“We Know We Are Forgotten”: Re-Centering Women in the Study of Economic Sanctions on Iraq, 1990–2003
By Samia Saliba
Abstract
From 1990 to 2003, the United Nations, largely at the direction of the United States of America, enforced a strict set of international sanctions against Iraq with the goal of eliminating the state’s chemical weapons and weakening Saddam Hussein’s regime. While the impacts of these sanctions were widespread and devastating for the general population, this period also saw a specific loss of rights and worsening of social and economic conditions for most Iraqi women. Utilizing a historical and intersectional feminist lens, this paper examines the understudied gendered impacts of sanctions, particularly the effects on women’s participation in the workforce, education, and political arena; the impact on family structure, marriage, and patriarchal violence; and the experience of ethnic or religious minority women in Iraqi Kurdistan. This paper argues that the sanctions not only halted the expansion of gender equality, but actively reversed gains in women’s rights made during the previous decade. Exposing the regressive gendered implications of US policy in Iraq, it argues that sanctions cannot be considered a nonviolent alternative to traditional warfare given the policy’s effects on vulnerable populations.
Keywords
women’s rights in Iraq, Iraq sanctions, gender violence, United States foreign policy, imperialism, United Nations, feminism, international relations
Introduction
The Myth of Liberation
In a speech given during International Women’s Week of 2004, nearly a year after the formal start of the US war on Iraq, President George W. Bush championed the so-called “liberation” of 25 million Iraqi and Afghan women; democracy, he claimed, must be promoted in the Middle East so that women may “take their rightful place in societies that were once incredibly oppressive and closed” (“President, Mrs. Bush Mark Progress”). This idea that foreign invasion and endless war results in women’s liberation should be suspect, just as the idea that the war on terror promoted democracy should be suspicious to anyone who has seen photographs of Abu Ghraib. As feminist scholar Chandra Mohanty has argued, such universal claims about the oppression of Third World women serve to write those women “outside history,” stripping them of their voice, agency, and variety of experience based on class, ethnic, or religious differences (70). Indeed, President Bush’s ahistorical conception ignores the diversity of women’s lives in pre-invasion Iraq and, moreover, disregards the unmistakably gendered impacts of the decade-long economic sanctions previously imposed on Iraq by a US-driven United Nations. Enforced from 1990 to 2003, the broad-ranging sanctions devastated the Iraqi economy, caused widespread poverty and malnutrition, and more than doubled child mortality rates—public health crises only worsened by the US bombing Iraqi sanitation and water facilities during the Gulf War (1990–1991) (Ali and Shah 1851; Garfield 35). This widespread devastation likewise affected the lives, conditions, and treatment of women in particular; both the 1994 and 1998 Periodic Reports from Iraq on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) determined sanctions to be the primary barrier to improving women’s status and rights (“Concluding Observations” 33; “Second and Third Periodic Reports” 8).
While the status of Iraqi women prior to sanctions cannot be simplified to fit the imperialist dichotomy of “liberated” or “oppressed,” this study argues that sanctions not only halted the expansion of women’s rights but actively reversed the advancements in gender equality made during the period of 1968–1990. Historicizing the complex relationships of Iraqi women to sociopolitical institutions through a feminist lens, this essay analyzes the broad impacts of sanctions on gender relations across the following categories: employment, political participation, education, family relations and marriage, and violence against women. This article complements recent transnational data-analyses on sanctions in relation to human rights; research shows that sanctions, particularly comprehensive sanctions, worsen human rights abuses related to “physical integrity,” defined as extralegal killing, torture, disappearance, ethnic violence, and the violation of women’s rights (Peksen 59; Drury and Peksen 483; Lv and Xu 105). Additionally, this study draws on the work of two Iraqi Assyrian scholars and sanction era survivors, Mariam Georgis and Riva Gewarges, who understand sanctions as an extension of colonial power over the Global South. Given that the US-international justification for sanctions fixated on the threat of the Iraqi state while reenforcing the historical othering of Iraqi bodies, Georgis and Gewarges argue that comprehending the violence of sanctions requires decentering the state and focusing on the experiences of the Iraqi people (320). In following their necessary recentering and rehumanization of Iraqis, this paper challenges the common Euro-American view that Iraqi economic sanctions are a nonviolent alternative to war, demonstrating the violent results which directly harmed the country’s marginalized populations, particularly women of a lower economic class, or women belonging to an ethnic or religious minority group.
Note on Surveyed Literature
This work employs case studies and oral histories that highlight the specificities of Iraqi women’s experiences through their own voices. There are three primary scholars whose work explores a gendered impact of sanctions in Iraq: Nadje al-Ali, Nicola Pratt, and Yasmin Al-Jawaheri.
Al-Ali’s 2007 book, Iraqi Women: Untold Stories from 1948 to the Present, argues that the experience of women in the post-invasion era cannot be understood without the history of gender relations from the period of British colonialism to modern day. Chapter five, “Living With War and Sanctions,” argues not only that the sanctions had gendered effects, but that “women and gender ideologies and relations were . . . at the centre of social and cultural change during this period” (175). Al-Ali’s 2008 article, “Reconstructing Gender: Iraqi Women Between Dictatorship, War, Sanctions, and Occupation,” provides important historical context for the long-term trajectory of gender relations in Iraqi politics and society, including the development of state rhetoric and action with regard to women’s rights. Al-Ali and Pratt’s 2009 book, What Kind of Liberation?: Women and the Occupation of Iraq, and their 2011 article, “Conspiracy of Near Silence: Violence Against Iraqi Women,” add important perspectives on the experience of Iraqi Kurdish women under sanctions. They also illustrate how the particular context of Kurdistan, including its semi-autonomous governance and the interference from foreign nations and the Iraqi central government, contributed to violence against women. The last major scholarship on gender and sanctions in Iraq, Al-Jawaheri’s Women in Iraq: The Gender Impacts of International Sanctions, combines statistical analysis with a comprehensive process of surveying and interviewing women from various class, family, and educational backgrounds in Baghdad. Through this work, Al-Jawaheri argues that, although Iraqi laws regarding women’s rights stayed relatively static during the sanctions era, the sanctions contributed to a reversal of recent social gains for women, in large part due to the state’s failure to enforce the laws guaranteeing women’s participation in education and the work force (140). Though this work is perhaps the most comprehensive analysis of women’s rights under sanctions, its geographic scope is limited to Baghdad, missing the perspectives of rural women and women in other regions such as Iraqi Kurdistan.
This essay draws extensively on both the interviews in these sources and the authors’ feminist analysis. In integrating the different perspectives and regional analysis of these sources, this paper provides a more comprehensive overview of the effects of sanctions on women.
Sanctioning Iraq
Before discussing the particular effects of sanctions on women, it is necessary to understand the historical context surrounding sanctions and the forces which maintained the policy’s violence. The sanctions against Iraq began in August of 1990 and continued until May 22, 2003, after Saddam Hussein had been overthrown by the US invading forces. The sanctions imposed a total embargo on trade and financial support to Iraq, with exceptions for medicine and a limited number of food products. Initially, the sanctions were put in place with the goal of forcing Iraq out of Kuwait, a goal quickly achieved through military force during the first Gulf War. The sanctions, however, were not lifted. Instead, they were reframed with the goal of forcing the Iraqi government’s compliance with ongoing UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) inspections, an act allegedly meant to ensure that the government was not harboring chemical weapons in the wake of the Anfal genocide. However, many researchers, political activists, and government officials have acknowledged that the US approach towards sanctions was focused on the end of the Saddam Hussein regime rather than the weapons inspections. In 1997, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said, “We do not agree with those nations who argue that if Iraq complies with its obligations concerning weapons of mass destruction, sanctions should be lifted” (qtd. in Zunes 180; see also Von Sponeck 266).
Though the regime initially cooperated with UNSCOM inspections, US policy continued to hold Iraqi people hostage as a bargaining tool for regime change despite the violence of sanctions against Iraqis. From 1990 to 2000, estimates of child mortality rates suggest that 350,000 Iraqi children were killed by sanctions, though at the time these numbers were believed to be higher. The under-five mortality rate increased from 56 per 1000 births to 131 per 1000 births under sanctions (Ali and Shah 1851; Cortright). Access to health and food resources in Iraq were fatally low for much of the population. Though Madeleine Albright infamously said that these deaths were “worth it,” by the mid-1990s, it was no longer possible to ignore the deadly impacts of sanctions on the Iraqi population (Mahajan).
In 1995, the UN attempted to mitigate the impacts of sanctions on the Iraqi public by instituting the Oil-for-Food Programme (OFF), which enabled the Iraqi government to sell oil on the global market in exchange for food, medicine, and other humanitarian necessities. However, this program failed to alleviate the public health crises due to poor design, unequal regional allocation, inadequate budget, and corruption. Dennis Halliday, former UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq, alleged that OFF “was never intended to actually resolve the humanitarian crisis,” but merely to stop it from worsening (Bennis and Halliday 36). The corrupted program primarily benefited the Iraqi regime, which had a large degree of control over OFF’s design and implementation. Numerous investigations indicate that the regime received direct kickbacks on oil sales through sympathetic or bribed third-party sellers. As Al-Jawaheri writes, “The cruel irony . . . was that Saddam Hussain and his henchmen . . . grew obscenely rich as a direct result of sanctions that were meant to punish them” (5–6). In the years following the failure of OFF, three UN officials resigned over the inhumanity of prolonged sanctions, including two UN Humanitarian Coordinators for Iraq: Dennis Halliday and his successor Hans Von Sponeck. Von Sponeck later stated that a critical and recurring failure was the UN’s inability to see its own sanctions regime as a factor in Iraqi human rights conditions (257).
Similarly, the UN continually failed to address the disproportionate impact of sanctions on women’s rights despite the issue being repeatedly raised throughout the policy’s duration. Paragraph 145 (i) of the 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action at the World Conference on Women asserted that governments and international organizations should “take measures in accordance with international law with a view to alleviating the negative impact of economic sanctions on women and children” (62). As previously stated, multiple UN reports concerning discrimination against women in Iraq emphasized that sanctions were the main obstacle to improving women’s rights (“Concluding Observations” 33; “Second and Third Periodic Reports” 8).
This overview of policy implementation illuminates the broader violence inherent in the sanctions program and the unwillingness of international governing bodies to address their role in maintaining that violence. It also makes apparent the salience of Georgis and Gewarges’s framework; the dehumanization of Iraqis renders invisible the bodily violence of sanctions in favor of the abstract and theoretical effects of policy. A critical reexamination requires not only the recentering of the Iraqi population who bore the effects of sanctions most directly, but a recentering of women as a core group most invisibilized in this history.
A critical reexamination requires not only the recentering of the Iraqi population who bore the effects of sanctions most directly, but a recentering of women as a core group most invisibilized in this history.
The Lives of Iraqi Women Before Sanctions
In order to understand the changes brought about by sanctions, it is important to first contextualize women’s lives and status in the pre-sanctions era, a period of complex changes for women’s rights in Iraq. Prior to sanctions, a number of legislative changes transitioned women from a private role to a public role and limited the control of male family members over women. Saddam Hussein often condemned the “bourgeois ideology which assumes that the first and last role of women is in the home” (Hussein 7). Speaking on women’s education in 1971, he said it would be “a crime . . . if women were deprived of their rights to freedom, education, and full participation in . . . the community,” (Hussein 7). This rhetoric was paired with increased resources and social programs that allowed women, especially poor women, greater access to education and work outside the home. Women’s increased role in public work and education was also supported by expansive kinship and neighborhood networks which shared responsibility for children and household tasks. However, while the state did engage in various projects that promoted women’s access to resources and status, these laws also increased the patriarchal control of the state itself over women (Al-Jawaheri 28).
In order to promote women’s roles in their political project, the state funded and controlled a women’s branch of the Ba‘th party, the General Federation of Iraqi Women (GFIW). Open only to Ba'thi women, the GFIW represented the experience of a small section of Iraqi women. Still, it did serve as a critical source of income for many women at the time. Some members were able to use the funds allocated by the state to mobilize Iraqi women, and the GFIW was often in tension with Ba‘thi leadership, pushing them on issues of women’s equality (Al-Ali, Iraqi Women 138). Although the GFIW played a key role in expanding women’s rights, its existence and actions in no way negate the violence of the state against women, ethnic minority groups, and political actors from opposition parties. Rather, the state’s promotion of women’s rights must be understood as an extension of its political framework; the state’s position changed based on political convenience and the formation of GFIW acted to contain feminist political advancements within the one-party state structure. In this way, the GFIW should be understood as an effort of state feminism, a process by which the state coopted feminist struggle in order to control its progress, while simultaneously suppressing other, non-state-sanctioned feminist activity.
Though the pre-sanctions era saw many gains for women, conditions created by the Iran–Iraq War and compounded by the Gulf War harmed women and complicated their social and economic roles. The eight-year Iran–Iraq War ended only two years prior to the start of sanctions, and the shifts in Iraq’s economy, family structures, and gender relations carried over into the sanctions period. Likewise, the 1990 Gulf War caused direct damage to the population and infrastructure of Iraq, impacting the country just as sanctions began. While it is impossible to fully disentangle these catastrophes, all of them reshaped women’s lives. The Iran–Iraq War contributed to a rise of women in the workplace as the majority of the male population was either conscripted or volunteered to fight in the war. As male relatives fought and died, women increasingly became the primary breadwinners. The state simultaneously lauded women as workers maintaining the nation and as mothers raising the new generation, emphasizing the importance of childbirth in the face of massive population losses (Al-Ali, Iraqi Women 168). These dual expectations often conflicted for women, who bore the burdens of keeping the nation together during wartime.
Women’s experiences in the pre-sanctions era were highly variable, but many found new opportunities and access to resources that would be removed or limited under sanctions. The imposition of sanctions also worsened many crises for women that had started during the Iran–Iraq War.
Employment
The sanctions era began just as Iraqi men were returning from war and searching for work. In response to this influx, Iraqi women were encouraged to exit employment and take up motherhood as their national role, a shift only further accelerated by the economic harm of sanctions. While there were few jobs available, any openings were likely to be taken by men (Al-Jawaheri 37). Women were pressured to return to domestic work through both the changing social dynamics and the elimination of key government programs that had supported women working in the public sphere. Socially, the role of women became “umm bait muhtarama, or the respectable housewife,” representing a sharp change from the rhetoric of the 1970s and 80s that celebrated women workers (Al-Jawaheri 10).
On a national level, women were encouraged to resign or retire early, which was often forced by the termination of social programs such as free childcare and public transportation. Women had been the primary recipients of the welfare state more broadly and so were most affected by its collapse under sanctions (Al-Ali, Iraqi Women 188; Al-Ali, “Reconstructing Gender” 747). Iraq’s 1998 report to the UN on the Convention to End All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) discussed the impacts of sanctions on women’s work participation, stating that “the difficult economic conditions created by the comprehensive embargo have also forced large numbers of Iraqi women to . . . devote themselves to domestic work.” This report shifts the blame onto the sanctions but ignores that the regime was actively promoting the domestic role of women and removing social programs. In reference to childcare for women workers, the report notes that the number of facilities actually increased from 1987 to 1996 but ignores that the programs for subsidized childcare had ended under sanctions (“Second and Third Periodic Reports” 8). The collapse of the welfare state, combined with the erosion of extended family and neighborhood networks, meant that more women were forced to stay home and care for their children. The sanctions reduced economic opportunities for everyone, but the state and society worked to shift the loss of work onto women so as to preserve the opportunities for men, particularly by reducing state support for women workers.
Political Participation
The GFIW, which had been a critical site of women’s political participation and source of well-paid work prior to sanctions, changed dramatically in the 1990s. Although other women’s political groups existed at the time, information on them remains limited as they had to hide their operations from the one-party state, which strictly policed political activities. Nevertheless, the GFIW provides insight into the regime’s control of resources under sanctions and how this disadvantaged many women.
One significant change under sanctions was the pay of GFIW employees. One employee named Soha reported that her salary was $320 USD per month prior to sanctions. However, during sanctions, her salary dropped to $3.50 USD per month (Al-Jawaheri 49). Many women like Soha, who had previously held a relatively privileged position as party members, were forced to take up informal work, such as sex work or selling goods, for secondary sources of income. The 1998 CEDAW report, speaking of women’s political participation, claimed that “any diminution in the role of women is due to the embargo and to their preoccupation with shouldering the burdens of the household” (“Second and Third Periodic Reports” 9). However, though the financial burdens of sanctions certainly did affect the role of women like Soha, other women within the GFIW reaped material benefits from sanctions. The GFIW saw not a unilateral loss of benefits, but rather an increased stratification between the top-ranking members, and the larger base of employees. In Soha’s own words: “Now there are a few women who gain from being employees here, while the rest get nothing,” (Al-Jawaheri 49).
The high-ranking members of the GFIW who benefitted under sanctions were, as Al-Ali and Pratt put it, “themselves part of oppressive political and social structures” (What Kind of Liberation? 53). Under sanctions, those women who had used the GFIW as a site for social mobilization were increasingly marginalized in the pay structure. At the same time, those closest to regime leaders received millions of Iraqi Dinars as well as “valuable gifts from the delegations.” These gifts were typically humanitarian aid, intended for the population, but stolen and distributed to friends of the regime, according to a GFIW informant (Al-Jawaheri 49). The stratification of wealth in the GFIW reflected the broader issues with state control of funds and programs during sanctions; Saddam and other leading party members gained vast personal wealth through criminal activities, including smuggling and bribery (Al-Jawaheri 5–6). Thus, the GFIW served as a microcosm for understanding women’s political access in Iraq at large and the implications of the one-party system during this time. Women lost avenues for social mobilization and access to work and pay, along with the rest of the Iraqi population. Women’s shifting status within the GFIW illustrates the importance of adding a class and political analysis to the gendered experience of sanctions. The shifts in the GFIW benefitted some women as much as they disadvantaged others.
Education
Iraqi women also experienced a decline in educational opportunities during sanctions. Prior to sanctions, Iraq’s education system was advanced; education was mandatory from ages 6 to 12 for all children and was free at all levels due to the regime’s efforts to make education accessible in the 1970s and 1980s. By 1990, women’s education had increased rapidly; female enrollment in secondary school increased to 38.5%, and though young women came from families where most of their mothers were illiterate, the majority of students in higher education were women. However, a study of women in Iraq conducted before sanctions and published in 1990 suggests that, socially, education for women was perceived as a way to improve one’s status for marriage (Khayyat 197). Though the improvement of women’s education existed within a social context that limited women’s full participation, its rise in the decades prior to sanctions can still be seen in relatively positive terms; women (especially working-class women) had greater access to the resources needed to gain an education.
Under sanctions, female education declined sharply, and class and public health improvements were effectively eliminated. By 2000, illiteracy rates among Iraqi women were at 71% for females ages 15–24. Though primary education remained mandatory, statistics show that over 1.5 million Iraqi girls eligible for primary school were not enrolled in the 2000–2001 school year. Female enrollment in secondary school dropped to 29%, lower than it had been in the 1970s (Al-Jawaheri 60–1). Although education remained technically free, certain school supplies were no longer covered, and many families could not afford to pay. Additionally, many young women were expected to make money for their families in the informal economy (often through begging or theft) and did not have the time or funds to attend school (Al-Jawaheri 60–1). The women that were able to attend school likely received a lower quality of education due to the increase in underfunded school facilities and underpaid teachers. The Iraqi blogger Riverbend wrote that university science classes could not obtain textbooks or necessary materials because they were banned under the sanctions (132; see also Al-Ali, Iraqi Women 192). In these ways, recent improvements that had made education more accessible to all genders and classes were effectively reversed under sanctions.
The loss of subsidized educational resources had severe implications for both class stratification and public health. Working-class women and girls were kept out of education by the reconstruction of financial barriers. With regards to public health, studies have shown that in Southwest Asia and North Africa, education is a critical factor for improving women’s planning for childbirth and raising the age of marriage and first childbirth. Under sanctions in Iraq, fertility rates rose to 5.4 births per the average woman by 2003, nearly the global high, while child mortality and morbidity simultaneously rose to the highest regional rate (Al-Jawaheri 75). The collapse of women’s education cannot be disentangled from the public health crisis under sanctions, nor from the lasting psychological and physical trauma experienced by women who gave birth and lost children while experiencing malnutrition, anemia, or other health crises. Likewise, the violence of the public health crisis cannot be separated from the devastation of women’s education and work, the re-emphasis of women’s role as mothers, or the long-term psychological impacts on individuals.
The violence of the public health crisis cannot be separated from the devastation of women’s education and work, the re-emphasis of women’s role as mothers, or the long-term psychological impacts on individuals.
Family and Marriage
Nuclearizing Family Structures
The family structure of Iraqi society and the role of women in the family were affected not only by declining employment and educational opportunities but also by the medical impacts of sanctions, including the deaths of children. Under-five mortality in south and central Iraq were found to have increased from 56 per 1000 births in 1984–1989 to 131 per 1000 births in 1994–1999 (Ali and Shah 1851; Cortright). Case studies of Iraqi women show that the fear of child death had substantial social impacts on Iraqi women and the family experience. The impacts of these deaths on Iraqi families were particularly pronounced for lower-class families, who were more likely to experience child mortality (Al-Ali, “Reconstructing Gender” 746). To support repopulation efforts during the Iran–Iraq War, the government had emphasized the importance of motherhood and outlawed contraceptives—a ban which continued into the sanctions period. Although women were still encouraged to have many children, there was a greater reluctance to have children for fear that children would die or that limited resources would lead to malnutrition. Additionally, the mass casualties of Iraqi men during the Iran–Iraq War and the Gulf War and the following male economic migration created a large number of female-headed households—in the city of Basra, this figure was as high as 60% (Al-Jawaheri 22; Al-Ali, Iraqi Women 198–9). As women were encouraged to have more children, many became their children’s sole provider in an economy where they were discouraged from working.
One such woman was Halimah, a 20-year-old war widow and mother interviewed by Al-Jawaheri, whose case demonstrates the effects of the disintegration of kinship and neighborhood support networks. Under sanctions, families shifted away from broader kinship networks and towards the importance of the nuclear family (Al-Ali, Iraqi Women 198–9). While the nuclear family may hold particular importance in Western conceptualization of modernization, it cannot be viewed as such in the Iraqi context. Indeed, in Iraq, the shift away from extended networks may have led to more oppressive patriarchal relations. In Halimah’s case, her neighborhood network of support no longer existed because everyone had become extremely poor under sanctions. “We feel we have been abandoned and that nobody can help us. We know we are forgotten” (Al-Jawaheri 84). Halimah’s desperate condition forced her to turn to her brother and brother-in-law for support, but both were highly aggressive and asserted control over her and her daughter. Yasmin Al-Jawaheri argues that women who lacked support from both the state and a broad family network under sanctions were further subordinated because they developed “high dependency ratio on a single male provider” (Al-Jawaheri 84, 97). Halimah’s case is one example of how the deterioration of broad family networks created more oppressive family relations for women.
Marriage as Survival
Given the importance of support from a male provider for many women, marriage became increasingly crucial for young Iraqi women under sanctions. However, it also became harder to find a husband due to the gender imbalance in the population following the Iran–Iraq War. Hamdiya, a woman interviewed by Al-Ali, stated that, whereas it had once been considered taboo to either not married or to enter a polygamous marriage, “among my generation, there are many women who either did not get married . . . or became the second wife of someone” (Al-Ali, Iraqi Women 196). Polygamous marriages, which had been sharply reduced and condemned by the regime in previous eras, were revived in the 1990s. In a 1976 address to the General Federation of Iraqi Women, Saddam had stated the importance of “strengthening and expanding the conditions which prohibit polygamy” (Hussein 29). Nevertheless, polygamous marriages increased dramatically under sanctions, largely out of economic necessity (Al-Jawaheri 102).
The desirability of a husband was no longer based on love and family reputation, but instead based almost entirely on whether he could provide for his wife. As such, the class dynamics of marriage also shifted. Increasingly, middle-class women from important families who had suffered under sanctions began to marry nouveau-riche sanctions profiteers, primarily Oil-for-Food contractors and oil smugglers, even though marriage below one’s family status had previously been very uncommon (Al-Jawaheri 53; Al-Ali, Iraqi Women 197). Money came to surpass family name in determining social status; however, the limited number of marriageable men who could provide economic protection also meant that many lower-class women were either not able to marry or were not able to use marriage as a source of economic protection. Middle-class and upper-class women focused heavily on marriage as a means of survival and were often forced into harmful or difficult marriages. Lower-class women were more likely to experience direct forms of gender-based violence or were forced into sex work for survival. These shifts in marriage expectations should be understood as both a classed and gendered impact of sanctions.
Violence Against Women
“Honor” Killings and Domestic Violence
The phrase “honor” killing or crime denotes a particular circumstance; that is, the murder of women, typically by family members, as a reaction to the perception that the woman has “dishonored” the family. The acts that are considered “dishonorable” are rooted in restrictive heteropatriarchal social boundaries for women. Under sanctions, Iraq saw a revival of “honor” killings and domestic violence; economic crisis and war have both been well documented as key contributors to gender-based violence. The revival of “honor” killings in Iraq occurred not only on a popular level but was also encouraged by the state effectively legalizing “honor” crimes. In 1990, Saddam issued a decree granting immunity to men accused of committing “honor” crimes (Al-Ali, Iraqi Women 202). Though this ruling was appealed two months later, the law granted legitimacy to “honor” crimes beyond the scope of the law’s existence. The UN tracked an increase in “honor” crimes during the 1990s compared to previous decades: approximately 4,000 women and girls were murdered between 1990 and 2002 in so-called “honor” killings. It is unclear why this law was passed, though Al-Jawaheri and Al-Ali both suggest that it was a tactic to gain the support of conservative tribal and religious leaders in preparation for the invasion of Kuwait (Al-Jawaheri 113; Al-Ali, Iraqi Women 202). The regime’s need to acquire the loyalty of tribal leaders continued during the sanctions period, and men who killed female relatives to preserve family “honor” were regularly acquitted (Al-Ali, Iraqi Women 209). In general, the legal system favored those who committed “honor” crimes rather than the victims.
The rise in “honor” crimes contributed to real fears and changes in social dynamics for young girls. Zeinab, a fifteen-year-old who had lived almost all her life under sanctions, described the changes women had to make in daily life to prevent social criticism that could potentially damage a family’s “honor,” including conservative dress. She stated, “Most people are somewhat pressured to change their lives in order to protect themselves from . . . talk about family [honor]” (Al-Ali and Hussein 46).
Domestic violence, too, increased as a product of economic insecurities. Both men and women encouraged and perpetrated this violence against other women; Al-Jawaheri interviewed one woman, 20-year-old Fatima, who was physically abused by her husband when she fought back against his plan to take a second wife from a wealthy family for economic benefit. Fatima’s mother-in-law encouraged the abuse and took control over her children. In her interview, Fatima said, “My children are not mine. They are hers” (Al-Jawaheri 112). Although it is difficult to analyze domestic violence in Iraq due to its taboo status, Al-Jawaheri believes that relationships like that of Fatima and her mother-in-law were increasingly common during sanctions. She suggests that older women sought a “stake in the system of domination” as opportunity for the family’s economic stability diminished (Al-Jawaheri 113). Increased violence against women was not merely a result of men’s economic stress, but of the broader stressors placed on the entire community.
Violence Against Sex Workers
Related to the rise in “honor” crimes and domestic violence was the increased violence against those engaging in sex work. This coincided with a rise in sex work, which quickly became a critical source of income for many women, given the limited opportunities for work under sanctions. For the first time, Iraqi cities developed luxury brothels, the patrons of which were primarily profiteers and members of the regime (Al-Jawaheri 114). Given its complicity in the sex work sector, the regime initially supported, or at least failed to interfere in, the rising industry. However, beginning in 2000, the regime reportedly beheaded more than 300 people accused of engaging in or facilitating sex work. One such incident occurred in November 2000 when two sex workers in Baghdad were beheaded in front of their homes. This public murder was witnessed by several neighbors, including children who were on their way to school. Those living nearby said that the entire area was left in a “shocked state” (Al-Jawaheri 115). It was well known that the clients of these women had been high-ranking government officials. The populace perceived the act as a reassertion of control over women and the social order by the state. Among scholars, this attack on sex workers, like the legalization of “honor” crimes, is understood as an effort by the regime to gain the favor of tribal and religious leaders in a period of increased social conservatism (Al-Jawaheri 115; Al-Ali, Iraqi Women 200-1). The sanctions contributed to both a rise in sex work as a means of economic survival and a rise in social conservatism, which, in turn, punished women for these acts of survival. This form of violence, committed by the state against women whose “crimes” depended on the complicity of state actors, reveals a blatant double standard within the patriarchal state structure. Regardless of its role in promoting equal rights for women during previous decades, the state committed intense violence on women and their bodies during sanctions, actions which suggest that it has always been most interested in maintaining control over women.
Regardless of its role in promoting equal rights for women during previous decades, the state committed intense violence on women and their bodies during sanctions, actions which suggest that it has always been most interested in maintaining control over women.
The Experiences of Women in Iraqi Kurdistan
Kurdish women experienced the violence of sanctions differently because of their position as a targeted ethnic minority. However, Kurdish women are not the only ethnic minority to face ethnic and gendered violence under sanctions. In fact, because of Kurdistan’s geographic separation and autonomy from Central and Southern Iraq, Kurdish women’s experiences are not necessarily representative of all ethnic minority women, although there is unfortunately little data on other minority ethnic communities. It should also be noted that many non-Kurdish ethno-religious minorities, including Yezidis, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Christians, and Turcomans, often identified themselves as Kurdish when no other option was presented, and many resided in the northern regions designated as Kurdistan (Graham-Brown 218). Ethnic minority women, like lower-class women, faced particularly difficult conditions under sanctions.
Iraqi Kurdistan had long been a target of state violence as an ethnic minority region, including the Anfal campaign genocide. The UN did not view Kurdistan as the target of sanctions, but neither was the region exempt from sanctions. Kurdistan is sometimes described as facing a “double embargo” because of the impacts of both international sanctions and the Iraqi central government’s economic targeting of the region, including power blackouts and currency manipulation (Graham-Brown 222). However, Kurdistan also received a higher rate of international aid than the rest of Iraq, mainly due to an increase in international attention following the chemical attacks (Al-Ali and Pratt, What Kind of Liberation? 50). In addition to the aid influx, the experiences of women in Kurdistan were also shaped by differences in governance. The de facto establishment of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in 1992 allowed some regional autonomy, although the Iraqi state did not recognize Kurdish autonomy until 2003. Ultimately, both aid and regional autonomy did little to improve conditions for women, though they shaped the context in which women struggled for survival.
Although Kurdish women had long been central to the Kurdish independence struggle, the growth of aid allowed them to participate even more in emerging civil society, strengthening women’s political organizing around issues of gender and violence. However, these women’s rights groups depend on the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) for their continued existence. The KRG did little to improve the position of Kurdish women and often actively worked against this goal. Zouzan, a Kurdish activist fighting against “honor” killings in the 1990s, stated that “both political parties, the PUK and the KDP, gave us a hard time. They really harassed us” (Al-Ali, Iraqi Women 207). Zouzan ultimately exiled herself and continued her activism from abroad because of this harassment. Despite the rise in humanitarian groups and women’s organizations, Iraqi Kurdistan experienced a marked rise in “honor” killings and domestic violence under sanctions, even higher than that of Iraq at large. Despite the fact that the “honorable motives” clause, which allowed perpetrators of “honor” crimes to justify their violence on grounds of honor, was removed from Kurdish law in 2002, Kurdish women’s rights activists still report that these crimes go largely unpunished (Al-Ali and Pratt, “Conspiracy of Near Silence” 36). Just as Saddam’s legalization of “honor” crimes was an attempt to consolidate support from conservative tribal leaders, so can the KRG’s failure to prosecute these crimes be seen as an attempt to consolidate power in a newly formed autonomous parastate (Graham-Brown 218).
In addition to a rise in domestic violence and “honor” killings, Kurdistan experienced high rates of female-headed households, exacerbated by recent ethnic violence and the disappearances of Kurdish men. Some relief workers estimated between 3000 and 3500 female heads of households, or “Anfal widows,” in the Barzan valley alone (Graham-Brown 237). Many women who lived through Anfal had been raped, and over 700 girls were kidnapped and sold to neighboring countries as a part of the violence; the Anfal widows suffered compound traumas to their bodies and their families, as well as social ostracization for losing their “honor” as survivors of rape (Al-Ali and Pratt, What Kind of Liberation? 44). These widows’ struggles were perhaps somewhat mediated by the large concentration of relief workers, many of them focusing on supporting female headed households. Still, as with honor killings, widespread aid did not seem to correlate with widespread relief. As late as 2007, 83% of these women still had housing problems (Al-Ali and Pratt, What Kind of Liberation? 43).
Conclusions
An Immeasurable Violence
The experiences of Iraqi women presented in this paper only begin to illustrate just how many aspects of women’s lives were affected, directly or indirectly, by sanctions. In some ways, the growth of women’s access to rights and resources was paused to address the broader cause of sanctions, such as in the context of the General Federation of Iraqi Women, where economic conditions made it difficult for women to continue their political projects. In other arenas, such as employment and education, the policies that had allowed women greater access were reversed just as the rhetoric around women’s role in society changed drastically. Even beyond issues of access, the sanctions caused immeasurable physical and psychological violence to women through the rising rates of child deaths, domestic violence, and “honor” killings. The types of impacts felt by women varied greatly based on class, ethnicity, and party affiliation, but ultimately women as a group were affected in devastating, gender-specific ways. Batuol, an Iraqi social scientist interviewed by Al-Jawaheri, described this well: “It’s hardly surprising that economic deprivation and impoverishment have caused such wide-scale social distortion. The Iraqi society today is a masterpiece produced by the United Nations sanctions. . . . It’s true that the whole society is suffering, but it is women who are the prime victims” (Al-Jawaheri 117).
The feminist framework of this study seeks to dismantle the popular narrative that the sanctions in Iraq were a nonviolent alternative to war by situating the violence against the most marginalized Iraqi populations as a primary, rather than a secondary effect of sanctions policy.
This analysis also fits into a broader, ongoing conversation about the violence of international sanction policy. The feminist framework of this study seeks to dismantle the popular narrative that the sanctions in Iraq were a nonviolent alternative to war by situating the violence against the most marginalized Iraqi populations as a primary, rather than a secondary effect of sanctions policy. This recentering makes clear that the United Nations and the international community cannot prevent human rights violations end discrimination against women while continuing to enforce and support economic sanctions as they have historically been implemented.
Beyond Sanctions and the Revolutionary Present
In many ways, the conditions for Iraqis, and Iraqi women in particular, have only worsened since the end of sanctions. The fragmenting of the country by endless imperial warfare, ISIS, and Iraqi state actors has kept Iraq in a state of continual violence for at least 40 years, leaving its people with little chance to recover. It is impossible to extricate the history of sanctions from the compounded destructions that followed, particularly the 2003 US invasion and ongoing war. For the young people of Iraq, now a majority of the population, their only reality has been life under imperial control. It is no wonder, then, that in October of 2019, Iraqis of all ages took to the streets to fight for their rights to live, utilizing the slogan: Nureed Watan—– We Want a Country (Abdul Hadi). The October Revolution focuses in part on the fight against foreign interference in Iraqi self-governance, particularly Iranian interference, which flourished after the 2003 invasion; Iranian control of the Iraqi economy has only intensified since Iran was placed under US sanctions (Risen).
Despite the socially conservative opposition to women’s organizing, many young women and girls participate in the Revolution. In addition to facing state violence, women revolutionaries have faced threats and disapproval from families, and several female activists have been abducted or killed for their involvement (Mustafa). And yet these women continue to show up for national liberation—they too want a country. They understand their participation as directly related to their oppression as women; women revolutionaries explained that the poor conditions of their education and the ostracization of women in political movements are key motivators for their participation, alongside national goals (Mustafa). Given the history outlined in this study, it is clear how interrelated the goals of national liberation are with those of gender liberation. It is impossible to separate these ongoing histories from the international sanctions policies that have contributed to the further marginalization of women and other disadvantaged populations. The October Revolution serves as a powerful example of a people attempting to heal their country and of the women revolutionaries challenging the gendered violence of international policy. The people of Iraq, Iran, and many other countries in the Global South are risking their lives to revolt against the conditions that sanctions have helped create. In response, the Global North must center the voices and follow the lead of the people whose daily existence is defined by the violence of international policies—only then can we reject and reconceptualize the type of policy that dismisses human suffering as a justifiable sacrifice.
Definitions
Abu Ghraib: During the Iraq War, members of the United States Army and the CIA committed a series of human rights violations and war crimes, including torture and murder, against detainees in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The abuses came to public attention with the publication of photographs by CBS News in April 2004.
Third World women: A term used by Mohanty to refer to women living in the exploited and underdeveloped regions of the world that had and continue to experience colonization by the “First World” or the “West.” Though the term “Third World” is no longer commonly used, its usage here comes from the Third World feminist movement, sometimes called postcolonial feminism or transnational feminism, which centers Third World women’s anti-colonial struggles.
Gulf War: This war began when Iraq invaded and attempted to annex Kuwait in 1990. The international community, led by the US, responded with international sanctions and military invasion. The war ended less than two months after the start of US involvement in 1991.
Global South: A term used to describe regions of the world that have been underdeveloped and subjected to colonization from the Global North. In the contemporary context of neoliberal globalization, the Global South is typically a site for resource extraction, while the Global North is primarily a site of resource consumption. These terms describe geopolitical power relationships rather than geographic relationships.
Anfal genocide: A series of attacks on Iraqi Kurdistan from 1986 to 1989 which killed up to 182,000 Iraqi Kurds and several thousand Assyrians.
“Honor” killing or crime: This term has been criticized for many years by Southwest Asian and North African feminists. Given the feminist framework of this paper, I am inclined to agree with them: there is no “honor” in killing. Although the term leaves much to be desired, it also describes a particular type of crime that cannot yet be described with other terms. I therefore use quotations to separate this phrase from ideas that women’s bodies and actions are responsible for a family’s honor.
Invasion of Kuwait: In August of 1990, Iraq invaded and annexed Kuwait. This invasion provided the pretext for US invasion during the Gulf War.
Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK): The two dominant political parties in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) which were, until 2003, strongly oppositional and fought each other for maximal control.
Nureed Watan: The translation given in the cited article is “We Want a Country.” However, I suggest that “watan” translates more directly to “homeland” as the word implies a sense of unity and belonging that cannot be adequately conveyed in the English word “country.”
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Author
Samia Saliba graduated from Western Washington University in March 2020 with a B.A. in History and minors in Spanish and Arabic & Islamic Studies. She was named as the WWU History Department's Outstanding Graduate for 2020. She currently works as an educator through the Upward Bound program. Her creative writing has been published or is forthcoming in Sycamore Review, Vagabond City Lit, Mizna, and elsewhere.