Iraq’s ambassador to the United States, Samir Sumaida’ie, began his welcome to the International Women’s Day celebration he was hosting this week not with the praises for his countrywomen, but with a moment of silence.
Guests packed into the embassy reception hall bowed their heads — some covered in the Muslim hijab, most not — “to remember what Iraqi women have endured and are enduring,” he said before dusting off a quick chronology of Iraqi women’s achievements: 1923, the first women’s magazine; 1935, the first woman law school graduate and doctor; 1938, the first woman judge.
“That was at a time when our neighbors didn’t allow their girls to go to school,” Sumaida’ie added.
Iraq’s Constitution is intended to ensure this doesn’t happen. A quarter of Parliament itself is to be female. Women voted in post-Saddam elections, a favorite reminder of the Bush administration. There’s little overt U.S. attention to their ongoing struggles, however, as violence forces Iraqi women into widowhood and threatens them sexually.
“Iraqi women have not always been in such desperate state,” Sumaida’ie said. They raised families with “remarkable courage and remarkable fortitude … in extraordinary circumstances.”
A new report from Women for Women International notes Iraqi women polled say the situation since 2004 has gotten worse. Nearly 70 percent of Iraqi women respondents think women are increasingly targeted in Iraq and attribute it to “less respect for women’s rights than before, that women are thought of as possessions, and that the economy has gotten worse.” Just more than 76 percent “said that girls in their families are not allowed to attend school, and 56.7 percent said that girls’ ability to attend school has gotten worse since the U.S. invasion.”
Against those odds, Iraqi women held marches and rallies throughout Iraq over the past week, protesting the trend. In Washington, prior to being recognized by Sumaida’ie at the embassy event, Dr. Eaman al-Gobory and seven non-Iraqi women were awarded International Women of Courage Awards by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. …
Read the entire story by United Press International’s Ben Lando here.
The Norwegian oil firm DNO has reached an agreement with Iraq’s Kurdistan government on revising its production sharing contract, according to a company statement. The KRG announced last year it was relooking at the oil deals it had signed prior to August 2008. That’s when it passed its regional oil law, and it wanted to bring those deals in line with the law. The PSC has been split into 3 parts now, with DNO having 55 percent interest in the most prolific so far, Tawke, and 40 percent each in what’s now called the Dohuk and Irbil PSCs. The rest is controlled by the KRG.
The Bush Administration apparently does not want a U.S. military study that found no direct connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda to get any attention, Jonathan Karl reports for ABC News. This morning, the Pentagon cancelled plans to send out a press release announcing the report’s release and will no longer make the report available online.
The government’s announcement that it was creating 800,000 new jobs is a sigh of relief amid nearly a five-year-succession of bad news, Iraqi economists said, Hadeel al-Jawari reports for Azzaman.
Trauma, poverty shred young Iraqis’ dreams, Aseel Kami reports for Reuters.As a teenager, Mazin Tahir dreamt that the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq would bring new freedoms and democracy with the fall of Saddam Hussein. As a young adult, his hopes have been replaced by despair after five years of unremitting violence.
“It’s sad, or funny. The Iraqi dream has turned into a nightmare,” said Tahir, who was 15 when the Americans came. “When I was young I dreamt of getting rid of the dictatorship and replacing it with democracy. Saddam has gone but Iraq is in worse shape. There are killings every day, politicians are like thieves … it’s like a curse from God.”
The U.S. State Department’s Iraq Weekly Status Report can be found here.
A Long Road in Iraq, a recap of 5 years in Iraq by Greg Bruno for the Council on Foreign Relations.
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