Remember all the pictures we saw of women with purple fingers who were able to vote in Iraq? Remember how "Freedom was on the March"? How many of you know what kind of freedom the women of Iraq now have? I've been reading a number of Iraqi blogs of late and they've all had the same chilling stories of how women are being treated. The following article is the first story I've seen published on this horror:
Men in black terrorise Iraq's women
This is what democracy has brought the women of Iraq. The rage I'm feeling right now makes me want to vomit. The next time I hear someone say how great we're doing in Iraq I'm going to scream.
Follow me below and read what we've helped bring to the women of Iraq....
Western clothes are death sentence
NOOR and her boyfriend used to go out a lot and listen to dance in their favourite restaurant in Baghdad. The 26-year-old university lecturer also used to enjoy going window shopping at night in the city's once-glitzy Mansour district, dressed in the latest fashions.
That was before the "men in black", the Taliban-style militias waging terror against the urban middle class, arrived in Noor's neighbourhood, threatening to shoot, kidnap and shave the heads of anyone who challenged their draconian strictures.
The militias are part of a hardline religious crackdown organised by Abu Musab al- Zarqawi, the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq. On Friday he released a four-hour sermon, effectively a message of hate, calling on Sunni Muslims to confront adherents of the rival Shi'ite branch of Islam.
Zarqawi, who appears to act with impunity in Iraq despite a £13m bounty on his head, has printed pamphlets that were delivered through doors in the Amariya district of Baghdad, one of his self-declared Sunni "emirates".
New Rules! I associate that term with Bill Maher. Whenever I see that on his show again, I will think of this instead.
The "emir", identified as Abu Houzeifa, announced new rules: "Women cannot drive; women cannot go out after midday; women and men are not allowed to go out and walk together, they must walk separately." The rules are enforced by Al-Qaeda thugs who drive around in cars in Amariya, Yarmouk and other Sunni areas that Zarqawi has declared are his. Noor said: "If they see someone breaking the rules, they shoot them."
The "men in black" have turned women into virtual prisoners in their homes. "At first we were more afraid of bombs but now we are more afraid of being killed for what we are wearing," Noor said.
Many of you read Riverbend. I always worry when she doesn't post for long periods of time. She now has to make up excuses so her brothers will take her to the store, just so she can see the light of day and go for a walk on the street.
Iraqi women are now dependent on the men in their family. One young Iraqi woman, who writes a blog called Riverbend, described her humiliation when she tried to return to her job as a computer network administrator. "My former manager said females weren't welcome and told me, in not so many words, to `go home'," she said. "There was a hostility I couldn't believe."
Now, to go out, she must take two "preferably large" male relatives. She makes up reasons why she must go shopping. " It feels like we've gone back 50 years."
Under Saddam, Iraqi women were among the most liberated in the Arab World. This is what we've brought them. It's not only women that are under fire. The men have been targeted also. But for them, it's only dress and beards.
This article is 2 pages long and I encourage all of you to read it. Read how teenage girls have had their head shaved because they were not wearing a hijab when they went outside.
Iraq is chaos. Baghdad has become a city divided and separated by neighborhoods which are patrolled by militias. Iraqi's don't turn to the police because they are worthless or part of a militia.
Just why do we have 150,000 troops still in Iraq? What are they doing there? We've set Iraq back 50 years and we are supposed to call this progress?
Month after month Iraq gets worse and we're told we just can't leave because Iraq will explode into Civil War and month after month it gets worse over there. Just when is the right time going to come for us to leave? Will it be when we've bombed it out of existence? When there isn't a soul left alive? Why are we still there?