The Hindu Business Line : Tormentors and tormented

The Iraq prison abuse story leaves one with two disturbing images... of women in power tormenting the helpless. And, of the sexually abused women prisoners who can't tell their story to the world... because they are women.

To those of us who've agonised over how wars and war-like situations make women the worst victims, it was a doubly traumatic experience to witness the presence of so many women tormentors in the notorious prisoner abuse case of Iraq.

The horrific images of sexual abuse and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners that emanated last month from the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad stunned the entire world and sent ripples of revulsion, agony and anger down the Arab world. The images of naked prisoners forced into a human pyramid; or male prisoners forced to masturbate with an American female soldier pointing to a man's genitals; or prisoners with their bodies smeared with human excreta made to march up and down a corridor; or a helpless prisoner cowering in a corner with a ferocious dog barking at him... . have become the worst nightmare of the Bush regime.

The presence of three women in this hall of shame — Sabrina Harman, Megan Ambuhl and Lynndie England — has shattered the normally accepted image of women as more humane and less prone to violence and cruelty, at least in comparison to men. But the world saw Sabrina, wearing a sickening smile and giving a triumphant thumbs-up signal as she posed behind a group of naked Iraqi men. She has been charged with photographing and videotaping detainees ordered to strip and masturbate and of attaching wires to a hooded prisoner, who was made to stand on a box with the threat that he would be electrocuted if he fell off.

Lynndie England thought it a mark of bravery to put a naked human being on a leash and drag him.

In a powerful article in the Los Angeles Times, Barbara Ehrenreich has commented on how for a feminist like her, the pictures were heart-breaking. She found that even though she had no illusions about the US mission in Iraq "it turns out that I did have some illusions about women."

She adds that as the sordid saga revealed the involvement of female soldiers "a certain kind of feminism, or feminist naiveté, died in Abu Ghraib. It was a feminism that saw men as the perpetual perpetrators, women as the perpetual victims and male sexual violence against women as the root of all injustice."

Other commentators have also agonised over the widely held belief — particularly by feminists — that women, by the very virtue of their having been the victims of male ruthlessness, cruelty and violence, are somehow "morally superior" to men. But as this writer concludes, obviously with a lot of pain, "we have learned from Abu Ghraib, once and for all, that a uterus is not a substitute for a conscience."

One aspect of the prison abuse saga that has not been reported in detail pertains to the abuse of women prisoners at this and other detention centres in Iraq. Obviously the Bush administration has deliberately underplayed these details for fear of further enraging the Islamic world and triggering sharper spurts of militant backlash from the al Qaeda and other jihadi groups on all things American.

It now appears that the Abu Ghraib prison scandal was first exposed by a letter smuggled out by a woman prisoner in December 2003 that charged that the women detainees were being raped by the US guards. It claimed that some of the women were pregnant, and urged the Iraqi militants to bomb the jail so that the women would be spared any further shame and disgrace.

The Iraqi woman lawyer Amal Kadham Swadi, who investigated charges of sexual abuse of women prisoners by American soldiers, told The Guardian about one female prisoner who had been raped by several soldiers, "She had tried to fight them off and they had hurt her arm. She showed us the stitches and told us: `We have daughters and husbands. For God's sake don't tell anyone about this.'"

It is reported that videotapes and photographs of naked female detainees are also available with the Bush administration, as also pictures of Iraqi women forced at gunpoint to bare their breasts. These have been shown to the Congress.

But the story gets only more ghastly as it progresses, with the women, who are victims in this case, being victimised further by their families for the sake of "honour". The inquiry conducted by the US military a few months ago confirmed that the letter mentioned above had indeed been smuggled out of Abu Ghraib prison by a woman called Noor, and its content found to be accurate. But human rights activists in Baghdad, working along with Amnesty International, who tried to trace this woman after her release, ran into a dead end. The neighbours told them that the entire family had shifted without leaving any forwarding address.

Honour killings are common in the Islamic world and in the tribal areas of Pakistan they are indulged in with deadly regularity. Under this strange concept of `honour' the victim becomes the criminal. A woman who has been raped is a `disgrace' to the family and has to pay for this shame with nothing less than her life.

Noor, it has been reported, was raped by the American guards at the prison, and was pregnant when she was released... . enough stigma for the family's honour. So instead of the family members comforting her for the untold misery, trauma and sexual humiliation she underwent at the hands of the so-called liberators, she must have been punished for undergoing the ignominy and killed. So concluded the human rights activist who went searching for her in order to tell her story to the world, but in vain.

With such dire punishment awaiting Iraqi women prisoners who were raped in jails, it is not surprising that the world has not heard too many tales of the sexual abuse undergone by Iraqi women in the jails manned by the Americans. The stories, which have come out, relate only to the humiliation of male prisoners. The women who survived the ordeal will have to live in their private hell for heaven knows how long. Can we even imagine the psychological and emotional trauma that will haunt them for the rest of their lives?

So why were women being held at Abu Ghraib prison?

Once again the same old story; they were being made to pay for the sins of their husbands or paramours, who the Americans believe were Saddam loyalists or connected in any way to the bloody resistance that the coalition forces are facing in Iraq.

The Guardian reported that two of the women at Abu Ghraib prison were the wives of high-ranking Ba'ath party members; two are accused of financing the resistance; and one allegedly had a relationship with the former head of Iraq's secret police, the Mukhabarat." Swadi, the lawyer, told the newspaper that the allegations against the women were "absurd. One of them is supposed to be the mistress of the former director of the Mukhabarat. In fact, she's a widow who used to own a small shop. She also worked as a taxi driver, ferrying children to and from kindergarten. If she really had a relationship with the director of the Mukhabarat, she would scarcely be running a kiosk. These are baseless charges. She is the only person who can provide for her children."

But then, as the adage goes, Iraq today, under coalition rule, is an "— andheri nagri with andha raja — (a blind country with a blind king), and the women have been arrested not for what they have done, but for who they have married. Aren't we in India familiar with the police taking away the female relatives of an absconding accused? What greater degree of impotence or helplessness can any authority show than hope that holding the women hostage would compel the men to come forward and either surrender or provide valuable information?

Small wonder then that Amnesty International's Secretary General Irene Khan has said the US pursuit of security has actually made the world a more dangerous place. "Sacrificing human rights in the name of security at home, turning a blind eye to abuses abroad and using pre-emptive military force where and when it chooses, have neither increased security nor ensured liberty," she told the Washington Post.

At the end of the day the prison abuse story leaves one with two disturbing images... of women in power just joining with their male colleagues to torment the helpless and the vulnerable. And, of women prisoners who have been brutally and sexually abused not even having the opportunity to tell their story to the world... just because they are women.

... and they used to call Saddam the Butcher of Baghdad!

Response can be sent to rasheeda@thehindu.co.in

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Stories in this Section
Beating stress

The perfect boss

Different strokes

Time for the `bovies'

The new karate kid

Tormentors and tormented

MGR's midday meal scheme

Catching the eye at Cannes

Far from those war days...

In the `blue' twilight zone