Ms. Magazine reported last week, "Prominent women's rights activists are increasingly being killed by Islamic extremists in Iraq. Twenty women have been killed in Mosul alone and a dozen more in Baghdad, reports Newsweek. As a result, women are living in fear, attendance by female students in school has declined, and more and more women are choosing to wear the hijab (headscarf) to avoid harassment and violence."

This hostile environment has made it increasingly difficult for women's rights activists to go out to the streets and protest.
Despite these challenges, 94 percent of Iraqi women want legal rights, according to a poll commissioned by Women for Women International.

How is the US involved in this? This reminds me of the notion of bootleg masculinity, when men feel oppressed, they oppress what is threatening, what they CAN oppress. In the building of a nation, historically, women have been in disadvandaged places, and often suppressed by the men that are trying to "create" that nation. Is history just repeating itself?
Shout out to the women's rights activists in Iraq! This is some scary stuff.