Gorilla’s Guides

The women of Iraq have disappeared. Five years after the US-led invasion of Iraq, women’s secular freedoms - once the envy of women across the Middle East - have been snatched away because militant Islam is rising across the country. Across Iraq, a bloody and relentless oppression of women has taken hold. Many women had their heads shaved for refusing to wear a scarf or have been stoned in the street for wearing make-up. Others have been kidnapped and murdered for crimes that are being labelled simply as “inappropriate behaviour”. The insurrection against the fragile and barely functioning state has left the country prey to extremists whose notion of freedom does not extend to women. In Basra, where Mehdi Army retains a stranglehold, women insist the situation is at its worst. Here they are forced to live behind closed doors only to emerge, concealed behind scarves, hidden behind husbands and fathers. Even wearing a pair of trousers is considered an act of defiance, punishable by death. One Basra woman, known only as Dr Kefaya, was working in the women and children’s hospital unit at the city university when she started receiving threats from extremists. She defied them. Then, one day a man walked into the building and murdered her.

Behind the wave of insurgent attacks, the violence against women who dare to challenge the Islamic orthodoxy is growing. Fatwas banning women from driving or being seen out alone are regularly issued. Infiltrated by militia, the police are unwilling or unable to crack down on the fundamentalists. Ms Alebadi said: “After the fall of the regime, the religious extremist parties came out on to the streets and threatened women. Although the extremists are in the minority, they control powerful positions, so they control Basra.” To venture on the streets today without a male relative is to risk attack, humiliation or kidnap. A journalist, Shatta Kareem, said: “I was driving my car one day when someone just crashed into me and drove me off the road. If a woman is seen driving these days it is considered a violation of men’s rights.”

Source: Accompanying text to : YouTube - The Women in the New Iraq المرأة في العراق الجديد  shown above.

Thank you America for making it possible for these scum to set our Sisters’ rights back by several generations.

Maryam, Mohammed Ibn Laith.

In Basra, the Mehdi Army has been able to hold off the Iraqi army in gun battles but has then retreated. But there is no sign so far of the militia being eliminated and it could probably launch devastating counter attacks in the slum districts where its supporters live.

Mr Sadr called a six-month ceasefire last August, renewed it in February and called his militiamen off the streets when they seemed to be winning during fighting at the end of March.

Many of his militiamen are impatient to renew their battle with the Iraqi army and the Americans. In Sadr City, one Mehdi Army commander said on Saturday night that he was “thrilled” by Mr Sadr’s threat to go back to war. “We will wait until tomorrow to see the response of the government,” he said. “Otherwise they will see black days like they have never seen before in their life.”

The US has long encouraged the Iraqi government to crush the Sadrists but seems to have been caught by surprise by current events in which the US finds itself fighting a war on two fronts: one against the Sunni Arabs, which it has waged since 2003, and now a second, which is just beginning, against the Shia.

Read in full: Sadr threatens ‘open war’ as Iraqi army attacks base - Middle East, World - The Independent

US and British forces are increasingly playing a supporting role in the Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s stalled offensive against the Mehdi Army militia. American aircraft launched air strikes in Basra yesterday and fought militiamen on the streets in Baghdad while British advisers have also been assisting Iraqi troops in Basra.

Mr Maliki retreated from his demand that militiamen hand over their weapons by yesterday and extended the deadline to 8 April. This is a tacit admission that the Iraqi army and police have failed to oust the Mehdi Army from any of its strongholds in the capital and in southern Iraq. The Iraqi army has either met stubborn resistance from Mehdi Army fighters or soldiers and police have refused to fight or changed sides. “We did not expect the fight to be this intense,” said the officer from a 300-strong commando unit that has been pinned down in the Tamimiyah district in Basra, where the supporters of Muqtada al-Sadr, the leader of the Mehdi Army, have strong support.

The officer said four of his men were killed and 15 wounded in the fighting. “Some of the men told me that they did not want to go back to the fight until they have better support and more protection,” he added. The Interior Ministry threatened that the men would be court-martialled for refusing to fight. Government troops arriving in Basra complain that they are being fired on by local police loyal to Mr Sadr. Members of one police unit had fist fights with their officers after they refused to join the battle.

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March 27 (Reuters) - Following are security developments in Iraq at 1530 GMT on Thursday.

* BAGHDAD - Gunmen kidnapped Tahseen al-Sheikhli, a civilian spokesman for the Baghdad security plan, designed to make the capital safer, from his home in Baghdad, police said.

* BAGHDAD - The Green Zone diplomatic and government compound in central Baghdad was hit by repeated rocket and mortar fire in some of the worst barrages in months.

* BAGHDAD - Shi’ite militants clashed with Iraqi security forces in Baghdad’s Washash, Iskan, Shurta, Hurriya, Kamiliya, Fudhailiya, Ur, Shula, Mashtal and Sadr City districts, Baghdad security plan spokesman Major-General Qassim Moussawi said. Civilians and security force members had been killed or wounded, he said, but he gave no figures.

* BAGHDAD - Eight soldiers were wounded in clashes with Mehdi Army fighters in Talabiya in eastern Baghdad, police said.

BASRA - Fighting between Iraqi security forces and the Mehdi Army militia continued in Basra. A police source in Baghdad put the latest death toll at 51 people killed and 225 wounded since a major Iraqi military operation began on Tuesday.

KUT - At least 44 people have been killed, including four policemen, and 75 wounded in two-day clashes in the city of Kut, 170 km (105 miles) southeast of Baghdad, said Abdul Hanin al-Imara, police chief of Wasit province.

BAGHDAD - Three people were killed and 15 wounded by a mortar attack on a bus terminal in central Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - Gunmen attacked an Iraqi army checkpoint in the Sadr City district of northeastern Baghdad, wounding four soldiers, police said.

DAQUQ - Gunmen attacked an Iraqi army patrol in the town of Daquq, 45 km (30 miles) south of Kirkuk, killing four soldiers, police said.

AL-RIFAI - Gunmen attacked Iraqi troops heading to Basra, killing two soldiers in the town of al-Rifai, near Nassiriya, 375 km (235 miles) southwest of Baghdad, police said.

KIRKUK - A car bomb killed two Kurdish Peshmerga security force members and wounded six, including two civilians, in the northern city of Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

MAHAWEEL - A roadside bomb exploded near a police patrol, killing four policemen and wounding four in the town of Mahaweel, 75 km (45 miles) south of Baghdad, police said.

NEAR BAQUBA - The bodies of four men were found with gunshot wounds to the head in a village near Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, a hospital source said.

BAGHDAD - The bodies of three people were found in Baghdad on Wednesday, police said.

OTHER DEVELOPMENTS

BAGHDAD - Thousands of supporters of Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr marched in Baghdad to protest against a three-day-old crackdown against his followers in the southern city of Basra and to call for the downfall of the U.S.-backed government.

Reuters AlertNet - FACTBOX-Security developments in Iraq, March 27

* Sadr supporters march in Baghdad

* Saboteurs blow up southern oil export pipeline * Third day of fighting in Basra; curfews in Shi’ite towns

(Updates with new details)

By Aseel Kami and Wisam Mohammed

BAGHDAD March 27 (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of supporters of Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr marched in Baghdad on Thursday as a crackdown on his followers raged in southern Iraqi towns and rockets and mortars exploded across the capital.

In Sadr City, the vast Shi’ite slum named after Sadr’s slain father, enormous crowds of angry men jammed the main circle chanting and shouting slogans calling for the ousting of U.S.-backed Shi’ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

“We demand the downfall of the Maliki government. It does not represent the people. It represents Bush and Cheney,” marcher Hussein Abu Ali said.

The slum of 2 million people has been locked in a virtual state of siege: “We are trapped in our homes with no water or electricity since yesterday. We can’t bathe our children or wash our clothes,” said a resident who gave his name as Mohammed.

Mass demonstrations were also held in the northern Kadhimiya and Shula districts. The demonstrations were among the largest anti-government protests Maliki’s government has faced, although the total number of marchers was impossible to verify. An Interior Ministry source said hundreds of thousands took part.

More than 130 people have been killed and hundreds wounded since the government launched a major military operation in the southern city of Basra on Tuesday, targeting districts where Sadr’s Mehdi Army militia has a strong presence.

Fighting there raged afresh on Thursday for a third day. A Reuters correspondent in the city said Iraqi forces had cordoned off seven districts but were being repelled by Mehdi Army fighters inside them. Helicopters swooped overhead.

Authorities imposed curfews in other Shi’ite towns to halt the spread of the violence, which has exposed a deep divide between Shi’ite parties in Maliki’s government and Sadr’s followers who in many Shi’ite areas rule the streets.

The government says it is fighting “outlaws”. Sadrists say Maliki is using military force to marginalise political rivals ahead of local elections due by October.

The clashes have all but wrecked a truce declared last August by Sadr, which U.S. commanders had credited with reducing violence.

Saboteurs blew up one of Iraq’s two main oil export pipelines from Basra, cutting at least a third of the exports from the city which provides 80 percent of government revenue. U.S. oil prices rose more than $1 a barrel after the blast.

BOMBARDMENT

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