How good to see Australia’s first serious female contender for the top job, Julia Gillard, visiting the last Australian troops in Iraq just days before the US withdraws from the country. The Deputy PM made a secret trip to the strife-torn nation over the weekend and her appearance was greeted with qualified enthusiasm by Iraqi journalists. Yet one thing stood out, to a report by John Lyons in The Australian. Iraqi TV’s Razzak Aqili said after the news conference: “As Iraqis, we are pleased to see a woman politician.”
Somewhere amid the bloodshed and bad news reports and the on-going controversy about the role of the burqa, that progressive element of Iraqi society has been overlooked. Iraq’s history as a progressive country is well known, and women have long had leading roles there, as I came to discover when writing my second book, “The Promise, An Iraqi Mother’s Desperate Flight to Freedom” (Random House) about Guzin Najim, an Iraqi woman whose husband was murdered by Saddam Hussein. Guzin and her two children were kept under house arrest for three years before they fled across the desert into Jordan with the help of the Mukhabarat (Iraqi secret police). They then made their way to Australia where they now live, among the approximately 12,000 people granted refugee status by the previous Federal government in 2002.
One of the strongest messages that Guzin wanted to convey in the book was how progressive Iraq had been and how women were encouraged to get an education and have professional lives. It was important to her that the western world saw another view of Iraq rather than the ‘behind-the-veil’ stereotypes.
For more on Gillard’s trip to Iraq (photographed here at the Australian Embassy by the ADF) – and to see her sense of humour in action – read John Lyons in The Australian. www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25704927-601,00.html
