Killing democracy in Iraq

/ politics / iraq /
Naomi Klein and Haifa Zangana discuss the current situation in Iraq and its implications for the anti-war movement... Excerpt:

NK: They’re using feminism and women’s issues to advance the occupation in a really dangerous way, because they are sullying the reputation of women’s issues, which could be seized upon by anti-women forces in Iraq. It is easy then to say, ‘if you are advocating women’s rights, you’re for the occupation’.
You could hear how people talked about Moqtada Sadr when I arrived. Support for him at that time was 7 or 8 per cent. But the more he was attacked, the more support grew for him, for a religious state. Combine decreasing support for secularism with the Americans marketing feminism: it’s not only a disastrous recipe for women: it’s a disastrous strategy against women.
HZ: Yes, they come with millions of dollars, while Iraqi women struggle for the most basic services and goods.
I don’t care about programmes for democracy because democracy is coming back like a joke. If you want to say a bad word about someone, you say they’re democratic. What Bush and Blair have achieved in the occupation is they’ve killed democracy.

Also by Haifa Zangana: "Iraqi women were long the most liberated in the Middle East. Occupation has confined them to their homes"... She seemed to have had from early on a good idea of where the "liberation" of Iraq was leading