http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=35751BAGHDAD, Dec. 7 (IPS) - Hundreds of thousands of widows are becoming the silent tragedy of a country sliding deeper into chaos by the day.
Widows are the flip side of violence that has meant more than a million men dead, detained or disabled, Iraqi NGOs estimate. These men's wives or mothers now carry the burden of running the families.
"The total figure of men who have been killed, disabled or detained for long periods of time adds up to more than one and a half million," Khalid Hameed, chief of the Iraqi al-Raya human rights organisation told IPS. "The average number of Iraqi family members is seven, so about ten million Iraqis are facing the worst living circumstances."
In these circumstances, he said, women have had to "search for ways to survive and support their families at a time when not much help comes from the international community."
Most international NGOs left the country by last year apparently on the advice of governments of their countries pointing to growing violence and dangers to NGO members. snip
"We have never lived our lives as human beings should live," 42-year-old Dr Shatha Ahmed told IPS at her home in Baghdad. "The Iraq-Iran war took our fathers, and now the Bush war is taking our husbands and sons."