Widows of Iraq’s war pick up the threads of fragmented lives
In a workshop in a bombed-out factory in Mosul, Najlaa Abdelrahman joins scores of other women on a production line as they sew garments and try to knit their lives back together. The mother of three lost her husband during the war against jihadist group Islamic State, which occupied the northern Iraqi city as the […]In a workshop in a bombed-out factory in Mosul, Najlaa Abdelrahman joins scores of other women on a production line as they sew garments and try to knit their lives back together.
The mother of three lost her husband during the war against jihadist group Islamic State, which occupied the northern Iraqi city as the capital of its self-declared caliphate until government forces recaptured it in summer 2017.
Most of the site was destroyed in the fighting, but the International Organization for Migration has managed to restore one section, where around 150 people - of whom 80% are women - now work, a fraction of the 1,020 it used to employ.
