According to Al Shammari, widows who have lost their husbands due to violence account for an estimated 40% of the women of Iraq.
Umm Nahla's husband joined al-Qaeda in 2004, under the threat of death. They lived with their daughter in Diyala, in northern Baghdad, and the organization had a stronghold in the region then, making resistance very difficult.
"Al-Qaeda was supported by Arab tribes in Diyala to fight the Americans out of Iraq. They organized several attacks each day in Baghdad, Diyala, Mosul, Tikrit and other cities," she says. "Al-Qaeda threatened to kill him if he didn't join, and said they would kill me and our daughter. So my husband joined them, fearing for his family. He became involved in many attacks on the U.S. military and Iraqi army, and he was absent sometimes for days."
In 2007, he was among a group of 100 fighters in an attack against the U.S. military in northern Baghdad, and was killed in the battle. The group was led by Prince Ameer, a military leader who trained with the Republican Guard under Saddam Hussein.
"The prince told me that he wanted to take care of me and my daughter, and that his wife would provide us with money and food and everything we needed," she said. "I began to fear for the future, and the future of my daughter. Not only did I not know how to find a way after the death of my husband, I did not have any idea how I would continue life and get back any pleasure and happiness. It had been hell since the arrival of the base to our city, especially when my husband joined al-Qaeda."
But the support of Prince Ameer and his wife was not to come without a great cost.
"One day, the prince's wife came to my house and she told me that she would take care of me and my daughter and we started to talk, and I started to complain to her about our future, and she told me to not be worried, and that she and her husband would support us," she says. "We became friends, and she talked about my husband and how he had fought bravely, and that it was now in the hands of God, and how he is in the right place now, because he fought and died for Islam, religion and principle.
"Then she invited me to her house to visit her, and she had invited all the wives, mothers or sisters who lost their husbands, sons or brothers, fighting the U.S. military or the Iraqi army. She said that your husbands have their rightful place with God, and you should get the right place for you, and she started to recruit us to be suicide bombers."
She asked what would happen to their children, should they die as suicide bombers, and was told that they would be taken in by the prince and his family, and cared for as if they were their own children.
"Most of the wives who lost their husbands are unhappy in their lives and have lost hope in life, and you see the misery and unhappiness in their eyes as well," she says. "One of the widows, Umm Mohammed, was always telling me that she wants to die and get rid of this miserable life. She says she has always been eager to bomb herself, as revenge for the death of her husband."
But Umm Nahla was not satisfied with this option. She felt that al-Qaeda had destroyed Iraq and taken it backwards. "I was more concerned about the future of my daughter. I wanted her to get a good education and a great future and a happier life than mine. So I waited for the opportunity to run with my daughter to the south, in order to be safely out of the hands of al-Qaeda, and when I had the chance, we fled to Wasit, for a better life and a happier future."
Al Shammari says, "The Iraqi government should be very serious about the development of the lives of these widows, and provide them with protection and the amount of money they need to live, and provide them with programs to develop skills and find employment for them, because these widows may constitute a significant risk to the Iraqi people, if they are being used by militias or al-Qaeda."
Wasit Province is currently the home of an estimated 1500 Iraqi widows.
However, widows are not the only group still targeted by al-Qaeda for suicide missions; orphans are not immune, either.
19-year-old Zahra's parents were killed in an air strike during an army attack. She lived with her family in Diyala City. Soon after her parents' death, she was taken in by women with connections to al-Qaeda, who later recruited her for a suicide mission.
Wearing a bomb belt and approaching an Iraqi checkpoint in Baquba City, she panicked and wanted out of the mission. Crying, she called over an Iraqi soldier, and told him she was wearing a bomb belt. He calmed her down, telling her everything would be OK, as other soldiers removed the belt from her. She is currently being detained in a women's prison in Baghdad. Women's Rights Organization is arguing on her behalf, that since she was forced into the mission by al-Qaeda, she should not be imprisoned. But the government wants to keep her in the facility until they feel it is safe for her to be out.
According to Ali al-Dabbagh, an official spokesman for the Iraqi government, there are an estimated 2.5 million orphans in Iraq, and, he says, it's more than the Iraqi government can handle. There has been great interest internationally in adopting the orphans, but for many reasons, it is not allowed.
So, with few options for these children, and a government that can't provide for them, they are prey to al-Qaeda and other militia groups who have a use for them. And those who have already lost the most - the widows, the orphans, and the mothers who no longer have children - are still those who have the most to lose.
