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Overview
Nadje Al-Ali challenges the myths and misconceptions which have dominated debates about Iraqi women, bringing a much needed gender perspective to bear on the central political issue of our time. Based on life stories and oral histories of Iraqi women, she traces the history of Iraq from post-colonial independence, to the emergence of a women's movement in the 1950s, Saddam Hussein's early policy of state feminism to the turn towards greater social conservatism triggered by war and sanctions. Yet, the book also shows that, far from being passive victims, Iraqi women have been, and continue to be, key social and political actors. Following the invasion, Al-Ali analyses the impact of occupation and Islamist movements on women's lives and argues that US-led calls for liberation has led to a greater backlash against Iraqi women.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781848137127 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Bloomsbury Publishing |
| Publication date: | 07/04/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 304 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Nadje Al-Ali is Lecturer at the Centre for Gender Studies, SOAS, London. Her recent publications include Secularism, Gender and the State in the Middle East (2000) and New Approaches to Migration (2002). She is also a founding member of Act Together: Women's Action on Iraq and a member of Women in Black.
Read an Excerpt
Iraqi Women
Untold Stories from 1948 to the Present
By Nadje Sadig Al-Ali
Zed Books Ltd
Copyright © 2007 Nadje Sadig Al-AliAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84813-106-4
CHAPTER 1
Living in the Diaspora
For decades, Iraq has not only existed inside the territorial boundaries of the nation-state but has also stayed alive within the numerous migrant and exile communities dispersed throughout the world. Iraq has been living in the hearts of diaspora Iraqis and has filled their imaginations. Alienation, nostalgia and depression are chronic and widespread amongst Iraqis abroad, whether living in one of the neighbouring countries in the Middle East, or further away, in Europe, the Americas, Australia or the Far East; speaking to them one often senses a great sadness. Yet, diasporic communities have also been great sources of hope, of political mobilization, of humanitarian and financial assistance as well as creative synergies.
Iraqi women and men have been leaving in significant numbers since the 1940 s for a variety of reasons. The vast majority had to leave due to political repression or fear of persecution. Others left to escape war and destruction. Economic betterment as well as the wish to pursue higher education abroad have also been amongst the reasons why Iraqis have migrated. During the period of economic sanctions (1990–2003), simple categories of voluntary versus forced migration did become blurred as hundreds of thousands of Iraqis left in the context of a severe economic crisis and ongoing political repression.
When my father left Iraq in 1958 to study in Germany, along with a number of his contemporaries, he did not think about leaving for good. Even when he married my German mother in 1966, he was still eager to return to Baghdad and she was adventurous enough to agree. Yet by the time my father finished his studies and training, the Ba'th Party had come to power in a second coup d'état (1968) and the political situation inside Iraq started to look unsettling. For a long time, my father and his Iraqi Turkmen friend Hashem from Kirkuk were among a very small number of Iraqis in the German town I grew up in. Some bigger cities had more substantial communities of Iraqi refugees and migrants. However, in the aftermath of the Gulf War in 1991, even my small home town of Krefeld saw a steady growth of a community of Iraqi refugees and asylum-seekers, duplicating the mushrooming of Iraqi communities in many countries and cities throughout the world.
During my last visit to Baghdad in 1997, my Aunt Salima pleaded with my father and my mother to find a way to get one of my cousins out of the country and into Germany — to what she imagined must be a better life. She had raised my cousin Hamid after his father had been killed by the regime of Saddam Hussein, which left his mother too distressed to cope. Although, or maybe because, she was extremely attached to Hamid and treated him as her son, she wanted him to leave, hoping that he would have a better chance elsewhere. After many years of struggle, finally my cousin managed to emigrate to Germany, soon followed by his wife, his sister (my cousin Iba), her husband and two children. Yet their experience of leaving Iraq and starting anew in a foreign country could not have been more different from that of my father, who left voluntarily. Instead of the opportunities, open labour markets and relatively warm welcome extended to the small numbers of students from Arab countries that my father found in the 1960s in Germany, my cousins have found themselves in the midst of an economic crisis, high unemployment rates, a pervasive suspicion of asylum-seekers, and widespread Islamophobia. Entering into this milieu, carrying the baggage of their own traumas and anxieties related to their upbringing inside Iraq, they have become part of a generation of Iraqi refugees and migrants who are in a continuous state of limbo: suspended between the harsh economic and social realities facing migrants and asylum-seekers in Western countries and the worsening situation inside Iraq, which prevents most from returning to what they still perceive to be home.
In this chapter, I will explain the historical circumstances that have led to the dispersal of more than 4 million Iraqis (out of approximately 24 million) throughout the world. I will map out my main sites of research for this book — London, Detroit, San Diego and Amman — explaining the different migration trajectories of Iraqi communities in each location and the specific conditions they find themselves in today, and sharing my own travels and observations. Before delving into the different layers and sites of dispersion as well as specific historical circumstances that resulted in the migration and flight of millions of Iraqis, I will clarify my use of concepts and my understanding of the terms 'diaspora' and 'exile'.
Diaspora and Exile
Although the term 'diaspora' has traditionally been used in the context of the tragic Jewish and Armenian experiences, the Greek origins of the word refer to a more mixed bag of forced and voluntary migration (Cohen, 1995: 6). I work with the more open perspective adopted here:
First, the population is dispersed from a homeland to two or more territories. Second, the presence abroad is enduring, although exile is not necessarily permanent, but may include movement between homeland and new host. And third, there is some kind of exchange — social, economic, political or cultural — between or among the spatially separated populations comprising the diaspora. (van Hear, 1998: 6)
Much of the Iraqi dispersal is tragic both in terms of the conditions that forced people to flee from Iraq and in terms of the circumstances of flight and the living conditions in the country of settlement. Yet, there are also many stories of success, achievements and flourishing of communities abroad. Aside from differences related to social class, educational background and professional qualifications, the specific circumstances and time of migration and the economic, social and political conditions within the host country have very much shaped the experiences of Iraqis abroad. Gender is one among many variables that have contributed to a diversity of experiences. While some Iraqi women have become more dependent on male family members, suffered from the loss of support networks and lived through an acute sense of isolation, others have managed to thrive and benefit from the opportunities and possibilities connected to their new surroundings.
While the term 'diaspora' encompasses a whole range of voluntary and forced migration patterns, the term 'exile' refers more specifically to the condition of having left one's home country due to political repression, persecution or oppositional politics. Iraqi women of all ethnic and religious backgrounds have become exiled due to their own political activism inside Iraq. Others experienced exile because of the persecution due to their ethnic and religious affiliation, especially as Kurds and Shi'is. And many women ended up in exile due to their affiliation, either as wives or relatives, with male political activists.
Aside from the physical and material realities and hardships related to living in a strange place away from home, exile also refers to a state of mind and being. Received notions and ideas as well as set practices and traditions are unsettled when people are forced to leave the known and the familiar behind. While many of those exiled face a 'crisis of meaning', others fervently and desperately hold on to the past and everything they knew and did before. Among the women I interviewed, exile came to mean different things depending on their socio-economic positions, their educational and political backgrounds and their wider social relationships and networks within the place that became their new physical home.
Yet the notion of Iraqi exile itself has transformed in the aftermath of the downfall of Saddam's regime. Thousands of Iraqis were initially able to go 'home' for the first time in decades after the invasion in 2003. Most went for a short visit only, but many among them were hoping to return for good. Their experiences varied from emotional homecomings to encounters with a land and people that had become utterly alien to them. As I sit here writing, more than three years after the end of the dictatorship, Iraqis abroad are once more unable to return to their home country, fearing the violence, lack of security and rampant kidnappings inside Iraq. Meanwhile hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are trying to escape the deteriorating living conditions and spiralling violence, adding a new phase and new layers to Iraqi diasporic communities throughout the world.
Becoming Iraqi in London
My own initiation into Iraqi diasporic life started in the mid-1990s when I moved from Cairo to London to do my Ph.D. During my childhood I often felt embarrassed about the things that marked me and my family as 'different': my name, visitors speaking Arabic, and different foods. I still feel a pang of shame remembering the moment when some friends visiting our home asked me about the picture of my grandmother, sitting on the floor wearing the traditional black garment called abaya. Just as I told them that I did not know who the person in the photo was, my father stuck his head through the door and heard what I said. He never commented on it but I could sense his hurt. Later on as a teenager my sense of embarrassment turned into a defiant pride in my 'difference', although German society's lack of multiculturalism at the time did not allow for much expression of it. It was during my five-year stay in Cairo that I gave up trying so hard to be Deutscher als die Deutschen (more German than the Germans) and eagerly explored and asserted my 'Arab roots'.
I began to develop a sense of 'Iraqiness' in the context of the Gulf War in 1991 and the unfolding humanitarian crisis due to economic sanctions. But it was in London that I 'became Iraqi', in terms of both an ascribed identity as an academic and activist and in the way I started identifying myself. Due to my own mixed background and voluntary moving between different countries, I have been attracted to cosmopolitan places like London. Yet, over the past decade this cosmopolitanism has been living side by side with a growing political, cultural and emotional attachment to Iraq, or at least to my particular vision of it. I have also been feeling something of the mounting pain, maddening anger and, at moments, utter helplessness that so many Iraqis have felt as a result of repression, destruction and escalating violence.
Initially it was just a matter of socializing with Iraqi opposition intellectuals and artists at a particular café in Camden, within walking distance of my rented room in Kentish Town. Between writing my Ph.D. on the Egyptian women's movement and working as a postgraduate teaching assistant at the university, I would eagerly seek out their company, and listen to the stories about their lives inside and outside Iraq. We would also discuss novels, films and exhibitions, philosophize about this and that, and sometimes exchange news and gossip. I never had to arrange a meeting as I knew that I would always find one of my friends at the café. The actual café changed several times throughout the period I lived in north London, but the regulars did not.
Sometimes my friends would take me along to concerts, poetry readings, talks, dinners and parties, and slowly my circle of Iraqi friends and acquaintances grew. Many of the Iraqis I knew were struggling to make ends meet, working as journalists or freelance writers, occasionally selling their artworks or making some money interpreting. Most of my friends were living in council flats at the time and some were getting income support. I often tried to imagine how it must feel to have had a career, a certain status, and then being forced into a new place where one's skills and abilities are not appreciated or not needed. I also became painfully aware of my own privilege as someone holding a German passport being free to come and go and travel all over the world, while many of my friends were, even after years of residency in the UK, still waiting to obtain citizenship. As it turned out, my circle of friends ended up doing quite well and managed to re-establish their lives and careers in London, but many other Iraqis continue to struggle despite being highly qualified, and there are many whose legal status remains insecure.
One of the most active venues for cultural activities was the Kufa gallery in West London, an institution that, as I was shocked to find out, recently closed down. I used to attend events there regularly, always feeling fascinated by the numbers of Iraqis interested in culture and intellectual issues. At some point I must have had the impression that all the Iraqis I met in London were writers, poets, artists, journalists or intellectuals in the widest sense. Through my father's acquaintances I had also come across an older generation of Iraqi professionals and business people. Later on as I started to become politically active in the context of anti-sanctions and anti-war activism, I met with Iraqi exiled political activists of different political orientations. It was only when I started to document the impact of economic sanctions on women and gender relations that I started to meet the more recently arrived refugees and asylum-seekers, who were not attending the cultural events frequented by my friends, but were either socializing among themselves or occasionally attending events organized by the Muntada al-Iraqi (the Iraqi Community Association) in Hammersmith, West London.
Historically, London has been home to vibrant communities of Iraqi migrants, intellectuals, artists, exiled political activists, journalists, wealthy and poor business people as well as professionals, especially medical doctors. Although Iraqis can also be found in some other major cities in the UK, mainly Birmingham and Manchester, as well as in the home counties of Surrey, Essex and Kent, the vast majority have settled within the Greater London area. Since the 1980s, but especially in the aftermath of the Gulf War in 1991, thousands of refugees and asylum-seekers of all ethnic, religious and class backgrounds have added new layers to the already heterogeneous Iraqi communities. While there are no statistics available, migrants and refugees of Iraqi origin were estimated to number about 70–80,000 in the early 1990s (Al-Rasheed, 1994: 204). As the UK has been one of the main destinations for Iraqi refugees within Western Europe over the past decade, one can safely assume that over 100,000 people of Iraqi origin currently live in the country. Iraqis can be found scattered throughout London, with notable clusters in West London, especially Ealing, Acton and Hammersmith and Fulham, as well as in North London, particularly Brent and Camden.
There is a clear division between the various communities, cutting across ethnic and class boundaries. One of the earliest communities started in the 1950s by a small group of Assyrian Iraqis, who had worked in the levies in Habbaniya, north of Baghdad, before the British withdrawal from Iraq (Al-Rasheed, 1994: 207). The community, numbering now over 4,000, is concentrated in Ealing (West London) and is rather self-contained, not mingling much with Iraqis of different ethnic and religious backgrounds.
Similarly, the Iraqi Kurdish community is relatively separate from the other Iraqi communities, although, on an individual basis, a number of Iraqi Kurdish intellectuals, activists and artists do mingle with Iraqis of Arab origin. Since the 1970s, the UK has been a significant host for Kurdish students and later refugees from Iraq. There are no reliable statistics, but the Kurdish community overall is estimated to be about 50,000. Among those, the Iraqi Kurds make up the largest group, exceeding the numbers of Kurds from Turkey and Iran (Wahlbeck, 1998: 217).
Iraqis of Arab origin, both Sunni and Shi'i, are divided in terms of social class background, political orientation, profession, time of arrival and current living conditions. The earliest wave of refugees was associated with the revolution in 1958 and consisted mainly of Sunni upper-class professionals, politicians and landowners, who made up the main bulk of the bureaucracy and state apparatus under the monarchy. Later on, as the Ba'th came to power, Iraqis of different ethnic, religious and social class backgrounds fled government repression. While London saw a particularly large influx of Iraqi communist exiles, many other opposition groups and parties found refuge in the British capital as well, including Arab nationalists, non-Saddamist Ba'this, democrats and Shi'i Islamists. In the aftermath of the uprising in 1991 after the Gulf War, it was mainly Iraqi Shi'is and Kurds who made up most of the numbers of refugees arriving in the UK.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Iraqi Women by Nadje Sadig Al-Ali. Copyright © 2007 Nadje Sadig Al-Ali. Excerpted by permission of Zed Books Ltd.
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Table of Contents
Introduction1. Living in the Diaspora
2. Living with the Revolution
3. Living with the Ba'th
4. Living with Wars on Many Fronts
5. Living with War and Sanctions
6. Living with the Occupation
Conclusion
Notes
References
Index