15 EACH MONTH

A couple of days ago I was listening to Slots Bennett's show and someone made reference to all the progress in women's rights in Afghanistan and Iraq because of U.S. actions. This is an odd notion of progress because in many ways, there has been either no progress or the situation has deteriorated. Over 3 years ago, in Afghanistan's Herat province, "women are burning themselves to escape abuse" and it is unlikely the situation has changed very much.

In the Great Neo-Con Laboratory for Democracy (Iraq), McClatchy reports that women in the South are being terrorized by religious fundamentalists:

In Basra, vigilantes wage deadly campaign against women
By Jay Price and Ali Omar al Basri | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Thursday, October 4, 2007

BASRA, Iraq — Women in Basra have become the targets of a violent campaign by religious extremists, who leave more than 15 female bodies scattered around the city each month, police officers say.

Maj. Gen. Abdel Jalil Khalaf, the commander of Basra's police, said Thursday that self-styled enforcers of religious law threatened, beat and sometimes shot women who they believed weren't sufficiently Muslim.

"This is a new type of terror that Basra is not familiar with," he said. "These gangs represent only themselves, and they are far outside religious, forgiving instructions of Islam."

Often, he said, the "crime" is no more than wearing Western clothes or not wearing a head scarf.

The violence is displacing the few members of religious minorities in the area. Fuad Na'im, one of a handful of Christians left in the city, said Thursday that the way his wife dressed made the whole family a target.

Back in August, the Washington Post also reported that the situation in Basra is not at all good:

As British Leave, Basra Deteriorates
Violence Rises in Shiite City Once Called a Success Story

By Karen DeYoung and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, August 7, 2007; A01

Three major Shiite political groups are locked in a bloody conflict that has left the city in the hands of militias and criminal gangs, whose control extends to municipal offices and neighborhood streets. The city is plagued by "the systematic misuse of official institutions, political assassinations, tribal vendettas, neighborhood vigilantism and enforcement of social mores, together with the rise of criminal mafias that increasingly intermingle with political actors," a recent report by the International Crisis Group said.

As recently as February, Vice President Cheney hailed Basra as a part of Iraq "where things are going pretty well."