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Baghdad: Every week, letters from Iraqi widows spill across Samira Al Mousawi'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.
Violence has fallen sharply across Iraq, but the number of women left without breadwinners is mounting, and with only a fraction of them receiving financial support from the government, officials fear the consequences could be explosive.
"What shall the widow do, deviate from what is right?" Mousawi said. "Terrorist groups exploit the destitute."
No-one can give an exact figure for the number of widows left by the reign of Saddam Hussain, the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, the 1991 Gulf War and in bloodshed since the 2003 invasion.
Mousawi, basing her estimate on a Ministry of Planning report from mid-2007, put the number of divorcées 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.
Whatever their number, both parliamentarians say the women who have lost male family members since the US-led invasion are increasingly lacking the means to provide for themselves.
As conservative interpretations of Islam gain ground in Iraq, the opportunities for solitary women to play a role in the economy are shrinking. Many, especially those in poorer areas, are forced to stay at home by conservative Muslim families, rather than go out to work to support themselves.
'Prisoners'
"The number [of widows] is increasing day after day, it is becoming a time bomb, especially because many of them are still young," Othman said. "They become prisoners at home."
Even during Saddam's rule, Mousawi 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.
Sisters Umm Baqir and Umm Mohammad both lost their husbands in the violence, almost a decade apart.
Umm Baqir was thrown out of her husband's parents' home a week after gunmen killed him at a fake checkpoint in southern Baghdad last March.
Umm Mohammad's husband, a Shi'ite, was executed in 1999, killed during Saddam's reign for opposing his rule.
Each sister has four children they are trying to raise in the same tiny house in Baghdad's sprawling Shi'ite slum district of Sadr City, with precious little support from their families and even less from the government.
"I depend on my sister," said Umm Baqir. "My eldest daughter is in the final year of primary school. I don't want her to quit but it is getting too expensive. I can't afford it," she said.
Of Iraq's widows, only 84,000 receive government support from the Ministry of Labour and Social Support - between 50,000 and 120,000 Iraqi dinars (Dh145 to 350) a month.
"This is an analgesic ... not a solution," Mousawi said. Her committee has presented a draft law to parliament that would provide women without breadwinners with housing, to prevent them from resorting to desperate measures such as prostitution or from being exploited by militants.
Pleas to Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki's Shi'ite-led government have fallen on deaf ears: the bill has yet to be voted on, despite being read in parliament twice.
"They are busy with politics and the security situation and forget about other things," Mousawi said.
Social Affairs Minister Mahmoud Al Shaikh Radhi agreed that his ministry paid widows too little.
"The sum is not enough but we pay what is being allocated to us, this is what is in the government's budget," he said.
Some humanitarian organisations help widows and orphans where they can. One, Al Musbah, takes in one child from each family and gives them a small allowance as well as clothing and books, provided they promise to stay in school.
Al Musbah is helping Umm Hassan, who lost her husband, 9-year-old son and brother to a mortar round in 2004.
Al Musbah gives her 30,000 dinars (Dh120) a month for 11-year-old Hassan, the eldest of her three sons.
"Life is difficult," she sobbed as Hassan did his homework. "I want my children to keep going to school, I do not want them to lose their future. I do what I can, the rest (depends) on God."
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