Besides the human trafficking, gang rapes, widows selling their daughters to pimps, and starvation situations discussed in the piece, the most shocking bit of information has to do with the sheer number of prositutes and widows in the country.
According to the article, there are 8 million widows in the country, 350,000 in Baghdad alone (the article did not specify what percentage of those were the result of the “Fight for Democracy” or um, WAR!), and more horrifying, an estimated 15 percent of those widowers have either volunteerly or forcibly turned to prositution.
With no socio-economic safety net for the living causalities of war, most of these women who have chosen or have been forcibly placed into the profession cite hunger as their primary motivation. The most common story seemed to be one of mothers putting food on the table for their starving children. Most interesting about the issue of Iraqi widows of war is the starking contrast of the care for them under the American-led invasion and the Iran-Iraq war. According to the article:
“Prior to the US invasion, Iraqi widows, particularly those who lost husbands during the Iran-Iraq war, were provided with compensation and free education for their children. In some cases, they were provided with free homes.”
Read the full article here.
Related posts:
- Iraqi depicts Rumsfeld
- Mack: On Iraqi Blogger’s Trip Out West
- New Book Drops Bomb on CIA
- Oops, Wrong Iraqi Becomes Prime Minister
- Iraqi Classifieds
According to the article, there are 8 million widowers in the country, 350,000 in Baghdad alone
That’s obviosuly a false statement. There probably aren’t 8 million women of “child bearing” age in all of Iraq. That’s a third of the population! I Al Jazeera trying to say every adult woman in Iraq is a prostitute!?
Posted by programmer craig | August 25, 2007, 10:06 amnot to be picky, but a widow is a woman and a widower is a man.
8million widowers would be 8million men – i believe you meant 8million widows…
Posted by Anonymous | August 25, 2007, 10:11 amcraig, you didn’t read the article carefully, did you?
8 million widows in iraq today – that includes those widowed by the iran-iraq war, and by disease or accidents or whatever the hell. NOT 8million widowed by the US 2003 invasion and occupation.
and without a social safety net, widows in general are turning to prostitution.
Its really pretty logical, and highly probably.
Posted by Anonymous | August 25, 2007, 10:17 amprobable.
Posted by Anonymous | August 25, 2007, 10:18 amgood looking out anonymous-thanks for catching my definitional error!
Posted by Maytha | August 25, 2007, 10:32 am8 million widows in iraq today – that includes those widowed by the iran-iraq war, and by disease or accidents or whatever the hell. NOT 8million widowed by the US 2003 invasion and occupation.
I did read the article, and I did read that. What does that have to do with the fact that if there were 8 million Iraqi women who were widows, that would be basically every adult woman in Iraq.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad
Baghdad (Arabic: بغداد Baġdād) is the capital of Iraq and of Baghdad Governorate. With a metropolitan area estimated at a population of 7,000,000, it is the largest city in Iraq.
If the claim that there are 350,000 widows in Baghdad is true, that means there are 50,000 widows per million people. That would yield a total of 1.25 million widows in Iraq. Not 8 million.
If we remove the Baghdad stats from Iraq’s claimed overall totals, we end up with 18 million Iraqis outside Baghdad, with over 7.5 million widows amongst that population.
That would mean that over 40% of the population of Iraq (outside of Baghdad, is a widow.
Does that make sense to anyone?
Really?
I’m glad Al Jazeera (and Kabobfest) is covering this tragedy, but this has got to be one of the most flawed news articles I’ve ever read!
Posted by programmer craig | August 25, 2007, 11:45 amPC,
Why do you hate Arabs? Why do you hate Palestinians? Why do you hate Muslims?
What should be done to/with the Palestinians living in Israel/Palestine?
Posted by Pali-American | August 25, 2007, 1:45 pmWhy do you hate Americans? Why do you hate Israelis?
Why ask why?
And why put words in my mouth?
I dislike you pretty intensely, and you aren’t a Muslim. You aren’t Palestinian, either. Is it really so simple as you suggest?
Is everyone who doesn’t like you a bigot?
Posted by programmer craig | August 25, 2007, 3:32 pm“Why do you hate Americans? Why do you hate Israelis?”
I am American and don’t hate myself or my fellow Americans. I don’t hate Israelis.
I’ll allow you to put your own words in your mouth. Do you hate Palestinians? Arabs? Muslims?
Posted by Pali-American | August 25, 2007, 3:36 pm“Is everyone who doesn’t like you a bigot?”
It depends on why they don’t like me, doesn’t it?
Posted by Pali-American | August 25, 2007, 4:20 pmIt depends on why they don’t like me, doesn’t it?
What if they hate you because you are a retarded asshole who is a pathological liar and is verbally abusive? Bigotry?
Example of your dishonesty:
I am American and don’t hate myself or my fellow Americans. I don’t hate Israelis.
There isn’t one thing in that sentence that is true.
Posted by programmer craig | August 25, 2007, 5:16 pmAs fascinating as it is to read these arguments about craig hating arabs,i’m not seeing the connection to the very legitimate question he has raised about the accuracy of these statistics.
In all fairness, if we assume that there are 27million people approximately in Iraq, and sloppily divide that number in half to represent the number of women, that’s 16million women. If 8 million of these are widows, that’s 50%. Which is perhaps a bit much.
Bear in mind that these numbers came from the Minstry of Women’s Affairs in Baghdad, and that the article already pointed out that there are ‘few reliable statistics’.
In my opinion, the number of widows for baghdad is probably pretty accurate (350,000), since the Ministry is much more likely to have accurate information in the city where it is based. However, I think perhaps the 8 million in the rest of the country may be overstated. It could be that they had some statistics for a particular area, and then just applied those statistics to the whole country since its rather hard to go out and collect that info. Census-taking in a civil war can be tricky.
But as the news source quote the Iraqi government, i don’t think its a bad piece of reporting – it is the Ministry that gave out that number.
Anyway, quibbling over numbers misses the point of this article entirely – there’s a VERY large percentage of Iraqi women who are widowed and have no social safety net, so must resort to desperate measures. And that is tragic, and something the occupation should be ashamed of. I’m certain craig would agree – surely trafficking in women and rampant prostituion are not part of his American Dream.
Posted by Anonymous | August 26, 2007, 12:30 amvery well stated anonymous! I too was incredulous about the veracity of the whole-country widow statistic (and should have included that in the post), but I also agree, that the rough estimate on Baghdad, sounds much more believable.
Posted by Maytha | August 26, 2007, 10:21 am“What if they hate you because you are a retarded asshole who is a pathological liar and is verbally abusive? Bigotry?”
If those things were true, it would not be bigotry. I am however none of those tings. And calling me a “retarded asshole…” is pretty verbally abusive.
And yes I am American and don’t hate my fellow countrymen and i don’t hate Isralies.
But you’re still a racist who hates Palestinians. You only come on to Kabob to verbally abuse people, distract from the substance of the post and obfusicate. That’s seriously your only purpose here.
Posted by Pal-American | August 26, 2007, 2:30 pmHum…….Bush’s new name then should be “Abu Sharmeet”.
Posted by أبو سنان | August 27, 2007, 9:10 amreliable stats on iraqis are very hard to pin down due to the scale of the displacement and lack of security, but i remember reading on the bbc that something like 12% of families were thought to be headed by women.
Posted by nadia | October 30, 2007, 9:55 am