Yet, when it came to political propaganda, Iraqi women received plenty of attention from the Bush administration and the CPA. An op-ed article in The Washington Post by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, whose hotel had been rocketed when he visited Iraq the previous fall, appeared on February 1, 2004. In it he wrote about visiting one of Fern Holland’s women’s centers in Hilla. It was entitled “Women in the New Iraq,” and used the centers as evidence of U.S. progress.
“My second trip to Iraq since the liberation of Baghdad grabbed some headlines because of a rocket attack on our hotel,” he wrote. “But a visit to a new women’s center in the city of Hillah said more about Iraq’s future than did the act of violence.… We should do everything we can to help them.”
If women’s rights is the CPA’s biggest point of pride, we’re in trouble here, Manal thought. There was no mention of the quota or sharia law, the two signature issues women were currently fighting hardest on. Wolfowitz wasn’t the only one to seize good publicity when he could, of course. In a speech First Lady Laura Bush gave in early March 2004, entitled “Progress in Global Women’s Human Rights,” she referred to photos of veiled women protesting against sharia in Firdos Square, applauding their “freedom” to protest. She credited her husband for giving them this freedom.
“Earlier this week, during the signing of Iraq’s interim constitution,” she said in the East Room of the White House, “Iraqi women marched together and many spoke publicly after decades of oppression. In al-Fardous Square, more than two hundred women marched for greater rights, chanting, ‘Yes for equality, yes for freedom.’ They were supported and applauded by a group of Iraqi men. One man smiled and said that ‘This is the first time women have demonstrated freely in Iraq.’ ”
There was applause. “We’re making progress toward greater rights for women in the Middle East and around the world,” Mrs. Bush said.
No, we’re not, Manal thought. The first lady didn’t seem to understand that Iraqi women were protesting the implementation of Islamic law—something they never had to worry about during Saddam’s time but which had become a real possibility on George Bush’s watch. They were fighting tooth and nail just to keep the few rights they had had under Saddam’s government. The timing of the speech was like a slap in the faces of Iraqi women.
Nonetheless, the rhetoric from the Bush administration continued. When Fern opened another women’s center in Karbala in the spring of 2004, Bremer arrived by helicopter at the opening.
“Your future is full of hope,” he announced to the crowd. “We in the coalition are committed to supporting women’s rights in Iraq.”
Yet Manal suspected that Bremer’s very presence at the center put it in great jeopardy. A self-congratulatory CPA press release was issued the same day. “During the former Regime, Iraqi women would never have dreamed of meeting to discuss their rights as individuals,” it read. “Ambassador Bremer provided encouragement to the women as they work for a democratic Iraq.”
Despite the absence of practical support, the Iraqi women collectively gathered more than fifty thousand signatures supporting their quota. The pressure paid off. Soon enough, the discussion inside the committee drafting the interim constitution (the Transitional Administrative Law) revolved not around if there would be a quota, but around how much. Would the women agree to 10 percent? How about 20 percent? Each week women worked to bring another male member into their cause. With the signing of the Transitional Administrative Law, also on March 8, they got their victory. The government would have no less than 25 percent women. And that wasn’t all: the Governing Council overturned Resolution 137. Iraqi women would not have to live under Islamic law, for now.
Both victories came just as Manal and Heather’s center was opened. The women celebrated with huge parties. These were two battles they hadn’t expected to fight, and there was so much left to do, but at least they had made some headway. For better or worse, the Iraqi women had done it largely themselves, with almost no support from the Bush administration. After that, Manal noticed a shift in attitude among the Iraqi women. When talk of the CPA arose their faces darkened and their tone became embittered.
THE MORNING OF opening day, Manal braced for Bremer’s arrival. He would be the first guest and then, she hoped, leave. Negotiations with his staff had been bitter. Bremer’s aides had wanted him to cut the ceremonial opening-day ribbon, but Manal had refused.
“Why are you making such a big deal out of this?” the aide complained. Bremer had cut the ribbon at all of Fern’s centers. Fortunately, though, Manal had already been negotiating with the newly appointed minister of human rights, Abdul-Basit Turki, to cut the ribbon. Bremer’s aides could bully a women’s center, but wouldn’t dare bully an Iraqi minister out of the spotlight. If they did, Manal threatened, she would contact The New York Times and embarrass the CPA. The aide backed down, and eventually agreed that Bremer would arrive at sunrise and stay briefly.
Shortly before his arrival, a low-flying helicopter passed overhead in a security sweep. Manal grimaced. Then a long motorcade pulled up. Manal watched from the gate as an entourage fit for a king parked in front of the neighbors’ houses. No expense had been spared in protecting the viceroy. Several SUVs flanked his car, each with bulletproof tinted glass windows and armored doors. As the doors swung open, half a dozen beefy men emerged, each wielding an automatic rifle and displaying no ID. Bremer was guarded by Blackwater—not even the U.S. military was enough security for the CPA. Soldiers were bound by rules of engagement, but private security companies such as Blackwater were above the law in Iraq. Many Iraqis had told Manal stories of being run off the road or shot at by these men, but they had no recourse to justice. The men took up positions by the front gate as Bremer was hustled out of the car, past the flower beds, and into the center.
Despite her feelings of resentment, Manal was polite as he sat cross-legged in his pressed suit and tie, looking like the CEO of Occupation America, Inc., in the sitting room before a twenty-foot-long spread of platters filled with baklava and other sticky pastries. His translator sat by his side. Bremer’s office had tried to orchestrate everything for the cameras, even sending Manal a list of Iraqi women whom they wanted Bremer to receive. The list included mostly women from the diaspora who had supported the invasion and who were professionals, eager to be appointed to the government, and were well versed in diplomatic protocol and photo opportunities.
Manal tossed the list.
This isn’t some Potemkin village, she thought. Instead, she had hired a bus and brought in poor women from one of her programs—widows, war victims, and household breadwinners. They deserved a chance to meet the man running their country. Likewise, she wanted Bremer to hear what life was really like for the majority of Iraqi women.
Bremer made some remarks congratulating the women. He promised them that the center marked the dawn of a new day for women in Iraq.
“Where’s the electricity?” one woman in a black abaya said between bites of food.
Unfazed, Bremer explained that the reconstruction process needed time. The conversation was conducted through a translator, making it awkward. Manal listened as some women made long speeches. Bremer’s translator broke them down to a few simple lines.
“I still don’t know who you are, but you’re handsome, so I watch you on TV,” said another old lady in black. “But you’re mabtinfani,” she added, waving her hand. Manal held her breath. Mabtinfani meant “useless to me” or “irrelevant.” Bremer’s translator looked furious. He fidgeted nervously. He hemmed and hawed and then softened the translation considerably.
Still, Bremer picked up on the hostile mood, Manal thought. “You can destroy a city in a day, but rebuilding it takes a while. And we need strong women like you. Your patience will help.”
Photos were taken, and then he was ushered out. Within hours, the standard CPA press release from Bremer’s staff was emailed to more than a hundred media outlets in Baghdad, from CNN to The New York Time
s. “The Mansour Women’s Center represents another important step forward for democracy and freedom for all Iraqi women.”
IN THE GREEN Zone, Heather was heading toward the dining hall, tea bag in hand. For the first time in her year in Iraq, she had had a long, hot morning shower, and was dressed in civilian clothes. Almost like a normal life, she thought, except for the sandbags surrounding my trailer and the rockets whistling overhead.
Her phone beeped. “Bremer just left,” Manal said. “Everything went fine.”
“Nice,” said Heather. “I’m going to check to make sure we have priority on the convoys, and we’ll be there by eleven.”
The prior week she had left the château in which she had lived since the war began. She had been moved into one of the hundreds of trailers sitting in the shadows of the recently erected concrete blast walls that surrounded the Green Zone. The trailer felt thin enough to be blown away by a gust of wind. Heather shared it with her roommate, Leah, a female foreign service officer who was working on district councils for the CPA. Leah was out of town, and Jody Lautenschlager, Heather’s friend from deployment, had moved in temporarily. As she tiptoed out of the trailer, carefully closing the swinging white door, Heather felt as though she was exiting a Porta-John. At least she’d had a shower.
Moving briskly past the rows of sandbags and trailers, she could see the balconies of Saddam’s palace. She flashed her badge for the soldiers standing guard at the palace door, and flashed it again at the dining hall. She rarely ate much before lunch, and on this day she was too nervous to consume more than hot tea. The palace breakfast counter of sugary cereals and ceramic bowls reminded her of a college dining hall.
From the cafeteria, Heather walked down a long hallway with dozens of offices on each side until she reached her own large office, which had been carved into individual workspaces for a dozen CPA staffers. Her desk was smothered in folders that represented dozens of projects undertaken in the past year—the hardest of her life. Yet she could count only two successes, both of which had come in the last month. The first was the ceremony marking the official transfer of authority over the food warehouses from the militias to the Ministry of Trade, which had happened in the summer of 2003.
The second was the Hindiya Club elections, just the prior week. The Hindiya Club was the Iraqi equivalent of America’s Rotary Club. After the fall of Saddam, different Sunni and Shia groups battled to take control of the club and its coffers. A few members asked the CPA to get involved, and the task of overseeing an election for new leadership was handed to Heather. She had approached the archbishop of the Syrian Catholic Church to act as an impartial overseer. The elections were publicized, ballots were prepared, a plan was drafted to check the eligibility of members to vote, and a team was created to count the votes, with another team overseeing the count to prevent fraud. Iraqi police provided security on election day. Hundreds of members had arrived to vote and then actually watch the count take place. Heather had been thrilled to watch democracy in action, stepping back to snap photos of history in the making.
This was democracy. It occurred in towns, cities, school boards, and community groups across the USA every day, without much thought. But in Iraq, they were starting from scratch, and getting it right was a painstaking process that required dozens of different players working together in good faith. Sure, it would have been easier for the CPA to have just appointed new leadership, and Iraqis, in their impatience, often pushed Heather to take charge. But she always insisted that the slow wheel of democracy be allowed to turn in order to give the people a stake in the institutions that made decisions about their lives. The pressure could be intense. Had one person decided to bomb the club, or assassinate a candidate, the months of hard work would have been for nothing. Fortunately, no one did.
Watching democracy done correctly and its cautious acceptance by the Hindiya Club members gave her hope, for the first time since the invasion, that if this process was raised to a national level, Iraq had a chance to succeed, she thought. However rare these successes were, though, they pushed her on. These small steps convinced her that, despite the violence, most Iraqis did appreciate the Americans’ presence. She knew that armchair critics back in D.C. called democracy in Iraq a “fantasy.” Well, they could say what they liked, she thought bitterly. They didn’t understand the stakes, or meet Iraqis whose lives depended on democracy’s working out; Iraqis who shook her hand and thanked her for staying in the country to fight for peace and stability.
She was thrilled that they were finally opening the Mansour Women’s Center. The center had taken six months to get up and running, which was not an unreasonably long time to open an entirely new establishment. But Heather had envisioned it would take a few weeks, and hence had felt disappointed. Everything in Iraq had to be done three times as fast, even as it seemed to take ten times as long, because they were racing against a brewing insurgency and a receding tide of goodwill. Perhaps it was due to the expectation, set by the Bush administration before the war, that the USA would arrive, deliver democracy, and be washed clean of the whole affair in a month or two. Whatever the reason, instant democracy was impossible. With all the struggles involved in erecting one center, it would be a miracle to get eight more up and running, as was the original plan. The CPA was dissolving in three months—many Green Zone staffers were looking online for D.C. apartments and sending out their résumés. Heather couldn’t fathom packing her bags, shrugging her shoulders, and going home. No way. She had already put in requests to stay in Iraq beyond the dissolution of the CPA that summer. She had made promises, to herself and to the Iraqis she worked with, that this would work out. She wasn’t ready to face what failure meant.
By 9:00 a.m., Heather was in the parking lot full of Humvees getting all the security organized, people in the right convoys, and a route mapped out. She was traveling with a senior-level CPA official and two public affairs officials, all women. Finally, after a couple of hours, everything was organized, and the convoy pulling out of the parking lot included nine soldiers, all with M16 rifles and 9mm pistols, and three Humvees, one with a grenade launcher and the other with a .50-caliber machine gun atop it—all just to escort four women to the opening of a women’s center. The expense! The waste of human energy! Heather thought. Oh, we could he doing so much, if not for the insurgency.
Heather had directed the soldiers to drop them off in front of the center, and then park their Humvees in a vacant lot nearby. “Please don’t come into the women’s center,” she said. They nodded, and Heather felt a twinge of injustice. These young guys would spend the next two hours standing outside in the hot sun, hoping not to get shot at. From their perspective, they were just trying to help, and it probably stung to be rebuffed by the locals. Heather saw both sides of the situation, and it was awkward.
She and the women headed inside the gates. Quickly she found Manal. They hugged.
“This is it!” Manal said. “This is what we worked so hard for!”
“Wow, you’ve really done it.” Heather did a circle, amazed at the sun-washed building. “You’ve really made it happen.”
Manal was feeling good about their friendship again, especially when she saw that Heather had the consideration to wear civilian clothes, knowing that Manal preferred not to have the military associated with the event. Her heart was in the right place, Manal thought. “Nice outfit!” she joked. They laughed and posed for a photo together. Manal showed Heather the photos she had snapped on her digital camera that morning, of Bremer sitting with the women. She left out the mabtinfani story, unsure of how Heather felt about Bremer.
“Oh, great. That’ll be really helpful,” Heather said, thinking of the publicity she could get to secure additional U.S. funding for more centers. “We have to use those.”
As they walked around, Heather grew happier and happier. The American guests included many from the “donor community” such as USAID and the CPA. Young staffers milled around. Many Iraqis came, including women’s
rights activists, their husbands, and ministers and their staffs. Very few Western media came, but much of the Arabic and Iraqi press was invited. She was upset when she saw a few female soldiers standing around in their uniforms, but the Iraqi women didn’t seem to mind. They vied to take photos with the soldiers.
The time arrived for the ceremonial planting of flowers around the center. Manal encouraged Heather to plant the first one. She tried to refuse but was quickly surrounded by a bevy of women in black abayas with trowels. They helped her pat in the dirt. Just as the plant settled into its new home, the women let out ululating screams that sounded to Heather like a battle cry.
“I thought that was for wars,” she whispered nervously to Manal.
“No, we do that for good events too,” Manal said, smiling.
Heather laughed. “Mabrook!” she said to all the Iraqi women, meaning “congratulations.”
The rest of opening day went smoothly. My third victory, Heather thought. Her entire sense of success was riding on these small victories, even though, on some deeper level, she sensed the rising tide about to engulf her. She shook off such thoughts, wanting instead to just live in the moment. She was always criticizing her Iraqi staff for not planning for the future, but now she was beginning to understand the mentality. She thought about the hundreds of Iraqis killed at the religious festivals last week. Life was cheap and unpredictable in Iraq. Enjoy the rare victory of today.
Who knew what would happen tomorrow?
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THE MORNING AFTER the Mansour Women’s Center opening in Baghdad, several of Manal’s staff members drove down to Karbala to check up on the Women for Women programs running in Fern’s center there. Manal was working on her laptop in her office when she got a call from Amjad, the driver in the group. She heard shouting and noise in the background. “We’ve been attacked,” he said breathlessly. She could hear her female staff members crying loudly in the car.
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