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Home Front: Culture Wars

Risky work: Iraqi doc puts life on the line for womens rights

2007-07-25

When Dr. Rajaa Al-Khuzai travels in Iraq, shes protected by 30 bodyguards and lives in constant fear that shell be killed because of her rebel role as a womens rights crusader, physician and former elected Iraqi official.

Today, on her first visit to Boston, shell tell a group of Iraqi and international scholars why she takes those risks. Al-Khuzai hopes to spread the message that there are 2 million Iraqi war widows, some as young as 12, who are suffering economically and emotionally and getting little help. I want international organizations to know. I want American women to know that there are women just like them that need support, said Al-Khuzai, who will speak at the University of Massachusetts-Boston conference, Rebuilding Sustainable Communities in Iraq, this morning.

Al-Khuzai, a mother of six and grandmother of seven, founded the Iraqi Widows Organization in 2004 with a World Bank donation of $24,000. So far, the group has helped 1,400 widows get loans for small businesses, job training and other support, but thats only a fraction of the population. The number of widows is increasing every day because the violence is increasing, she told the Herald in an interview yesterday.

Al-Khuzai, who graduated from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in London, said physicians, professors and educated Iraqis have been killed or have fled the warring country, but she has stayed in the hope that she can make a difference.

She said the U.S.-led invasion has left the country in dire straits. We greeted the allied troops with flowers. We were so glad to get rid of a dictator. We could never, ever believe this man would go, she said. But post-war strategy was not planned well.

Got any suggestions? I appreciate that you're speaking out and that your life is in danger, but you might consider not biting the only hand in Iraq that's trying to help.

But her work on the American-backed government councils, her activism and education have made her and her family targets. She requires bodyguards when she goes to her job as a university professor. Her son, a doctor, fled to Jordan this summer because his life was in danger. Her husband, a surgeon, was forced to quit practicing because it was too dangerous. (Militias) consider it black spots in my life because I always speak for womens rights, she said.

Adenrele Awotona, dean of the UMass-Boston College of Public and Community Service, said Al-Khuzai was a natural choice to speak at the conference, which was two years in the making. Al-Khuzai was elected to the Iraqi National Assembly and before that served as an appointed member of the governing council. She has a very clear understanding of where Iraq wants to go, he said. Shes also been a very active community and political agent.

Posted by:Delphi

#1 I can see why she has to triangulate. Many of the widows she advocates for lost their husbands, fathers and sons because they fought the US, so they are probably still bitter as hell about it.

However, her approach to helping them, with micro loans and such, is not only proven to really help women in the third and fourth world, but all those small businesses are a big stimulus to both employment and the local economy. Even in the US, small businesses employ the majority of workers.

Finally, women with money are a nightmare to extremists. The women no longer have to put up with a lot of their guff and abuse.

Posted by: Anonymoose 2007-07-25 11:24

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