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April 27 - May 4,2003 |
The Awakening of a Delicate Giant
Iraqi Women's Rights activist Yanar Mohammed reflects on her country's shaky future
By Alberto Lunati
Originally Published: 2003-04-20
Yanar Mohammed's eyes are wet with tears but lit with pride.
Her relatives, her friends, all her loved ones are thousands of kilometres away, under the bombs, in the devastated neighbourhood of Baghdad or Kirkuk. They survive - she hopes, with the resignation of one who got a taste of war - fighting for some water and food, carrying with them their frightened and sick children.
Yanar, a representative of the Iraqi Women's Rights organization in Canada, experienced the "humanitarian" bombs pounding Baghdad during Desert Storm in 1991. She perfectly knows the butcher's bill that, once again, civilians are footing...
And she unmasks, between the lines, "the great swindle" carried out backstage in the operation that the U.S. administration christened "Iraqi Freedom".
Yanar's hopes of peace were shattered in front of her television set, as she watched infrared images of the U.S. attack, and later, when cameras showed the fall of Saddam's statue on Paradise Square.
She harbours few illusions on the future of Iraq, and that's why she spent days stationed in front of the U.S. consulate in Toronto, rain or shine, bearing witness to the reality of a people dying for the dirty business of the system most of us profit from.
She doesn't mince words, and speaks loud and clear.
Don't you think that this war was waged for the freedom of the Iraqi people?
"I think this is genocide, not war... and anyway, it should be for the Iraqi people, for the Iraqi people alone, to decide their lot. We all know that Saddam was going to be ousted, one way or the other, but at what price? When the Americans depart, only death and devastation will remain... too high a price, don't you think? Of course Iraqis do not want this kind of 'liberation'. The Americans promise to rebuild the country, presenting themselves as liberators, but we should be the people rebuilding the place where we've lived and which we were forced to flee."
How was life under Saddam's rule?
"Terrible. Nobody ever denied this."
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