The Key administration is about to decide the extent of New Zealand's
commitment to any proposed international retaliatory action against the Islamic
State in Iraq and Syria. However, for LGBT New Zealanders, as for many of our
fellow citizens, this may be a difficult issue to grasp.
Back in 1993, New Zealand passed the Human Rights Act and put an end to
military service discrimination, with little dissent from the armed forces chief
of staff. As long as someone was competent in combat, that was all that
mattered. Over time, same-sex couples and their children have moved into family
quarters, and some have been posted overseas to various peacekeeping and other
military duties. Some undoubtedly served in Afghanistan, where New Zealand's
commitment was largely limited to medical and humanitarian infrastructure
provision. Whether that commitment will ultimately yield permanent results is a
moot point. Afghanistan is a highly fragmented nation of multiple contending
religious and ethnic factions, which affect state building but also hamper the
Taliban from resurrecting their late nineties theocratic regime for the same
reason. It is telling that New Zealand granted requests from Afghans who had
provided assistance to New Zealand troops in Helmand Province as interpreters.
In all, ten New Zealand service personnel lost their lives during New Zealand's
tenure in Afghanistan. We got involved in that conflict because New Zealanders
were killed when al Qaeda launched its murderous attack on New York's Twin
Towers on September 11, 2001 amidst its three thousand civilian casualties.
However, at best, the outcome of our involvement in that particular conflict is
ambiguous. Afghanistan's government may not have collapsed (yet), but the decade
of conflict has destabilised neighbouring Pakistan and fomented radical Sunni
Islamist antagonisms within it. The Taliban did execute a handful of gay men,
but at the same time, there is a strong domestic tradition of same-sex male
relationships and sexuality.
What about Iraq? In 1990, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein annexed
neighbouring Kuwait. During the eighties, he had been financed and armed by the
United States because their former ally, the Islamic Republic of Iran, was now
governed by an anti-American Shia Islamist dictatorship. Unfortunately, the
dictator interpreted US non-intervention against the use of poison gas against
Iraqi Shia, Iranian soldiers and Kurdish cities during the Iran-Iraq War of the
eighties as carte blanche
for further military adventurism outside that context. The consequence was the
Gulf War of 1990-1, which the United States led against Iraq and which resulted
in its expulsion from Kuwait, but no regime change. That had to wait for another
decade, albeit with CIA subversion attempts, sporadic bombing forays, continued
economic sanctions and finally, in 2003, an Anglo-American-led invasion and
occupation of Iraq for the next eleven years. Saddam Hussein was located and
executed after a summary trial. However, decades of Saddam's dictatorial rule
had crippled Iraq's civil society, that set of non-governmental civic
institutions that nurture and cement effective democratic involvement and
citizenship. While Iraqi resistance groups did exist, most were necessarily
situated outside Iraq and had no firm roots in Iraqi society. Consequently,
religious institutions occupied the power vacuum, with predictably detrimental
results. Under Saddam, Sunni Muslims had dominated the Iraqi state and political
institutions, but without the regime, Shia Muslim paramilitary groups took over
governance of Baghdad suburbs and began to harass, abduct, assault, torture and
execute gay men within that city. Resultantly, many lesbian and gay Iraqis fled
the country. Over the last decade, I've noted accounts from Iraq about this
steady deterioration in lesbian and gay human rights, which has been covered in
a number of excellent articles in Australia's DNA magazine during that period.
Insofar as Shia homophobic persecution goes, the Mahdi Army, the League
of the Righteous (Asiab al-Haqq) and the Supreme Council for the Islamic
Revolution in Iraq appear to be the primary instigators.
(Before the fall of Saddam, it should not be assumed that lesbian and
gay life in Iraq was utopian. According to Wikipedia, while the Iraqi Criminal
Code 1969 may have 'decriminalised' male homosexuality by omission, there are
numerous other obstructive elements that shuttered Iraqi lesbian and gay lives.
Gay erotic media (Paragraph 215), same-sex marriage certificates (Paragraph
375),immodest acts (Paragraph 401) and immodest advances toward someone of the
same sex (Paragraph 402 (b)) indicate some degree of prior repression under
Saddam, but nothing of the current intensity, however).
Unfortunately, when it came to Sunni Islamism, the situation was no
better. Formed in 2006, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has been
bankrolled by Sunni religious conservatives in Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia
who have taken advantage of the civil war in neighbouring Syria and the weakness
of Baghdad's infrastructure and poorly trained and integrated armies to make
considerable territorial advances. They first came to international attention in
2014, after they conquered the cities of Mosul (population 1.8 million) and
Tikrit, and advanced on Baghdad. It has an estimated 3000-10,000 combatants in
the field. At the same time, al Qaeda disowned its leadership for excessive
violence in the pursuit of their objectives, such as crucifixion and beheadings
of captives (February 2014). ISIS' early successes were accompanied by several
instances of apparent homophobic persecution, involving designated Iraqi gay
men in some occupied areas being thrown to their deaths from high buildings.
However, this instability and civil war is arguably the consequence of the hasty
and ill-planned Anglo-American intervention and occupation that began in 2003.
Once entrenched there, the United States and its allies found it difficult to
extract themselves from the quagmire that they found themselves within and were
unable to exit for another decade. Hardly had they done so when ISIS arose in
earnest and began rapid territorial conquests, although it now seems to have
bogged down. As for Iraqi Shia, ISIS is a sectarian organisation which has
attacked Shia mosques, religious festival processions and Sadr City, a heavily
Shia Baghdad suburb over the last decade.
Much of the blame
for ISIS' militancy and Sunni support for its objectives can be attributed to
Nouri al-Maliki, the former Iraqi President (2007-2014), widely accused of
fostering Shia domination of the armed forces, civil service and his own
administration. Moreover, his regime also attracted criticism for widespread
government corruption, poor educational attainment, and the use of capital
punishment, torture, arbitrary detention and repression against its opponents.
Given this context, ISIS made initial rapid progress, but is now experiencing
setbacks due to Iraqi Sunni dissent and diversity, Iraqi Shia majority and
Northern Kurd resistance to their expansion. In August 2014, Haidar al-Abadi
replaced him and reportedly had an excellent record as a pragmatist coalition
builder- but is it too late to undo the malignant effects of the prior al-Maliki
era?
And so, New Zealand is debating whether or not we should become involved
in this context. At present, New Zealand seems set to post 143 military service
personnel to the wartorn nation. which will consist of military trainers,
protective personnel and possibly some SAS intelligence and surveillance
specialists, which may co-operate with Australian military personnel in the same
area. Unfortunately, it seems incontrovertible that the last decade of US-led
military intervention and occupation has only worsened matters for lesbian and
gay Iraqis, and there are real questions for New Zealand's LGBT communities
about whether or not we should back a Shia-led regime that has shown little
inclination to prevent acts of Shia antigay harassment, violence and homicide
within Baghdad and elsewhere. On the other hand, ISIS is similarly opposed to
the existence of metropolitan lesbian and gay communities in areas of Iraq under
its occupation. We face a thorny dilemma. Some of us would argue that ISIS is
actively persecuting and murdering gay men and therefore, we should support New
Zealand involvement in military intervention against it, while other antiwar,
figures would argue that the last decade of intervention has only worsened
matters for Iraqi lesbians and gay men, so why then should we support closer New
Zealand involvement in this quagmire? Certainly, we should increase our refugee
and asylum intake from Iraq given its tortured current circumstances. But beyond
that, more intensive involvement is debatable. Opinion polls indicate New
Zealanders are almost evenly split on the advisability or otherwise of our
military involvement in this context.
Recommended:
Clive Simmons: "The New Dark Age" DNA 101 (June 2008): 96-100.
Austin Mackell: "Under Attack" DNA 122 (March 2010): 62-67
Tim Warrington:
:"The Killing Fields" DNA149 (June 2012): 34-39
Wikipedia/LGBT rights in Iraq: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Iraq
Suunivie Brydum: "ISIS propaganda claims gays are pedophiles, animals"
Advocate: 19.09.2014: http://www.advocate.com/world/2014/09/18/isis-propaganda-claims-gays-are-pedophiles-animals
Josh
Lowe: "Iraq Crisis: Who or What is ISIS?" Prospect: 12.06.2014: http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/iraq-crisis-who-and-what-is-isis/#.U7xqD_mSyPY
Bartle
Bull: "Iraq Crisis: Who is Haider al-Abadi?" Prospect: 15.08.2014: http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/world/iraq-crisis-who-is-iraqs-new-prime-minister-heider-haidar-al-abadi
