WASHINGTON, D.C., Feb 3 (OneWorld) — Iraqi women, who were among the most liberated in the Arab world under the country’s legal system, are seeing their rights stripped away by the U.S.-backed Iraqi Governing Council (IGC), according to 44 U.S. lawmakers who are calling on President Bush (news – web sites) to take urgent steps to address what they call a “brewing women’s rights crisis.”

In a letter sent to Bush Monday, the lawmakers, led by Reps. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), Eddie Bernice Johnson (D- TX), and Darlene Hooley (R-OR), complained that the IGC had quietly voted to “cancel” certain laws designed to protect women and to place them under the jurisdiction of Islamic law, or “Sharia.”

“To prevent this order from taking effect, we strongly urge you and your administration to take steps now to protect the rights of Iraqi women,” the lawmakers wrote. The White House had no immediate comment.

They were referring to IGC resolution 137, approved by the 25-member IGC December 29, which replaces Iraq (news – web sites)’s 1959 personal-status laws–that could affect everything from the right to education, employment and freedom of movement, to property inheritance, divorce, and child custody–with religious laws to be administered by clerics from the country’s different religious faiths, depending on the sect to which the parties in any dispute belonged.

The resolution must still be approved by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), headed by Amb. Paul Bremer, in order to become legally binding. In a letter to Bremer Friday, MADRE, a New York-based international rights advocate for women, noted that IGC’s action lacked transparency and was taken without any public debate or open consultation with only a minority of Council member’s present.

“In less than 15 minutes of discussions, the IGC–none of whose members were elected by Iraqis–passed Resolution 137, effectively abolishing women’s legal rights in ‘liberated’ Iraq,” said MADRE’s associate director, Yifat Susskind. “Under the direct authority of the Bush administration, the IGC has privileged sectarianism over inclusiveness and violated core principles of democratic governance…”

Iraqi women, only three of whom serve on the IGC, are also protesting the resolution, according to recent press reports.

“This will send us home and shut the door, just like what happened to women in Afghanistan (news – web sites),” Amira Hassan Abdullah, a Kurdish lawyer, told the Washington Post last month. “The old law wasn’t perfect, but this one would make Iraq a jungle. Iraq women will accept it over their dead bodies.”

The IGC’s action, according to various reports, came at the behest of conservative Shiite members of the Council when Abdul Aziz Hakim, a Shiite who heads the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, chaired it. Secular and Kurdish members of the Council have since argued against the measure.

While the CPA is considered highly unlikely to ratify it, concern that Muslim conservatives could push it through the transitional government to which sovereignty is supposed to be returned by the CPA no later than June 30. Shia clerics are not only expected to increase their representation in the government, but they may be supported by conservative Sunnis, as well.

Since the ouster of former President Saddam Hussein (news – web sites) by U.S.-led forces last April, religious conservatives in both Shia and Sunni parts of the country are reported to have become increasingly prominent and influential in both communities.

“Although this law would not go into effect until after June 30, 2004…we will be unable to stop the implementation of these types of harmful laws,” the lawmakers’ letter to Bush noted. “It is imperative that we act now to reverse this decision, or the lives of Iraqi women will be worse because of America’s actions. We cannot allow that to happen.”

The lawmakers said they were particularly angered by a column on women’s rights by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz in the Washington Post Sunday. Wolfowitz is currently in Baghdad reviewing the military and political situation there.

The column, entitled “Women in the New Iraq,” argued that “women must have an equal role and more women should be included in Iraqi governing bodies and ministries” but failed to mention the growing controversy over Resolution 137 or the threat to women’s rights that it poses.

“I would hope that Mr. Wolfowitz and this administration aren’t viewing this situation through rose-colored glasses,” said Maloney. “There is a women’s rights crisis on the horizon, and we must take action… As ruthless a place as Iraq was under its former dictatorship, women did hold basic rights and were educated participants in society.”

But in the post-war period, she went on, “women have been brutally attacked and discouraged from participating in civic activities. The Governing Council’s rash move has started Iraqi women down a dangerous slippery slope that ends in a human rights crisis. The time to act is now or never.”

“After making tremendous strides for equality and parity in Iraqi society, the women there are now being forced to fight yesterday’s battle anew as some elements in their society attempt to roll back the hands on the clock of progress,” said Johnson.

“It would be utterly ironic if the women of Iraq were forced to grapple with an age-old regime of oppression even more despotic than the one we liberated them from during the war,” she added.

The Bush administration had originally planned to oversee the writing and ratification of a new constitution before handing sovereignty back to an Iraqi government. While U.S. lawyers are continuing to work with the IGC on an interim charter that reportedly includes equal rights from women and minorities, there is no guarantee that the principles enshrined in it will be incorporated in a new constitution.

In its letter, MADRE noted that the resolution not only threatens women’s rights, but may also worsen growing sectarian tensions in Iraq. The resolution, according to the letter to Bremer “would mean the introduction of separate provisions and rules for each of the various sects in Iraq and will thus threaten the fabric of Iraqi civil society.”

“The decision establishes sectarianism as an organizing principle of social and political life in Iraq and will deeply damage the cause of national integration,” the letter argued. It noted as well that differences exist within the various sects regarding interpretations of Sharia and thus could invite “legal chaos.”

Zakia Ismael Hakki, a retired judge, told the Post that resolution will “send Iraqi families back to the Middle Ages. It will allow men to have four or five or six wives,” she said. “It will take away children from their mothers.”

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