Features » January 4, 2008

Resister in Exile (cont’d)

You’ve written that it’s dangerous now for women to even go to university.

Tremendously difficult. Because you have to defy almost everything, from the minute you step outside your house until you reach the university, and it is not even safe in the university. The assassination of academics, the targeting of professors, have left universities with a minimum presence of intellectuals.

There is a risk of being kidnapped, which is getting to be a very, very popular business. It depends on how affluent you are. That’s why people are fleeing the country. The fear of arbitrary arrest in the street. Of mortars dropping on you, IEDs, air strikes and snipers. Snipers are one of the main dangers because they shoot people as if to paralyze life in the city.

As for jobs, last year, because of the targeting of men, women are going out to deal with every aspect of life, including trying to find jobs.

What kind of work?

I’ll give you an example. I know of a woman, she’s a widow with children who works as a taxi driver. Or she stands in queue on your behalf at the petrol station. With the lack of fuel, you have to queue sometimes seven hours to get a few liters of petrol. So you pay her to stand in queue.

There are certain areas where you cannot really go nowadays unless you are wearing a hijab. So if you are a woman who refuses to, who believes, “It’s a matter of choice and I don’t want to be forced wearing a hijab unless I want to,” then you send another woman who is wearing, or is willing to wear a hijab, and you pay her.

The title of your book, City of Widows, alludes to the fact that many women have lost their husbands.

There are 90 widows made each day. The Ministry of Human Rights in Iraq–it’s funny we have one–says that there are 1 million widows in Iraq. In Baghdad alone there are 300,000 widows.

What is the presence of women in the resistance?

Women are supporting the resistance in various ways, and not just the armed resistance. When I ask women there, “What does the word ‘resisting’ mean to you?” They answer, “Survival. We have to stay alive. We have to protect our families.”

There is also political resistance in peaceful, nonviolent ways. There is civil society and community resistance. Unions are doing a fantastic job. They were the real force behind delaying the signing of the new oil law that gives an open hand to the occupiers. Writing, painting, making documentary films, songs–these are all forms of resistance under occupation.

In the book, you write that peaceful resistance ended three years into the war. Is armed struggle the only option?

Sometimes it seems like armed resistance is the only language that the occupiers understand. After all, the occupiers did not go to Iraq with the Royal Shakespeare Company or the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Nor did they go there to take Iraqis to the ballet or bring them books. No, they went as a brutal force, bringing shock and awe. Dropping bombs and napalm onto a new generation of people. So where does peaceful resistance take us?

But people are still working with international organizations, with the antiwar movement. In America, we are getting support from veterans’ families.

Many on the left in America debate whether an immediate withdrawal or a gradual withdrawal would be better. What do you think?

This gradual withdrawal is actually a gradual building of bases in Iraq. The call should be for immediate withdrawal.

People are concerned that if the Americans leave, Iraqis will kill each other. But that is the white man’s burden. Powerful nations believe it is their duty to liberate people and then look after them because they are incapable of doing it themselves.

You saw it in Algeria, in Vietnam and it’s now happening in Iraq.

We’re approaching five years since the start of the war in Iraq. Do you think the future looks hopeful or bleak?

Both. Bleak because of the reality of what Iraqis are going through. The death, the violence, the suffering and the despair, especially among women.

And hopeful, because we cannot live without hope. We have to be optimistic. Because Iraqis are not accepting what’s being enforced on them, there is hope. This is a credit to the Iraqi people.

This kind of resilience gives you hope. And Iraq, after all, is a country with thousands of years of history, and the occupation has been here only for five years. We are bound to put an end to it.