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Nuha Farraj's large brown eyes flash with pride and sorrow as she recalls the last morning she spent with her husband.

Just three weeks before, Ms. Farraj married Ali Hazem, a 21-year-old recruit to Iraq's embattled national police force. They woke up early together on the morning of Dec. 7 and she saw him to the door in his crisp blue uniform. Her husband, she said, truly believed in what she calls the new, democratic Iraq. "He just wanted to defend his country," she said, her lips quivering slightly but her eyes dry.

An hour after Mr. Hazem left home that day, he was dead, killed by a car bomb that targeted his unit. Just 18 years old, Ms. Farraj is now a widow, just like her mother.

It's one of the biggest of Iraq's many tragedies that Ms. Farraj's tale is entirely common here. Though there are no reliable estimates, the country's Minister For Women says that there could be as many as two million widows in Iraq, which would mean they make up 8 per cent of the population. Some believe the number of widows is even higher, perhaps three million. A recent study of women found that 10.7 per cent of women surveyed were widowed.

The staggering figures are a testament to the horror show that has been Iraq's recent history: 24 years of Saddam Hussein's murderous rule, wars and harsh United Nations sanctions; then the U.S, invasion in 2003 and the hurricane of violence it inspired.

"We don't really know how many widows we have in Iraq. There are no statistics about women," said Salma Jabou, an aid worker and an adviser to President Jalal Talabani on women's affairs. "We do know that these widows don't have any income, they don't have a place to live in, that they don't have gas or electricity. They have no education, maybe only primary school."

The widows are only the worst off. One year after the United States invaded Iraq and toppled Mr. Hussein, U.S. President George W. Bush claimed that "the advance of freedom in the Middle East has given new rights and new hopes to women." In fact, the precise opposite has occurred in Iraq.

Mr. Hussein's Iraq, for all its flaws, was a staunchly secular society and women and men were equal before the law. Five years after the U.S. invasion, women have become a persecuted majority.

Surveys conducted by the Washington-based Women for Women International found a staggering rise in domestic abuse during the past five years, as well as a precipitous drop in the number of girls being enrolled in school. United Nations figures suggest that the number of illiterate women has jumped from just 2 per cent in the 1970s and 1980s to 27 per cent today.

Many women have hit rock bottom. Tens of thousands have been forced into prostitution, including many from the vulnerable Iraqi refugee community spread across the Middle East. In recent months, there's even been a disturbing rise in the number of women suicide bombers inside Iraq.

Because of the violence on the streets, many women in Baghdad say they only leave their homes when it's absolutely necessary, leaving even the shopping to their sons, brothers and husbands. On the occasions they do go outside, most women - even those who aren't Muslims - wear a head scarf and form-concealing Islamic dress to avoid drawing the attention of the militias, Sunni and Shia, that impose a harsh form of sharia law in many Baghdad neighbourhoods.

"We've experienced such tragedies, such sadness. We can't go out on the street at all. We can't participate. We get threatened," said Hazar al-Bayati, an 18-year-old music student who has lived all her life on Baghdad's Haifa Street - perhaps the most dangerous stretch in the world for most of the past five years as Sunni and Shia militias battled for control of the street.

Ms. al-Bayati was among several hundred women who gathered at a Baghdad hotel to mark International Women's Day on March 8. Five years after they were supposed to have been liberated, the women rallied under the plaintive banner "Stop neglecting women. Stop killing women. Stop creating widows."

The Women's Day gathering was considered such a target that the Iraqi police stationed a truck mounted with a heavy machine gun at the hotel entrance. Anyone entering was subjected to three separate physical searches.

Security is also tight around Narmin Othman, one of the most powerful women in the country. She holds two portfolios - Environment Minister and acting minister for women - in the cabinet of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. A former minister in the Kurdish regional government, she also has the ear of her fellow Kurd, Mr. Talabani.

She spends much of her time moving between her home and office, which are both in the fortified and U.S.-protected green zone in the heart of the city. When she goes out in the city, she does so in an armed convoy. When she needs to get her short, stylish hair done, she flies to neighbouring Jordan.

There are few women's hair salons still open in Baghdad, a city that before the war had a population of 5.4 million people. Ms. Othman said that while some salons still quietly operate underground, none advertise the services they provide out of fear they could be targeted by the militias.

Five years ago, Ms. Othman was one of those who believed that overthrowing Mr. Hussein's regime would pave the way for Iraq to become a secular, democratic model for the rest of the Middle East. "In the beginning, we really had another dream," she said in an interview at her Ikea-furnished home, which serves as a gathering place for women's activists. "That dream is not coming true."

In assessing the past five years, Ms. Othman is careful to first list what has gone right. Iraq's new constitution is remarkable for the Muslim world in that it requires 25 per cent of seats in parliament be allocated to women, with a similar quota of positions in the senior bureaucracy also reserved for women. Though the quotas often go unfilled, Ms. Othman said, their existence has helped ensure women are in positions of power.

But the ills, she says, easily outweigh those gains. The chaos in Iraq has allowed groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq to terrorize women who don't follow their harsh interpretation of Islam. In some cases, Ms. Othman believes the government has been part of the problem: A clause in Iraq's new constitution allows different family and divorce laws for each religious sect, something that has effectively made sharia - which allows the man to unilaterally divorce the woman, but not vice versa - the governing principle in many parts of Iraq.

Her efforts to have that clause in the constitution reopened have hit a firm wall: the conservative beliefs of her fellow cabinet ministers, including Prime Minister al-Maliki.

"They are not against employing women. In fact, it's the opposite - they are supportive," she said of Mr. Maliki and his associates. "But they take an Islamic view. ... They believe that power in the family must belong to the man, and that men and women are not equal."

It's an attitude that holds sway in large swathes of Iraq. In the southern city of Basra, which was once one of the most casually dressed cities in the entire Middle East but is now under the control of Shia militias, graffiti on the walls warn women not to wear makeup or go outside without proper Islamic dress. "Whoever disobeys this will be punished," the message reads. "God is our witness that we have conveyed this message."

It's no idle threat. Police say more than 40 women have been killed in recent months for violating the dress code. In at least two cases, the woman's children were slain along with her.

"Women have no choice but to listen. If they don't listen, they will be killed," Ms. Othman said.

Iraq is such a sexist, anti-women place in 2008 that even something as unthreatening as a widows' centre needs protection from the world around it. The al-Aramil Development and Training Centre for Widows is hidden on a backstreet in the relatively safe central Baghdad neighbourhood of Karada. But the iron gate is still kept locked at all times, and two men with Kalashnikov rifles stand guard over the entrance.

A centre that teaches bereaved women things such as their legal rights and how to operate a computer would infuriate some radical Islamist groups if they knew about it, so the centre's all-female management decided not to put up a sign announcing their presence in the building. It was considered too big a security risk.

Still, the al-Aramil centre is a rare place of refuge for Iraqi widows. In addition to the skills workshops, the women are given a chance to work sewing and folding sheets for modest salary of $5 a day, plus lunch. For many of the dozens of women who come every day, the widows' centre provides their only social contact outside the home.

"I'm scared to be on the streets. I go from my job here to my house," said Karima Challoub, a 46-year-old whose husband died of a heart attack during the U.S. bombing of Baghdad in 2003. She sends her 13-year-old son to do the family's shopping. "I'm afraid to go to the market. I don't even think of going somewhere like a cinema, or a park."

The centre, however, is facing a financial crunch that could threaten its programs. With no government support, it may not be able to meet its $10,000 rent bill for the year.

Activists say the centre's bleak situation is representative of the entire women's rights cause five years after the U.S. invasion. "When the regime fell, we hoped for human rights and democracy and especially women's rights. What we got was the opposite. The militias and the terrorists are the authority," said Baghdad lawyer Tameem al-Azzawi, one of the centre's volunteers.

"If you come back in five years, I think you will not see people like me. Because I speak out, I'm a threat to them."

By the numbers

Women for Women International, a non-governmental organization working in Iraq, recently surveyed 1,513 women. Here's some of what they found.

10.7 %

Were widowed

70.5 %

Didn't know whether they had the right to move freely

52.7 %

Didn't know whether they had the right to an education

76.2 %

Said girls in their family were not allowed to attend school

56.7 %

Found it harder for girls to attend school than before the war

52 %

Didn't know whether they had the right to political participation

63.9 %

Felt that violence against women was increasing

67.9 %

Found it less likely now to be able to walk down the street as they please

56.7 %

Found it harder now to work outside the home

Source: Women for Women

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Back to Baghdad

Mark MacKinnon covered the fall of Baghdad for The Globe in April of 2003 and has returned to the country four times since then, visiting the Sunni Triangle, Baghdad and the Shia south. But because of the kidnapping risk and restrictions on mobility, this is the first time he has returned to Baghdad in more than three years. To read his blog, visit our website.

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