Women’s rights activist calls on U.S. to end 'anarchy' in Iraq

Speaking at a forum sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, women's rights activist Zainab Salbi said that the United States was "on the verge of losing the peace" in Iraq, and she called upon the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance to take steps to end "absolute anarchy" in the country.

Also at the forum, the Wilson center released recommendations from its April conference on the role of women in post-conflict Iraq. The conference, co-sponsored by the group Women Waging Peace, brought together 26 women leaders from Iraq and more than 60 U.S. policymakers from the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Defense Department and other agencies.

Among other recommendations, the conference participants urged the U.S. reconstruction leadership in Iraq to ensure that no less than 30 percent of all governing organizations set up to advance the reconstruction effort be made up of women. The participants also urged the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance to appoint a liaison to Iraqi women, and to set aside funding to speed the formation of women's groups and initiatives in Iraq.

Salbi, founder of the human rights group Women for Women International and a native of Baghdad, has spent the last few months in Iraq assessing the situation on the ground. She said that the situation for women in Iraq is dire, with kidnappings and rapes of girls and women rampant. She said that there is a market in Baghdad where women and girls are being bought and sold.

Overall, the country has become a "cowboy state" where everyone has a gun, and stores are afraid to open, she said. Iraqis still have only limited electricity, limited water, and little cooking fuel and gasoline. Hospitals and health clinics are running out of medication, she said.

Still, most Iraqis are still thankful to the Bush administration for overthrowing the regime of Saddam Hussein, but are losing patience with the pace of reconstruction, she said. "There is still a chance to win this peace, but we're not winning it now at all."

Until the arrival of Paul Bremer, the new head of the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, Salbi added, the U.S. leadership in Iraq had hardly reached out at all to the Iraqi people or to humanitarian relief groups in the country. Bremer has taken initial steps to provide salaries to Iraqi civil servants, set up a police force, and increased food distribution, she said.