Widows adrift in land that cannot provide

MOSUL - Three sewing machines in a dingy apartment were all Munna Abdul Adeem Ahmed could scrape together when she set up a tailoring co-operative for poor widows. She soon realised it was not enough.

More than 1000 women from the northern city of Mosul turned up looking for work on the first day. Ahmed finally stopped registering new names after the 1200th widow signed up.

The women were mostly young, poor and desperate for work. Many lost their spouses during the conflicts that have blighted Iraq for 25 years. Traditionally, widows have been supported by their late husband's family or other relatives, but in a country brought to its knees by war, there is now little to spare for the most vulnerable members of society.

"We don't have enough money to clothe our children," said Nawal Ayob, who lost her husband in the bombing of Mosul during the first Gulf War in 1991 and has since joined Ahmed's co-operative. "We have no support. How can we survive?"

There are few reliable statistics on the number of widows, but the Ministry of Women's Affairs has recorded at least 206,000 in Iraq, outside of Kurdish provinces. There are just over half as many widowed men.

Women's groups, however, say anecdotal evidence suggests the number is far higher, with some estimates saying there are 250,000 out of a population of about 7 million in Baghdad.

"In every house in Iraq, you will find at least one widow," said Azhaar al-Hakim, member of the Women's Alliance for a Democratic Iraq, an activist group. "In some houses, there may be two or three."

For many widows, life is blighted by grinding poverty. Finding a job in post-war Iraq is hard enough for men - securing one as a widow in an increasingly Islamic society is almost always an uphill climb.

Some widows take up menial jobs they once would not have even considered, Hakim said, recalling one widow she met in Karbala who worked as a maid despite holding a college degree. Others have been forced to sell off possessions or live off handouts from relatives, say women's groups.

Buthaina al-Suheil, head of the Iraqi Family Organisation which helps support 200 widows in Baghdad, said: "We have women whose children left school to earn a living to support their mother."

When Suad Hussein Musshada's husband died, she moved out of her house to live with her father and sent her son to an uncle.

Six years later, the 40-year-old, who also signed up for Ahmed's co-operative, is still looking for a job.

Widows and aid groups say their plight is made worse by the Government's indifference.

During Saddam Hussein's rule, widows of men killed in battle - particularly during the 8-year Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s - were often compensated, sometimes given land and free education for their children.

But this compensation began to dry up after foreign sanctions in the 1990s crippled the economy. Now, rampant corruption and violence have pushed widows to the side, campaigners say.

Ahmed, the co-op organiser, said she had travelled to the Mosul Governor's office seeking money for cloth and a building to replace the tiny apartment her seamstresses toil in. But their requests were not granted.

Ahmed, whose husband was disabled during Iraq's conflict with Kurdish rebels in the 1970s, also complained about the lack of governmental support at a meeting of local women ahead of December elections.

The influential head of the local women's centre sympathised but could only offer some blunt advice: "You just have to learn to become self-sufficient".

- REUTERS