A Victory for Women - and Democracy

Before the Vote: Kuwaiti Women

(...and Frida)

Kuwaiti women fight - and win - the right to vote and run for office. But their struggle is not over.

Women in Kuwait: Free at Last?

(various papers)

A Step Towards Democracy in the Middle East

By Frida Ghitis

When I first heard the news, I thought someone made a mistake. Did Kuwait's parliament, on a day when almost no one expected it, really grant women the right to vote? Could it be true?

Oh, yes, it is true. But the political confrontation is not over.

The ammunition to stop women's rights was written into the law that grants them political freedom. And the next battles will be watched closely throughout an anxious Middle East.

Since it happened on May 16 -- a date democracy advocates say will live on in the country's history -- I've been talking to Kuwait's indefatigable women's rights activists. The Gulf's passionate suffragettes sound like they're walking on air. If you could radiate joy over the phone, if you could send a smile over an old-fashioned landline, we might all get a true sense of what this means to the women of the tiny Gulf emirate, who have spent more than 40 years pushing this political rock up the steep hills of their male dominated world. For now, at least, their voices beam with excitement.

And yet, you can already feel them bracing for what comes next. We have so much to do now, is what they all tell me. There's no time to rest. My friend Lulwa al-Mullah, the secretary general of the Women's Cultural and Social Society, said the activists are rushing to produce information about democracy for the until-now excluded female half of the country.

''Women have to learn about the law,'' she said, ''How to use it. How to be more active.'' Kuwaiti women already held influential positions. The country is no Saudi Arabia. But men had locked them out of the political process. Some analysts predict female voters in traditional families will simply follow the dictates of their husbands, strengthening the hand of Islamists. But al-Mullah disagrees. Women, she says, will prove themselves. Another brilliant activist, Massouma al-Mubarak, also dismisses claims that this is ultimately a victory for Islamists. It's a victory for Kuwait she said. And for democracy.

Strangely enough, the news that democracy took a giant step in Kuwait did not strike the West with the same impact of other democratic stirrings, such as recent events in Lebanon or Egypt. But Kuwait's parliament has shaken up the Gulf's political structures to their foundation, and we would do well to keep a close eye on what happens next. Kuwait's is no Jeffersonian democracy, but the Parliament more than doubled the number of voters from one day to the next. Nobody knows exactly where this will lead. And more than a few powerful men are unhappy with the decision.

The tiny Emirate, rescued by an America-led coalition from Saddam Hussein's grip in 1991, stands wedged between a changing Iraq and a militantly Wahhabi Saudi Arabia; between forces battling to determine if the future brings political freedom or theocratic oppression to the Arab world. This is the very conflict that the American government now views as key to stability not just in the Middle East, but in the entire world.

The way the winds blow in Kuwait will tell us much about where the entire region will ultimately move.

Women suffer the greatest indignities in undemocratic societies, that's why this campaign is waged with such passion. But the men who fought to defeat women's rights are also devoted to their cause. When Kuwait's prime minister unexpectedly brought the measure to a vote in parliament, the Islamists, who claim women's political participation goes against the dictates of their religion, suffered a punishing defeat. They went down fighting.

But before falling, they scored a potentially dangerous blow. And there is every reason to believe they will stand up and keep fighting. Anti-women legislators managed to add a clause to the new law requiring that women abide by Sharia, Islamic law, when practicing their new rights.

No one is quite sure what that will mean.

The euphoric celebrations that followed the unexpected victory for Kuwait's women are beginning to wind down.

The vote came too late to allow participation in the June 2 municipal elections. But the activists who made this milestone possible say they're already launching their campaigns to elect and be elected to the next parliament in 2007.

The question remains, what will the opposition do to stop them?

Frida Ghitis, an international television journalist for 20 years, writes about world affairs.

Original Articles here and here

My 5/11 in Washington DC

A dispatch from the front lines of the Capitol under (false alarm) terrorist attack
Friday, May 13, 2005

(printed in Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Miami Herald, Houston Chronicle)

WASHINGTON -- If you live in Washington, D.C., Wednesday looked like your standard spectacular spring day. To me, however, the day carried a tint of unreality long before the echoes of 9/11 reverberated through the Capitol and the White House, sending tens of thousands running down crowded stairwells, across marbled corridors and for several blocks down the streets around Capitol Hill. For Washington residents, what goes on in and around the Capitol on a standard day looks normal. To me, however, Washington remains a slightly unreal place. The "normal" sights on the Hill amaze me every time.

In just a few minutes I had already come across numerous members of Congress, high-powered lobbyists and other every-day Capitol characters. I climbed in an elevator just as a cluster of high-ranking U.S. military men escorted out their ramrod-straight uniformed colleagues from some other country -- a page out of Hollywood Central Casting. And I had just bumped into the former speaker of the House, 60-something Newt Gingrich, tenderly holding hands with his 30-something wife. The merry-go-round was only about to start spinning.

I was standing deep inside the Capitol, on the third floor of the House side, about to enter the House gallery, when I noticed a small commotion. Then the frenzy exploded. "Everybody out of the building!" Then the shout that followed me and 35,000 other people for an interminable few minutes: "Run, run, run!" Remember how after 9/11 everyone said it seemed like a movie? Now it looked as though we might have stepped into the same show. Only this time not as spectators.

I had handed my cell phone to security, so I had no immediate way of finding out what the emergency was. We heard rumors of airplanes and attacks as we ran down the street. We snaked through the crowd, thinking about anthrax and dirty bombs, as we passed groups of school children crying, elderly visitors struggling to keep up and anxious officers speaking into their crackling radios. We made way for motorcades and police cars rushing to safety the chosen few selected to run the post-apocalypse government in case our fearless leaders fail to prevent the doom about which they have so thoroughly warned us.

When it was all over, there were congratulations all around. Yes, everything went according to plan, we were told. Only six minutes to evacuate the U.S. Capitol. Bravo.

Of course, when the evacuation started, the suspicious plane was perhaps one or two minutes away. Maybe six minutes to evacuate is a new record, perhaps impressive, but not good enough.

The American tradition of generous praise and abundant self-congratulation eroded a bit in the aftermath of 9/11. But let's hope this 5/11 is used for more than handing out medals. The evacuation was not an over-reaction. How is it possible that an unidentified plane made it to within three miles of the White House and the U.S. Capitol? How is it possible, that more than three years and billions of dollars after Sept. 11, 2001, an incompetent student pilot can send the government of the United States into a state of chaos, emptying both chambers of Congress, the White House and the Supreme Court? And how, how in the world are we to interpret the fact that throughout this potentially catastrophic national emergency, the commander in chief, the self-described "wartime president," was playing on his bicycle on a Wednesday afternoon, and nobody thought he should be even briefly interrupted to learn about the situation?

No, this was clearly not a normal day in Washington. I will remember it, and I am sure so will the jaded Washingtonians who think they have seen it all. What happened on 5/11 should not pass for normal. We cannot wait for another disaster to start the "where-did-we-go-wrong" hearings. If reaction to the violation of restricted airspace went according to plan, then the plan needs revision. We should learn some lessons from this experience.

And just in case the truly important lessons go unlearned, let me pass on a small tidbit I learned watching others suffer through the ordeal: As long as the nation remains under threat, whatever you do, do not wear high heels in Washington.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05133/503714.stm

Runaway Bride - Global Edition

Nary a stir around globe

Frida Ghitis

Philadelphia Inquirer 5/05/05
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/2005/05/05/
news/editorial/11565615.htm

On Saturday morning, when the new pop culture brand "runaway bride" blasted onto the American stage, the New York Times carried a front-page story about wedding pressures felt by women thousands of miles away from Duluth, Ga.

It turns out Jennifer Wilbanks' wedding jitters would have taken her in quite a different direction had she and her groom-to-be lived in Kyrgyzstan. A common way of catching a wife in that Central Asian nation consists of, literally, catching her: setting up a trap and hunting her like an animal in the wild. More than a third of women there go into marriage against their will, via abduction. The hopelessly romantic Kyrgyz men have a good reason for pursuing their soul mates this way. The men "say they snatch the women because it is easier than courtship," the article explains, "and cheaper than paying the standard 'bride price,' which can be as much as $800 plus a cow."

I wanted to see how the runaway bride story was being reported in Kyrgyzstan. Alas, the story does not appear to have captured the Kyrgyz imagination.

With every news outlet in America offering incessant analysis of the legal and psychological ramifications of the busted nuptials in Duluth, it seemed a sure bet the story would make waves around the world. So, I set out to find how the story of love jitters played in other corners of the world.

One country where what goes on in America usually makes news is Kuwait, next door to Iraq. Kuwaitis, however, do not appear to have developed a runaway bride obsession. Maybe that's because while Katie Couric was interviewing just about every citizen of Duluth, the women of Kuwait were anxiously holding their breath. On Monday, the Kuwaiti parliament - all men - held a vote to decide if they would allow women to vote for the first time ever in that country. For years, brave and determined Kuwaiti women have struggled relentlessly to gain the right to vote. They did not win this time, either.

In Saudi Arabia, the bride story also failed to make a splash. No sign of it in the Saudi Arab News. There, coverage focused on a number of other matters. Saudi voters (new adjective-noun pair!) recently went to the polls for the first time in history, to elect half the members of weak city councils; the king and his men appoint the other half. Women, unsurprisingly, were not granted permission to vote by the men. I doubt any Saudi woman would survive running away from her groom. In fact, running away, Jennifer Wilbanks style, is all but impossible. You would never see a woman jogging (forget the shorts - black cover from head to toe is the only public clothing for Saudi women) or riding a bus alone, or flying without a male relative or without official permission from a husband or son or father.

The runaway bride debate will not die soon in America. The question of whether the bride deserves punishment or compassion remains a wrenching, brow-furrowing issue for television pundits. Because the matter weighs so heavily on the nation, I would like to make my own suggestion: Let's put the Duluth wedding on hold for a few months while Jennifer volunteers to work with women in Kyrgyzstan or Kuwait. She'll gain a whole new perspective on what it means to experience pressure as a woman.

Frida Ghitis writes about world affairs

Northwestern Thailand

Rushing back from the office


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