Women Find a Voice at Iraq Radio Station

For all of the horrible things that have happened as a result of the Invasion of Iraq, I suppose there are a few positive things too. Not that the positive will ever outweigh the negative, but it is interesting to see how the country is changing and how some people are discovering their voices in "Post-war" Iraq. The following article, by Yochi Dreazen, is extremely interesting and makes me hopeful that the situation in Iraq isn´t completely hopeless.

BAGHDAD — Three years ago, Majda Jabouri earned a small living as a housekeeper, the only job she could find after being imprisoned because of her family’s opposition to the regime of then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Today, she hosts a popular daily call-in show on Radio Almahaba, Iraq’s only station dedicated to women’s issues, called “Cup of Tea.” Most episodes are devoted to relationships, parenting, and other topics that would be familiar to any “Oprah” viewer. The show is also a product of its environment: a recent episode dealt with women’s feelings of jealousy and powerlessness when their husbands take second wives.

It isn’t Almahaba’s only nod to the challenges of life in Iraq. With policymakers debating just how many legal protections women should enjoy in the country’s new constitution, the United Nations-funded station finds itself on the frontlines of a bitter showdown over women’s rights. Several employees have been threatened with death for working at the station, although no one has been attacked. Many Shiite clerics have ordered their followers to boycott it.

The station has responded by shifting from simply covering the raging debate over Iraqi women’s political and legal standing to actively participating in it. At issue is whether Iraq’s new constitution should include expansive women’s rights, including a guaranteed 25% of the seats in Iraq’s parliament, enshrined in the temporary constitution written last year with heavy American involvement. The Shiite religious parties that dominate Iraq’s government have long disapproved of those provisions and are now pushing to strip them out.

Almahaba, named after the Arabic word for love, regularly broadcasts portions of U.N. resolutions on gender equality and encourages listeners to make sure their interests are represented in the country’s draft constitution. After recording several interviews at a recent rally against proposed cutbacks in women’s rights, meanwhile, an Almahaba reporter put down her microphone and began helping protest leaders pass out fliers and petitions.

The station’s willingness to openly advocate its views of a highly politicized issue sets it apart from many of the country’s other media outlets, which try to avoid picking sides for fear of sparking an attack by the insurgents and sectarian militias responsible for Iraq’s near-daily violence.

But Almahaba executives say that Iraq has too few voices devoted to women’s issues for them to sit out the current constitutional debate, which pits secular-minded Kurds and Sunni Arabs who want to preserve the rights accorded to women — who make up an estimated 60% of Iraq’s population — by the country’s temporary constitution, against fundamentalist Shiite Arabs eager to curb women’s rights and give Islamic law greater prominence. Iraqi policymakers face a critical Aug. 15 deadline for delivering a draft constitution, but remain far apart on a range of issues.

“We encourage our employees to get involved,” says station manager Kareem Jabbar, an Iraqi exile who fled the country in 1990 and spent more than a decade working as a journalist in the Netherlands and Britain. “We don’t want them just sitting on the sides.”

Almahaba began broadcasting this spring out of a suite of shabby offices decorated with photos of famous Iraqi female artists and musicians. Its eight hours of programming a day include cultural shows designed to teach women about art and poetry, health programs and news broadcasts. More than half of Almahaba’s 40 employees are women with little or no radio or journalism experience, but the station’s male employees — which include several veterans of Iraq’s former state-run media — say they are learning quickly.

“We men are really just trying to teach the women to take our places,” says Khalid Aziz, a program director who had formerly directed films for Iraq’s state-owned cinema industry. “We hope to only be here temporarily.”

The station was founded by Deborah Bowers, an American humanitarian worker whose interest in Iraq was sparked by her experiences helping Iraqi war refugees adjust to life in upstate New York in the early 1990s. In 1995, Ms. Bowers and one of the refugees she had befriended, Steve Sharrif, created Opportunities for Kids International Inc., a relief agency devoted to Iraqi children. It has since sent medical supplies and thousands of pairs of children’s shoes to the country.

Ms. Bowers, 50 years old, says that the idea for the station began with her Iraqi staffers, who saw Mr. Hussein’s ouster by U.S.-led forces as an opportunity to dramatically improve the legal and political standing of Iraqi women. Although Mr. Hussein’s government had been nominally secular, women had numerous restrictions on their daily lives, including an inability to leave the country without being accompanied by a spouse or male relative.

Ms. Bowers developed a grant proposal for the station and presented it to the United Nations Development Fund for Women, which supports private initiatives around the world devoted to gender equality and women’s rights. The U.N. agency ultimately gave her $500,000, which allowed the nascent station to purchase broadcasting and recording equipment and rent office space near the heavily fortified Palestine Hotel here. Employees chose the name Almahaba, and it began broadcasting to Baghdad and the surrounding area in March.

On a recent afternoon, Seeham Fadhallah, a cheerful woman in a blue Muslim hair covering, sat down in a small recording booth and nodded to Najid Dijbari, an engineer sitting on the opposite side of the glass. He gave her a thumbs up, and she began reading news items about that day’s attacks in Iraq, the investigation into the London bombings, and Sudan’s apology to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for scuffling with members of her official delegation. When she finished the segment a few minutes later, Mr. Dijbari switched to a popular Lebanese pop song.

The station’s funding from the U.N. agency was seed money, so the grant can’t be renewed when it runs out next year. Almahaba employees say the station’s survival will depend on its ability to sell ads and find other funding from Iraqi, American or international organizations.

Employees are united on trying to help prevent Iraq’s increasingly theocratic government from imposing strict Islamic law on the country. On-air reporters and hosts encourage women to make their feelings known at public hearings. Almahaba recently launched a program that mixes the latest news about the Iraqi constitution with analysis of the women’s rights contained in other constitutions and legal systems around the world.

Even Ms. Jabouri, whose shows generally deal with relationships, plans to devote several upcoming episodes to the constitutional debate. “I don’t want to just tell my audience about the problems it could cause,” she says. “I want to help to find solutions.”

Source: Wall Street Journal, July 29, 2005