Iraq Minister On War Widows: 'There Are Too Many' To Help

[babylonsister]

Iraq’s War Widows Face Dire Need With Little Aid

Johan Spanner for The New York Times

Ahmed Hassan Sharmal, right, and his extended family of 30, including three war widows, are forced to share only two trailers.

By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
Published: February 22, 2009


BAGHDAD — Her twin sisters were killed trying to flee Falluja in 2004. Then her husband was killed by a car bomb in Baghdad just after she had become pregnant. When her own twins were 5 months old, one was killed by an explosive planted in a Baghdad market.

Now, Nacham Jaleel Kadim, 23, lives with her remaining daughter in a trailer park for war widows and their families in one of the poorest parts of Iraq’s capital.

That makes her one of the lucky ones. The trailer park, called Al Waffa, or “Park of the Grateful,” is among the few aid programs available for Iraq’s estimated 740,000 widows. It houses 750 people.

As the number of widows has swelled during six years of war, their presence on city streets begging for food or as potential recruits by insurgents has become a vexing symbol of the breakdown of Iraqi self-sufficiency.

Women who lost their husbands had once been looked after by an extended support system of family, neighbors and mosques.

But as the war has ground on, government and social service organizations say the women’s needs have come to exceed available help, posing a threat to the stability of the country’s tenuous social structures.

more...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/23/world/middleeast/23widows.html?hp

[arcadian]

1. War Widows? More like Holocaust survivors.

n/t

[ensho]

2. here we go again - women's needs a threat to stability of social structures

so tough titty, the widows are on their own.

the crimes we americans let happen in Iraq will never, ever be forgotten.

[madokie]

3. This just tears me up

that this has happened and is still going on and its all being done in you and Is name. Worst than sad

Maybe I do need to go work in yard and kick and throw things now.... Stop the killing, right damn now, shaking head here,,, damn son stop the killing. These are people just like you and me are and they haven't done one damn thing to deserve this even if it would be possible as to ever be deserved. Stop the killing man, stop the fucking killing already

[babylonsister]

6. ...

:hug:

[slipslidingaway]

4. About 1 Million Killed, 4.5 Million Displaced, 1-2 Million Widows, 5 Million Orphans

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090216/tirman

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Iraq/Iraq_ShockingHumanToll.html

[slipslidingaway]

5. ....n/t

[slipslidingaway]

7. We have a responsibility to help these widows and refugees n/t