For Iraqi Girls, Changing Land Narrows Lives

[Rose Siding]

snip>
The perils and pressures bearing on the lives of teenage girls here offer a snapshot of the changes bedeviling Iraq. In the past several months, the new access to satellite dishes, Internet cafes and cellphones has given these young women a new window on the outside world. But creeping religious conservatism, lawlessness and economic uncertainty have also been conspiring against them in peculiar ways.

Parents are so rattled by reports of rapes and kidnappings that they keep their girls under closer watch than ever. Girls accustomed to pool outings and piano lessons during the crushingly hot summer vacation months are instead locked up at home. They quarrel with their mothers; they sleep too much; they grow cranky and dejected from mind-numbing boredom.

During the school year, young men claiming to represent new religious groups arrived at some schools, demanding that girls' heads be covered or long-sleeved shirts be required. Not surprisingly, an increasing number of the girls seem to be covering their heads — as much out of fear as out of newfound conviction. Some have stopped going to school altogether, as much because of the threat of violence as because of the economic hardships facing their families. In Yosor's school, for example, 700 girls registered for classes this past year, compared with 850 the previous year.

What long-term effect any of this will have remains to be seen. In a country that was once singular in the Arab world for its ranks of educated, professional women, it is impossible to tell whether the fate of today's teenage girls will be any different from that of their mothers.

http://nytimes.com/2004/06/27/international/middleeast/27GIRL.html

[NMDemDist2]

1. and so it begins, the theocracy takes over one of the most

advanced secular societies in the middle east <sigh>

[Tansy_Gold]

2. I was waiting for these reports

This was inevitable when the secular power was removed with nothing to replace it but fundamentalism.

Just one more crime against humanity to lay at the feet of boosh.

[Frances]

3. I have not heard one single reporter on TV

make this point.

I have never heard one reporter on TV make the point that the life of women in Afghanistan under the Russians was much better than it is now. The U.S. supported the Taliban against the Russians, so it can be argued that the U.S. set back the quality of life for Afghan women.

[Tansy_Gold]

4. that was the U.S. under boosh the elder

now boosh the younger is making the life of women in Afghanistan, Iraq, and oh, maybe even the U.S. much worse than it was before.


What sorry POS these booshies be.

[wellst0nev0ter]

5. And Yet They Will Claim That More Girls Are Attending School

screw them :eyes: