SEHAM AL-SHWAYLI

8. HIDDEN FACTS

Being an Iraqi Muslim Woman

INTRODUCTION People have often asked whether is better or worse off after the 2003 U.S. invasion. Many would have said the latter when the insurgency started immediately after the fall of , and then the country fell into civil war from 2005-2008. To complicate the matter, Saddam led Iraq down the path of a series of horrible foreign policy decisions, which devastated the economy. In the 1970s, Iraq was a fast growing nation where services and income were quickly rising. Then in 1980, Saddam invaded Iran, which diverted the country’s wealth to the war effort. Afterward it was left with a huge debt, and massive war damage, but rather than rebuild, the regime decided to re-arm. Those two issues led to the 1990 invasion of , the 1991 , and then more than a decade of international sanctions. During that time living standards plummeted. This meant that Iraq went through nearly thirty years of economic decline even before the 2003 invasion. Due to wars and sanction conditions, significant numbers of Iraqi people have left Iraq and migrated for a variety of reasons. The vast majority have to leave due to political repression or fear of persecution. Others left to escape war and destruction. Yet the notion of forced migration has been transformed in the aftermath of the downfall of Saddam’s regime. As I sit here writing, more than ten years after the end of the dictatorship, abroad are once more unable to return to their home country, fearing the violence, lack of security, and rampant kidnappings inside Iraq. Meanwhile hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are trying to escape the deteriorating living conditions and spiralling violence, adding new layers to Iraqi diasporic communities throughout the world. For safety reasons and to protect my children from violence, I was forced to leave Iraq, my country, with my family to Australia in 2008. Many Iraqi families joined us to ask protection from the Australian army camp in Baghdad at that time. I am living in Melbourne with my husband and three sons now. I am also a doctoral student in my third year of study. The story of my journey to this place and time is the story of my country, past and present. It is also the story of my family, past and present. It is a story of the women in my family, strong women who have, by their example, made it possible for me to be where I am today. For most people Iraq exists only in terms of the events covered by the Western media. It is a place of violence, repression of women, fundamentalist Islamic belief and terrorism, but Iraq is more than this. It is a place where people live, people who are caught up in a seemingly endless conflict which impacts on every aspect of

J. Brown (Ed.), Navigating International Academia, 77–87. © 2014 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved. SEHAM AL-SHWAYLI their lives. It is also my country – a beautiful place with warm, friendly people who struggle to maintain a normal life in horrific circumstances. In this chapter, I briefly outline the historical and present facts and describe the conditions of life during the wars and sanction years and the ways in which these affected the daily lives of millions of Iraqis. This provides a context within which to understand the story of my family.

THE STORY OF IRAQ In ancient times Iraq was known as , the land between two rivers, the and the . It was the cradle of the first civilization known to man and had great significance for Islamic civilization. Baghdad, the capital of Iraq, was a lighthouse of culture and civilization, attracting men of thought and literature from all around the world. For many years Iraq was part of the Ottoman Empire, gaining independence in 1920. It was a poor country, economically dependent on agriculture as a basic income. After independence, Iraq established its educational system in 1921, offering both public and private schools. Before this time very few people went to school and the vast majority of the population was unable to read or write. Islam is the state religion, followed by the vast majority of the population, most of whom identify with Arab culture. The second-largest cultural group is the , who are in the highlands and mountain valleys of the north in a politically autonomous settlement. Iraqi Muslims are split into two groups, the Shias, which is the largest group, and the Sunnis. The Sunnis, a majority in Islam, are a minority in Iraq, and the Shias, a minority in the Arab world, are the majority in Iraq. The differences are not as acute as one would think. Essentially the split occurred over the political question of who should succeed the Prophet Muhammad as the leader of the community. Major differences between the two occur in jurisprudence (i.e. how to pray, how to marry, inheritance) and minor elements of faith.

THE SADDAM HUSSEIN YEARS Following an army coup in 1958, Iraq became a republic under General Abdul Karim Kassem. In 1968 a coup brought the Ba’ath party to power in Iraq and in 1979 Saddam Hussein became party leader and Iraq’s president. In 1980, Iraq launched a costly war against Iran that ended in a stalemate in 1988. Two years later, on the morning of August 2, 1990, the invaded Kuwait. After six months, diplomacy and negotiations had failed and a bombing campaign started. This destroyed almost the entire infrastructure of Iraq, including factories, storage facilities, electricity grids, transport system and bridges. The Iraqi troops were defeated by the US army and the international coalition and expelled from Kuwait in the war on the ground, a war known as the Gulf War. Opposition to the government within Iraq grew among the Shiites, who were the majority of the population yet were excluded from political control. In March 1991, Shiite Muslims in southern Iraq and ethnic Kurds in the north staged

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