Suicide epidemic striking Kurdish women

[ck4829]

Three weeks after she was burned, the petite 18-year-old lay in a hospital bed, her head, arms and upper torso swathed in cotton. Her seared face was daubed with ointment.

She looked at the ceiling and thought about her new life. "I don't know about the future," she said, still looking up. "It will be whatever Allah brings." She refused to give her name.

A gas stove had exploded when she'd tried to light it, she said.

Her nurses don't buy it. They recognize the pattern of the burns and have seen hundreds of cases like hers, many with variations on the same story. A teenage girl with a young marriage, and "a cooking accident."

In many parts of the world, such accidents would be attributed to "honor killings," the murders of young women by family or spouses because they didn't work hard enough, complained too much or dated the wrong men. There are honor killings in Iraqi Kurdistan , as well.

But health-care professionals and women's experts stress that what they're seeing here is different: a suicide epidemic in which Kurdistan's girls and young women are setting themselves on fire.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20070925bcusiraqsuicides_attn_national_foreign_editors_ytop

[MADem]

1. Good grief--for cellphone envy, and things of that nature...

It's the most painful way to die," Yones said. "I don't know why they do it. In other cultures, they may use pills or guns, but for Kurds, they burn themselves. We even hear of cases among Kurds who have immigrated to Europe ."

Hundreds more have survived with horrible scars, only to have their husbands and friends desert them and parents hide them from the rest of the family and visitors out of shame....Almost none admits a suicide attempt, partly because suicide is forbidden for Muslims. But half a dozen nurses and physical therapists interviewed at Kurdistan's two major burn units, in the cities of Irbil and Sulaimaniyah , said that about 80 percent of the women brought in with burns had tried to kill themselves....The rising number of cases, Yones said, coincides with the economic boom triggered by the U.S.-led ouster of Saddam Hussein in 2003. Saddam had been the region's greatest enemy, periodically attacking the Kurds and killing tens of thousands.

Now, strong security that's prevented much of the terrorism that racks the rest of Iraq along with a wave of construction and foreign investment have made Kurdistan a Middle East success story.

In the cities, hundreds of new buildings are under construction, the skylines dominated by scaffolding and cranes. Porsche and Mercedes SUVs pick their way through battered taxis in the anarchic traffic, and residents choose between traditional market stalls and gleaming shopping centers and malls.

New jobs are luring families from villages steeped in traditional culture to the cities, where Western values— such as young women picking their own husbands— are coming to the fore.

Also, young people from poor families see material goods pouring into the cities and don't understand why they can't have cell phones or cars, Monsour said.

Many of the suicides are in families that have moved to the city in the past year or two, Yones said. ...