democracy in Iraq

[briannell]

Half of democracy is wholly unacceptable

August 10, 2005

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For the last few weeks, head-scarfed Iraqi women in Baghdad have been marching in protest, carrying banners to express their concern about their rights being protected under a new Iraqi constitution. They have reason to worry. The framers of the draft constitution are squabbling over the role Islam should play in the national government, and so far the provisions they have debated do little to preserve even the liberties women enjoyed under a dictator.



The protesters are particularly concerned about a provision that would allow religious courts to supersede civil law. The provision would give the right for each sect -- whether Shiite or Sunni -- to enforce its own family laws and require women to acquiesce to the strict religious decisions of the clerics in their communities. It would guarantee that husbands, fathers and clerics have increased control over women's lives.

It would give religion a paramount role in determining the quality of Iraqi women's lives and would essentially roll back the clock to the 1950s. Women would have fewer freedoms than they did under the brutal dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. The provision would allow for the creation of a theocracy, not a democracy.

If this provision is endorsed in the draft constitution to be presented to Iraq's National Assembly next week, it will dash the intentions of the Bush government, which envisioned an Iraqi parliament to spread freedom in the Middle East. As Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in a television interview, equality for women in Iraq is essential: "The United States believes that you cannot be half a democracy." To think that American lives are being lost to aid a country that may curtail democratic rights for all its citizens is beyond tragic; it is an abomination.

Sharia, Islamic law, has always had an influence in Iraq, including on marriage ceremonies and divorce. But the laws have been enacted by civil judges, not clerics. Having local clerics regain this control would not only abrogate women's freedoms, it would create a patchwork of laws across the country.

President Bush should ratchet up the pressure on the Iraqis to ensure equal rights. How can we provide aid and troops to a country that denies basic rights to women? As more American lives are lost, the public grows more weary of our presence in Iraq. One poll shows only 38 percent support the president's course of action. We also need more evidence that Iraqi soldiers are shouldering greater responsibility for the protection of their fellow citizens. Only when Americans see that will they believe progress is being made in this critical battlefront of the war on terror.

It would be a betrayal of the U.S. vision for Iraq and the sacrifice made by so many American families for our soldiers to be dying so Iraqi women could be forced to relinquish freedoms they've had for almost 50 years.

Jo