War time “success”

The American government is hailing the Iraqi mission a success. Having captured
Saddam Hussein and removed the threat of weapons of mass destruction,
the Americans prepare to withdraw from Iraq. All is well in the world
now, isn’t it? Hmm…debatable.

A recent article on BBC’s website brought
attention to a growing and alarming trend in Iraq, and it wouldn’t
surprise me if it started becoming a trend in other war-torn countries
as well. Iraq has a high proportion of young widows, often with
families, often with no earning capacity, and a shortage of young,
unmarried men. As a result, some people in Iraq are looking to polygamy
as a solution for war widows. The women of Afghanistan are in a scarily
similar position, where they can no longer financially support their
children and often leave them at shelters and orphanages. I have a
feeling this won’t be the last we hear of such trends.

The woman in the article, Hanan, thought she was marrying a divorced
man, only to find out after marrying him that he was in fact still
married. And although she is one of the rare few who can raise her
family on her single income, she – and many other women like her -
believe that she needs a “man-shelter”. As a young Indo-Canadian
woman, although the importance of marriage in my own heritage is
paramount, the idea of a ‘man-shelter’ is very foreign to me. It
could be cultural tradition that supports this belief in Iraq, but it
can also be fear: fear of the unknown; fear of being alone, particularly
in a male-dominant, conservative Islamic society; and possibly even fear
of succeeding in such a society and challenging the cultural traditions
and beliefs upon which a whole peoples is based.

Setting aside the “man-shelter” idea for a moment, it is concerning
that women feel they need to remarry in order to survive and to feel
secure, and it is even more concerning that some politicians are
actively promoting the idea of polygamy as a solution by putting forward
a proposal awarding financial incentives for men who take on a second
wife. Instead of supporting polygamy, why not use this as an opportunity
to build capacity among women? Those same financial incentives could be
more efficiently used to develop culturally-appropriate educational or
micro-financing programs that allow women to support their families
without having to become dependent on a man as his second wife. But have
no fear…the American government said that the Iraqi mission was a
success.