Review of City of Widows: An Iraqi Woman's Account of War and Resistance
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If you want to understand a society you should look to its women. It's they who carry the burdens and responsibilities of everyday life and ensure continuity through thick and thin. There isn't a society on earth that could exist without them and the homes and families they nurture, the food they prepare, and the solace they dispense.
Too often we talk of history, of war and peace, in terms of Churchill, Hitler, Bush, Hussein and Blair. The real people, and hence reality, become a backdrop to events and our knowledge and understanding is diminished. Another foible is to talk of events in soundbites which obscure the facts. Haifa Zangana's is a feminine perspective of Iraqi 20th century history which puts the 2003 invasion into context. She shows us how successive occupations have coloured life and restricted developments and freedoms, and how they have been resisted and deposed, often only to be replaced with other occupations or impositions. She shows us how progress, towards a well-adapted free secular society where everyone, women included, are respected and valued, has been uneven, with repeated setbacks, and how the imposition of foreign rule and subversive influences like sanctions have interrupted progress. Iraqi society has struggled to develop strong institutions in the face of continual interference.
Most Iraqis see the 2003 invasion as yet another in a series dating back to WWI when the Ottomans were turfed out only to be replaced by British colonization and subsequent crippling interference, which has cast a long shadow over Iraqi development and independence ever since. The theme of her book is that the continual struggles to establish government and institutions that faithfully represent Iraqi needs and identity have placed particular burdens on women who have provided the continuity in times of change and upheaval, progress and reversal, destitution and plenty, equality and inequality, and as the centre of family life often with their men unemployed, incapacitated, imprisoned or killed. And life still goes on!
The invasion of 2003 was, to most Iraqis, just another chapter in the cruel and heartless treatment of Iraqi society by foreign leaders bent on serving their own interests and to hell with anyone who happened to get in the way. History, like peace and justice, is relative. It looks entirely different, depending on your circumstances and perspective. Bush and Blair knew nothing of Iraq, its history, its culture, or its peoples, yet they pronounced on everything and used every means available to push their particular propaganda in the teeth of reality. The government of occupation-vetted stooges and the mechanism by which it was elected is viewed as yet another temporary setback on the road to progress. The people who talk about Iraq in soundbites, as if they understand, come and go but Iraq will survive their interference and injustices.
"What the occupiers have failed to see is that Iraqis who have committed acts of resistance are not terrorists. We are a people willing to risk our lives defending our homes, families, ways of life, history, culture, identity, and resources. We do not hate Americans, though we loathe their government's greed and brutality, and are willing to defend ourselves against it. We simply believe that Iraq belongs to Iraq."
The book is full of real information and recounts numerous atrocities committed by those determined to mould Iraq to fit their vision, including the US & UK occupiers.
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