‘Sisters in War’ author Christina Asquith is on her way to the Seacoast

Heading to Iraq to cover the U.S. invasion in 2003 was not an easy decision for journalist and author Christina Asquith. Armed with nothing but her press credentials from the New York Times, she entered an active war zone in Baghdad.

“It was terrifying. I was really nervous,” Asquith said. “I had no bulletproof vest, no night vision goggles, no helmet. I didn’t really have any official network if something were to happen to me, if I were kidnapped.”

Perhaps the only people more horrified than Asquith were her parents, who tried to hide her passport to prevent her from leaving, she said. But, with encouragement from a friend serving as a foreign correspondent in Iraq, she mustered the courage to go.

The assignment proved extremely dangerous for Asquith, a Boston University graduate who now teaches at the University of Vermont. As the war dragged on, the atmosphere became increasingly hostile for American journalists, and Asquith was forced to go into hiding with an Iraqi family she befriended.

The time Asquith spent with this family would serve as the basis of her new book, “Sisters in War,” which was released by Random House late last year. The book follows four women—two Iraqi, two American—as they struggle for women’s rights in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq.

Asquith will read from “Sisters in War” at RiverRun Bookstore in Portsmouth on Tuesday, Jan. 26, and at Water Street Bookstore in Exeter on Wednesday, Jan. 27.

The book first introduces Iraqi sisters Zia and Nunu. Asquith met Zia while the latter was volunteering as a translator for the United States in Baghdad. At the time, Asquith was interviewing Iraqi women at Hussein’s former palace. Her conversation with Zia lasted several hours, and the two became friends.

Zia’s Shia family had suffered immensely under Hussein’s repressive regime. Her father had lost his job after being accused of opposing the ruling Ba’ath Party, and international sanctions made basic necessities like food and medicine difficult to obtain. They had no access to information about the outside world that wasn’t filtered through Hussein’s propaganda machine.

“They grew up in a completely closed society,” Asquith said. “They lived in a state of fear, constantly, that they would either say something bad about the regime or be accused of saying something bad about the regime.”

Zia’s family was elated when the U.S. military toppled Hussein. They believed the Americans would liberate them, restoring Iraq to the proud nation of educated artists, writers and scientists it had been decades earlier. Iraqi women hoped to “cast off decades of oppression and reconstruct themselves in a western image,” Asquith said.
“That didn’t happen.”

Within a matter of months, the family’s elation turned to terror as a deadly opposition movement arose against American forces and their allies. Women who interacted with foreign soldiers or worked for the Americans received death threats. Islamic fundamentalists took command of many villages and imposed their social beliefs, forcing women to wear veils and consent to arranged marriages. Women who violated their strict laws were publicly whipped or beheaded.

“Under Saddam, the more fervent Islamic believers were kept at bay,” Asquith said. “Once he was gone, I don’t think the Americans were prepared at all for this really fervent rise in Shia Islamism.”

Because she served as a translator for Americans, Zia became the target of numerous death threats. At the same time, Asquith became increasingly fearful of a personal attack from radical insurgents.“The war soured and it became really dangerous for both of us,” Asquith said. “(Zia) had many attempts made on her life, and journalists were getting kidnapped and attacked.”

Zia’s family warned Asquith that insurgents might target her hotel, which housed a number of foreign reporters. She moved into their house, aware of the irony that she was accepting protection from the very people the United States had come to liberate.
It was during this stay that she came up with the idea for her book. As one of the few female American journalists working in Baghdad, she felt the plight of Iraqi women was a sorely underreported facet of the war.

“I was hearing these incredible stories about what women were going through, and I felt I was one of the few reporters over there that was able to tell it,” said Asquith, who has also written about women’s rights in Afghanistan, Oman and Jordan.

“Sisters in War” also follows two American women who served in Iraq. Heather Coyne was an examiner in the White House’s Office of Management and Budget before she joined the Army to fight in Iraq. Although she was an anti-Bush Democrat, she believed the war would bring liberation to the Iraqi people. And so she ignored the protestations of her liberal friends, who thought the war was motivated by Republican oil interests.

The book’s other central character is Manal Omar, a Muslim American who had lived in Baghdad and was involved in international aid work. Unlike Heather, Manal anticipated that the war would be a disaster, and she went to Iraq to offer her help.

Heather and Manal started a women’s center in Baghdad, the first of its kind in Iraq. But the challenges they encountered were both daunting and perilous. Many of the American aid workers in Iraq did not understand the local language or religion, and they often put money and resources in the wrong hands. Even more frightening, they were threatened by bomb-happy anti-American insurgents “who would destroy anything that the Americans created,” Asquith said.

Other efforts to promote women’s rights in Iraq were questionable. Lynne Cheney, wife of the former vice president, started her own women’s center, but it turned away women who were critical of the United States. Asquith suspects Cheney’s endeavor was actually designed to promote the Bush administration’s military and economic agendas. “They put politics in front of helping Iraqi women,” she said.

Advancing the cause of women in Iraq will mean reconciling women’s rights with the traditions of Islam. But women are not limited to the two options of western ideals versus Islamic extremism.

“There’s a third way, and that is Islamic feminism,” Asquith said. “In the Koran, you can find many examples of the Prophet Muhammad protecting women’s rights.”

There is still a monumental amount of work to be done in Iraq. In addition to ending the ongoing war, the nation must rebuild its flattened infrastructure—a process that will take many years. But Asquith is hopeful that women’s rights will eventually prevail in Iraq. The next generation of Iraqi women, she said, will be educated and free.

“Once, hopefully, the situation settles and the violence ebbs, you’ll see women have positioned themselves to be on equal standing with men,” she said.

Christina Asquith will read from “Sisters in War: A Story of Love, Family, and Survival in the New Iraq” at 7 p.m. on Jan. 26 at RiverRun Bookstore, 20 Congress St., Portsmouth, 603-431-2100, and at 7 p.m. on Jan. 27 at Water Street Bookstore, 125 Water St., Exeter, 603-778-9731.