Different Media Perspectives

Media filters from news on the Middle East certainly need to be taken into account, as well as political ties with any country. Following is a not-usually-seen perspective to international news about the Middle East:

The above is taken from: http://www.adl.org/Anti_semitism/arab/al-ahram-syria-may29_02.jpg

As I was looking at media portrayals of Iraq in the U.S., I came across this article, on The Private war of Women Soldiers, and was shocked. I think that when most of us think of soldiers in Iraq, we get pictures in our minds of the men we see on T.V., taking cover as bombs are exploding around them. It is not so easy to handle the picture of women on the frontlines:

. More than 160,500 American female soldiers have served in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Middle East since the war began in 2003, which means one in seven soldiers is a woman. Women now make up 15 percent of active duty forces, four times more than in the 1991 Gulf War. At least 450 women have been wounded in Iraq, and 71 have died — more female casualties and deaths than in the Korean, Vietnam and first Gulf Wars combined. And women are fighting in combat.

Officially, the Pentagon prohibits women from serving in ground combat units such as the infantry, citing their lack of upper-body strength and a reluctance to put girls and mothers in harm’s way. But mention this ban to any female soldier in Iraq and she will scoff.

“Of course we were in combat!” said Laura Naylor, 25, who served with the Army Combat Military Police in Baghdad from 2003-04. “We were interchangeable with the infantry. They came to our police stations and helped pull security, and we helped them search houses and search people. That’s how it is in Iraq.”

Women are fighting in ground combat because there is no choice. This is a war with no front lines or safe zones, no hiding from in-flying mortars, car and roadside bombs, and not enough soldiers. As a result, women are coming home with missing limbs, mutilating wounds and severe trauma, just like the men…

The article goes on to talk about the treatment of women in the military:

Rape, sexual assault and harassment are nothing new to the military. They were a serious problem for the Women’s Army Corps in Vietnam, and the rapes and sexual hounding of Navy women at Tailhook in 1991 and of Army women at Aberdeen in 1996 became national news. A 2003 survey of female veterans from Vietnam through the first Gulf War found that 30 percent said they were raped in the military. A 2004 study of veterans from Vietnam and all the wars since, who were seeking help for post-traumatic stress disorder, found that 71 percent of the women said they were sexually assaulted or raped while in the military. And in a third study, conducted in 1992-93 with female veterans of the Gulf War and earlier wars, 90 percent said they had been sexually harassed in the military, which means anything from being pressured for sex to being relentlessly teased and stared at.

And then, there are also the cries of women in Iraq, as portrayed in this Guardian Unlimited article last month:

Bearing in mind that executions of women were formally prohibited under Iraqi law from 1965 on the grounds that women are life-givers and life-nurturers.

The four women sentenced to death and in imminent danger of execution are Samar Sa’ad ‘Abdullah, Wassan Talib, Zeynab Fadhil, and Liqa’ Qamar. Ages 25-31. They were tried individually for murder, kidnapping, and the murder of several members of Iraqi security forces in Baghdad. All denied the accusations and Amnesty International is questioning the circumstances which led to the sentences by the central criminal court of Iraq (CCCI) between 2005-2006. Two of the women have young children with them: Zeynab Fadhil has her three-year-old daughter, Liqa’ Qamar her one-year-old daughter, who was born in prison. The death penalty was reinstated in August 2004 by the “sovereign” interim government. According to Amnesty International, during 2006 at least 65 men and women were executed.

In issuing these sentences in the absence of law and order, carrying out arbitrary arrests and detaining suspects for years without charge or access to lawyers, the Iraqi regime seems to enjoy a convenient amnesia of times when all of its members used to condemn the previous regime for sentencing people to death without proper judicial procedure…

The Death Penalty was re-instated in Iraq by the first interim government in 2004, in order to act as a sort of bridle amidst a chaotic syststem of security. However, Amnesty International has now declared it to have had the opposite effect. I wonder whether or not this issue will receive the same negative publicity and international pressure, as had the imprisonment of the Iranian women activists, who were released not too long ago. With all the turmoil and confusion in Iraq, it would seem a bit paradoxical to re-instate the death penalty, whether or not one is a proponent of the death-penalty. Amidst all the back-biting, mistrust, and chaos, how can anyone be sure of anything? Prison sentences, in and of themselves, frequently involve mis-representation, torture, and false confessions. Especially in a country where death is ever-present, why would you add to the rolling statistics?

On one last note, I think it slightly ironic that women in Iraq were prohibited from being sentenced to death because they were life-givers and life-nurturers. And yet, women and children are dying in masses every day, because of the war. If one were bearing the protection of women in mind, wouldn’t one attempt to put an end to the violence outside and inside their homes? And if one wishes to protect women, because they are life-givers and life-nurturers, wouldn’t one consequently wish to protect human life itself?