Via
MOMENT OF TRIUMPH--
I wasn't sure if I should be spreading
this story around, but I see
Today in Iraq has picked it up, so I don't see why not.
This is the kind of word-of-mouth apocrypha I've spent the last five years studying, albeit in a very different context. Interpretation is always a kind of tea-leaf affair, but (even in the absense of comparitive examples) I'll give it a shot.
The text:
ZUSUK Army Honor: US soldiers board bus carrying college girls in Mosul and make them strip, baring their heads and breasts.
One of the women students told Mafkarat al-Islam that she was determined to send a letter about the crime to Arab and Islamic states appealing to them to take heed from what was going on in Iraq for the sake of the future. She said wants them to be aware of what America's talk of freedom and democracy really means. She wants them to think about what can happen to "free" women in the shadow of "American democracy."
This is a framing device. The author is the writer, and if there ever was a female source for the story the material will have been made to fit the writer's perceptions and objectives. When a story like this is actually reported by a victim, the material sometimes defies attempts to make it fit, or when the mode of information delivery complicates fitting, but there is no evidence of that here, as I will show. The story is utterly pat. If there ever was an incident similar to the one described, we are reading how it played out in the writer's mind, not how it came out of the witness' mouth.
In a dispatch posted at 11:40pm Mecca time Friday night, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that a few days ago US troops in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul stopped a bus carrying students at the local Women Teachers Training Institute and forced the young women at gunpoint to uncover their heads and bare their breasts."
Stop right there. Mardi gras I get, but this head-bearing stuff seems unlikely. Although I would expect soldiers in Iraq to understand the local customs and I don't doubt that a few get off on violating them, the juxtaposition here is crap. From an American perspective, if you've got tits, who needs bare heads? Friday night, furthermore, means completely opposite things to those said to have done this and those said to have suffered this. These are two very different kinds of assaults from an American perspective. Running them together reflects an Arab perspective, and therefore an Arab's fabrication.
I may be wrong, but I seriously doubt it.
The Mosul correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported that a US patrol halted a bus belonging to the Central Teachers Training Institute in Mosul as it was on its way to the institution at 7:30am local time. American male soldiers accompanied by a number of US women troops boarded the bus and ordered the driver to get out of the vehicle that had a capacity of 44 passengers.
Numbers. Always good to throw out a bunch of numbers. Verisimilitude and all that.
The addition of women troops is an interesting touch, intended to be an aggravating factor (but again, only from an Arab cultural perspective) since, as we will see, they do nothing to stop the men. In fact, they disappear from the story after this point, which may mean they were added to the story very late in its composition. Intros and conclusions are the most rewritten portions of any composition, especially when a story has changed hands several times.
The Americans then tied up the driver and threw him on the ground. Next, as the American troops trained their guns on the women, one of the Americans, speaking broken Arabic, ordered them to open their shirts and expose their breasts. The American soldiers also demanded that they take off their head coverings and expose their heads and hair.
If the serviceman had a rudimentary grasp of Arabic as a result of his duties, I doubt that his vocabulary would have included the words for "breasts" or "hair."
One of the women students - who has since decided to quit the school - later spoke to the Mafkarat al-Islam correspondent about the incident. She recounted that they were all shocked by the soldiers' order and tried to scream for help as loudly as they could, calling "Help, save our honor! God is greatest! Help, save our dignity! God is greatest!" Their screams and weeping only made the Americans laugh and make fun of them. One of the soldiers yelled at them and pointed his gun over their heads and they were forced to uncover their heads and bare their breasts.
Two things going on, here. Resistance is an important prelimary to violation. Not only does it aggravate the appearance of violation, but it also excuses the victims from complying. For instance, in late medieval England a woman would have to cry "out, out, o wail-away" when being raped or she would be considered to have consented. At the rapist's trial, the victim would at least have to pretend to have uttered the formula or the court would ignore her violation. Here, God is juxtaposed with heathen lust. Oldest story in the book.
The woman said that meanwhile, their screams had been heard by people in the area who ran to get the principal of the Teachers Institute. She immediately hurried to the scene along with the local Director of Education, a crowd of local men, and some of the puppet police. The Americans then got down out of the bus, as many of the women inside passed out unconscious from the shock and humiliation.
Iraq is, or at least was, one of the most secular Islamic countries. Here, however, the women are said to have swooned. Not only, therefore, are we looking at a composition that emphasizes the violation of Arab modesty (being read back on Islam, which originally said nothing about women covering their hair) but it is intended for an audience
outside Iraq, a more conservative one.
The other figures that appear at this point are meant to give the impression of there being many witnesses when in fact we have one guy saying that this organization spoke with some woman. The creation of corroboration continues:
The Mafkarat al-Islam correspondent spoke with Shaykh Duwwas ash-Shamari, one of the tribal chiefs in the Mosul area and he confirmed the story. He said it was true and that he had confirmed it with one of the women who had been aboard the bus too. He said that the Americans had indeed committed the outrage, even though the puppet governor of Mosul and some other local puppet officials denied the reports claiming that they had to do so in order to avoid stirring up the whole city's population.
More of the same. The chief confirms it even though he didn't see it. Others are said to deny it even though they know better. The witnesses in the story don't appear in the narrative as passing information. They are merely characters, not narrators. Chances are the correspondent has spoken with none of these people.
The Iraqi Resistance responded to the reports that same day by shelling four US military headquarters in Mosul, destroying two Humvees.
One of the women teachers in the Institute told Mafkarat al-Islam that a large number of the students had quit the program after the humiliating outrage. Meanwhile, several local journalists who work for various news agencies also learned of the incident from local people and relatives of the women but were unwilling to report it publicly.
The incident is used here to justify an attack, blame locals' fright (i.e., leaving the program) on someone else, and further attestations are manufactured
along with an explanation why they appear no where else.
One of the women students told Mafkarat al-Islam that she was determined to send a letter about the crime to Arab and Islamic states appealing to them to take heed from what was going on in Iraq for the sake of the future. She said wants them to be aware of what America's talk of freedom and democracy really means. She wants them to think about what can happen to "free" women in the shadow of "American democracy."
Well, this story
is a kind of letter to Arab and Islamic states, it is an appeal and a very basic one: our womanhood is being violated, where are the men in the Arab and Islamic world who will save them?
But no volunteers are actually expected. The point is to add to the political cost of the occupation. The occupation becomes every Arab and Muslim's business by connecting the consequences of that occupation to other's honor.
Very sneaky.