Women and the Iraqi Revolution

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Mar 13, 2020 Iraq
Image provided by author. Image provided by author.

Women and the Iraqi Revolution

By : Zahra Ali زهراء علي

Since October 2019, Iraq is experiencing a turning point in its history with popular mobilizations demanding radical change. The Iraqi revolution is a societal uprising involving a wide spectrum of society including the dispossessed, the marginalized, the ones deprived of resources and power. 

Women’s massive participation from young female students to older women has turned this uprising to a people’s revolution. While remarkable, this participation is not surprising, it only makes visible deep societal realities and transformations that have found their space of expression in the Iraqi streets and squares of protest.

Reclaiming Public Space


Since at least the 1990s, wars and harsh economic sanctions impacted heavily on Iraqi women who had to carry the society’s livelihood and survival on their shoulders, as head of their households, workers, and caretakers. Decades of wars and economic hardship also turned public spaces into militarized and male-dominated spaces.
In these spaces a new social fabric is woven through collective organizing, the Iraqi society meets, negotiates and builds new societal bonds and norms: where the uneducated poor is equal with the educated middle class, where men and women, young and old meet, share a common space and build a common movement.

Tahrir Square in Baghdad, al-Habubi Square in Nasriya and squares of protests all over the country are spaces where those who are looked down upon, dominated, and discriminated against can exist and thrive. Women are taking back public space in marching, demonstrating, occupying, organizing, and making them-selves visible and loud whether in the frontline facing Iraqi security forces’ brutality, or in their artwork decorating the squares of protests, and taking care of the wounded protesters, cooking, and cleaning.

Young women and men are also creating a new “ordinary” that challenges social hierarchies and societal norms including class and gender divisions. In Baghdad’s Tahrir Square, a young middle-class woman from al-Mansur befriend a working-class young man from Medinat al-Sadr. Lovers hold hands facing security forces live bullets. The everyday gender mixing is accepted and does not entail sexual harassment or disapproval.

In these spaces a new social fabric is woven through collective organizing, the Iraqi society meets, negotiates and builds new societal bonds and norms: where the uneducated poor is equal with the educated middle class, where men and women, young and old meet, share a common space and build a common movement. The protesters are, in effect, establishing new ‘state forms’ by providing free health and education services, street cleaning and re-paintings, as well as the restoration of public monument and beautification of public spaces through original art and design. 

"Women of the October Revolution are Revolutionaries not Whores"


While the scale and level of this participation is remarkable, it is not surprising. One of the first demonstrations organized in post-2003 Iraq was a women’s right protest against the Shi‘i political elite’s attempt to question the basis of their legal rights, the Personal Status Code. Just a few months after the US invasion, the Shi‘i Islamist political elite, brought to power by the US administration and its allies, attempted to put in place a sectarian-based code instead of the one in place gathering Sunni and Shi‘a jurisprudence. While this attempt was blocked by feminists’ mobilizations, Shi‘i Islamist parties are constantly renewing their attempt to adopt a sectarian and conservative Personal Status Code, their last attempt being the Ja‘fari Law proposition.

The post-2003 system is “Sextarian” as defined by the feminist scholar Maya Mikdashi in the sense that the muhasasa system is not only based on ethnic, religious and sectarian difference, but it is also based on sexual difference. Sectarianism is gendered, identity politics are being played on gender norms and relations, especially on women’s bodies. If conservative gender politics already started during the sanctions with the Ba’th regime’s Faith Campaign, the exacerbation of social, economic and political fragmentation since 2003 and the nature of the political elite that came to power created extreme forms of social control and conservatisms. 

[Image provided by author.]

Patriarchal sectarian religious forces not only dominate the political sphere, but also the streets through their armed groups and militias. The sectarian war of 2006-2007 and the Islamic State invasion in 2014 represented extreme forms of a sectarian and gender violence. The sextarian system asserts its power through sectarian and gender division, visible through imposing strict dress codes for women, as well as for men, and limit both sectarian and gender mixing. 

It is clear in the nature of the repression exercised by the Iraqi political establishment that is trying through their media channels and social media campaigns to undermine the revolution in portraying it as “immoral.” Revolutionaries are accused of being sexually corrupt and depraved and all kinds of rumors are spread around supposedly “illicit behavior” happening among the youth under the tents set in protests’ squares. The repression targets women, especially young women. Militia violence is used to prevent women’s participation in spreading fear and terror, kidnapping protesters such as Saba Mahdawi and Mari Mohammed or in killing them in the case of Sara Taleb and her husband ‘Adel in al Basra or Zahraa Ali in Baghdad. 

Women are also being attacked on social media. The hashtag #بناتك_ياوطن  launched for the women’s protest of last 13 February was turned into #عاهراتك_ياوطن. On the wall of the tunnel leading to Tahrir Square, and on signs held by young women during the protests, the following sentence can be read "Women of the October Revolution are Revolutionaries not Whores."

A Woman’s Voice is a Revolution 


Since the beginning of the October revolution, over seven hundred unarmed protesters, mainly young men, were killed by live bullets or tear gas canisters used by the Iraqi security forces and their attendant militias, over twenty-five thousand wounded and hundreds kidnapped and disappeared. Lethal violence and intimidation reinforced protesters’ determination as honoring the martyrs of the revolution quickly became one of its main mantras. One of the early martyrs and important figure of the protests Safaa al-Sarai used to be “Son of Thanwa’” in reference to his mother Thanwa instead of referring to him as his father’s son. “Son of Thanwa” is now a name commonly used to describe revolutionaries and many protesters’ surnames refer to their mother instead of their father’s names. 

The uprising goes beyond narrow political demands, revolutionaries are not only questioning economic and political oppression exercised through corruption, nepotism, and discrimination, they are also questioning the system’s social and societal norms imposing a normative and conservative way of life. Through the slogan ‘We want a homeland’ Iraqis demand social and economic justice, functioning state services and institutions such as health care and education, housing, employment and what is needed to live a good life. They also demand freedom, freedom not be killed for the religion or sect they belong to or refuse to identify with, freedom of being religious or not, freedom to dress as they please, and circulate across social and sectarian borders, freedom to be different. 

[Image provided by author.]

Protesters are not only asking for change, they are enacting it and living it, proposing new codes of conduct and building an inclusive sense of coexistence. Women participating in the revolution are diverse: from the uneducated middle-aged mother in her black ‘abaya cooking for the protesters to the sophisticated middle-class student leading debates on the reform of the electoral law. Young women from conservative families and those who challenge the dominant dress code. All share a common space, elaborate strategies and organize the weekly protests. They chant together, “No, no, no, do not say it is shameful, a woman’s voice is a revolution” aware of the subversive nature of their very presence.

Under a few tents, feminist agendas are being discussed tackling specific women’s rights issues, while under most tents, women consider that the revolution is already changing Iraq and that achieving its goals will benefit women along with men. Feminist activists in formally organized groups while present on the protest squares also respected the unformal and open nature of the uprising that refuses any type of affiliation. 

The diversity of women’s participation, whether they participate as individuals or as members of women’s rights groups, is visible in the international women’s day mobilization showing that the limited-term “Iraqi woman” used historically, often by male political agendas, whether secular or Islamist, is being replaced in action with the more inclusive “Iraqi women.” This unprecedented process of popular unity show that Iraqi women and men are healing from decades of war and social fragmentation.

[This article is an English version of an Arabic article originally published on Assafir al-Arabi.]

  • ALSO BY THIS AUTHOR

Jul 9, 2013 Lebanon
Zeynep Gambetti By :
Zeynep Gambetti

Occupy Gezi as Politics of the Body

Since the Gezi resistance started with bloodshed on 31 May, it has had an “anti-depressant” effect, as a friend of mine puts it, as much as it has been nerve-racking. During this period where each day has been prone to new crises and normalcy was completely disrupted, we simultaneously experienced the peaks of ecstasy and the depths of sorrow.

Analyzing such an intense event naturally requires taking some distance. Pending systematization, however, the vivid memory of each day impels one to put on paper multifarious ideas that resonate well with the resistance. Each morning, many bodies with sleep deprived eyes wake up in Istanbul, Ankara, Antakya, Urfa, and Denizli to take to the streets once again, after having quickly checked the latest news in the social media. They are astonished and impressed that they can still walk, run, stand up, and carry provisions for those in the parks. Exhausted bodies rejuvenate with every new threat that the government utters, and with thousands, tens of thousands of others they begin flowing to Taksim, Kızılay, Kuğulu Park, Gündoğdu, Abbasoğlu, and Yeniköy Park carrying home-made gas masks, swimmer goggles, anti-acid solutions, and whistles.

No one does or can govern these bodies. The masses that gather in public spaces are not formed by virtue of transferring tax money into the wallets of partisans. No one provides shuttle buses for them; no one gives them flags, or feeds them with sandwiches. No one assigns them the slogans they shout out during the demonstrations. Bodies that take heart from knowing that they are not alone do not count, or count on, numbers to meet with others in communal or virtual spaces. One standing man suffices for thousands of others to take to the streets. After all, “one” is also a number…

The government, whose tactlessness prompts these resisting and standing bodies to convene again and again every single day, could not have missed the significance of this body politics. These bodies naturally do have a language, even a few languages that are at times congruent and at others incongruent; however, as a whole, they constitute a politics of the body. The rage and dreams that have been embodied in tweets and graffiti since 31 May turn into material realities through the physical existence, visibility, and endurance of the bodies. If history is being rewritten, then its subject is the body.

Four of these bodies lost their lives during this war that the government has waged on society. Thousands of bodies have been beaten up: some lost their eyes, some received irretrievable injuries. Skins were burnt under the water from the cannons, “laced” with chemicals for maximum harm; lungs were choked with tear gas. Pounded arms, legs, and heads got crushed and broken. The long-term effects of the tons of chemicals dumped on bodies are still unknown. What is known, however, is that these chemicals killed hundreds of cats, dogs, and birds, and that they did harm to countless insects, butterflies, and other smaller organisms.

The apparatuses of the state, and the vehicles of death that responded to Gezi’s politics of the body, attempted to imitate the life force that they failed to extort. In response to the huge numbers that filled the parks and squares and astonished everyone without exception, they hoped to gather partisans together in scripted rallies. They began comparing head counts; they calculated representative percentages. When the calculations did not match, they increased the number of police in body armor and helmets and moved them from protest to protest. They built walls of flesh and steel against the wave of resisting flesh. When that did not work, they offered these bodies—which have been in contact with each other physically and virtually through meetings, banners, and tweets—a mise en scène of dialogue, the conditions of which were more or less already determined. They could not even wait for this attempt to yield fruit; two warnings and a command were enough to launch an assault to remove the bodies that produced an alternative sociability from the park, from the space in which physical resistance could be transformed into a life style. They freed the public space of the public. They collected all the banners, pictures, and colors one by one to erase them from social memory. They stripped all the trees, each dedicated to victims of state violence; they appropriated the barricades that were named after tens of people who had undergone physical and psychological torture, and they tore them to tatters. They destroyed the efforts to keep alive the memories of Fikret Encü, who was a victim of Roboski; Metin Göktepe, who was tortured and killed in detention; Dicle Koğacoğlu, who could not take all the sorrow inherent in this society any more; and the Surp Hagop Armenian Cemetery, which was destroyed by Turkish racism.

The only thing that remains is a politics of the body—but the bodies that produce this politics differ from what Giorgio Agamben calls “bare life.” They are not “mere” bodies that the arbitrary will of a sovereign can isolate from society, oppress unceremoniously, or push to the margins of the symbolic world. Rather, they evoke what Ernst Bloch calls “the upright man,” the collective Prometheus. Bloch writes:

Nothing is more fortifying than the call to begin from the beginning. It is youthful as long as it is; to it there belongs a young and aspiring class. It is innocent of the bad things that have happened, for it has never had a real opportunity to be guilty. When this happens, justice has the effect of a morning; it opposes itself to that eternal sickness which was handed down before it. Beginning anew is freshness through and through; it is a first if it appears completely ahistorical, and if it seems to lead back to the beginning of history….It carries the image of the pastoral mood, of the shepherd, of the simple and upright man; one can play with it even in the dark.[1]

Gezi is the struggle of disorderly bodies, those who do not have any dispositif other than their own bodies, against the death machines. If the machines are regulatory instances that follow commands and extort public spaces of mobility with force and violence, then the force they face is the resistance of life itself. Life flourishes at the most unexpected moments and places, just like weeds that crack the concrete and spring out of it. No apparatus of the state can succeed in dominating life absolutely.

The state seeks order; it can control only those whom it orders. It cannot cope with the demand of "freedom"; it has to ask questions such as “freedom for whom,” “freedom for what,” or “freedom under what circumstances” in order to tuck freedom into neat boxes. Order draws borders, fixes identities, and defines. It attempts to establish a hierarchy. By telling parents to take their daughters and sons home from the park, it both brands the resisting bodies as "children" and tries to trigger into action the nucleus of society: family. Through its rhetoric of security, it attributes the risks of its own making to the resisting bodies. It hangs its own flag or banner on the bodies that it prefers knocking down rather than protecting. It punishes those who do not obey; it uses punishment as retaliation. It operates through censorship, threats, and propaganda.

Life, on the other hand, is a constant flux. It challenges borders and moves beyond them. It opens up to circulation those spaces that are closed off due to construction; it paints such destructive vehicles as bulldozers pink; it transforms steps into tribunes, pieces of iron into wish trees, and trees destined to be cut down into monuments. It walks on highways and bridges that are closed to pedestrians. It does not like the empty and the sterile; it covers them up with banners, slogans, tents. It leaves its mark on every surface. It disrupts silence at times with pots and pans, and at other times with a tune from a piano. It plays with identities and definitions; it makes them fluid; it renders them indistinguishable. It can make fun of both itself and the established order thanks to its humor. By changing one single letter in a word, it can ridicule the heaviest of symbolisms. When the state apparatus sends a riot-intervention vehicle to pour tear gas on it, life stops to catch its breath for a while and goes right back to resisting. When a body grows tired, it gets replaced by a reinvigorated one. Life turns into thousands of fingers that tweet and take photographs when the state apparatus sends down vehicles of propaganda. It stops its wheelchair to grab the flag that fell on the ground while escaping from tear gas. It apologizes when it steps on someone`s foot while running; it calms down those who panic.

It is obvious that these bodies that fascism wants to militarize will not assume any ideological identity. When they do not drink alcohol, they ridicule conservatism; when they lie under a TOMA, they make fun of liberalism, which claims that life is the most valuable good. Orthodox Marxism cannot decide under which class struggle these "çapulcu" bodies are to be subsumed. As long as they stay in physical contact, as long as they remain as collective Prometheuses, as long as they—have to—continue the resistance, they grow accustomed to each other`s colors, languages, and genders. They disrupt the behavioral rules that ideologies and institutions expect from them. The natural or moral instinct of protection that has been attributed to mothers loses ground when female bodies participate in the resistance alongside their children. The nationalist and the Kurd exchange anti-acid solutions in gas-filled hotel lobbies. The upper-class college kid drinks the water handed over by the kid with an Anonymous mask without needing to ask what neighborhood he’s from. Soccer fans save their curses for the police rather than for their rivals.

What comes out of all this is trust, not chaos. That`s why the bodies multiply with every gush of tear gas, spaces expand with every police attack, and the quality of contact among the bodies increases with every propaganda speech. The life woven together by bodies born in Gezi is so tenacious that the government is right in fearing it. The power of these bodies stems from their capacity to mutualize endurance, rather than vulnerability (as Judith Butler envisioned they would). One would need to look into the extensive interstices of this politics of the body, rather than into macro-level discourses, to begin deciphering it.

NOTES

[1] Ernst Bloch, Natural Right and Human Dignity (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987), 61.

[An earlier version of this article was published on 26 June 2013 on BIA ("Independent Communication Network"). The link to that version can be found here. This article was translated from Turkish by Gülfer Göze.]