Women in Iraqi police a sign of progress

Ever seem to you that the news from the Middle East is always bleak? Well, take heart. From Iraq, where the United States sought to plant seeds of democracy, there is evidence of some budding.

The good news is that Shiites and Sunnis and Kurds have been trying to resolve tough procedural issues over oil rights and shares of seats in parliament, not with guns and bombs in the streets, but in parliament itself. Despite some glitches, the aim is to enable a landmark national election to go forward in January. Whether or not they make that deadline, this is democracy in action, albeit fragile democracy.

But even more significant news, a major step for women, went largely unnoticed outside Iraq. Fifty women graduated alongside male classmates as senior officers in the national police force. In next year's class, there will be 100 of them. The jobs are among the highest-paying in Iraq. The majority of the women in this year's class finished law school. There have been some women in lower police ranks, but they have not until now been eligible for the elite officers' corps.

Although the world's attention has latterly moved from Iraq to Afghanistan, this new recognition of women in a male-dominated Arab world is important. As Tom Friedman, now a columnist, but with long experience in the region, said: Transforming Iraq will impact the whole Arab Muslim world. Change in Afghanistan will just change Afghanistan.

Many scholars and economists, both Arab and non-Arab, have reasoned that the political and economic repression of women is one of the significant reasons for the backwardness of the region. Successive reports by the United Nations have deplored the fact that one in every two Arab women can neither read nor write. Clearly, society as a whole suffers when half of its productive potential is stifled.

Because of their oil wealth, the so-called Gulf states have experienced unprecedented development in recent years. A survey by the New York-based Freedom House, which monitors freedom around the world, suggests that female citizens in the Gulf region have profited from recent government decisions to rely less on foreign, imported labor.

In Kuwait, women now have the same political rights as men. They can vote and run for office in parliamentary elections. Bahrain has appointed its first women judges. In Saudi Arabia, women can now study law, obtain their own identification cards and check into hotels alone. But Freedom House concludes that they remain "among the most restricted (women) in the world."