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Iraqi native speaks out
Kim Johnson - Thu, Nov, 27, 2008
Imagine how it would feel to lose the rights we, as Americans, have grown accustomed to.
Imagine being told it is no longer acceptable for you to leave your home with your head uncovered or to send your daughter to school.
These are issues Iraqi native Susan Dakak brought to the attention of participants in her seminar “Freedom in America and the progress of Women in Iraq” Tuesday, Nov. 11, at Farragut Town Hall.
“One of the things that really is important, in my opinion, is that we have been in this war with Iraq for five years, and we do not seem to hear the wonderful things that have been done in Iraq,” Dakak said.
Citing an ancient Chinese proverb that says “give a man a fish and you have fed him for today, but teach a man to fish and you have fed him for a lifetime,” Dakak said the United States is teaching Iraqis, especially women, to fish again.
“When I left in Iraq in 1978, there were no differences between men and women in Iraq. As a matter of fact there were more women engineers and doctors than men. Women enjoyed complete freedom just like men and like we do here,” Dakak said.
“The first few years after Saddam [Hussein] took power, he was trying to oppress different groups of people and women were not one of the groups he oppressed, so they remained very free.
“He found out later on, like the last four or five years before the war, that the more religious he became — he wasn’t really religious himself, he was just using it for his political power — the more powerful he would become. So women started to cover up and stay at home and not be as educated as they were before,” she added.
Soon after the United States removed Hussein from power in 2004, Islamic fundamentalists have tried to keep women oppressed.
Dakak, who graduated from Tennessee technical university in 1983 with a degree in civil engineering volunteered to go to Iraq in 2004 to help rebuild Iraq’s decimated infrastructure and instead, found her place as a women’s advocate.
“For 26 years I was living here in the states and living the America dream. I could not just sit still and not help with the war effort,” she said.
“I went to work as a sanitary and sewer engineer, but when I got there and I went back to some of my high school buddies, I realized that the women’s movement needed a lot more help than the sanitary and sewer system,” she added.
Dakak became involved with the Women’s Alliance for a Democratic Iraq and never looked back.
Dakak said the omen of Iraq had two main goals: To be fairly represented in government and to defeat Resolution 137, which prohibited women from going out in public without a male escort, prohibited girls from attending school and forced women to cover their entire bodies.
Dakak and her peers helped write a constitution the women of Iraq could live with and lobbied the Iraqi Government Council to strike the resolution from the books and to allow women 25 percent of all government and private positions.
“All of the women in Iraq did not want [Resolution 137] and they were the ones who said ‘What do we do about this? We do not want it. How can we defeat it? We do not know how to do that.’ So we helped with that. We helped them get petitions and demonstrate. We were sending the media out to cover all that. Then they started lobbying the Iraqi Government Council and when it came down to the vote they voted it out and the women cheered.
“I still feel the excitement of their cheer. It was unbelievable,” Dakak said.
Thanks to the efforts of Dakak and her peers, more and more business contracts are being awarded to women in Iraq.
“There is an incentive for woman-owned businesses in Iraq,” Dakak said.
“When more and more women are encouraged to go after work and apply for jobs, they are being empowered in so many different ways. It is not just the money, but also the confidence they have and the ability. They feel good about getting a job done,” she added.
Dakak said she wants the American people to feel good about the effort in Iraq.
“In my opinion, when the American public learns that there are a lot of success and progress that is happening in Iraq, they would feel better, not only about the war itself, but also about their contributions and sacrifices,” she said.
“I didn’t want this to be political. It has nothing to do with politics. I just want people to leave feeling great about being American,” she added.
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