Imperialist feminism in Iraq

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

One of these days some enterprising radical scholar should write an 
article or a book on how feminism has been used as a justification for 
the "war on terror".

In the run-up to the war in Afghanistan, a segment of the left was 
championing RAWA, an Afghan feminist group that while never actually 
supporting the war, made appearances on CNN at the very moment the USA 
was being whipped into a war fever--not a very wise time and place for a 
group with a progressive agenda.

And two years ago, Bush told the UN: "Respect for women... can triumph 
in the Middle East and beyond…The repression of women [is] everywhere 
and always wrong!"

While most unbiased observers recognize that Saddam Hussein promoted 
women into leadership positions (despite having extremely backward 
attitudes on other questions), feminism has also been misused as a way 
of controlling the population. NGO's have sought to drive a wedge 
between groups conducting the resistance against imperialism and women 
in their communities who have been traditionally oppressed. By lining up 
women behind nominally progressive goals, NGO's or functionaries in the 
Provisional Governing Authority apparently seek to divide and conquer.

This process is described in great detail in a fascinating article that 
appeared in Sunday's NY Times Magazine section. 
(http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/19/magazine/19WOMENL.html) It is focused 
on the late Fern Holland, a 33 year old PGA official who was 
assassinated recently. She was involved in setting up women's centers 
and providing legal advice to Iraqi women.

Two such women came to her seeking aid in a legal dispute with a 
Baathist official who built a house on their land and refused to leave. 
Holland decided that the best way to deal with him was to get a legal 
write to destroy the house. Although the Times does not explicitly say 
so, she basically tried to bribe the judge by bringing an Internet cafe 
to his rice-farming village.

She managed to cajole the court into providing legal cover for 
bulldozing the house. Although the judge agreed that, ''No one should 
jump over a woman's rights,'' he pointed out that it was shameful to 
destroy somebody's house. After the judgment was made, no Iraqi would 
carry out the order. Holland had to deliver the bulldozer herself. An 
Egyptian  NGO colleague told her, "A bulldozer…that is an Israeli act.'' 
She replied, ''They can't just harass women this way, Dr. Adly."

With her mixture of brutality, gung-ho idealism and missionary contempt 
for the natives, Holland will remind you of the CIA character in Graham 
Green's "The Quiet American." As reporter Elizabeth Rubin puts it, "From 
early in her life, Holland harnessed a go-it-alone, pioneer mentality to 
a Wilsonian belief in universal human rights and self-determination. As 
an American, she felt a moral obligation to the world, despite or maybe 
because of her decidedly rough beginnings."

When a friend from Oklahoma told her about antiwar protests and the 
failure to find WMD's, she responded, "I don't know anything about 
W.M.D. But I can tell you this countryside is littered with the graves 
of men, women and children murdered by this regime.'' When you read 
through the Times article, a consistent portrait is drawn of an 
imperious American official who will not allow herself to be bothered by 
counter indicative information. In other words, a touchy-feely version 
of Condoleeza Rice or Paul Wolfowitz.

When she arrived, there were profound illusions that the Iraqis could be 
bent to the US's will. Rubin describes the prevailing mood:

>>It was an exciting time. Visions were grand. Cash was flowing by the 
truckload from Baghdad. Because it was confiscated money from Saddam's 
coffers that the U.S. was distributing and not official American funds, 
there were almost no regulations on how it was spent. As Rachel Roe, a 
reservist and lawyer who was rebuilding the legal system in Najaf, told 
me: ''Fern showed up in the palace in Baghdad looking for the head of 
democracy and human rights to see what's the plan and found some 
21-year-old political appointee who had no idea what was going on. 
Someone would just say, 'O.K., take this cash, put it in a backpack and 
build democracy centers.' It was insane. I was looking for guidance on 
Iraqi law and was met by a 22-year-old American in charge of the 
Ministry of Justice who said, 'Don't worry about that, I'm pretty sure 
we're going to rewrite that constitution anyway.' This is a country of 
23 million people, and we're there with no plan for what we're going to 
do. So we just started figuring it out ourselves.''<<

The article concludes with the following perceptive observations:

>>Shortly before I left Iraq, I went to a Baghdad provincial council 
meeting with a council member, Siham Hamdan. She lives in Baghdad's 
impoverished Sadr City and had spent several days with Holland in 
Washington. A professor of English literature at Mustansirya University 
in Baghdad, Hamdan tried to explain why Iraq's young men had revolted. 
''We did nothing for them in a year,'' she said. ''No jobs. No projects. 
No water, services, sewage, electricity.''

And then there was the cultural miscommunication, which seems to have 
been complete. The American military has its code of ethics and 
behavior; the Iraqis have their dignity; and the two have only clashed. 
She said she spent her last night in Washington touring the city with 
Holland and had met some of her friends. ''I came to believe she was 
wonderful,'' Hamdan said. ''She told me she wanted to come back to Iraq 
because she loved the people and couldn't leave them anymore.''

The conversation reminded Hamdan of E. M. Forster's ''Passage to 
India.'' She valued Forster for understanding that some English 
conventions were wrong, and that he needed to change the colonial 
mentality: ''He tried to tackle this in all his novels until he made 
this final clash -- personal, religious, political, social, cultural, 
all in one time, in one place in the caves.'' She was describing the 
novel's climax, when two Englishwomen visit the Marbar Caves with their 
Indian male friends, and the young Miss Adela Quested comes flying out 
of the darkness accusing the Indian doctor of assaulting her. ''From 
that point every party tries to defend his own,'' Hamdan said. ''And 
what began as an attempt at friendship and understanding ends in 
misunderstanding, failure and total chaos. And the final sentence is 
marvelous.'' As Hamdan recalled it, the English colonial, Fielding, asks 
the Indian doctor if they can ever be friends again: ''And the doctor 
answered: 'Not yet. Not now.' '' Hamdan laughed, then said: ''Sometimes 
I feel what's happening between Iraqis and Americans is just like this: 
'Not yet. Not now.' I can have an excellent understanding on the 
personal level but understanding between our nations is somehow 
impossible.''

Actually, the novel ends a little differently than Hamdan remembered 
and, in the context of Iraq today, perhaps more prophetically. The 
Indian doctor on his horse rages at his old friend Fielding: ''Clear 
out, you fellows, double quick, I say. We may hate one another, but we 
hate you most. If I don't make you go, Ahmed will, Karim will, if it's 
fifty-five hundred years we shall get rid of you, yes, we shall drive 
every blasted Englishman into the sea, and then' -- he rode against him 
furiously -- 'and then,' he concluded, half kissing him, 'you and I 
shall be friends.' ''<<

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