On Women’s Struggles in West Asia

Estimated reading time: 12 minutes

In the 1970s, women comprised over 60 percent of the 10,000 students at Kabul University. This was achieved under the Soviet-backed People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan, which also abolished practices such as bride sales and implemented various other reforms beneficial to women. Whereas the U.S. has historically involved itself in the politics of West and Central Asian nations under the pretense of defending women’s rights, it has not delivered on these promises; on the contrary, it has entrenched the very reactionary forces that keep those societies fractured. These reforms of the Democratic Party of Afghanistan, however, would not last (Al-Shammari, 2023). Following the Soviet occupation and the rise of foreign-backed forces, primarily the U.S.-backed Mujahideen, Afghanistan descended into decades of sectarian conflict. Over time, this conflict completely destabilized the nation and destroyed all infrastructure and democratic institutions that could have supported even a modicum of progressive reform. We have seen this pattern repeated across other regions of U.S. geopolitical interest, such as Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and many others. Considering a brief recollection of the tragedies of those nations caught in the imperialist crosshairs of American aggression, the greatest casualty was not only the nation and her people, but the very potential of what they could have become. Western liberalism, far from advancing human rights, has enabled imperial violence that destroys nations and suffocates their democratic potential. In West Asia and elsewhere, true progress for women and oppressed groups does not — and has never — come from foreign intervention or liberal pretense, but from self-determined, democratic development driven by the people themselves.

Iraq was bombed into desolation — its electricity grid, water systems, hospitals, roads, bridges, and even sewage systems were reduced to rubble. Their bloodlust still unquenched, the U.S. used depleted uranium rounds, poisoning the land and condemning generations to birth defects and cancer. Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, when asked whether she regretted the slaughter of over half a million Iraqi children, calmly declared on 60 Minutes that it was “worth it”  (Twaij, 2022). A personal memory, I recall once watching a lecture by Arundhati Roy who remarked on the U.S. justification of the bombing of Iraq, “We are expected to believe that the U.S. Marines were sent on a feminist mission.” One truly has to applaud the audacity of the lie. However, this kind of propaganda is hardly uncommon in the history of U.S. imperialism; it is very much par for the course that they hide behind the language of human rights and progressive Western feminism to justify their carte blanche bombing campaigns that eviscerate women, men, and children alike. The hypocrisy cannot be ignored — a woman in a position of senior leadership in the U.S. actively contributed to a campaign that resulted in the catastrophic rollback of women’s rights, safety, and security.

In Syria, America waged a relentless crusade to overthrow Bashar al-Assad, once again cloaking itself in the rhetoric of “democracy and human rights” — not unlike Iraq (and countless other cases throughout the 20th century). As a result, the nation that was once called the cradle of civilization is today a blood-soaked nightmare of unimaginable human tragedy, all because the U.S. demanded a regime change in favor of someone more amenable to their investor and business class interests (Naiman, 2015).

To add to the ensuing horror even further, America continues its crusade of calamity in Yemen, where its bombs continue to shred civilian infrastructure, while American money and weapons fuel Saudi aggression. Meanwhile, Israel, armed to the teeth with U.S. military aid, carries out daily atrocities with impunity, trampling human rights as the world watches in silence (Saleh, 2025). And I have only scratched the surface of American imperialism — and only over the last few decades, in just one part of the world — all while it claims to act under the moral mission of civilization and humanitarianism.

Is it reasonable, then, to expect nations broken and shattered by such wars and foreign intervention to function in any democratic manner? We do not — and cannot — know what these nations might look like today had they been allowed to develop on their own terms, guided by the specific and unique cultural, material, and economic practices democratically determined by their own citizens. The argument is often made that West Asian nations remain undeveloped because Islam is a backward religion that breeds terrorism and oppression — as if religious belief alone determines the course of a nation’s progress. But progress is not born of ideology; it comes from the democratic participation of the masses and the historical and material conditions in which they live and struggle. The idea that faith in a particular god sets the limits of development is not only wrong — it is ahistorical and frankly, absurd. The Western Liberal Democracies, dripping with a colonial arrogance so vast and insatiable it eclipses all of history, lecture such nations on “Progressive Politics.” Yet was it not these same nations that razed to the ground even the tiniest sliver of hope and institutional framework required to achieve such a thing?

Furthermore, if the Western model of development is so superior — if the ideals of the Enlightenment were truly as revolutionary as they are claimed to be – then why did it take centuries for women, Black people, people of color, Indigenous peoples, minorities, Queer communities, and immigrants to even begin to be treated with dignity and granted equal rights? And that struggle, I should add, is still far from over. As a glaring example, just four years of Donald Trump was enough to destabilize the American “Democratic” system so thoroughly that the federal right to abortion — Roe v. Wade — was overturned. Just four years of one reactionary leader. Now imagine decades of that, layered with war, foreign occupation, sabotage, and poverty, with not a single institution left standing to hold back the worst instincts of violence and repression. That is — and has been — the reality for much of West Asia, and far beyond.

Not only has Western liberalism failed to deliver on these rights and promises throughout its historical development, but it continues to fail — with equal, if not greater, force — even today. On this, I offer both historical and contemporary evidence. Consider first what the famed liberal hero Alexis de Tocqueville had to say about the workers’ revolt of the June Days Uprising in 1848: “After the outbreak of the workers’ revolt, de Tocqueville was not only in favor of conferring emergency powers on Cavaignac but recommended shooting on sight anyone caught ‘in a posture of defense’” (Losurdo, 2011, ch. 10).

Now consider Joe Biden, the self-proclaimed champion of the working class, who calls himself the “most pro-union president” and has been hailed by historians as the greatest advocate for workers since Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Loomis, 2024). Yet this same president blocked a bill that would have granted sick leave to railroad workers, denying the demands of more than 115,000 workers who had gone on strike in 2022. And this was not some anomaly or failing of character — it is the function of liberalism itself, which gives with one hand and takes with the other, only retreating when popular movements threaten its order. Even on the rare occasions when liberals do offer concessions, they are steadily eroded into nothing by one reformist negation after another. As Losurdo (2011) writes, “At issue was canceling, or more or less drastically reducing, the democratic concessions won from liberal society by the popular movement.” And as de Tocqueville made clear, when that fails, the gun will do. As the old saying goes: scratch a liberal, and a fascist bleeds.

If we are indeed asked to believe that liberalism is an ideology adorned with glitter and gold, then we must confront an unavoidable question: how can such ideas give rise to some of the most depraved acts of horror ever known to humanity? The contradiction between liberalism’s glittering promises and its reality is precisely the primordial force that necessitates its overwhelming need to oppress.

To further emphasize: as we have already demonstrated, these liberal ideas were never inherently superior; they were not even exclusively European. The Renaissance and the Enlightenment — pillars of so-called “Western thought” — emerged only through a deep engagement with earlier Greek and Roman texts, which in turn drew heavily on the scholarly achievements of Egyptians, Persians, Indians, and Mesopotamians (modern-day Iraq) (Davidson, 2006). Yet today, many of these regions are dismissed by the West as “uncivilized” or “underdeveloped.” The irony would almost be laughable, were it not so tragically real. As Michael Parenti observed, “The third world is not underdeveloped, they are overexploited.”

Moreover, even in their European form, these ideas were never truly progressive; they were always fundamentally Hobbesian and Machiavellian in their outlook on human nature. It was only the emergence of genuinely revolutionary ideas that forced liberals to concede to democratic ideals. The liberal framework, as we have discussed, can only muster reforms that preserve the existing state machinery, whereas revolutionary thought dares to transcend it. Consider the institution of slavery: a liberal might express shock at the slave’s plight and propose marginal improvements — better clothing or food — while the revolutionary would cry out, “Come, comrade, let us shatter the chains of slavery!” That is precisely the kind of transformative progress that followed the Bolshevik Revolution when peasants gained literacy and women secured equal pay, voting rights, and the opportunity to hold office (Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, 1983). Throughout history, liberals have consistently resisted the sweeping democratic changes championed by revolutionary movements.

Is it any wonder, then, that nations devastated by Western colonial and imperial ambitions remain broken beyond comprehension? Those of us in the West who are not members of racially or economically privileged groups did not receive our rights out of benevolence; rather, we were forced, for the first time in history, to compete with a rival political system that was materially superior and genuinely progressive. It was this competitive drive — fueled by the extraordinary social and human progress of the Soviet Union, combined with decades of development untainted by colonial or imperial interference — that enabled Western societies to evolve into what they are today.

If these same conditions were systematically denied to nations in the Global South through neocolonial exploitation, debt entrapment, illegal coups, and invasions, then it is not only unfair but intellectually dishonest to blame them solely for their own lack of progress.

If we were to allow these nations to develop according to their own histories — if we were to let their people prosper on their own terms, and if the forces of production, labor, and industry were free to drive genuine democratic participation — then, just as in every other society, the rights of minorities, women, and other oppressed groups would naturally flourish over time. Not out of moral charity, but because the conditions of their growth would make progress inevitable. We are told to measure progress by the standards of those who denied it to others. But given the chance — given peace, sovereignty, and the right to chart their own course — these nations would not need lectures from the West. They would show us what real progress looks like.

Citations:

1. Al-Shammari, M. (2023), “Women’s Education: Cultural and Religious Solutions from the Heart of Afghanistan”, Middle East Council on Global Affairs, https://mecouncil.org/publication/womens-education-cultural-and-religious-solutions-from-the-heart-of-afghanistan/
2. Twaij, A (2022), “Let’s remember Madeleine Albright for who she really was”, Al Jazeera, https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/3/25/lets-remember-madeleine-albright-as-who-she-really-was
3. Naiman, R (2015), “WikiLeaks Reveals How the US Aggressively Pursued Regime Change in Syria, Igniting a Bloodbath”, Truthout, https://truthout.org/articles/wikileaks-reveals-how-the-us-aggressively-pursued-regime-change-in-syria-igniting-a-bloodbath/
4. Davidson, N (2006), “Islam and the Enlightenment”, Socialist Worker, https://socialistworker.co.uk/socialist-review-archive/islam-and-enlightenment/
5. Saleh, A. (2025), “Yemen dismantles UK-Saudi espionage network and continues to attack strategic US and Israeli targets”, Peoples Dispatch, https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/01/08/yemen-dismantles-uk-saudi-espionage-network-and-continues-to-attack-strategic-us-and-israeli-targets/
6. Loomis, E. (2024), “Biden’s labor report card: Historian gives ‘Union Joe’ a higher grade than any president since FDR” Government Executive, https://www.govexec.com/management/2024/05/bidens-labor-report-card-historian-gives-union-joe-higher-grade-any-president-fdr/397002/
7. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (1983), United Nations, https://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/cedaw25years/content/english/CONCLUDING_COMMENTS/Russian_Federation/Union_of_Soviet_Socialist_Republic-CO-1.pdf