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The deteriorating economic situation in oil-rich Iraq has pushed thousands of people into begging. |
BAGHDAD — Just a few years ago, Um Abdul-Muthaleb was a happy mother and housewife.
Today, she is living on the streets of Baghdad, where she begs to survive along with her children.
"I don’t have any other place to go with my three children," the 38-year-old mother told IslamOnline.net.
Um Abdul-Muthaleb has never imagined in her worst nightmares ending up a beggar, but after losing everything she once had, that became the only option to feed her kids.
"I lost my husband four years ago and I did not have a family to support me and my children.
"We were forced out of our home because I didn’t have money to pay the rent, so we didn’t have a choice but to go to the streets searching for help."
Today, whenever Um Abdul-Muthaleb sees someone she used to know in her once happy life, she instantly tries to hide.
"Sometimes I see friends or far relatives stopping in places where we beg and I just cover my face. I already feel ashamed enough."
Aid workers say thousands like Um Abdul-Muthaleb are everywhere in Iraq.
The majority of them are women, most of them war widows, and children, mostly orphans who have lost their families to violence in post-invasion Iraq.
"The situation is so delicate that anyone can find a relative or a friend begging, sometimes covering their faces from shame from what the war drove them into," Bushra Yehia, spokesperson of Hope for Iraqi Children organization, told IOL.
She remembers the day one of the organization's volunteers came to her office crying.
"She figured out that one of the girls begging at a traffic light was the daughter of her best friend who was killed two years ago with her husband in a suicide attack."
Hand-Tied
Um Abdul-Muthaleb complains that even the little help she used to get from NGOs and social workers is diminishing by the day.
"Sometimes aid workers come to us offering help that doesn’t go further than some food and clothes."
Yehia, the activist, admits that the deteriorating economic situation is not helping NGO help beggars.
"The situation is getting critical and each day less NGOs receive funds to support them."
Khais Abdullah, a local aid worker who prefers not to name his NGO, agrees.
"Few local NGOs have money to invest in projects [for beggars] and there are dozens of other topics that need auxiliary too," he told IOL.
"Unfortunately… we are feeling hand-tied."
Iraq, one of the world's top oil producers, remains in economic tatters five years after the US invasion.
A report by the UN Development Program (UNDP) and an Iraqi government agency last year said that a third of Iraq's 26 million people live in poverty.
Unemployment is running at between 25 and 50 percent of the workforce, according to government figures.
Abandoned
NGOs also complain that the government's neglect is exacerbating the problem.
"For five years, we have been listening to the same excuses and seeing the same delay in projects to help beggars," says Yehia.
The government has recently launched a campaign to remove beggars from the streets.
"Only few months ago we put in practice some of our projects that include taking beggars out of the streets, mainly in Baghdad," Humam Muhammed, a senior Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs official, told IOL.
He asserts that taking beggars from the streets is a process that requires a lot of efforts.
"We are working hard to be able to overcome the problem."
But aid workers insist that if the government is keen on helping beggars, there has to be an appropriate budget allocated to change their reality.
"More structured orphanages or social homes have to be repaired or built and more jobs made available to widows who don’t have a way to get money to feed their loved ones," says Yehia.
After years of neglect, Um Abdul-Muthaleb, the Baghdad beggar, expects little change in her life.
"To be frank I don’t think they will do anything," she fumes.
"We have been living in this illusion in the past years and I believe we will be on it for longer time." |
