A Step Back for Women’s Rights in Iraq? Posted by Michael Osborne

The WMD’s turned out to be a mirage in the desert.   The country America invaded to stop terrorism has become the world’s prime incubator of terrorists.   So what remains of the Bush administration’s rationales for Operation Iraqi Freedom?  In a word: Democracy.  The constitution, to be finalised next week will allow Iraqis to live in federal harmony.  Iraq will take its place in the community of free nations.  And the new Iraq will be the catalyst for a democratic revolution across the Middle East.  Human rights, peace, freedom (and free markets), will spread throughout the Arab world.

Of course the administration's adversaries, unshakably  committed to the view that no good could come from America’s hegemonic adventure, are not buying this.  They dismiss the entire constitutional exercise as a sham, forced upon Iraqis by a rapacious imperialist, motivated by greed for oil, construction contracts, markets, and geopolitical interests.  Naomi Klein, like many others in the anti-war movement, is convinced that any constitution drafted under U.S. occupation is illegitimate.  Writing in The Nation, Klein bravely proposed that, rather than adopting a new constitution under the heel of America, Iraq should revive parts of its 1970 Provisional Constitution.   

For present purposes, I will assume, with Klein, that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was animated by the most diabolical of motives.   But I will also assume, contra Klein, that there is nevertheless a possibility that, under its new constitution, Iraq may in the medium term emerge somewhat better off than it would have been but for the deposing of Saddam.  (That opens up an interesting question: How would we evaluate an intervention motivated by avarice and defended by pretext -- which ultimately, perhaps by the cunning of history, turns out to yield what is generally recognised as a positive outcome for the victims of the aggression?  It is arguable, for example, that American intervention in both World Wars was animated by imperialist ambition, cloaked in Wilsonian idealism, and justified, in the case of the second war, by the pretext of Pearl Harbor.  But that broader debate is for another day.)

The slender prospect that Iraq may yet turn a corner for the better has been offered some support by commitments from Iraqi leaders that the new Iraqi constitution will protect the fundamental human rights of all Iraqis.   It is easy to dismiss reliance upon such promises as naïve.   Yet some encouragement may be drawn from the fact that the aspirations of a substantial part of Shiite and Kurdish Iraqis – albeit not the minority Sunnis  – do appear to be represented, albeit imperfectly, in the 71-member committee which has been drafting the country’s permanent Constitution.  (The constitution is due to be unveiled on August 15, and subject to referendum in October, in advance of the election of a new government under its aegis in December.)   

But the frail hopes of those who believed that the new constitution might herald a brighter future have been badly shaken by recently released drafts, under which women will be subject to the patriarchal law of Sharia.    Anita Sharma (July 22), laments that “even the hollow justification for the intervention in Iraq -- to free people from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, and in particular the women of Iraq, has turned out to be just an excuse”.    Baghdad women have also spoken out against the drafts.  The London Times Online quotes Masoon al-Denuchi, the Deputy Minister of Culture and president of the Iraqi Women’s Group, as remarking: “Unfortunately we don’t have a militia . . . [t]he only thing we can do is lobby and talk and talk and talk.”    And although the U.S. has gone to lengths to avoid creating the impression that it would dictate terms, Zalman Khalilzad, the new US Ambassador, recently weighed in, saying that: “A society cannot achieve all its potential if it does things that . . . weakens the prospects of -- half of its population to make the fullest contribution that it can.”   

The interim constitution, enacted last year under close U.S. supervision, acknowledged Islam as the official religion, but only "a source of legislation."  It encouragingly provided also that 25% of legislative seats be reserved for women.  Alarmingly, however, the draft of the permanent constitution leaked on July 25 envisaged that Islam would be "the major source" of legislation.  That has now apparently given way to an agreement that Islam would be “a main source of legislation." The new draft’s language on the subject of women’s rights offers little comfort: "The state guarantees the fundamental rights of women and their equality to men, in all fields, pursuant to the provisions of Islamic Sharia.”

Only Antonin Scalia (will Iraq ever be blessed with such a jurist?), would assume that anything will in practice turn on scholastic distinctions between a “source,” a “major source,” and a “main source.”  Still, it is becoming evident, if there was ever any doubt, that the Iraqi constitution will fall far short of guaranteeing the civic equality of women.  In one form or another, Sharia law will apply in most civil matters, including inheritance, marriage and divorce, and perhaps other areas of civil status.

All of this resonates with the great paradox that bedevils America’s announced policy of pushing democracy in the Middle East.  In principle, the U.S. believes that the key to transforming the region is democracy.  Yet there are reasons to think that America may not be happy with the actual outcome of democratic elections in Arab countries.  The United States was not displeased when the army overturned the democratic wishes of the Algerian people, as expressed in the 1992 election, widely believed to have been won by the Islamic Salvation Front.  America’s professed enthusiasm for democratic reforms in Riyadh will be sorely tested if what emerges from the first Saudi election is a fanatical theocracy.   As Suzanne Nossel (July 19) wrote, “letting countries alone to set up their own democracies can open the door for infringement on principles we hold dear, even to the point of undermining what we see as precepts fundamental to democracy.”  Clearly, the venerable (Iraqi?) adage, “beware of what you wish for” applies with full force here.

That irony aside, I think there is an argument to be made that an external attempt to impose democracy upon a country in the grip of dictatorship is not illegitimate.  The claim that sovereignty trumps imperialism rings hollow when used as a shield by a regime that denies any form of self-government to its own people.  That being said, I think it is going a bridge too far to presume to bestow not just democracy in the broadest sense, but a particular kind of democracy -- the liberal model.  Effectively, that would be to insist that counties like Iraq adopt not just the rule of law and entrench fundamental political rights, but also adopt a panoply of civil rights not enjoyed even in the U.S. until relatively recently.   The particular  variety of democracy that has triumphed in many counties around the world in the past quarter century is in practice a relatively “thin” model.  That model often offers little more than the  formal right to vote.  (Far from ideal, but a good start. The institution of a “thick” democracy -- encompassing full social and civil equality -- is an incomparably more ambitious project.  If that be so, I think that to dismiss the Iraqi constitution because it falls short of the highest liberal standards is not a good idea in the present circumstances.)

I say that for a number of reasons.   First, difficult though it may be for liberals to swallow, it appears that the democratic will of the Iraqi people demands some form of what they would call patriarchy.  And it is not just Iraqi men who would find it very difficult to embrace gender equality..  As Greg Priddy (July 20), observed, it is a mistake “to assume that there aren't … a significant number of women who . . . have fully internalized, the dominant patriarchal system of values”.  The editor of the Baghdad magazine Our Eve, Ethar Mousse is quoted, as saying that equality could lead to “corrupting Western influences.”  Liberals will dismiss this as a misguided worldview.  It is, they will say, the ideology of generations of patriarchy; as such, it can be discounted.  But that would be to embrace a liberal variety of Lenin’s false consciousness argument.   Our advocacy of democracy is revealed as a pious sham if it does not entail acceptance of outcomes we loath.  And it does not help to point to other Arab countries with relatively secular private law systems.  Priddy (July 29) reminds us that “many of the provisions of Egyptian law which conflict with Islamic law . . . are highly unpopular there, and would almost certainly be repealed by a legislature elected by a real popular vote.”

Second, as a practical matter the consensus necessary to get an Iraqi constitution enacted will likely be unattainable if we demand the embrace of civil rights utterly alien to the culture.   I must disagree with Michael Signer (July 29), when he suggests that the U.S. is making a mistake by insisting that the August 15 deadline be met, and in his argument that the finalization of the constitution be delayed until better protection for women’s rights are incorporated.    (Signer gives no indication as to why he believes that more liberal elements in the National Assembly would come to the fore if only given more time.)    As for Sharma, it is not clear the United States should do if the drafting committee stubbornly declines to build in women’s rights.  Exercise a veto?  Appoint a new assembly?  Or send in Martha Minow to draft a constitution for the Iraqi people?

Third, the fate of countless ambitious but miserably failed constitutions teaches that  the noblest aspirations in a constitution will be a dead letter if grafted onto a culture unready to embrace them.  I think the better approach is to push hard for a constitution that protects the bare minimum of political rights, which can be asserted in the political process to extend  equality into the civic realm.   The democratic project is, to use the familiar cliché, not an end but a process.  It necessarily embodies faith that even a rudimentary democracy, operating against the background of some semblance of the rule of law, will ultimately produce the substantive outcomes to which we are committed.   That does not mean that, like Leibnitz’s God, we set the constitutional clock running, then step back and observe from a distance.  Many kinds of subtle pressure, diplomatic, political and commercial, may be brought to bear in future by governments, international organisations, and NGO’s, to nudge Iraq towards full and equal civil rights.  But these extrinsic influences must be premised upon the assumption that, once the most fundamental procedural requisites of democracy -- by which I mean specifically political, as opposed to civil rights -- have been established, civic equality must be won through the struggles of Iraqi women in the political space that has been opened up.

Insisting that the Iraq constitution look like one that we would have drafted for ourselves is to make the best the enemy of the good.  A constitution laden with provisions anathema to the values of a deeply conservative community renders itself irrelevant.   Compared to what could have been, a constitution that does no more than institute the rule of law and universal suffrage should count as an astounding success.  More than that we cannot hope for.

Comments

[Greg Priddy]

Very thoughtful post -- I agree with a good deal of it. On balance, I still don't think the U.S. should have invaded Iraq solely to remove the old regime and install democracy -- we should have waited for the U.N. inspections process to play out fully, and could have then continued with containment. I'm also still skeptical of Iraq as a model which will spread across the region, due to the geopolitical tensions between a Shi'ite dominated Iraq closely aligned with Iran versus Sunni dominated Arab neighbors in Saudi Arabia and Jordan.

That said, I think there is a much better chance of seeing some benifit from this venture if we follow the path you propose here. A constitution which we force on them, contrary to the local system of values, won't last very long after the U.S. occupation ends. A model of "democracy within the boundaries set by Islam" has some potential to develop in a positive direction over the longer term.

PS -- Quick point, since you cited my earlier comments -- the name is spelled Priddy.

[howard]

i realize, of course, that what i'm about to say no longer matters, but nonetheless....

there are zero circumstances under which i can imagine the american public supporting the expenditure of blood and treasure to institute the rule of law and universal suffrage in iraq.

[Angryman]

Great, another genius post from the democracyarsenal.org brain trust that backhands the left as a mere afterthought to the generally misguided theme of the piece.

Enlist, chickenhawk. Enlist.

[Angryman]

Furthermore, it is absolutely hilarious to watch the liberal chickenhawks cooperate with the PNAC crowd in the moving of goalposts. So now a repressive Islamic government is an acceptible outcome for this war? My God, the moral gymnastics you people must go through every morning to keep from facing the fact that you facilitated and continue to facilitate one of the greatest foreign policy debacles in American history.

I know you can't say it. But I also know that this phrase eats at you at night, in those quiet times when what's left of your conscience comes up for air. So I'll put it to words for you:

This death, this destruction, the needless loss of American and Iraqi lives...it's your fault too.

[lily]

. I wish the people who support this war, especially in the Bush administration, would stop making up stuff and give honest explanations of goals and outcomes. Of course we can't re-create a democracy founded on our values in a culture as dramatically different from us as Iraq--which is why "democracy creation" shouldn't be the latest version of the pro-war sales pitch. Out here outside the beltway where people don't obsess about the details, "democracy" will be understood as
"like us". When that turns out to be untrue, when the government we support turns out to be very similar to the governments we are supposed to dislike, people are going to wonder what the hell their kids died for. "Democracy creation", if it doesn't creat something most Americans recognize as democratic, will be just another betrayal like fighting for weapons that don't exist or fighting terrorists that weren't in Iraq in the first place.
I didn't support the invasion and I don't know what we should do about Iraq now. It is too confusing for me to have an opinion. I do think that, as a matter of practical politics, those politicians who support the war had better stop selling it on the basis of weak, dishonest salespitches and slogans, and put some honest defensible goals in place or support will continue to drop and we will pull out for lack of domestic support, leaving a mess behind.

[John]

I see some parallels between the situation in Iraq and in the old German Weimar Republic. The Weimar Republic was responsible for carrying out extremely unpopular policies imposed by the victorious Allies. This led the very conservative public that had been taught to trust the Army to vote for those who wanted to destroy the Republic.

We had 200 years or so to get things right and we're still working on it. Perhaps the minority of women in Iraq who believe in liberal values will have to lose so that their granddaughters can gain the full rights of citizenship.

I say this largely in response to Angryman but we're stuck with the hand that criminals like Bush dealt us. If we liberals succeed in forcing a withdrawal leading to chaos, public opinion will forget to blame those responsible for the problem in the first place. I don't feel like having my side forced to accept the blame for losing "another Vietnam." I want Bush and his cronies to be stuck with the blame that Eisenhower should have gotten for disavowing an election in Vietnam and sending in "American adivsors." Don't blame Mr. Osborne for wanting to escape that fate and for wanting to make this country safer despite Bush's idiotic policies.

[John]

I forgot to include a link to a reaction piece I wrote about this article in the TPM Cafe. Unfortunately, I misspelled Mr. Osborne's name and could only add a comment with a correction instead of being able to edit the post.

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/8/10/115233/627

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