In late May Sweden was host to a huge UN conference on a thing called the International Compact with Iraq. 600 delegates from countries (and countries unto themselves, the IMF and World Bank) came to put their two cents into the future of Iraq. Separately, a Swedish organization hosted a panel event with Iraq women because they’d not been invited to sit or be heard in this global conclave on their futures.

In particular these Iraqi women wanted to draw attention to Section 41 of the new Iraq Constitution, pointing out it gives more power at the table to religious groups than women’s equal civil rights. Plus, with the Bush Administration now finangling a new Status of Forces Agreement it only seems right to remind everyone of UN Security Council Resolution 1325, which highlights the need for including women in conflict prevention and peace negotiations.

The specter of honor killings is also high on everyone’s minds lately, particularly those in Kurdistan, though even Sweden is scrambling to stop its own. The Kurdistan Regional Government in May passed new policy which is rather fascinating in that it denies protection to both soldiers and party members culpable in honor killings and violence against women. Maybe the US military and its contractors should take a look a that. Nevertheless, just a few days after the new policy was announced yet another young Kurdish woman died horrificly, apparently with complicity from public authorities. Some security.

At the end of the day the Iraqi Women’s Movement panel was right as far as I can tell, they really didn’t get any attention in the Compact and only two sections of the final report even briefly address gender anything; Section 2.7.8 on Gender talks statistics and technicians while the Human Rights section includes one sentence stating the Ministry of Human Rights will conduct research on rural women and monitor violence against them. How long can we keep ‘watching’? I wondered. What more is there to know when women in the many hundreds are burned alive before your eyes, often by their own hand, or pelted with rocks on their naked bodies until they simply succumb to death – most often by their own family members, or murdered for protecting their daughters?

2.7.8 Gender

In 2007, a Commission for Women’s Affairs was established within the Office of the Prime Minister. An annual budget has been allocated to support specific programmes promoting the rights of women. COSIT has established a new Gender Statistics Unit. A number of technicians have been contracted to follow up gender indicators and prepare reports and brochures to promote the achievements of women in Iraq.

350 women have attended leadership training workshops and research studies have been undertaken concerning women’s role in government.

Sec. of State Condi Rice headed up the US delegation to the Intl. Compact meeting yet in her remarks didn’t mention Iraqi women once. The International Monetary Fund got to say a few words. Latvia was represented! Even the World Bank was there. But in the creation of the multinational Compact on Iraq they sought no input from Iraqi women, apparently, and, truly, had only a few sentences to say about their welfare and safety with no plan to stem the tide of killings, called a ‘gender genocide’ by some, even against the violent backdrop of an ongoing military occupation.

UNIFEM’s gender advisor to Iraq, Dina Zorba, pointed out at the Iraqi womens’ news conference that only 1/2 of one percent of all support to Iraq goes to women. Iraqi women, anyway. Here stateside the Independent Women’s Forum got a good chunk just for nudging Iraqi women toward free markets and ‘personal responsiblity’, remember that?

In 2006 Sec. Rice talked up the work IWF/FDD/AIC did/does in Iraq with that original grant money they got in ‘04 for the Iraqi Women’s Democracy Initiative, a State Dept. project originally funded with $10 millionUS. Okay, true, Rice was there to have her back scratched by IWF, too.

In May, over 500 people attended IWF’s third annual ‘Barbara K. Olson Woman of Valor’ dinner in Washington, DC. This year’s honoree was Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who stated in her acceptance speech "’[IWF] is an organization that is promoting individual responsibility and economic liberty and democracy and it’s making a true difference in the lives of women around the world.And I want to acknowledge the work that this organization has done on Iraq, where the Iraqi Women’s Educational Institute, founded just two years ago, has grown into a hopeful force for women’s inclusion in the new Iraq."

The Iraqi Women’s Democracy Initiative got another $4.5 million from Congress in ‘06 and is scheduled for another $10 million for ‘08 – ‘09. I’m not sure if the same hucksters will be the grantees or not. They’re all the same, doesn’t really matter what storefront it comes out of, does it? Like playing whack-a-mole. Natl. Endowment for Democracy, IRI, NDI, MEDI, Wilson School crap. Same ol’ same ol’. The Velveeta of our foreign policy structure.

If our Government-sponsored goons are going to be paid millions to shape the futures of the women of Iraq against their will shouldn’t it at least be required they practise the democracy they preach? FDD’s own Tanya Gilly was everywhere in State Dept. press releases touting the needs of Iraqi women prior to the invasion and was subsequently elected to the Iraqi National Assembly representing Kirkuk, where "one of the main hospitals in the city has dealt with a series of cases where no less than 300 women have been killed by violence or abuse in the last eight months."

Gilly wasn’t in Sweden with the Iraqi women’s contingent. Neither did Sec. Rice try to have Iraqi women heard at the Intl. Compact with Iraq planning session on their future security. Neither did the Independent Women’s Forum or Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, home snug in their beds (plotting the free enterprise of Iranian women, I’d presume). The IMF didn’t and the World Bank sure as hell didn’t (Let them eat micro-loans).

But the Swedish Kvinna till Kvinna Foundation did set a place at the table. Good on them. Maybe we could outsource our next State Dept. to them? I don’t see how the Independent Women’s Forum could object.

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