SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq | Four gunshots through the kitchen window. Two to the leg, one to the stomach, one to the head. The woman, who will remain unnamed for her safety, survived the attack, but she is still in hiding.
“For seven years, it was a secret place for housing women,” said Kazhal Ali, the administrator of Asuda, a nongovernmental organization (NGO) in northeastern Iraq that runs shelters for abused women, including the one who was attacked.
“Now it is discovered,” Ms. Ali said, “and we changed the shelter to another place.”
The wounded woman’s brother, husband and two brothers-in-law have since been arrested - by police officers who only recently began investigating and charging those accused of attacking women.
The Kurdistan Regional Government’s Interior Ministry has given officials the authority to ensure that cases of violence against women are processed.
But the male-dominant culture remains in Iraq, even in the semiautonomous northern Kurdish region and even though Iraqis no longer face the brutality of Saddam Hussein’s government.
Life after Saddam has proved a mixed blessing for many women, who face religious extremism in a nation once considered among the Middle East’s most progressive for women’s rights.
“Throughout the country, women reported increasing pressure to wear veils, including within government ministries,” according to the U.S. State Department’s latest report on human rights in Iraq.
“Women were targeted for undertaking normal activities, such as driving a car, and wearing trousers, in an effort to force them to remain at home, wear veils and adhere to a conservative interpretation of Islam,” the report says.
Yanar Mohammed, president of the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq, said: “The current constitution has taken away … laws that used to give us some sort of level of protection.”
The 2005 constitution forbids “violence and abuse in the family.” But it also prohibits laws that contradict Islam, a move that often devolves into strict interpretations of Islamic law more akin to those in Iran and the former Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.
“Iraqis are free in their commitment to their personal status according to their religions, sects, beliefs or choices,” says one passage in the constitution that particularly troubles Ms. Mohammed.
“They left the women of Iraq in this new constitution as a victim of Shariah law.”
That, she said, has led to an increase in poverty, women heading single households, polygamy, teen marriages and even sex trafficking and forced prostitution, a claim backed by the State Department report.
Iraqi women were breaking ground as far back as the 1920s and ’30s, when it had female lawyers, doctors and judges.
Despite the cruelty during more than three decades under Saddam, Iraq recognized and protected women’s rights during the early years of rule by Saddam’s Ba’ath Party.
But as the dictator tightened his grip on power, more women were left out in order for men to have the limited number of jobs, especially during the period of U.N. sanctions prior to 2003.
Saddam ensured support from some tribes by easing penalties for men who killed female family members.
“It changed in the last 10 years of Saddam because if you’re not a Ba’athist, you cannot have any opportunity,” said Azza Khalil-Humadi, an Iraqi who had moved to the United States and is back working in Iraq.
She said freedom of speech has emerged to an extent in Iraq, but other rights have disappeared.
At business conferences she attended or organized since the U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam, Ms. Khalil-Humadi increasingly noticed the more conservative dress of a strict Muslim culture.
“All of a sudden, Iraq is wearing black and scarves,” she said. “The country is moving to this extreme religion, which I hadn’t seen before.
“This is worse than Saddam.”
Women for Women International polled Iraqi women and found that a majority said their lives had deteriorated since 2004.
Slightly 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.”
In Kurdistan, the regional government is attempting to enforce laws against violence, and authorities hope more cases of domestic abuse will be reported.
With this awareness, women will not accept violence by family members, said Twana Ali Kamal, a spokesman for the Kurdistan Regional Government’s Interior Ministry directorate that tracks cases of violence against women in Sulaimaniyah.
From July 2007 to May 2008, Mr. Kamal’s office has followed up on 304 cases. Dozens are reported to the small but growing staff each month.
“We are watching crimes and violence against women rising in Kurdistan,” he said.
In recounting the shooting at the Asuda shelter, Mr. Kamal added: “In a secret way, this directorate got the women out of Sulaimaniyah to protect them.”
Please read our comment policy before commenting.