Traditionally, women in wartime were seen as victims. But with so many involved in Iraq as soldiers and politicians, has that changed? By Natasha Walter
Thursday April 17, 2003 The Guardian
...There were no such such subtleties [as a variety of images of women politicians and soldiers on the USuk side], of course, in the images of the only woman to be associated with the enemy regime. A few days into the war, a blurry little picture - taken from some video footage - appeared of Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash, the only woman in Saddam Hussein's inner circle. All we learned about her was that she had participated in, or indeed, masterminded, Iraq's biological weapons programme.
In the absence of any other information, the image of this woman, Chemical Sally, as she was dubbed, stood as an embodiment of this evil regime. Indeed, one article that was first published in the London-based Saudi daily, Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, made her sound almost inhuman, saying that she had the courage of a lioness and the wiliness of a fox. But it also went on to mention that her father had been murdered by Saddam. As the daughter of a murdered man, was she a victim as well as a perpetrator of the regime?
I am not trying to suggest that Saddam's regime was in any way to be condoned on the grounds that it tolerated women's advancement. Yet, unlike some countries in the region, it allowed women's education and employment, and women went university and could wear western clothes as an alternative to the enveloping chador. That teeny photograph of Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash might, then, have reminded us that the presence of even one single woman in government would not have been tolerated in some neighbouring countries - neither Saudi Arabia nor Kuwait, for instance.
Since the downfall of the regime, the photographs that have been coming out of Iraq are notable for one thing that is passing almost unnoticed. There are no women in them. Yes, there may be an occasional woman walking down the street with a child, behind the soldiers, or there may be a woman holding up a can for a stream of precious water from an aid tanker. But there were few women to be seen in the cheering crowds photographed around the toppling statues of Saddam Hussein.
The photographs of the protests against the American presence in Baghdad this week showed groups of men, as did the photographs of the Shia demonstration on Tuesday in Nassiriya, in which thousands raised clenched fists and chanted "No to Saddam, No to America".
There are no women appearing in photographs as possible participants in the interim administration. Somehow, women have disappeared from the images of Iraq's present and Iraq's future. Will they return?
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/women/story/0,3604,938221,00.html> ***** -- Yoshie
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