On March 8, 2003, international women's day, Iraqi women had little to
celebrate. They were living under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, the
weight of onerous UN sanctions and living in fear of impending war. This
year, Saddam Hussein is gone and sanctions have been lifted. But Iraqi women
face a brand new set of burdens.

Iraqi women, like Iraqi men, wage a day-to-day struggle just to survive:
they face a devastating 60 percent unemployment rate, constant shortages of
electricity and clean drinking water, a crumbling transportation network,
and a crumbling health care system. But Iraqi women also have to cope with
an unanticipated consequence of Hussein's ouster: the breakdown of the rule
of law that has led to an unprecedented spate of rapes and kidnappings. Add
to that the daily bombings and the travails of living under an occupying
force, and it is no surprise that many Iraqi women are afraid to even
venture out of their homes.

Worse yet, in the long view, is a fear that Iraqi women's rights, won over a
century of struggles, are now being eroded by the rising power of
conservative Muslim clerics. Many Iraqi women fault the U.S. for shoring up
the clerics, while failing to promote women to decision-making positions.

In December 2003, a coalition of Iraqi women's groups, most of whom had
supported the US invasion, delivered a scathing letter to the U.S. Coalition
Provisional Authority (CPA) denouncing a litany of discriminatory political
appointments. The letter noted that there are only 3 women out of 25 on the
Interim Governing Council; no women governors have been appointed in any of
the 18 provinces, not one woman on the 9-person committee that wrote the
just-completed Fundamental Law. There is only 1 woman in charge in one of
the 25 government ministries; and there has been no woman appointed governor
in any of the country's 18 provinces.

And remember that one of the few noteworthy achievements of the Iraqi
government prior to the invasion was that there were more professional women
in positions of power than in almost any other Middle Eastern nation.

The relatively low key struggle between conservative clerics and
women activists recently exploded within the US-appointed Governing Council
over a Code 137, a reactionary resolution passed by Council but not approved
by the US authorities. The resolution would have scrapped Iraq's 1959 family
affairs code?considered among the most progressive in the Middle East?and
placed family law under Muslim religious jurisdiction.

Zakia Ismael Hakki, a retired woman judge, said that the new law would 'send
Iraqi families back to the Middle Ages" by stripping women of equal rights
around marriage, divorce, children, inheritance, and property rights. Iraqi
women promptly mobilized against the Code, with street protests and
petitions that elicited international support.? The women garnered a
temporary victory when the substance of the code was dropped from the
interim constitution approved on March 1. But conservative clerics and
political parties like the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq
vow to try again once political control is turned over the Iraqis on June
30.

Iraqi women are fully cognizant of the danger and are preemptively
organizing to defend their rights in the post-June 30 Iraqi government. They
spearheaded a national drive to have at least 40 percent representation in
public administration, legislative bodies and the judiciary. While the
interim constitution calls for modest quotas of 25 percent representation
for women, and only in the interim assembly, this is still an improvement
over what was originally planned and was only reached because women got
organized.

Yanar Mohamed, leader of the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq who has
received death threats because of her battles in favor of a secular state,
sees this as a critical juncture for Iraqi women. Either we organize and
demand our social and political freedoms or we give way to a theocracy and
the institutionalized, legalized oppression of women in Iraq.?? It would be
a sad irony indeed if an invasion that is now being sold as a war of
liberation for Iraqis?now that no WMDs can be found?leads to a government
that erodes the gains of Iraqi women. But given the spirited battles already
underway to retain their rights, Iraqi women may in fact succeed in having
something to celebrate next March 8.


Medea Benjamin is co-founder of women's peace group CodePink
(codepinkalert.org) and the San Francisco-based human rights group Global
Exchange (globalexchange.or