Voices of Iraq Article: Iraqi women foot the bill for their nation's plight

By Monther Hamad Zahi
Baghdad, Dec 19, (VOI) – Thirty-year-old Malak Saleh has never imagined there would come a day when she has to support her family of 14, all of them unable to work, after their father was killed in one of the car bombings taking place in Baghdad on nearly a daily basis.

Malak has never thought that Iraqi women would become one day the victims of their country's tragic reality.

"We have never thought that the situation would become this bad or that the citizens of one nation would be engaged in sanguinary conflicts. Unfortunately the days brought about this appalling hell burning us all," Malak told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).

Umm Ali was shocked by the death of her son in clashes in the central Baghdad district of al-Kifah after he went out to buy some things for his wedding place as he was getting ready to tie the knot.

"Do the people involved in fighting realize that many innocent Iraqis are paying the price?" wondered Umm Ali, adding "most families are now thinking of leaving their houses to live in neighboring countries."

A report issued by women's rights organization in Iraq, a body advocating the rights of Iraqi women and releasing monthly reports in this respect, pinpointed "90-100 married Iraqi women are widowed daily as a result of acts of violence and sectarian killings."

"There are currently 300,000 widows in Baghdad alone and eight million all over Iraq, which means that widows make 35% of Iraq's total population, 65% of the total number of Iraqi women and 80% of married women," the report said.

Dr. Hoda al-Aanbaki, a women's rights activist, said "the main problem faced by widows in Iraq is poverty. Due to this tough condition, most families had to sell their furniture just to keep the wolf from the door, while others had their children drop out from school to work."

Aanbaki criticized the "brutal practices confronting Iraqi women."

"Occupation troops and even Iraqi security agencies tend to detain women in a bid to press their husbands for instance," she said.

Aanbaki appealed to "all humanitarian organizations concerned to intervene and force decision makers in Iraq to stop detaining infants with their mothers in Iraqi jails and refrain from arresting suspects' relatives, particularly wives, to press them." She termed this behavior as "shameful and has nothing to do with civilized human behaviors."

Miaad Ali, a widow mother of four, urged "the Iraqi government to provide jobs for the women who have lost their husbands in acts of violence and offer lucrative payments that would guarantee them and their families a decent life."

"I live with my four children on 75,000 Iraqi dinars (roughly 54 dollars), which is a scanty income to subsist on," said Ali, adding "there are much worse widows than me."

The women's rights organization report denounced "rapes committed against Iraqi women in American jails, the recent of which was the rape of a young woman after she was detained with her family in Kirkuk by U.S. forces in July. Released afterwards, the young woman was slain by her own family as a victim of honor killing."

The Iraqi woman's tragedy is really vivid and her sufferings augmented as a citizen, a woman and a mother responsible for supporting her family in a country where killing is thriving and the stench of death overwhelming all places to increase the number of widows every day, and even every hour.