Iraqi Women Step Out
by Swanee Hunt, Scripps Howard News Service
December 17, 2023

This week I led a leadership training session for 29 Iraqi men and women who clapped, wept, and danced upon news that Saddam was captured.

One was Raja Khuzai. An obstetrician and hospital director, she received a late-night call years ago that her 21-year-old brother was ill. She and her husband drove to another city and found his body. A rope was still around his neck _ the price for a remark to a friend, privately spoken but critical of Saddam's ruthless Ba'athist regime. Raja and her husband dug a grave and buried him in the dark, then drove back home. She changed clothes and went to her office as usual, telling no one, not even her children.

Dr. Khuzai is one of only three women serving on the 25-member Governing Council appointed by the Americans. When I asked, she was reluctant to say that she's Shiite and her husband Sunni. "I abhor those boxes. They're false. We're all Iraqis," she insists. But like the other 80 Iraqis I've worked with since April, she's concerned that, with a rapid U.S. pullout, her country could devolve into bedlam, vulnerable to political power grabs in the name of ethnic or religious differences.

That was Raja's message to President Bush and top U.S. officials she met with last month in Washington, D.C. She doesn't mince words. After all, as a U.S. collaborator, her life is on the line: One of the original women on the Governing Council was assassinated in September. But Raja joined the struggling interim leadership with her husband's encouragement. "After assisting in the birth of so many Iraqi babies, now you can assist in the birth of a new Iraqi society," he said.

Raja and her female colleagues took small steps at first. "There was confusion and chaos; and the voices of the three women were soft. Then we realized we were going to be swallowed if we didn't stand up. As our confidence grew, our voices got stronger _ but not loud enough. When the constitution committee was announced with 25 men and no women, I realized how weak our voices were."

" Now the birth of a new democratic Iraq is at risk; the baby's life is in danger. Democratic forms of government are developed only with time and careful thought," says Raja. "If mistakes are made at the beginning, the final solution will be flawed. The U.S. government must stop and think. Don't build on your first mistakes. The baby's heartbeat is weakening."

I reinforced Raja's message with leaders of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Baghdad this week. They admitted that they're torn between self-rule of Iraq by Iraqis and establishment of basic human rights. But the problem is one of their own making; for example, resistance to women's rights is not at the grassroots level but rather led by extremist clerics and politicians who are masters of intimidation. Their influence reaches even into the CPA, whose leadership concedes that though the legislative assembly in summer 2004 won't be fair to women, "We won't interfere."

Instead, CPA leaders note that they are happy to fund fledgling, inexperienced nonprofit organizations to reach into communities. Although that approach doesn't excuse U.S. abdication of responsibility at the political level, the value of grassroots work became clear to me in another meeting, as I sat on a red carpet lined with pillows, drinking tea with ten very poor Shiite women. All were covered in billowy black robes, but their faces were glowing. For two months, the 10 had been coming for training to the office of Women for Women International, a global organization run by a brilliant Iraqi exile, Zainab Salbi, who after years of reaching across the globe is now focusing on her homeland.

With Zainab interpreting, I asked the women about the assembly being formed. All insisted that less than 50 percent representation of women would be unfair. But what would their husbands say? "They support us! They're glad we're becoming educated," the women insisted. I was shocked, having read in the press how reluctant Iraqi women were to step out. Then the clincher: Would any be willing to run for the new neighborhood councils? They huddled, then three put up their hands. "And the rest of us will work on their campaigns."

Good news and bad news from Iraq. Women are ready and willing to step forward. But they must buck a new system already stacked against them.

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