Concern for women's rights in Iraq....

Remember how, prior to the invasion of Afghanistan--way back when--the Bush administration cited the Taliban's repression of women and girls as an important reason to invade the country?

Well, women's rights seem to have played no role in the Bush administration's grand designs for Iraq.

Now that we've "liberated" the country, women find themselves in a more precarious position than ever as Islamic fundamentalists of all persuasions use the ensuing power-vacuum to slug it out in a brutal power-struggle.

Iraqi women, formerly among the most liberated in the region, are watching the rise of fundamentalism with dread.

"I want to move freely, live a joyful life out in the open," said Nimo Din'Kha Skander, the owner of the salon [Nimo's]. Nimo's is small but well known; Ms. Din'Kha Skander likes to recall how Saddam Hussein's second wife had her hair done there.

"I don't want a government of religion," Ms. Din'Kha Skander continued. Religion, she said, is "a private thing."

From this and other articles, I get the distinct feeling we just pulled the rug out from under the very Iraqis--in the upper and middle classes-- who were the strongest proponents of gender equity.

The article blames, among other things, the constraints and privations of the U.N.-sponsored sanctions for creating a generation more socially and religiously conservative than their parents.

Suha Turaihi, a retired diplomat who served in India, elaborated: "For 20 years they didn't travel — they were not exposed to Western values as we were. They are children of wars and embargo."

So, while talk of "traditional values" falls on the young's more receptive ears, women in the story put their hope in Iraq's diverse cultures and religions, believing no single group could easily monopolize power. (Unless under a dictator?)

Ironically, they also count on U.S. repression.

Criticizing Americans for mismanaging the postwar occupation and being slow to restore public services, one woman says,

"We are used to having coups and revolutions. But usually people who stage them take over the country afterward."

Ah, what fertile ground for Jeffersonian democratic ideals!

Full story here.

And by the way, what ever happened to those imperiled Afghani women and girls? Especially the ones unlucky enough to reside outside the boundaries of American control in and around Kabul?

We don't hear much about them from the Bush administration anymore, do we?