Read up, everybody. Here are a few links to interviews with, reviews of, and posts by Nadje al-Ali. She is the director of Gender Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London and author of What Kind of Liberation? Women and the Occupation of Iraq. In her new book, Dr. al-Ali shows “how the US invasion has set Iraqi women’s rights back as much as 70 years”–as explained in an excellent Guardian review by Sara Wajid.
In a 2007 interview with Mother Jones, al-Ali explains, “Women have been the biggest losers of the post-invasion period. I worked on the modern history of Iraqi women, and of course there were horrible problems related to living under a dictatorship, living with wars, living with sanctions. But one of the most tragic things is that really, women have been pushed back and have lost out quite a bit.” The interview gives details about shifts backwards in the post-invasion safety, cultural practices, and even the constitutional status of women.
At AlterNet in March 2008, Dr. al-Ali posted on The Iraq Legacy: Millions of Women’s Lives Destroyed, pointing out the political irony (to put it lightly) of this so-called liberation:
“On International Women’s Day in 2004, nearly a year after the invasion of Iraq, George Bush, the US President, addressed250 women from around the world who had gathered at the White House. ‘The advance of women’s rights and the advance of liberty are ultimately inseparable,’ he said.”
But she explains that this is “stirring stuff, but totally empty claims. In fact, Iraq’s women have become the biggest losers in the post-invasion disaster.”
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