Roj Women

Photojournalist Kael Alford spent 10 months covering the invasion of Iraq and its immediate aftermath in 2003-2004. She returned this summer to see what has and hasn’t changed as the U.S. prepared to withdraw its troops. 

Source: Photoblog

When I first met Yanar Mohammed in 2003, she was holding a megaphone and leading a women’s rally in Baghdad’s Firdos Square, standing in the shadow of a pedestal where a statue of Saddam Hussein had stood until U.S. tanks dragged it to the ground a few weeks earlier.  With a head of uncovered dark curls and a raised fist, she led chants demanding improved security and equal civil rights for women.

Eight years later, Mohammed is perhaps the most widely quoted activist on women’s rights in Iraq. A resident of both Iraq and Canada, she travels internationally, speaks at universities and conferences and has received prestigious awards for her service. And yet her message remains little known outside Iraq.

Yanar Mohammed rallies protestors in Tahrir Square in Baghdad, July 2011, calling for governmental reforms. She has been an activist since 2003 after the U.S. led invasion.

One of her main talking points is this: Iraq is a more dangerous place for women than it was before the U.S. invasion and it is getting worse. Reports by international human rights groups support her observations. According to the 2011 Iraq summary report by Human Rights Watch: “The deterioration of security has promoted a rise in tribal customs and religiously-inflected political extremism, which have had a deleterious effect on women’s rights, both inside and outside the home.”

Today, in a country where women have served in Parliament since the 1960s – longer than in any other Middle Eastern country – they are increasingly targeted by militant Islamic elements for participating in government, holding jobs or violating conservative Islamic traditions, such as appearing in public without head coverings. Even secular women now wear scarves in hopes of avoiding dangerous attention.

Iraq also has seen a rise in the tribal tradition of honor killings, where women who have a love affair outside of accepted cultural or religious boundaries are slain by members of their own family. Often these women, fleeing for their lives, seek out the Organization for Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI), which Mohammed founded in the wake of the U.S. invasion.

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