Iraqi refugees resort to desperate measures Iraqi Fatima Ahmaji earns money to feed her family in Damascus by starving herself.
Living with her two children in a bare room in Sayeda Zeinab, the Iraqi-majority suburb of Damascus, Fatima does not eat from dawn until dusk on behalf of people who have missed days of fasting during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.
“I am here in Syria jobless,” she told IRIN. “How can I survive and look after my children? I should and must work.”
Since September Fatima has been fasting, receiving 3,000 Syrian pounds (about US$60) each month from Gulf and Iraqi clients.
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The Syrian government does not allow the estimated 1.5 million Iraqis in Syria to work legally and an increasing number of refugees have taken up “harmful practices”, from prolonged fasting to prostitution, in order to survive.
“People are finding themselves in extreme situations and at the worst end we’re seeing child labour, early marriage and
survival sex,” said Sybella Wilkes, spokesperson for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Syria. “This is something that these families would never have resorted to in Iraq. They’re facing drastic measures in order to keep some semblance of quality of life.”
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An Arab Woman Blues - Reflections in a sealed bottle, reflects on her American liberation.
Iraqi refugees, for the most part very poor, do not venture out except to beg, or engage in some menial job. For the most part they stay cooped up at “home” if you can call that a home, living off charity...
Iraqis inside of their country – if you can still call that a country – live the same predicament.
During the great leader Saddam Hussein’s reign, food was subsidized.
Rice, flour, sugar, oil, soap, etc... During his great reign, and I am deliberately using the word GREAT, because compared to you 3 D’s and M’s it was GREAT, and that despite the sanction years, sanctions you imposed upon us - people could still afford to feed themselves and at least had a job.
Today Iraqi women vow to fast Ramadan not for one month but for the whole year, to feed their kids. The majority of Iraqis, i.e. over 80% live off, on less than 1 $ a day.
You say he was a dictator - Ha!
You are the dictators, you are the tyrants, you are the terrorists...
You are the ones who ruined this country, who pillaged it, who raped and killed its people and destroyed its history...
It seems we are losing the 'war' for the Iraqi heart and mind.
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