In 1989, Ott, who lives in Cordova, Alaska, experienced firsthand the devastating effects of the Exxon Valdex oil disaster. For the past two months, she’s been traveling back and forth between Louisiana and Florida to gather information about what’s really happening and share the lessons she learned about long-term illnesses and deaths of cleanup workers and residents. In late May, she began meeting people in the Gulf with symptoms like headaches, dizziness, sore throats, burning eyes, rashes and blisters that are so deep, they’re leaving scars. People are asking, “What’s happening to me?”

She says the culprit is almost two million gallons of Corexit, the dispersant BP is using to break up and hide the oil below the ocean’s surface. “It’s an industrial solvent. It’s a degreaser. It’s chewing up boat engines off-shore. It’s chewing up dive gear on-shore. Of course, it’s chewing up people’s skin. The doctors are saying the solvents are making the oil worse.”

In a widely watched YouTube video, from Project Gulf Impact, a project that aims to give Gulf residents a voice, Chris Pincetich, a marine biologist and campaigner with the Sea Turtle Restoration Project, said Coast Guard planes are flying overhead at night spraying Corexit on the water and on land.

Ott says people who are experiencing discomfort of any kind, especially children, pregnant women, cancer survivors, asthma sufferers and African-Americans because they’re prone to sickle cell anemia, should wear a respirator and see a doctor that specializes in chemical poisoning immediately. She also recommends contacting the detox specialists at The Environmental Health Center in Dallas, Texas. “People don’t have the information to know that the burning sore throat is actually chemical poisoning,” she said. “And this isn’t getting any attention, but it’s very important. There are no vaccinations for chemical poisoning. None.”

Because she’s gotten to know the locals and has done a number of national media interviews, she’s now receiving a barrage of daily phone calls and e-mails from people who are concerned and don’t know where else to turn. She recommends they read this Sciencecorps resource about potential health hazards.

Ott shared these stories on a recent trip to the Bay Area with Diane Wilson, former Texas shrimper turned rabble-rousing activist. Ott was coughing and constantly clearing her throat during our two-hour conversation. “I can still smell the oil,” she said.

Media outlets have been reporting on public health concerns and taking water quality samples, but Ott says they’ve only scratched the surface. “If I were in charge of the media, I would be talking about public safety and public health every day. They should also be exposing the truth about how our federal standards are outdated and no longer protective of public health or worker safety. We knew in 1989 that OSHA had a loophole in it that’s big enough to drive every single sick worker through. It exempts the reporting of colds and flus. That loophole has not been closed since Exxon Valdez.”

Ott expressed her concerns during a May meeting with Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator, Lisa Jackson. “I was sitting across from her. She said, quote, ‘I am walking a fine line between truth and hysteria. We don’t want to create a panic.’ This shows you how much our government is beholden to oil and cannot imagine a future without oil. We the people have got to imagine this. We have to. This is way worse than people think.”

On Tuesday, Mother Jones‘ Kate Sheppard reported that Hugh Kaufman, a whistleblower who works as a senior policy analyst in the EPA’s Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response, is accusing the agency of deliberately downplaying public health threats and its own role in regulating the chemicals being dumped into the Gulf “to protect itself from liability and keep the public from getting too alarmed.”

The cause for alarm can’t be more apparent. In addition to the health problems people are already experiencing, WKRG News 5 reporter, Jessica Taloney, recently collected samples of water and sand from five Alabama beaches and took them to a local lab to be tested.

Bob Naman, a chemist with nearly 30 years of experience, told Taloney that he wouldn’t expect to see more than five parts per million of oil and petroleum in the water. The sample of the water taken in Gulf Shores beach, where adults and kids were swimming and playing, showed 66 parts per million. The sand had 211 parts per million. When Naman began to test the sample collected from Dauphin Island Marina, it exploded. “We think that it mostly likely happened due to the presence of methanol or methane gas or the presence of the dispersant, Corexit.”

“What’s going on in the Gulf is the same cover-up that was going with the 9/11 environmental issue,” the EPA’s Kaufman told Sheppard. “The Bush White House ordered EPA to lie about the environmental and public health situation at the World Trade Center because of economic ramifications. So they did.”

On Democracy Now!, Kaufman accused the EPA of being “sock puppets for BP in this cover-up.”

I called Kaufman to find out if he agrees with Ott’s decision to sound the alarm about evacuations. The short answer? Yes. “If you’re getting sick, it’s because you’re being poisoned,” he said. “Those chemicals can cause cancer 20 years down the line and that’s why Riki Ott is saying some areas have to be evacuated. That’s true. We don’t know how bad it is because the EPA is not doing adequate air testing. They’re taking some measurements so they can tell the public that everything is safe [when, in fact, the public has] an increased risk of getting cancer and dying early. They’re pawns in a money game.”

Kaufman and Ott both say the media needs to follow the money. The reason why the EPA is covering this up, they say, is because the cost to BP would be astronomical. “The dispersants hide the oil,” said Ott. “If you put dispersants in the water, you don’t know how much oil was really spilled. Oil fines are based on how much oil was spilled, so it’s all about money.”

If a group listed as a terrorist organization had caused the oil disaster, Kaufman says their assets would be seized immediately and their members would be arrested. So, why hasn’t the US government seized BP’s assets? Kaufman points to an April Vanity Fair article about Larry Fink, one of the most powerful men on Wall Street. Fink’s BlackRock money-management firm controls or monitors more than $12 trillion worldwide, including a billion shares of BP. According to the article, BlackRock “has effectively become the leading manager of Washington’s bailout of Wall Street,” thanks to Fink’s close relationship with former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

“It’s all about money,” says Kaufman. “Follow the money.”

So, where does this leave the people whose lives have been destroyed by this disaster? Where does this leave the people who will face long-term health problems? Where does this leave our oceans, wildlife and environment? What’s next?

“The more the public knows, the more the media cover it, the more the people tell officials to help, the better it is,” says Kaufman. “It’s a game of momentum.”

Ott says she plans to stay in the area to assist where she can (getting respirators for workers is near the top of her list), get the truth out and continue the conversations and community meetings she’s having with self-described Tea Partiers, evangelicals and fifth and sixth generation fisherman. “Here’s something positive for you,” she said. “I’m starting to hear, ‘We all live on one planet and there really is a climate crisis here. This can’t continue.’ I’m having conversations with the Christian Right. I’m staying in an oilman’s camper. Oilmen are starting to see that we need alternatives. I’m having tea party people come up to me and say, ‘How can I help?’ Corporations want to divide the nation into red and blue, Democrat and Republican. I’m seeing that crashing down. The frames are dissolving. The South is rising. I’m talking about the Deep South. This is the most hopeful sign I’m seeing.”

Former shrimper, Diane Wilson, hopes to see more direct action. “This is a crisis. If this oil gusher does not move people to force a change in Washington, then it will never happen. We are seeing the end of the United States as we know it. If people hold their planet dear, they better be out there. Folks are too well behaved. We need to be unreasonable”.

Contrary to media reports last week, the “Criminal Homicide and Abortion Amendments” or HB12, which previously also applied to miscarriages caused by “reckless” acts, was never “withdrawn” by its sponsor, Republican Representative Carl Wimmer (who is crafting similar “model legislation” for other states). After the governor expressed concern over “possible unintended consequences,” of the legislation as written, Rep. Wimmer swiftly introduced a new version, titled “Criminal Homicide and Abortion Revisions” (HB462), which omitted the word “reckless.” Gov. Herbert signed the new bill and vetoed the old one.

In a letter to legislative leaders on Monday, the governor wrote: ”I appreciate the willingness of Representative Wimmer to reevaluate the impact of potential unintended consequences arising from the inclusion of ‘reckless’ behavior in HB12. HB 462 is more consistent with the true intent of the legislation and addresses those situations in which the termination of a pregnancy is intentional and is not conducted at a physician’s direction.”

Nevertheless, women’s and civil rights groups say the new, just-signed version of the bill is just as dangerous.

“We are still passing legislation which seeks to criminalize women for their actions,” Marina Lowe, legislative and policy counsel for the ACLU of Utah, told AlterNet. “The language is still problematic.” 

The original bill, which passed the Utah House and Senate a few weeks ago, attracted widespread condemnation and even international attention. But organizations like the ACLU and Planned Parenthood say most media coverage is missing the larger issue.

“Everyone’s focusing on the bill, but no one is talking about how we got here,” Melissa Bird, executive director of the Planned Parenthood Action Council in Utah, told AlterNet. “I’m thrilled the media have picked this up, but we need to start from the beginning.” 

Starting from the beginning means revisiting the case of a 17-year-old girl from Vernal, Utah, who was seven months pregnant last May, when she paid 21-year-old Aaron Harrison $150 to beat her up after her boyfriend threatened to leave her if she didn’t terminate the pregnancy. 

According to the Salt Lake Tribune, Harrison brought the girl to the basement of his parent’s house and attacked and kicked her, leaving bruises on her stomach and a bite mark on her neck. The baby survived the assault, was born in August, and has since been adopted. 

Harrison, who faced 15 years in prison, pleaded guilty to second-degree felony attempted murder, but instead got up to five years, after District Judge A. Lynn Payne sentenced him under Utah’s anti-abortion statute, saying a charge of third-degree “attempted killing of an unborn child” better fit the facts of the case, according to the Tribune. 

In June, the 17-year-old girl, whose name has not been released because of her age, pleaded no contest to a second-degree felony count of criminal solicitation to commit murder. Juvenile Court Judge Larry Steele ordered that she be placed in the custody of Utah Juvenile Justice Services until she turns 21, but she was released in October after the judge said that, under state law, “a woman who solicits or seeks to have another cause an abortion of her own unborn child cannot be criminally liable.”

That’s when Rep. Wimmer stepped in.

“The judge is absolutely stretching,” he said after the ruling. “There’s no way the judge believes the Utah Legislature left open this loophole [in the law]. I guarantee it will be closed this next session.” 

Rep. Wimmer introduced the Criminal Homicide and Abortion Amendments bill on December 14, and the Criminal Homicide and Abortion Revisions bill (minus the word “reckless”) on March 4. Both bills passed overwhelmingly, on February 24 and March 5 respectively, with little debate. 

Democratic Senator Ben McAdams, one of just four of 29 senators who voted against both pieces of legislation (three Democratic female senators voted for both), says the revised bill still sets a dangerous precedent that would “open up a Pandora’s box” of unintended legal consequences that will be hard to reverse. “Even the word ‘knowingly’ will result in unintended consequences,” he told AlterNet.

Planned Parenthood’s Melissa Bird says the same questions that so alarmed the bill’s earlier critics still apply to the rewritten version that was just signed into law.

“What happens to women who are in abusive relationships?” she asks. “What happens if a woman threatens to leave the abuser, falls down the stairs and loses the baby? What if the abuser beats the woman and causes a miscarriage? Could he turn her in? Who would the prosecutor believe? What happens if a drug addict who’s trying to get clean loses her baby? Will she be brought up on murder charges?” 

Rep. Wimmer claims such women would not be prosecuted because they didn’t knowingly act to terminate their pregnancies. But Bird says that is not necessarily the point.

“Even if the prosecutor doesn’t take the case, nothing precludes a woman from being brought to the attention of law enforcement in the first place,” she said. “What we’re doing is driving women underground and preventing them from getting health care and prenatal care.”

To put this in human terms, had Rep. Wimmer’s bill been on the books last spring — and had the 17-year-old’s fetus not survived — she would have faced a prison sentence of 15 years to life. Rep. Wimmer says he’s OK with that because the teenager has to face the “consequences of her barbaric actions.” 

“It’s pretty rare for a politician to openly support jail time for girls who have abortions, no matter how desperate they seem to be” a 40-something abortion provider who asked to remain anonymous, told AlterNet. “This is extreme. Mark my words. If they can get away with this, they will try to make abortion illegal in the state of Utah. People need to wake up.”

‘No One Wants to Defend Abortion’

Rep. Wimmer, who is a conservative Christian, makes no attempt to hide his anti-choice agenda.

According to his Web site, as chairman of the Utah Family Action Council, “we are continually working to pass pro-life legislation which will weaken Roe v. Wade. Abortions should be reserved for extreme cases only.” 

Upon learning of Rep. Wimmer’s planned legislation to put girls and women behind bars for “reckless” miscarriages, Planned Parenthood’s Bird called his office.

“I said, ‘Don’t do this until we sit down and talk,’” she told AlterNet. “There wasn’t a real willingness on the part of not only our elected officials, but also our local media, to find out how this young girl got into the circumstance she was in. I was trying to start that conversation, but nobody was willing to go there.”

“Yes, it’s mortifying,” Bird continued. “But should we be passing a law like this when we’re not even willing to talk about how she got pregnant? We do know she was living in poverty. We know she was from an incredibly rural part of the state and had no access to sex education or reproductive health care services.”

For activists and family planning advocates, this gets to the crux of this issue.

“Even without this legislation, I wouldn’t say throwing women in jail for having miscarriages is outside the realm of possibility,” says the Utah ACLU’s Marina Lowe. “The larger issue is whether or not our young people have access to information and services, especially people in remote parts of the state.” 

Planned Parenthood closed its clinic in Vernal, Utah 10 years ago. Three clinics offer abortions in Utah — all located in Salt Lake City, a three-and-a-half-hour drive from Vernal. According to the Guttmacher Institute, which advocates for sexual and reproductive health in the United States, 93 percent of all Utah counties have no abortion provider. 

“This is a nationwide problem,” says Dr. William Adams, 74, an abortion provider who runs the Mountain View Clinic in Salt Lake City. “I became an OB/GYN in 1973, the year abortion became legal. Since then, it’s only gotten worse,” 

“I see women from southeastern Idaho, western Wyoming, and occasionally some from eastern Nevada,” Dr. Adams told AlterNet. “They don’t have providers there.”

Dr. Adams says Utah’s legislation is extreme, but not unexpected.

“Nothing really surprises me anymore,” he said. “What saddens me is the fact that no one wants to defend abortion, not even the women who have one. We’re not even teaching our kids how to be responsible so they won’t get pregnant or get STDs.”

Chlamydia More Likely Than Chicken Pox In Utah

Ironically, just three days after Utah’s House and Senate overwhelmingly passed Rep. Wimmer’s Criminal Homicide and Abortion Amendments bill, the Senate refused to even debate legislation that would have allowed teachers to provide comprehensive sex education to students who had their parent’s permission. Current state law says teachers can’t advocate or endorse the use of contraceptive methods or devices, according to Bird.

“If you teach about chlamydia, you’re allowed to say, ‘This is a condom and this is chlamydia.’ The law would have allowed teachers to say, ‘If you’re having sex, you can use a condom to prevent chlamydia. Abstinence is the best way, but if you’re not abstinent, use a condom.’” 

Every day in Utah, 12 teenage girls between the ages of 15 and 19 become pregnant. Chlamydia is the number one most reported communicable disease in the state, according to the Utah Department of Health. In 2007 there were 5,721 newly reported cases; 3,748 of those cases (66 percent) were diagnosed in individuals between the ages of 15 and 24. In Utah, you’re more likely to get chlamydia than chicken pox or the flu. 

“Young girls are getting chlamydia and they’re not learning about it until they might be infertile,” Emma Waitzman, an 18-year-old senior at Salt Lake City’s West High School, told AlterNet. “That’s morally wrong.”   Waitzman has spent the past year working to get comprehensive sex education in Utah schools by organizing students, confronting conservatives, starting a Facebook group for Comprehensive Sex Ed in Utah, attending legislative hearings and meeting with legislators. She’s told legislators about girls who had to switch schools because of unwanted pregnancies. Another girl she knew had gonorrhea of the mouth. 

“We talked to legislators who said, ‘If you really want to share the information, then do it yourself,’” she recalls. “We said, ‘No, it’s not our responsibility. It’s yours.’ I couldn’t believe a grown man was saying this to me. Are we going to have to teach ourselves?”

A statewide poll conducted in September found that 67 percent of Utahns believe comprehensive sex-ed would “likely reduce the number of unintended teen pregnancies.” The poll was paid for by Planned Parenthood.

Waitzman says the students at her school aren’t politically active, but this issue has raised awareness and interest.

The same applies to parents, says Lori Harward, founder of PTA Parents for Comprehensive Sex-Ed.

“This is a very hush-hush issue in Utah,” Harward told AlterNet. “Even my good friends get defensive when I talk about it.”

Although she is religious and prefers teaching abstinence, Harward says it is irresponsible not to provide students with comprehensive sex ed.

“It’s time to speak out,” she said. “We’re a predominantly LDS [Latter-day Saints] state. It’s conservative here. I am LDS myself. I go to temple. I totally believe in this church. I believe in abstinence only, but I have four girls and I would be a fool to think that all of my children are going to choose abstinence. I grew up in this state and almost everyone was having sex. Let’s get real.”

Parents and students in favor of comprehensive sex education showed up on the day the Senate was supposed to debate the bill late last month, but instead of being asked to share their opinions and concerns, they were ignored. “I felt so disrespected,” says Waitzman. “Is this what politics is about?” 

Despite that disappointing experience, she organized a March for Sexual Education on Saturday in Salt Lake City and plans to continue the fight. “The bill is still alive in the House. We can’t give up. I have a feeling that they would like us to just go away, but that’s not going to happen.”

First published at AlterNet.

Last month, Nawal al-Samarrai, Iraq’s State Minister for Women’s Affairs, quit her job to protest a lack of resources and government support. She faced the daunting task of helping women with a budget that had been slashed from $7,500 to $1,500 per month.

“I think it is wrong to stay as a minister without doing anything for my people, especially in this time and in this situation of Iraqi women — we have an army of widows, violated women, detainees, illiteracy and unemployment — many, many problems. I had to resign,” she said in an interview with National Public Radio.

Al-Samarrai says there are more than three million widows in Iraq, most of them with children and without a social safety net or steady source of income. Because so many men have been killed by consecutive wars, some estimates put the rate of women to men at 65/35.

As the six-year anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq approaches, the voices of the women who are dealing with growing unemployment, violence, and seclusion are still missing from the conversation about the continued occupation and President Obama’s decision to keep 50,000 troops in their country.

A new book attempts to give those women a voice and examine why military intervention and occupation have failed to “liberate” them. In What Kind of Liberation? Women and the Occupation of Iraq, authors Nadje Al-Ali, Reader in Gender Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and Nicola Pratt, Lecturer in Comparative Politics and International Relations at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, write, “Official rhetoric puts women at center stage, but we show that in reality women’s rights and women’s lives have been exploited in the name of competing political agendas.”

The authors also challenge the widespread held belief in the Western media and among many U.S. politicians that something inherent in Middle Eastern, Muslim, and Iraqi culture is responsible for the ongoing violence, sectarianism, and systematic erosion of women’s rights in Iraq. “We argue that it is not Islam or ‘culture’ that has pushed Iraqi women back into their homes. Instead we blame specific and rapidly changing political, economic, and social conditions as well as a wide range of national, regional, and international actors,” they write.

When the Western media does highlight the plight of Iraqi women, they almost always fail to note that Iraqi women activists have been organizing since the 1920 revolution against British occupation. The Women’s Awakening Club, the first women’s organization in Iraq, was founded in 1923. The Iraqi Women’s Union, a feminist organization founded in 1945, tackled previously taboo issues such as prostitution, divorce, workplace issues, child custody, and property rights.

“Iraqi women were once at the forefront of the region with regard to women’s education, labor force participation, and political activism,” write Al-Ali and Pratt.

They argue that it is essential for antiwar movements to address the issue of women’s rights and resist U.S. imperialism simultaneously. “Any analysis of what went wrong in Iraq must put gender firmly on the agenda.”

AlterNet caught up with Nadje Al-Ali on a recent visit to San Francisco. Al-Ali is founding member of Act Together: Women’s Action for Iraq, a UK-based group formed in 2000 to campaign against the economic sanctions on Iraq and since late 2001, the U.S. invasion of Iraq. On August 1, 2007, Al-Ali’s uncle and 16-year-old cousin were killed in their home in Baghdad by unmasked gunmen.

Rose Aguilar: March 20 marks the six-year anniversary of the invasion. When you look back at this occupation, what comes to mind?

Nadje Al-Ali: The death toll. That’s the first thing that comes to mind. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died. You have hundreds of thousands of widows. Iraq has become a nation of widows. Sixty-five percent of the population is women. You have some areas of Iraq where about 70 percent are female-headed households and there is no functioning state, so women are forced to beg. Some are forced into prostitution. Some get $100 a month to survive.

RA: What else is new about today’s situation?

NA: We’ve never seen a situation where women were told to stay at home or forced to follow a dress code or told not to drive, which is happening in certain parts of Iraq. This is a totally new phenomenon. Last year in Basra, 133 women were killed by various Islamist groups for allegedly not being Islamic enough. This is not to say that things were wonderful under the previous regime, but one of the things that has been disturbing for me is the fact that some of the women and men I’ve talked to who suffered under the previous regime and under sanctions and wars, say it was better then than it is now.

Also, what I think is forgotten is the humanitarian crisis. Six years afterwards, people still don’t have electricity. They need generators if they want electricity. Seventy percent of Iraqis don’t have access to clean water. Eighty percent don’t have access to sewage. The hospitals are in very bad shape. We haven’t seen any reconstruction, really.

RA: What about the political situation?

NA: We had one Saddam Hussein. We had a dictator. Now Iraqis tell me, ‘We have 90 Saddam Husseins. We have many dictators.’ I’m in contact with scholars and university students. Everything is controlled by political parties. We had one radio station before; one TV station; one newspaper. Now we have many, but each one is pulling one specific line. That is not democracy.

I think it is wonderful that women went out to vote and in principle; it’s wonderful that women ran; but what people don’t realize is that many women who ran for election were not asked if they wanted to run. They were told to run. There’s a 25 percent women’s quota and lots of women ended up being told by their brothers, fathers, or other male politicians that you need to run because we have to fill the quota.

RA: What about security?

NA: Things are better than they were last year. In 2006 and 2007, it was really bad. Almost 90 people a day died. Things are better now, but why are they better? How is it sustainable? If you look at a city like Baghdad, mixed neighborhoods hardly exist anymore, so you have a Sunni neighborhood and you have a Shia neighborhood.

RA: Are neighborhoods still divided by walls?

NA: I’ve heard that some of the walls are being taken down, but there are still walls controlled by local militias. I hope that the country is going into a more stable phase, but I don’t trust the situation yet because in the first years after the invasion, the U.S. supported the Shia militia and armed them. The last few years, they have been arming Sunni groups. So now you have the Shia militias that are armed and the Sunni militias that are armed, both by Americans. What is going to happen? I don’t know.

Many people are fed up with sectarian political parties, but I don’t think this is the beginning of democracy. Fifty percent of the population voted. There had to be extremely high security at the polling station. Yes, Maliki is not an extremist Islamist, but he’s part of the Shia Islamist political party. It’s not a secular regime. What we have now is an establishment that is based on corruption. Everything is corrupt in Iraq.

RA: In this country, when we have conversations about Iraq, we tend to focus on the military and technical aspects, which are important, but it’s so rare to see the human side of the occupation. You said Iraq is not a functioning state. Talk about that.

NA: What does a state do? It provides security. It protects the borders. The state is also involved in providing services related to education and healthcare. That is still not happening. What you have are different political parties controlling different aspects of the state. If you want anything in Iraq, you need to pay for it. You need to prove that you are part of a political party, so that party can pull strings for you to get something done. For instance, if you want to enter university or get a scholarship, you have to go to a political party’s office. You pay your way through the system.

The billions of dollars that were supposed to go into reconstruction went into the pockets of American companies like Halliburton, but they also went into the pockets of corrupt Iraqi politicians. It’s on all levels from your local thug to the ministry.

RA: According to reports, the U.S. is still spending $12 billion a month in Iraq.

NA: I find it very strange that in the context of this worldwide crisis and the credit crunch, these connections are not being made. In terms of getting people to think about Iraq, if they don’t care about the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have died, think about your own lives. There is a connection between the money that is spent there and the money that could have been invested in your healthcare system, education system, and so on.

RA: You interviewed 120 women for your book. Tell me about the women’s rights activist you interviewed. How are they doing their work under such horrible circumstances?

NA: In 2004 and 2005, there was a mushrooming of women’s organizations in Iraq. It’s important to mention that the first people to deal with the mess after the invasion and looting were women. They tried to clean up the local hospitals and schools on a very practical level. They’re not passive bystanders.

RA: That’s how they’re often portrayed in the media.

NA: Yes, they’re either victims or they’re the heroines of the new Iraq. Iraqi women realized that despite the rhetoric of women’s liberation, women’s rights were not going to be handed to them on a golden platter. They had to fight for it, so they started to mobilize politically.

RA: In your book, you say it’s important to remember that Laura Bush and Condoleeza Rice constantly talked about women’s rights in Iraq.

NA: Yes, they started to think about women’s rights in Iraq a few months before the invasion. For years, many of us have been trying to point out how economic sanctions affected women’s rights. No one wanted to listen, certainly not the Bush administration. All of a sudden, there’s this interest in women’s rights.

Many Iraqi women inside Iraq decided to take things into their own hands. They said, ‘We had to keep the country together during these difficult times, during wars, during dictatorships, during sanctions. We want to be part of this new Iraq.’ But they knew they had to fight for it. So they started to mobilize. There was a mushrooming of women’s organizations that worked on humanitarian and political issues. In 2005, you saw women demonstrating on the streets. There were even sit-ins. People started income generating projects. There was a lot of activity. But in mid-2005, there was an outbreak in violence and women were targeted. Women’s rights activists received death threats. Many had to leave the country. Many stopped working. Despite the difficulties, many organizations continue. You still have over 100 women’s organizations throughout the country involved in providing basic services and lobbying politically. I don’t feel very hopefully about the political struggle. The first thing that is compromised is women’s rights.

In the current constitution, one of the outstanding issues is Article 41. It relates to the personal status code, which is a set of laws that govern marriage, divorce, child custody, and inheritance. Very few people know this, but in 1959, there was a new constitution. Iraq had one of the most progressive personal status codes. For instance, a man was not allowed to say, ‘I divorce you. I divorce you. I divorce you.’ He had to go through court. A man could not just marry a second wife or third wife. He had to get the permission of the wife. It was a codified set of laws that applied to all Iraqis, whether you’re Sunni or Shia, which allowed for mixed marriages. Now in the current constitution, Article 41 states that all Iraqis follow their specific set of laws depending on their ethnic and religious background. There is no law that is actually spelled out. It just says it’s up to interpretation. It’s not that Islamic law is inherently bad. If you had an egalitarian person interpreting Islamic law, you can come up with relatively egalitarian laws. But when I see the people who are controlling the streets of Iraq, I’m not very hopeful.

RA: What are you hearing from the Iraqi women’s rights activists about the occupation?

NA: Their views have changed quite drastically over the years. They had very divergent views in the beginning. Some women were pro-invasion. Many were not keen on the invasion. One woman said, ‘It happened. We’re hopeful.’ Some were vehemently against it, so there was quite a range of opinion when I started out. In 2005, there was a shift. Women who were optimistic in the beginning started to rethink their position and became much more critical of the occupation. Until 2007, some Iraqi women’s rights activists would tell me, ‘We don’t like the occupation. We want them to go. But they cannot go quite yet because we are more worried about the militias linked to the government and the Islamist insurgents. As long as they are targeting women, we need the Americans to protect us.’ Even they have changed their opinion. They are very disillusioned.

For a long time, they were still hoping that the Americans would somehow help them in their struggle for women’s rights, which in the beginning they [the Americans] were at least paying lip service to it. Now they’re not even saying that anymore. They’re not even pretending to be interested in women’s rights and there’s a great sense of disillusionment and disappointment among the women, who until a little while ago, were willing to go to the Green Zone and try to get support. But even they have realized that the American occupation is not helping in terms of security. If anything, they have worsened sectarian tensions and have been arming militias and insurgents. And they are not being serious about women’s rights and not even pretending to be.

RA: There were massive demonstrations in this country in the lead up to the invasion, but they’ve died down. There will be a big march in DC on March 21. As you speak in this country, what goes through your mind?

NA: When I entered the San Francisco airport, the immigration officer asked me, ‘What are you doing?’ I said, ‘I’m here for a book launch for What Kind of Liberation.’ He said, ‘So women’s lives are really good now in Iraq?’ I told him, ‘No, actually they’re not.’ And he was really surprised. It’s not that I like to be the conveyer of bad news, but I think people need to get a reality check.

This idea that because there was an election and women participated, Iraq becomes a model. Even when the violence stops, the implications for women’s rights and women’s roles are long term. They are the biggest losers in all of this because they are being used by everyone, whether it’s the Iraqi government using women to show they are different from the previous regime, or the resistance who see women as resistance to imperialism and therefore women should wear certain clothes and behave in a certain way. Women are caught between all these different forces. The irony of the situation is the louder we fight for women’s rights while the occupation is going on, the greater the backlash against women’s rights inside Iraq.