece for Baathist
ideological turn into a more conservative discourse regarding family and gender issues.
In this period of economic weakening of the regime that concentrated its budget to the
war effort, women were invited to go back to their houses and give birth to the “future
soldiers of the nation”.11 After the 1991 Gulf War, the politics of “state feminism”
witnessed a dramatic reversal, as this period was marked by the political and economic
weakening of the Baath Party; six weeks of devastating US-led bombings; the regime’s
brutal crackdown on the northern and southern uprisings; and a decade of severe, UN-
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imposed economic sanctions. All of these factors signaled the end of Iraq’s reign as a
regional power, plunging its middle class into poverty, destroying its infrastructure, and
ruining its social, educational, and health systems. Once reputed as the country with the
most educated women and home to one of the most developed and effective higher
education systems in the region, Iraq in the 2000s had one of the highest rates of
illiteracy and infant mortality. The dismantling of the education system, the public sector,
and state services as a result of sanctions, therefore, had a direct impact on the everyday
lives of Iraqi women.12 In her research on the gender impact of the UN sanctions, Al-
Jawaheri noted the emergence of new forms of patriarchy in extremely impoverished
contexts.13 The Baath Party aligned itself with the rise of political Islam in the region,
forging anew the Islamic and tribal nature of the Iraqi identity. Under the banner of the
al-hamlay al-imanyah (“the Faith Campaign”), President Saddam Hussein added “Allahu
Akbar” to the Iraqi flag, portrayed himself as a pious Muslim, Islamized public discourse
and funded the construction of huge mosques. In addition, measures were imposed
regarding women’s legal rights. Now a mahram (a male relative) was required in order
for women to travel abroad; severe punishments for prostitution were imposed; and the
legislation tolerating crimes committed “in the name of honor” was reinforced.14
The US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 has exacerbated the social, economic
and political crisis in which the country has been plunged since 1991, and framed it in
ethno-sectarian lines. In this context marked by the institutionalization of communal—
ethnosectarian and ethnoreligious—identities by the US-led administration and the
extreme weakening of the state, the PSC has once again taken a central role in debates
about issues of nationhood and statehood. The US-led administration put in power
ethnosectarian political groups that were at the marge of power under the Baath regime,
Shia Islamist parties and Kurdish nationalists. In Arab Iraq, the US-led politics through
the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) marked by the institutionalization of a
communal based political system, a marginalization of the Sunni population alongside
with the destruction of the old state’s institutions, in addition to the contestation of the
occupation itself by most Iraqis, plunged the country into a sectarian war. The post-2003
context is characterized by an extremely weak state, a largely contested political regime
and the very fragmentation of Iraqi nationhood through the separation of the Kurds and
the Arabs, and the Sunni-Shi’a political divide. While Kurdish nationalists dealt with the
PSC on nationalist terms in the separate territory of Iraqi Kurdistan. Shi’a Islamists,
driven by the defense of their politico-sectarian identity, pushed for a questioning of the
unified PSC on sectarian grounds through different propositions that all introduce the
possibility of a sectarian based PSC: Decree 137 proposed in 2003, Article 41 of the new
Iraqi Constitution adopted in 2005 and more recently in 2014 the Ja’fari Law proposition.
The latter, based on the Ja’fari school -main Shi’a religious school in Iraq- could allow the
marriage of girls since the age of 9 years old considered by the Ja’afari school as sin al-
balagha (the age of maturity), and allow precarious forms of marriage in which women
and girls loose legal protection. Activists of the Iraqi Women Network (IWN) the main
independent women’s rights platform in Iraq since 2003, were firmly opposed to all these
measures, defending the Law no 188 for its inclusion of all Muslim Iraqis. According to
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IWN activists, Decree 137, Article 41 and the Ja‘fari Law proposition brought the very
notion of the comparatively progressive and unifying PSC into question on both religious
and sectarian grounds. In turn, many civil society activists expressed fears over both the
adoption of a system based on a regressive and conservative reading of Muslim
jurisprudence and the sectarianization of women and family issues. Significantly, Sunni
Islamists also opposed these propositions, siding instead with the preservation of a
unified code that facilitates intercommunal marriage. Conversely, most Shi’a Islamist
women activists supported the Ja‘fari Law, considering it to be an affirmation of the
freedom to practice Shia Islam after decades of repression under the Baath regime.
According to a survey conducted by a women’s organization in southern Iraq which
confirmed my own research, even the majority of the Shia population (70%) considered
Article 41 to threaten the unity of Iraq.15 Most Shia clerics also opposed the Ja‘fari Law,
or example, Hussein al-Sadr—a prominent Shi’a cleric—stated that it was better for the
state to adopt civil legislation in line with international conventions and leave issues of
sharia to the clerics: “We want Iraq to be a civilian [madani] and civilized [mutahadhar]
state.”16 The fact that most of the Shi’a population and clerics also oppose the
sectarianization of the PSC shows how much this issue does not divide Sunnis and Shi’as
on strictly religious-sectarian lines, but rather on political-sectarian lines. Shi’a Islamists
who are in power push for a sectarianization of the PSC which is synonymous for them of
more power, while Sunni Islamists who are on the marge of power defend a unified PSC
to make sure that Sunnis would be treated as equal citizens.
This brief history of the challenges to women’s legal rights highlights the extent to which
gender issues are entangled with ideas of nationhood, and increasingly with sectarian
issues, as well as the nature of political regimes and the way it framed women’s activism.
Gender issues were continually raised throughout the Baathist project, oscillating
between Arab-Socialist nationalism and a tribalism colored by Islam. Subsequently,
conflicting gender politics can be seen to have economic, political, ideological, and
sociodemographic triggers. Such ambivalent legacies partly defined the ways in which
the PSC has been debated in the post-2003 context.
So far, my analysis of the formation and deformation of women’s legal rights in Iraq has
shown that the question cannot be reduced to the static perspective of “gender in Islam.”
If the interpretation of “Islam” was in favor of more egalitarian conceptions of women’s
rights between the 1950s and the 1970s, it was the product of a particular social,
economic, and political conjecture in which a gendered secular leftist nationalist
narrative dominated Iraqi political culture. The same “Islam” was interpreted in a more
conservative way in the 1980s and 1990s owing to militarization and general
impoverishment. Since 2003, the violent fragmentation of the country negatively affected
the very existence of a unified frame of women’s legal rights, and “Islam” is interpreted
through conservative sectarian lines.
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The Military, Political, and Economic

Genealogy of Gender-Based Violence in Iraq
Iraq has become one of the most brutalized countries in the world. In addition of having
experienced one of the most authoritarian regimes in the region, its population has been
plunged into several devastating wars starting in the early 1980s with the war with Iran.
Iraq seems to have been in a “state of war” since then as military violence has
characterized its everyday reality until today. The devastating impact of the UN sanctions
after the invasion of Kuwait in 1990 is still palpable today. Each of these forms of violence
has brought about the militarization and thus celebration of masculinization of Iraqi
society which, in turn, also carry ethnic and sectarian dimensions.17 Thus, this violence is
both gendered and ethnosectarian, and the imbrication of both created the fragmentation
of Iraq since the US-led invasion and even more since the invasion of ISIS.
Even before these wars and occupations, the authoritarian Baath regime had normalized
violence and turned it into a particular sense of Iraqi political identity. From 1975, the
cultural identity and very existence of the four million Iraqi Kurds was under threat:
between 250,000 and 300,000 Kurds were deported from Kirkuk to the south in order to
“Arabize the population.” The Baath Party also undertook a campaign of “internal
population redistribution,” deporting thousands of Yazidis from Sulaymaniyah and Sinjar.
From the 1970s to the 1990s, the repression of both the Shi’a movement and the Kurdish
nationalist movement made the Baath regime one of the most violent dictatorship in the
world. Under the banners of Arab nationalism and the struggle against Iranian influence,
the regime undertook massive campaigns of repression. The war with Iran lasted more
than eight years and caused the deaths of many thousands of individuals, mostly male
soldiers. This is coupled with the Tasfirat politics in which hundreds of thousands of Iraqi
families deemed to be of Iranian origin were taken from their homes and expelled across
the Iranian borders.18
As a consequence of these atrocities, the regime’s gender rhetoric shifted radically

towards the reinforcement of normative conceptions of masculinity and femininity.19 The
rhetoric of the “good Iraqi man and woman, educating and participating in the labor
force” changed radically. During the 1980s, the state engaged in a glorification of
militarized masculinity and emphasized Iraqi women’s reproductive responsibilities.
Being a good Iraqi woman became synonymous with being the mother of future
soldiers.20 In several speeches, Saddam Hussein insisted that “a woman who does not
bring at least five children is a traitor to the nation.”21 The regime pressured women to
raise the fertility rate by banning contraception, making abortion illegal, and enhancing
maternity benefits, including free infant food. Men were pictured as battle-ready soldiers:
the protectors of the nation’s women and children. As national agency was masculinized
and the land was presented as female, gendered obligations were denoted in poems and
propaganda literature. In the war’s last stages, reproductive representations encouraged
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an Islamic discourse, presenting women as “mothers”. Even children’s literature was

militarized and in it, Iranians dehumanized.22
The Baath regime’s discriminatory notion of Iraqiness was also very gendered in the
sense that it affected very concretely the legislation regarding who could marry whom
and how the ideal Iraqi family conducted its life.23 The regime implemented specific
legislation in the early 1980s to push mixed couples to divorce. Dima M., born in Baghdad
in 1955, was victim of the taba‘iyya campaign against Iraqis considered of Iranian
descent, and in 1980 her husband was jailed for leaving the war front. She recounted to
me how he was forced to “divorce her” in order to obtain his freedom, as the law
rewarded those who divorced “Iranian” Iraqis:
It was when Saddam was giving 2000 dinars to those who divorce a taba‘iyya
person. At the time, 2000 dinars was something huge. We earned around 100
dinars per month, so you can imagine how important this amount of money was.
Saddam tried to destroy families from the inside, pushing people to betray their
own families. My husband obtained his release after he divorced me. He was
released in 1984 and I saw him again for the first time in 1991.24
The years of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait marked two of the most brutal episodes of state
violence against Iraq’s northern and southern populations in the history of Iraqi society.
Between 1988 and 1989, chemical attacks on Halabja—known as the al-Anfal campaign—
killed more than 180,000 Kurds, mostly civilians.25 The 1991 uprising of the Kurdish
nationalists in the north gained international attention, and in April 1991 Operation Safe
Haven was undertaken in the Kurdish region in order to protect the population from the
Baath army. The spontaneous uprising by communists, Shias, and disaffected regional
Baathists in southern Iraq, on the other hand, did not gain as much attention after the US
regime abandoned them. Saddam Hussein’s praetorian guards launched a merciless
attack on the insurgents. Hundreds of thousands were killed, tortured, imprisoned, and
declared missing. The memories of these atrocities represented a turning point in the
country’s sectarian relations and fueled the sectarian war of 2006–2007.26
The US-led coalition’s six-week bombing campaign in January–February 1991 destroyed

the functionality of the Iraqi economy and state. A UN special report from March 1991
indicated that after the bombing campaign, Iraq moved from a modern, highly urbanized,
and mechanized economy to a pre-industrial one.27 The UN’s imposition of drastic
economic sanctions perpetuated the war’s destruction of state infrastructure. Hardest hit
were the sectors on which women relied: the public services, and social, education, and
health systems. The regime in Baghdad responded by imposing austerity measures: it
reduced the number of government employees, demobilized thousands of military and
civilian personnel, and curbed women’s work in the public sector. It pushed the
population into a “survival economy” as people were forced to work several jobs, selling
personal belongings, and sewing their own clothes.28
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The dismantling of the education system, public sector, and state services impacted
women’s everyday lives. The effects were especially felt by female teachers and public
employees, who saw their salaries plummet to such a degree that they could not even
afford to pay for weekly transport.29 Women could not work alternative jobs; men, on the
other hand, could work as engineers in the morning and as a taxi driver or shopkeepers
in the afternoon. This limited women’s financial contributions to the household, and
pushed many into domestic life. Iman A. was in her twenties at the time, employed in the
production sector, and married with two children. She spoke about the drop in her salary,
as well as the fact that most of her female friends quit their jobs. Iman A. also spoke
about how her sector managed to carry on despite the lack of staples:
The sanctions taught us a lot. How to face difficulties, how to be autonomous? I

decided to carry on working, although my salary was 6000 dinars (around 20
dollars), so almost nothing. It was not enough to buy the monthly bus ticket to go
to my place of work. I chose to carry on with my job despite the fact that all the
women around me were quitting their jobs, because it was a waste of time for
almost no salary. I did not work for the salary, I worked in order to have something
to do, to morally and psychologically handle the terrible situation of the 1990s.
Most of the women around me who quit their jobs ended up at home, they did not
find another job. It morally and psychologically destroyed so many women.30
More generally, women bore the burden of household survival, as many men were
involved in the military. Many women found alternative, informal ways to provide for their
family’s basic necessities, selling ready-made meals, personal objects, and homemade
sweets; giving tutorials for teachers; nursing; or cleaning.31
In the context of extreme poverty, new forms of patriarchy emerged that were marked by
conservatism and the idea that women “needed protection.”32 On the one hand, the
regime’s Faith Campaign espoused moral propriety of Iraqi women and, on the other,
women were forced to make degrading life-saving choices.33 Female and child
prostitution became rampant, men spent fortunes on pornography, kidnapping of girls for
ransom occurred, young women were forced into marriages with old wealthy men, all
practices that the PSC had sought to eradicate. Proportionate to this deterioration,
general poverty decimated the marriage rate. Informal unions—‘urfi marriages—and
temporary marriages—mut‘a for Shias, misyar for Sunnis filled the gap.34 More generally,
the spread of corruption, communal and neighborhood relations degenerated into
individualistic economic survival and mafia-type racketeering. This period restructured
the social and cultural fabric of Iraq, fundamentally altering the values of sociability and
morality.35
This sketch of political, economic, and military violence in Baath Iraq shows how much
these forms of violence are both gendered and carry ethnic and sectarian dimensions. It
is precisely the imbrication between gender, ethnicity, and sectarianism that is at the core
of the post-invasion condition of severe fragmentation of the country. Bearing this gloomy
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reality in mind is essential when considering the resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism

since 2014.
Living and Mobilizing in an Occupied and

Fragmented Country
The invasion of Iraq, coupled with the bombing and fighting that occurred between
March and May 2003, led to around 150,000 civilian deaths.36 After the establishment of
the occupation through the CPA, and the establishment of Iraqi governing councils based
on communal quotas, Iraqis’ daily lives began to be characterized by violence. The
sectarian civil war that continues to haunt the country was the direct result of the CPA
de-Baathification campaign which decommissioned 400,000 Iraqi soldiers and lowly
Baath Party members undermining the state, the political marginalization of the Sunni
population and the establishment of communal identities as the basis of the Iraqi political
system.37 The US army’s repression of uprisings against the occupation—especially in
Fallujah—and the rise of political and party-associated militias benefiting from the power
vacuum, all took a sectarian shape.38 The exacerbation of sectarian conflict reached its
extreme during the 2006–2007 sectarian war.39 This civil war and all the associated
events represented the second turning point after 1991 in Iraqi sectarian relations, and
reorganized society and territory according to sectarian lines.40 Such a fracturing is
visible in the division of Baghdad into homogeneously Sunni and Shi’a neighborhoods,
each separated by checkpoints and concrete walls.41
The sectarian dimension of the social retribalization started under the Baath in the 1990s
was pushed even further in the chaos that followed the invasion. Sectarian violence is
gendered. Most of the women activists I interviewed, especially public and media figures,
have received death threats or been directly targeted by violence, including car bomb
attacks in front of their offices or homes. Some had to flee the country, but the majority
remain in Baghdad. Some moved into areas controlled by their sect, as their
neighborhoods were “cleansed” by sectarian militias. Ibtihal I., in her early forties, very
active women’s rights activist of the Iraqi Women’s League recounted to me how, in an
attempt to kill her in 2007, a group of men placed explosives in the front of her house,
and made it explode. The event occurred after she had received several death threats
from conservative Islamist militia groups in the form of phone calls and messages.
Fortunately, no one was in the house at the time. Ibtihal recalled the police incompetence
and lack of will to help her find the perpetrators of the attack and provide her with
protection. She described the atmosphere of Baghdad in 2006–2007 and her feelings
about it:
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You know in 2006 and 2007, after 2 p.m., the streets of Baghdad were empty.
There was no life in Baghdad. The next day, everything opened at 8 a.m. But
people were scared to go out very early or later than 2 p.m. Violence was
everywhere. Armed groups, death threats, militias, the everyday reality was
terrible, frightful. Until today you know, the value of life is lost in Iraq. Any
disagreement between political leaders, ends up by violence in the streets. We
face death every single day, every Iraqi that goes out of his house is not certain
that he will come back alive. Iraq transformed into a scene of death. Even when
we have moments of joy, we feel that we are stealing these moments, and we then
refrain ourselves saying Allah yesterna [May God protect us]. The worse is that we
do not even have a state, a government towards whom we could seek for
protection or complain.42
In addition to the overall insecurity that led the deaths of many Iraqi women activists,
most of the women I interviewed noticed how the rise of conservative gender norms
impacted their dress and ability to move freely in specific neighborhoods of Baghdad. As
many neighborhoods are controled by militias and armed groups backed by conservative,
sectarian Islamist parties, many women have witnessed or experienced incidents
regarding clothes or behavior when crossing checkpoints. Christian women activists, too,
prefer to wear a loose shawl over their head when moving between the capital’s different
neighborhoods. Gender norms are imbricated with sectarian division: in Sunni-dominated
cities women often wear a jubbah consisting of a hijab and a long mantle while in Shia-
dominated cities, particularly in southern Iraq, women now wear a black ‘abayah43 over
their hijab and cover their feet with black socks. Many of the women I interviewed
described incidents such as the closing of hair salons or car bomb attacks to forbid
women from driving.
More generally, an overwhelming sense of tension has been created by the violence, and
the dominance of competing armed militias in the streets. This feeling was expressed
repeatedly to me: “Before we had one Saddam, today we have a Saddam at every street
corner.” Moreover, my ethnographic research showed that the militarization of the Iraqi
public spaces has turned Baghdad to a “city of men”: checkpoints, walls, and soldiers in
the streets everywhere. Many places are now inaccessible for women and some places
such as cafés, once the pride of riverside Baghdad are forbidden for women from five
p.m. even in al-Karrada neighborhood known for its openness.
In 2007, over half of the Iraqi population lived on less than one dollar a day. Acute
malnutrition has more than doubled since 2003, affecting no less than 43% of all children
between the ages of six months and five years. Almost 50% of all households have been
deprived of healthy sanitation facilities. There is a critical lack of medical drugs and
equipment, and more than 15,000 doctors have been killed, kidnapped, or fled the
country. Even in Baghdad, the state provides a maximum of five hours of electricity per
day.44 In addition, the lack of control and stability since 2003, as well as the privatization
and liberalization of the economy, has provoked a drastic increase in the price of staple
goods and basic necessities. As a result, the majority of Iraqis are poor while living in an
Page 12 of 21

oil-rich country. No major plan or policies have been undertaken by the new regime to
deal with these issues. The new state’s weakness, its inability to provide security and
respond to basic needs such as access to running water, electricity, housing, and
employment, mismanagement and corruption pushed Iraqis to rely on alternative sources
of protection and service.45
Alongside mobilizations around women’s legal rights, women civil society activists were
at the forefront of the struggle for welfare and social protection laws, against corruption,
advocating freedom of expression, criticizing governmental salaries and “institutionalized
corruption.” Most of the independent women civil society activists I met participated in
the Civil Initiative to Preserve the Constitution, which was launched in 2010 to apply
pressure on the government, as well as mobilizations denouncing armed violence,
sectarianism, and state incompetence in providing basic public services. The IWN took a
strong stand with regard to Iraq’s independence from foreign interference; it supported
federalism and denounced human rights abuses in Iraq.46 Activists also raised the issue of
the disappeared and prisoners of the anti-terrorism campaign, who are still detained
without judgment, as well as the police and security forces’ use of violence.47
The situation is so chaotic and fragmented that even female parliamentarians face
considerable challenges that makes their work on the ground almost impossible. Betoul
M.—a prominent Shi’a Islamist activist—believes the sectarian quota system is the root of
state and government dysfunction. She represented Tayar al-Islah, a Shi'a political group
founded by Ibrahim al-Ja‘fari, at the Baghdad Provincial Council and faced much
difficulty:
Page 13 of 21

We face a lot of problems at the Baghdad Provincial Council. The greater problem,
in reality, is the communal quota system. […] I had to struggle to get the
Committee of Civil Society Organizations, because I felt that as a civil society and
women’s activist, it was my place to be on this committee. But once I joined this
committee, I faced a lot of conflicts with the head of the committee. This man,
once he became the head of a committee, he thought he became the King of
Baghdad. We are both elected representatives; he has his position and I have
mine. I proposed him to divide Baghdad into different zones in order to operate
more efficiently. He imposed the areas where he wanted to work, and he refused
to work on certain areas. Let’s be honest here, the problem is sectarianism. He
told me: “You take al-Sadr, al-Kazmyah, al-Istiqlal, al-Kerrada and Tesa’ Nisan etc.
[all Shia areas] and I take Abu Ghraib, Tarmyah, Mayadeen and al-A‘dhamyah etc.
[all Sunni areas].” I finally told him that I agreed, because I cannot go to these
places with my ID card and my ‘abayah. The ‘abayah is the most visible sign, as
you know. And at the time, after 2005, it was dangerous. But even today, I do not
know these areas or trust going there. Anyway, I cannot access these areas. […]
Before the fall, didn’t we live all together, Sunnis and Shi'as, all neighbors?
[…]However, in the context where the state is so weak, when people are in such
need, it is normal that the citizen turns to its representatives to complain, or even
hurt them sometimes. […] It is easier now to work and ask for funds from NGOs
than the government. If I want to deal with basic services in a neighborhood, it is
easier for me to ask for funding from an NGO than from the government, because
of corruption the administrative process and control makes it take years to obtain
anything. It will be so complicated and so long, and I need to fix some very urgent
problems. It is a pragmatic approach. We have so many emergency issues: water,
electricity and basic needs. We cannot wait until the government builds social
housing, we have to find concrete solutions.48
In a context characterized by violence and a weak state, where individuals are pushed to
rely on alternative sources of protection and security, tribal leadership gained
significance and took a sectarian shape. It is not surprising, therefore, that a large
number of tribesmen and political leaders chose to join ISIS in June 2014, during its
capture of Mosul. In response to the invasion of ISIS, Grand Ayatollah Sistani—the most
important marja‘ in Iraq—called for a “jihad to preserve Iraq,” which incited thousands of
civilians mainly Shi’as to join the military operations against ISIS.
More recently in the context of the invasion of ISIS, ordinary citizens, civil society, and
women’s rights activists launched a strong grassroots movement that started last summer
(2015). From Baghdad’s Tahrir Square across Iraq, this movement has expressed citizens’
general exasperation at the corruption and mismanagement of the post-2003
government; corruption and mismanagement epitomized by electricity cuts and a lack of
public services. These protests quickly turned into a massive popular movement—
supported even by the prominent religious figure Ayatollah Sistani—vilifying Iraq’s post-
invasion regime and demanding radical reforms. Every Friday since, demonstrators have
gathered in the main public squares of Iraq’s big cities including Najaf, Nasrya, Basra,
Page 14 of 21

and echoed the slogans of the protestors in central Baghdad: “Bi-ism il-din bagunah al-
haramiyya” (“in the name of religion we have been robbed by looters”) and “Khubz,
Huriyya, Dawla Medeniya” (“Bread, Freedom, and a Civil State”). Demonstrators consider
the new regime’s corruption and sectarian politics as directly responsible for the
formation and spread of ISIS.
The Shi'a Islamist Sadrist movement joined the protest, as its leader Moqtada al-Sadr met
the sit-in—that started on March 18, 2016—in front of the concrete T-walls that
encompass the Green Zone in the capital, where the main central government building,
foreign embassies, and Iraq’s new political leadership all reside. If many civil society and
women’s rights activists are critical of the involvement and possible hijacking of the
popular movement by the Sadrist, others were far more nuanced. Henaa Edwar, head of
the Al-Amel organization and a prominent figure of the IWN was very hopeful regarding
the developments of the popular protests when I met her in the Al-Amel offices in al-
Kerrada, central Baghdad, the day she visited the sit-ins with a delegation of IWN
activists on March 22, 2016. Despite remaining critical of the Sadrists’ populism and
conservatism, especially regarding gender matters, Edwar expressed her support for the
protesters and a positive view of the Sadrists’ involvement. She believes that Moqtada al-
Sadr’s presence pushed the Sadrists’ wide grassroots proletarian base onto the streets in
a show of unified nationhood and citizenship, especially at a stage when after weeks of
mobilizations, some protesters, tired of being in the streets every Friday, were starting to
go home. Many women’s rights activists who participated actively in this movement of
protest emphasized the importance of linking gender equality advocacy with the
struggles for religious and class equality. The IWN activists insist on the preservation of
equal citizenship for Iraqis from all ethnic and religious backgrounds as a cornerstone of
the preservation of women’s legal rights.
Conclusion
As eloquently shown by Al-Ali and Pratt,49 the neocolonial use of women’s rights rhetoric
to justify imperialist and geopolitical agendas is well known in Iraq. The reality of Iraq
today shows that there is a great contradiction between the US government’s advocacy of
women’s rights and its actual neocolonial and neoliberal politics. The ethnosectarian form
of government the US occupation force ordained has resulted in generalized violence and
a fragmented citizenship. In the context of the ISIS invasion and the terrible violence it
unleashed, this discourse justifying military actions in order to “save women” has been
used again not only by political leaders in the West, especially the US administration, but
also very strongly by the Iraqi political leadership. The new regime describes ISIS as the
“main enemy” of Iraq and the Shi'a-dominated central government intensifies its
sectarian discourse legitimizing military violence and arbitrary executions in the name of
“security.” Since 2014, the central government has launched a huge media campaign
showing video clips more than ten times a day on Iraqi TV in which male Iraqi soldiers kill
Page 15 of 21

a “terrorist.” They celebrate both a violent model of masculinity and an exclusive

definition of nationhood in which the figure of the Sunni tribesman is depicted as either
an ISIS supporter or a former Baathist.
As demonstrated in this chapter, militarization and political violence that started under
the Baath regime are the central factor of everyday gender-based violence and in Iraq
today, the entanglement of gender and ethnosectarian enmity create a highly fragmented
reality. The very basis of the early republic’s women’s legal rights are delegitimized by
the central government dominated by conservative Shi’a Islamists which either seeks a
sectarianization of the PSC. Meanwhile in the areas occupied by ISIS, women are deemed
minors or inferiors. It is clear that the situation women are facing in Iraq today is not the
simple product of a misreading of “Islam,” but it is rather the direct consequences of a
series of wars and invasions that have led to social and political fragmentation coupled
with the rise of conservative forces, the foremost victims of which have been Iraqi
women.
And still, Iraqi women’s rights and civil society activists have rallied in Tahrir Square
every Friday since the summer of 2016 and insisted that only an inclusive, socially,
religiously, and ethnically egalitarian society could bring about an environment in which
Iraq can rebuild itself. The US-led invasion and occupation exacerbated the
ethnosectarian divisions as well as the social and economic crisis that characterized Iraq
since at least 1991. As Iraqi women and men demonstrators articulate very clearly, ISIS is
the product of sectarian oppression and corruption of this new regime produced by the
imperialist US-led invasion and occupation.
Zahra Ali
Rutgers University, Newark.
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l’Empire ottoman à Al-Qaida (Paris: La Découverte).
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Based Societies,” ANNALS, AAPSS 636, July 2011: 49–68.
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Iraq–Iran War,” Middle Eastern Studies 35, 2: 27–44.
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2003,” Current Trends in Islamist Ideology 14: 70.
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Haddad, Fanar (2010). Sectarian Relations in Arab Iraq: Competing Mythologies of

History, People and State. Thesis submitted to University of Exeter for a DPhil in
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(Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press).
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Rohde, Achim (2006). “Opportunities for Masculinity and Love: Cultural Production in
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(London/New York: Zed Books).
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Notes:
(1) See for example Abu-Lughod (2013, 1998); Kandiyoti (1996, 1991); Joseph (2000);
Ahmed, (1992, 1982); Mohanty (2003; 1988).
(2) See for example Zubaida (2011, 1989).
(3) I have conducted an indepth fieldwork mainly in Baghdad, and in Erbil and
Sulaymaniyah in Iraqi Kurdistan between October 2010 and June 2012. Throughout this
ethnography of women’s political activism in Iraq I conducted eighty semi-structured
interviews (most of them consisting in life-stories) of Iraqi women political activists from
across the political, ethnic and religious spectrum—leftists, secular, Islamists, Arabs,
Kurds, Christians, Sunnis, Shi’as etc. and have been a participant observer of Iraqi
women’s political mobilizations and gatherings. I have also conducted fieldwork among
women and civil society groups in Baghdad, Najaf-Koufa, Karbala an Nasriyah in March-
April 2016 and May 2017.
(4) For the studies on pre-republican legal frameworks for women, see Kern (2011) and
Noga Efrati (2012).
(5) Charrad (2011; 2001).
(6) That will become few years later the Iraqi Women’s League.
(7) Straight after the first Baath coup in 1963, this measure was abolished.
(8) Efrati (2005; 2012).
(9) Joseph (1991).
(10) Joseph (1991); Ismael J. and Ismael S. (2000).
(11) Efrati (1999) and Rohde (2010).
(12) Al-Jawaheri (2008); Al-Ali (2007); Ali (forthcoming).
(13) Al-Jawaheri (2008).
(14) Al-Jawaheri (2008); Efrati (2005).
Page 19 of 21

(15) Bint al-Rafidain/UNIFEM (2006).
(16) Al-hewar al-mutamaden, March 2, 2014.
(17) Khoury (2013).
(18) Kutschera (2005); Bozarslan (2009; 2008).
(19) Khoury (2013), Rohde (2010; 2006).
(20) Al-Ali (2007), Efrati (1999).
(21) Rohde (2010).
(22) Khoury (2013), Rohde (2010).
(23) Ali (forthcoming).
(24) Interview conducted in Baghdad in 2012.
(25) Kutschera (2005); Bozarslan (2009; 2008).
(26) Haddad (2014; 2010).
(27) Ahtissaari, M, “Report to the Secretary-General on Humanitarian Needs in Kuwait

and Iraq in the Immediate Post-Crisis Environment”, New York, UN Report no. S122366,
March 1991.
(28) Al-Jawaheri (2008).
(29) Al-Jawaheri (2008); Ali (forthcoming).
(31) Ismael J. and Ismael S (2008).
(32) Al-Ali (2007); Al-Jawaheri (2008); Ali (forthcoming).
(33) Al-Ali (2007); Rohde (2010).
(34) Rohde (2010); Ali (forthcoming).
(35) Al-Ali (2007); Al-Jawaheri (2008).
(36) Estimated according to the Lancet (2004), Iraq Body Count: www.iraqbodycount.org,
(last access February 3 2017) and Iraq: the Human Cost: http://web.mit.edu/
humancostiraq/ (last access February 3 2017).
(37) Ismael Y. and Ismael S. (2015); Arato (2009); Dodge (2005, 2013).
(38) Dodge (2013).
Page 20 of 21

(39) Between 2006 and 2007, the sectarian civil war claimed at least 1,000 lives per week,
mostly civilian, and both internally and externally displaced around 2,500,000 according
to the UNHCR.
(40) Haddad (2014; 2010).
(41) Damluji (2010); Pieri (2014).
(43) Long and large black tissue covering the whole body excluding the face.
(44) Dawisha (2009).
(45) Dawisha (2009).
(49) Al-Ali and Pratt (2009).
Zahra Ali
Rutgers University, Newark.
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The Fragmentation of Gender in Post-Invasion Iraq

Oxford Handbooks Online

Abstract and Keywords

Subscriber: University of Arizona Library; date: 28 July 2018

Considering Islamic fundamentalism in Iraq or elsewhere in Muslim majority countries as

Subscriber: University of Arizona Library; date: 28 July 2018

of considering violence, especially the development of political, economic, and military

Subscriber: University of Arizona Library; date: 28 July 2018

Beyond “Gender in Islam”: The Evolution of

Subscriber: University of Arizona Library; date: 28 July 2018

Subscriber: University of Arizona Library; date: 28 July 2018

Subscriber: University of Arizona Library; date: 28 July 2018

Subscriber: University of Arizona Library; date: 28 July 2018

The Military, Political, and Economic

As a consequence of these atrocities, the regime’s gender rhetoric shifted radically

Subscriber: University of Arizona Library; date: 28 July 2018

an Islamic discourse, presenting women as “mothers”. Even children’s literature was

The US-led coalition’s six-week bombing campaign in January–February 1991 destroyed

Subscriber: University of Arizona Library; date: 28 July 2018

The sanctions taught us a lot. How to face difficulties, how to be autonomous? I

Subscriber: University of Arizona Library; date: 28 July 2018

reality in mind is essential when considering the resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism

Living and Mobilizing in an Occupied and

Subscriber: University of Arizona Library; date: 28 July 2018

Subscriber: University of Arizona Library; date: 28 July 2018

Subscriber: University of Arizona Library; date: 28 July 2018

Subscriber: University of Arizona Library; date: 28 July 2018

Subscriber: University of Arizona Library; date: 28 July 2018

a “terrorist.” They celebrate both a violent model of masculinity and an exclusive

Rutgers University, Newark.

Subscriber: University of Arizona Library; date: 28 July 2018

Al-Jawaheri, H. Yasmine (2008). Women in Iraq. The Gender Impact of International

Bozarslan, Hamit (2009). Conflit kurde (Paris: Autrement).

Bozarslan, Hamit (2008). Une histoire de la violence au Moyen-Orient. De la fin de

Charrad, M. Mounira (2011). “Central and Local Patrimonialism: State-Building in Kin-

Dawisha, Adeed (2009). Iraq: A political history from independence to occupation

Subscriber: University of Arizona Library; date: 28 July 2018

Haddad, Fanar (2010). Sectarian Relations in Arab Iraq: Competing Mythologies of

Khoury, R. Dina (2013). Iraq in Wartime. Soldiering, Martyrdom, and Remembrance

Kutschera, Chris (2005). Le Livre Noir de Saddam Hussein (Paris: Oh editions).

Mohanty, T. Chandra (2003). Feminism without border. Decolonizing Theory, Practicing

Rohde, Achim (2010). “Gender Policies in Baathist Iraq,” in State-Society Relations in

Subscriber: University of Arizona Library; date: 28 July 2018

(2) See for example Zubaida (2011, 1989).

(5) Charrad (2011; 2001).

(8) Efrati (2005; 2012).

(9) Joseph (1991).

(10) Joseph (1991); Ismael J. and Ismael S. (2000).

(11) Efrati (1999) and Rohde (2010).

(12) Al-Jawaheri (2008); Al-Ali (2007); Ali (forthcoming).

(13) Al-Jawaheri (2008).

(14) Al-Jawaheri (2008); Efrati (2005).

Subscriber: University of Arizona Library; date: 28 July 2018

(15) Bint al-Rafidain/UNIFEM (2006).

(16) Al-hewar al-mutamaden, March 2, 2014.

(17) Khoury (2013).

(18) Kutschera (2005); Bozarslan (2009; 2008).

(19) Khoury (2013), Rohde (2010; 2006).

(20) Al-Ali (2007), Efrati (1999).

(21) Rohde (2010).

(22) Khoury (2013), Rohde (2010).

(23) Ali (forthcoming).

(24) Interview conducted in Baghdad in 2012.