It began when a convicted domestic abuser was sentenced to parade around town dressed in traditional Kurdish women’s clothing. The ruling by a judge in Marivan, Iran prompted 17 members of parliament to complain to the justice ministry that the action was “humiliating to Muslim women.”

Masoud Fathi reacted differently; he popped on a dress. His friend Dler Kamangar snapped a picture. They posted it to Facebook with the slogan “Being a woman is not a tool to humiliate or punish anyone” and so launched The Kurd Men for Equality campaign. They’ve garnered over 18,000 Facebook “likes” and the improbable endorsement of American actress Rosario Dawson.

(RELATED: Saudi men dress as women)

Since the campaign kicked off last April, other men in drag have taken to the streets, with heavy follow-on posting to Facebook. They hold signs with slogans such as “hoping for the day that sexuality, gender will not be a way of evaluating humanity.”

“Women are part of our personality, our character. If we oppress one part of our character, we oppress ourselves,” Fathi said in an interview with the Kurdistan Tribune, “If one part of us is unfree, our whole cannot be free, either.”

It makes for fascinating dichotomy that a male-led feminist movement would emerge in a region with a dubious  record for women’s rights. Diana Nammi, Executive Director for the Iranian & Kurdish Women’s Rights Organization, told CNN that honor killings, genital mutilation, and child marriages remain a large part of contemporary culture.

“Officials put the number of honor killings at a few hundred each year, but I think that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The realities are far darker,” said Nammi.

In politics, Kurdish women enjoy greater rights than females in neighboring countries: by law, 30% of the Iraqi Kurdistan parliament’s members must be women. The main Kurdish party in the Turkish parliament has instituted a similar quota, requiring 40% of the seats go to women.

“It seems the Kurdish people are trying really hard to fight for the rights that have been taken from them. I guess women’s rights is part of that whole thing,” activist Pedram Penhan told CNN, “I wouldn’t label myself as a feminist, but I would say I’m an activist who does anything possible to make the world a better place for every human.”

Images from the Kurd Men for Equality Facebook page

The post Kurdish Men Dress In Drag to Support Iranian Feminism appeared first on Green Prophet.

We have long suspected that in the coming years, as climate change and population expansion put pressure on natural resources, conflicts will arise. The ongoing Egyptian protests demonstrate how repressed rage eventually surfaces when autocrats rule and people are deprived of basic goods and services. It is also interesting how such suffering can skew perception. Iraqis living in the oil-rich Kirkuk province near Kurdistan believe that their Kurdish neighbors are maliciously depriving them of water via the Dukan Dam, though that is not the case. Water scarcity in the entire Middle East region is putting pressure on everyone, but already tense Sunnis seek to pin the blame. Sheikh Khaled al Mafraji told Al Arabiya that their Kurdish neighbors are closing off the dam valves during winter, which means that they do not have enough water to drink or for irrigation. UN figures show that of the 900,000 inhabitants of Kirkuk, 16% rely on agriculture.

They farm wheat and corn in the winter and sesame, tomatoes, and watermelon in the summer.

Sheikh Mafraji added that he was prepared to organize demonstrations if the situation doesn’t improve.

Cooler heads show a different perspective. One landowner describes how in 2005, peasants were forced to give up 1/3 of their land. They claimed that Kurds then exerted pressure through water deprivation.

In Abdul Rahman al-Obeidi’s view, officials in Baghdad and the Sulaimaniyah province are not doing enough to avert what is a potential crisis.

At present, the region is receiving half of its usual annual rainfall. And the dam, which currently holds 1.3 million cubic meters of water, is dangerously low. Of that amount, only 600,000 may be used, since the rest is being held as an emergency reserve.

And the dam on the lesser Zab river has been closed every year during winter in order to preserve water for spring farming.

Tahseen Kader is the former Minister of water resources for the Kurdistan government. Given that many of Kirkuk’s residents are in fact Kurdish, he suggests it is absurd to suggest that they would deliberately harm their neighbors.

With a long history of ethnic tensions between Kurds and Iraqis, both governments would do well to arrest this problem before it gets out of control.

:: Al Arabiya

More on water shortages in the Middle East:

Yemen’s Water Shortage Could Worsen Security

In The Face Of Nile-lessness, Egyptians Protest Water Shortages

Thailand To Help Jordan Make Artificial Rain

image via martijn.munneke

The post Iraqi Sheikh Threatens To Demonstrate If Kurds Don’t Share Water appeared first on Green Prophet.