Women's lives unraveling in Iraq

Mithre J. Sandrasagra, IPS

Amid the chaos and violence of U.S.-occupied Iraq, the significance of widespread gender-based violence has been largely overlooked, according to a groundbreaking report released here by MADRE, an internationally active women's human rights organization. Iraqi women are enduring unprecedented levels of assault in the public sphere, including widespread abductions, public beatings, death threats, sexual assaults, honor killings, domestic abuse, torture in detention, beheadings, shootings and public hangings, said the report titled "Promising Democracy, Imposing Theocracy: Gender-Based Violence and the U.S. War on Iraq" (...) Women have been systematically attacked by theocratic militias on both sides of the sectarian divide, but the most widespread violence has been committed by the Shi'a militias affiliated with the U.S.-backed government — the Badr Brigade and Mahdi Army, according to Susskind...

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