Dire Situation for Women Under U.S. Occupation and Rising Fundamentalism

We turn now to examine the dire situation for women in Iraq and Afghanistan. Earlier this month the Daily Mail of London published the following dispatch from Iraq: “A 17-year-old girl has been stoned to death in Iraq because her boyfriend was from a different religious faith. Du'a Khalil Aswad, from a minority Kurdish religious group, Yezidi, was condemned to an ‘honour killing’ by men in her family and hardliners due to her relationship with a Sunni Muslim. She had taken shelter in the house of a Yezidi tribal leader in Bashika, near the northern capital, Mosul. Eight or nine men stormed the house and dragged Miss Aswad into the street where they hurled stones at her for half an hour. Reports said a local security force saw the attack, but did not try to stop it. Now her boyfriend is in hiding.”

Human rights groups say this honor killing is just the latest news to emerge from Iraq that shows how the condition of women in Iraq has rapidly deteriorated since the U.S. occupation began. Some have described it as the Talibanization of Iraq.

Today we are joined in Los Angeles by two leading feminists: one from Iraq and one from Afghanistan. Both are featured in the new issue of Ms. Magazine.

* Yanar Mohammed. Co-founder of the Organization for Women's Freedom in Iraq. The group vocally supports women's rights in Iraq and shelters Iraqi women targeted in honor killings and sectarian violence. She was born in Baghdad in 1960. She left Iraq in 1993 and then returned after the U.S. invasion.

* Dr. Sima Samar. She is the chair of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission and is the United Nations special envoy to Darfur, Sudan. She served as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Women's Affairs in Hamid Karzai's first government following the U.S. invasion of 2001. She was forced to resign her government post following death threats.

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