from; octimotor
to; jaluo@jaluo.com
Theocracy vs. women induced to take up arms
Perhaps readers may recall news accounts in the USA media during the early 2000’s concerning the situations of women and girls in places such as Afghanistan and other countries in the surrounding region.
For awhile the Talaban regime held sway. It operated as a theocracy.
Heavy restrictions against women seeking to hold employment outside of homes were enforced. Schooling of girls was ended for the duration of their time in power.
Eventually, using the events of the 2001 September NY City twin towers and Washington DC Pentagon attacks as the officially proclaimed motivations, US forces invaded and occupied Afghanistan and Iraq. Hence the Talaban regime in Afghanistan and the Sadam Husane regime of Iraq were unseated. After such actions eventually comes a time for the invading forces to be drawn down and prepare for what is to be established afterward.
In that context it occurred to me that there could be much value gained by setting up a particular kind of recruitment campaign.
It would be oriented toward involvement of the local women who had first hand experience of having been subjected to the restrictions imposed upon them by the prior Talaban regime. They would be provided with training in military skills and then equipped, formed up as military units.
Surely you would then reasonably expect that they could then be counted on to follow their natural interest and motivation to not again be placed under the thumb of elements of that kind of regime if it would seek to come back into power.
Against that background of my prior speculations, I was surprised to find recently a related history note. It was information in a presentation by mikitary historian Douglas Dietrich. Apparently that notion had already actually occurred in a near by geographic area a few years earlier. Those conditions arose in regards to the Iran / Iraq region at beginnings of 1980’s.
Under the US – sponsored 1950’s to 1980 Iran government of Shaw Raza Palavi, extensive moves toward Westernization of that nation occurred. Under programs pursued by that regime, women, often educated in Western nations’ universities, made major inroads into occupying high responsibility positions in the professions. These included Iranian universities faculty, law offices, government civil service, management positions in businesses.
Then in 1980. came the revolution in which the Revolutionary Islamic Republic of Iran was established, led by the clerics, very formally operating as a theocracy with religious law being held as supreme. Westernized socieo-econic-political forms were to be abolished.
In one of his presentations, Douglas Diettich said that the women, employed in such positions within the professions, were informed that they must end their participation in such activities, or else face execution. As a reaction to being confronted with that kind of drastic proposition, many chose to flee that country. Due to geographic closeness, having a shared national border with Iran, Iraq received a major influx of these Iranian expatriate women.
Iraq’s regime had seen the Iran revolution as its opportunity to try to grab some territory from Iran, hence beginning a war between the two which bogged down and became very costly to them both.
In this setting, a number of the women who had fled into Iraq from Iran under duress then were able to take up arms. They joined their efforts into a battle which they hoped would allow the regime of the new Islamic Republic of Iran to be overturned. The records show that their units proved to be quite effective, militarily speaking.
Tragically though, their potentials for successes came to be deemed to be not in the US national interests, as viewed by its top level foreign relations officials. This was on the basis that Iraq, and the military units composed by expatriate Iranian women professionals, were being interpreted as players who joined alliances with the then Soviet Union as the main source for their military supplies and anticipated future political support, in the event that that they succeeded militarily.
This was a time in which the US arranged to sell arms to Iran for use in its war against Iraq. Those deals were set up by members of the Regan presidency. They started as a way to leverage his election into office. They continued afterward as a an element in his actions to confront Soviet power world wide. Look into accounts under two headings. One is “October Surprise”. The other is Iran / Contra Arms Scandal.
Observe also that previously Iraq had purchased much of its military supplies from the US as well as from the USSR.
US, Iraq, WMD-s
In the Media, much attention has been placed on the question as to presence, or not, for Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD’s) in the hands of Iraq. The Younger President Bush made this the celebrated cause for the US invasion of Iraq following the Twin Towers Sept 2001 events. Afterward, the most widely published view holds that there turned out not to be any of those things found by the US & its allies.
But WMD’s – – chemical and biological agents – – actually had been in the possession of Iraq, at least for a period of time. However, these were items manufactured and sold by US companies to Iraq. with the quiet acquiescence of the US government. A witnesses to this fact stated he had been a member of a special forces team. During infiltration and recon operational mission he broke into the relevant Iraqi storage bunkers, and there read company receipts inside, and lettering stenciled on outside of the containers of such ordnance. Mr. Dietrich’s info is an additional account of this situation.
You can thus recognize that US officials would have strong motives to avoid national embarrassment which would arise if the presence these munitions were officially proclaimed by US / Allied officials. The trail of receipts which announced US origins likely would not go unnoticed if investigation followed high profile disclosure of such armaments. Thus a policy to have US forces in the field just bomb (not capture and retrieve) them can easily be understood as a tactic to remove inconvenient evidence.
Douglas Dietrich states that he served as an enlisted man in the ranks of the US Marines during the Elder President Bush’s Persian Gulf War. He reports being an eye witness, within sight of the event in which one of the largest storage areas containing chemical agents and bio-agents was exploded by US fighter-bomber aircraft attack. He reports that he saw the rising flaming clouds,and soon afterward experienced the strange odors stemming from some of those agents being dispersed with the winds, hence becoming a source for chronic health problems effecting the troops who had been there.
By contrast the US official position was and continues to be that our troops were not subjected to exposure to chemical and or biological weapons agents. But this is counter to the facts of the matter. A result is a rather new medical illness. This is the much talked about ‘Gulf War Sendrome’.
Some of these veterans face a very difficult predicament. A former army nurse from that theatre of conflict speaks out now advocating their cause. The veterans’ medical system has been skewed with intent to keep benefit expenditures low. It often asserts that the vets seeking treatments are officially deemed to only have psychological difficulties. In reality, though, these folks are subject to many important medical physiological pathology conditions due to exposures to exposures to toxic materials.
Signed, -om-