Roslyn Ross ~ copyright (c) 2008

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In a month in which a woman is offered the keys to Yarralumla we are reminded of how far women have not come.

The appointment of Quentin Bryce, the first female governor-general in Australia's history, does stand as testament to how far women have come in this country in 107 years. Although we need to remember that even here, in the developed world, women still have a long way to go to secure equal wages and to reach parity which is equal to their number in the community in many areas including politics, the church and business corporations.

GG-elect Quentin Bryce

But beyond Australia and the developed world the plight of women has, in the main not improved, and in some circumstances, such as the ongoing occupations, official and unofficial, of Iraq and Afghanistan, gotten worse.

At the same time that Quentin Bryce's appointment is hailed as a watershed and a breakthrough by feminists and senior political figures, women in most of the world are being subjugated, abused, tortured and murdered.

"What this day says to Australian women and to Australian girls is that they can do anything, you can be anything, and it makes my heart sing to see women in so many diverse roles across our country," said Quentin Bryce.

Quite right! But at the same time it throws into even starker relief the fact that women in Iraq can now do and be less than they could under a tyrant and the women of Afghanistan are being punished and killed for trying to become more than they have ever been as human beings.

When Afghanistan was attacked we were told that it was done to deliver liberation to the people, most particularly, the women. We supported the installation of Hamid Karzai, and, even though some of us knew he was a Western puppet and a 'friend' of the big oil companies, we believed, or at least hoped, that he could bring about change. There would be no more beatings, no more burgas and no more repression. Women would become equal and free and Afghanistan would move ahead.

But, that was not what happened. The Taliban, empowered by increasing local support as it turned itself into an army of resistance fighting against Western occupiers and a puppet Afghan government is resurgent. And a recent report released by a British women's group, Womankind, says that Afghanistan is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a woman. Around 80 percent of women are affected by domestic violence; over 60 percent of marriages are forced, some of them between elderly men and girls as young as eight; half of Afghanistan's girls are married before the age of 16.

Not only has the condition of women not improved, it has gotten worse. So bad in fact that a new horror is emerging: Afghan women are setting themselves on fire to escape the brutality. Seven years after Afghan women were 'freed' by the foreign invaders, life is just as bad for most and worse for many!

What many of us did not know was that the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan who first brought the world the ghastly images of Taliban brutality, opposed the US led invasion because they saw it as far too simplistic an approach to a deeply rooted cultural problem. They were ignored of course because invading Afghanistan and putting a pro-US government in place was never about the plight of women, but about oil and the American desire to take revenge on someone for 9/11.

The treatment of women, said RAWA, was the product of a nation ravaged by decades of war, with all the feudal social structures, entrenched poverty, illiteracy and corrosive brutality that this nurtures. Such a situation can never be resolved militarily because it ignored the fact that the Taliban was a symptom as much as a cause.

It was the Northern Alliance, the West's new friends and allies in Afghanistan, who had crushed and brutalised Afghan women before the Taliban. Some 50,000 civilians were killed during its rule in the 1990s, and thousands of women and girls were systematically raped and others pushed to commit suicide.

But these were now our allies and the 'good guys.' It was hardly surprising that soon after the invasion an international NGO worker told Amnesty International that 'during the Taliban era, if a woman went to market and showed an inch of flesh she would have been flogged; now she's raped.'

Australia's involvement in Afghanistan means that we have a responsibility for what happens there. And, even more so in Iraq, where the part we played in the invasion and occupation of that sovereign nation is even greater. Here too, the Americans, supported by their allies including us, claimed that women would have 'new rights and new hopes.'

For Iraqi women today, rapes, murders and burnings are a daily event. In Sulaimaniyah hospital morgue in Iraqi Kurdistan the bodies are laid out on white tiles. Some have been beaten to death, others shot or strangled, but most have been burned. These women are not the casualties of our war of occupation, but 'accidents', as the records show. Most bodies will remain unclaimed.

"It is getting worse, especially the burnings," says Khanim Rahim Latif, the manager of Asuda, an Iraqi organisation based in Kurdistan that works to combat violence against women.

"In many cases the woman is accused of adultery, or of a relationship before she is married, or the marriage is not sanctioned by the family," Khanim says. Her husband, brother or another relative will kill her to restore their 'honour'. The body might be dumped miles away and when it is found the family says, 'We don't have a daughter.' In other cases, disputes over such murders are resolved between families or tribes by the payment of a forfeit, or the gift of another woman.

"The authorities say such agreements are necessary for social stability, to prevent revenge killings," says Khanim.

Even under Saddam, women in Iraq - including in semi-autonomous Kurdistan - were widely recognised as among the most liberated in the Middle East. They held important positions in business, education and the public sector, and their rights were protected by a statutory family law that was the envy of women's activists in neighbouring countries. But since the 2003 invasion, advances that took 50 years to establish are crumbling away. In much of the country, women can only now move around with a male escort. Rape is committed habitually by all the main armed groups, including those linked to the government. Women are being murdered throughout Iraq in unprecedented numbers.

In October the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq (Unami) expressed serious concern over the rising incidence of so-called honour crimes in Iraqi Kurdistan, confirming that 255 women had been killed in just the first six months of 2007, three-quarters of them by burning. An earlier Unami report cited 366 burns cases in Dohuk in 2006, up from 289 the year before, although most were not fatal. In Irbil, the emergency management centre had reported 576 burns cases since 2003, resulting in 358 deaths.

Afghani Women (source bbc.co.uk)

Under the new system of government developing in Iraq, family disputes are increasingly settled not in state courts but by local tribal or religious authorities.

"Not that any religion allows such abuse - it is the culture," says Khanim. "And we see cases from all the communities, including the Christians. It is even worse outside Kurdistan."

Every year since 2003 honour killings have increased. In just one month last year, 130 unclaimed women's bodies were counted in the Baghdad morgue, says a representative from the Organisation of Women's Freedom in Iraq.

Under the new Iraqi constitution a quarter of the 275 seats are reserved for women, making the level of female representation among the highest in the world. But behind the statistics there is another story. In 2005, one female MP, Lamia Abed Khadouri, was gunned down and killed as she left home.

"If security in Iraq can be provided - and it's a big if - then we have great hope," says a Baghdad economics professor who herself survived an assassination attempt last year. But she is not optimistic about the future. The invasion and ongoing occupation means that religious parties have increasing power and that means more repression for women.

Iraq is now the most violent country on earth and it is the women who bear the greatest brunt of that violence for they are exposed not only to the military aggression of the US led occupiers, the Iraqi Government, the mercenaries and the various sectarian militia groups but to increasing violence within their families as traditional tribal codes take hold once more.

And it's not as if the American occupiers are setting any standards. Since 2003 US forces have denied numerous allegations that soldiers have raped and abused female detainees or held them as bargaining chips in the hunt for family members wanted as insurgents. But the Pentagon's Taguba report into abuse at Abu Ghraib prison confirmed that US military police had photographed and videotaped naked women prisoners and referred to a guard 'having sex with a female detainee'.

The Taguba report also stated that U.S. guards committed other crimes against Iraqi women for their entertainment. "An Iraqi woman in her 70s had been harnessed and ridden like a donkey at Abu Ghraib and another coalition detention center after being arrested last July," the report said.

Lawyers of women prisoners also assert that US guards had been raping women detainees and forcing them to strip naked in front of men. They also said that these crimes were being committed all across Iraq.

Four US soldiers have been found guilty of the rape and murder of 14-year-old Abeer Qasim Hamza and three members of her family in Mahmoudiya, south of Baghdad, in an attack the US military had at first blamed on Sunni insurgents.

Rapes carried out against Shia or Christian women have been justified by insurgent groups as revenge for what was done to women in Abu Ghraib. But the extent to which the abuse of women has become both the vehicle and the justification for sectarian hatred in Iraq was demonstrated most chillingly in the April killing of Du'a Khalil Aswad. A 17-year-old from Nineveh, Du'a was stoned in front of hundreds of men, some of whom videoed what happened on their mobile phones.

Iraqi women have even been sold to foreign countries for the global prostitution network, the Woman Freedom Organization (WFO), a Baghdad-based NGO, said in a report.

"We've studied reports from local NGOs on women's rights in the past three years, including violence, kidnappings, forced prostitution and honor killings," WFO President Senar Mohammad told Reuters. "And the extent to which women have lost their rights in Iraq is shocking."

According to the WFO study, the most worrying trend was the kidnappings of women, many of whom reported being sexually abused or tortured. Kidnapping and raping women has become so widespread that very few women are seen on the streets. More than 2,000 Iraqi women have been kidnapped since April 2003, the report said, adding that such incidents were largely unknown during Saddam Hussein's regime.

As Australians we naturally feel good because we share in Quentin Bryce's achievement. But if we share in the good things which happen when our nation plays a part then we must also share in the bad. Australia's involvement in both Iraq and Afghanistan means that we 'share' in everything which happens there.

We need to remember, as we celebrate and take pride in the rise of one woman that, at the same time, there are millions of women falling deeper into dark, desperate and deadly places.

~ Roslyn Ross