Iraq has million-woman social time-bomb (up to 2 million divorcees and widows)

[sabra]

Source: Reuters

BAGHDAD, Jan 31 (Reuters) - Every week, letters from Iraqi widows spill across Samira al-Moussawi's desk. One wrote to ask whether she should spend what scant money she gets on her infant or on school books for her older son.

The member of parliament and head of a parliamentary women's committee is at her wits' end as to how to answer the desperate pleas from what could be as many as one to two million women.

...

Moussawi, basing her estimate on a Ministry of Planning report from mid-2007, put the number of divorcees and widows close to 1 million of a total of 8.5 million women aged between 15 and 80.

Narmeen Othman, Iraq's acting minister for women's affairs, put the number as high as 2 million in a country of 27 million people.

...

Even during Saddam's rule, Moussawi said, widows were paid a monthly salary and given land and a car, which helped to placate many, despite Saddam's brutality. He also rewarded members of the military who married widows. That stopped when he was overthrown.

Read more: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/KAM744152.htm

[MadMaddie]

1. One of my dear friends who is still drinking the coolaid a bit

thinks that the Iraqi women are living better now then when they lived under Saddam....and of course I told him that that news was not correct.

Sigh....I am still working on him...

[stillcool]

2. and a million plus dead people

[eppur_se_muova]

3. Good news for freepers ... more mail-order brides!!

...and they can't afford to be choosy!

:bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce:

(OK, I know that's sick ... but do you seriously think there won't be cases of exactly that?)

[dysfunctional press]

4. well...if half of them stopped shaving, maybe there wouldn't be a problem...

:sarcasm:

i'm here all week...try the veal.

[tanyev]

5. Gosh, will Laura have time to get over there for another magical fix-everything photo-op?