Mosul: Abir Jassem is busy preparing stuffed vegetables at a kitchen in Iraq’s Mosul, where after years of unrest a women-run catering service has helped single mothers like her achieve financial security.
The 37-year-old, who lost her husband while the city was under the control of the Islamic State (IS) group, said she had to get a job to put food on the table for her and her children.
“If I didn’t work, we wouldn’t have anything to eat,” said Jassem.
She is now one of some 30 employees of “Taste of Mosul,” which celebrates local delicacies and was founded in 2017 after the northern Iraqi metropolis was liberated from IS jihadists.
Most of the workers — cooks as well as two deliverywomen — are widowed or divorced.
Mosul residents are all reeling from the brutal IS rule and the war to defeat it, but for women in Iraq’s largely conservative and patriarchal society, the challenges are often compounded.
For Jassem, whose husband died of hepatitis, the catering business has offered a lifeline.
Her family had refused for her to work in any mixed-gender spaces, “but I wanted to work so I would not have to depend on anybody,” she said.
Now she earns 15,000 dinars ($11) a day cooking meals that are then delivered to clients.
Her speciality is Mosul-style kibbeh, a minced meat dish.
“Neither Syrians nor Lebanese can make” some of the recipes her Iraqi city is known for, Jassem boasted, as other women sat beside her at a large blue table were preparing the day’s menu.
One cook rolled vine leaves. Another copiously stuffed hollowed-out peppers with orange-colored rice, and a third made meat fritters.
Only slightly more than 10 percent of Iraq’s 13 million women of working age are in the job market, according to a July 2022 report issued by the International Labour Organization.
When the war in Mosul ended in the summer of 2017, the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR estimated the number of “war widows” in the thousands.
“Their husbands were often the families’ sole breadwinners,” the UN agency said.
“Without an income and often with children to support, Mosul’s war widows are among the most vulnerable to have been displaced during months of fighting for the once thriving city.”
Mahiya Youssef, 58, started “Taste of Mosul” to allow women to enter the labor market in the battered city.
“We have to be realistic,” she said. “If even people with university degrees are unemployed, I wondered what kind of work” would “let them cover their children’s needs and be strong women.”
Launched with just two cooks, the initiative has since grown and now also provides employment for young graduates, said Youssef, a married mother of five.
Appetisers and main dishes on the menu go for the equivalent of $1-10, and monthly profits top $3,000, according to Youssef, who plans to expand.
She said she hopes to open a restaurant or create similar projects in other parts of Iraq.
Youssef said her passion was “old recipes that restaurants don’t make,” like hindiya, a spicy zucchini stew with kibbeh, or ouroug, fried balls of flour, meat and vegetables.
One of her employees, Makarem Abdel Rahman, lost her husband in 2004 when he was kidnapped by Al-Qaeda militants.
The mother of two, now in her 50s, delivers food in her car, which she said has drawn some criticism.
“My children support me, but certain relatives are opposed” to her working, she said.
But Abdel Rahman hasn’t let that stop her, and said she has found in “Taste of Mosul” a “second home.”
Many clients order again, but some have become particularly loyal.
For more than two years, Taha Ghanem has ordered his lunch from “Taste of Mosul” two or three times a week.
“Because of our work, we are far from home,” said the 28-year-old cafe owner.
“Sometimes we miss our home cooking, but we have this service,” he said, hailing “the unique flavours” of Mosul’s cuisine.
In war-scarred Iraqi city, food business gives women independence
In war-scarred Iraqi city, food business gives women independence
- Only slightly more than 10 percent of Iraq’s 13 million women of working age are in the job market, according to a July 2022 report
- Most of the workers — cooks as well as two deliverywomen — are widowed or divorced
Iran says it sent a capsule with animals into orbit as it prepares for human missions
A report by the official IRNA news agency quoted Telecommunications Minister Isa Zarepour as saying the capsule was launched 130 kilometers (80 miles) into orbit.
Zarepour said the launch of the 500-kilogram (1,000-pound) capsule is aimed at sending Iranian astronauts to space in coming years. He did not say what kind of animals were in the capsule.
State TV showed footage of a rocket named Salman carrying the capsule into space.
Iran occasionally announces successful launches of satellites and other space crafts. In September, Iran said it sent a data-collecting satellite into space. In 2013, Iran said it sent a monkey into space and returned it successfully.
It says its satellite program is for scientific research and other civilian applications. The US and other Western countries have long been suspicious of the program because the same technology can be used to develop long-range missiles.
Iran Revolutionary Guards seize two vessels smuggling 4.5 million liters of fuel — Tasnim
DUBAI: Iran’s Revolutionary Guards’ Navy have seized two vessels smuggling 4.5 million liters of fuel, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported on Wednesday.
Tasnim said 34 foreign crew have been detained by the Guards in the operation.
Iran, which has some of the world’s cheapest fuel prices due to heavy subsidies and the plunge in the value of its national currency, has been fighting rampant fuel smuggling by land to neighboring countries and by sea to Gulf Arab states.
Israel reviewing strike that harmed Lebanese troops, army says
- Lebanese army say the soldier, a sergeant, was killed when an army position was shelled by Israel on Tuesday
JERUSALEM: The Israeli army said on Wednesday it was reviewing a strike that harmed Lebanese troops in south Lebanon, an apparent reference to Israeli shelling that killed a Lebanese soldier and wounded three others the previous day.
“The Lebanese Armed Forces were not the target of the strike. The IDF expresses regret over the incident. The incident is under review,” the Israeli military said in a statement.
Israel and the heavily armed Lebanese group Hezbollah have been exchanging fire across the Lebanese-Israeli border since the start of the war between the Palestinian group Hamas and Israel on Oct. 7.
The Lebanese army said the soldier, a sergeant, was killed when an army position was shelled by Israel on Tuesday.
The Israeli army said its soldiers had acted in “self defense to eliminate an imminent threat that had been identified from Lebanon” from a “known launch area and observation point” used by Hezbollah.
The UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon UNIFIL noted in a statement on Tuesday it was the first Lebanese army soldier killed during the hostilities, and that the Lebanese army had not engaged in conflict with Israel.
The Gaza Strip: Tiny, cramped and as densely populated as London
- Gaza has a population density of about 5,500 per square kilometer
GAZA: The war between Israel and Hamas has seen fierce Israeli bombardment that has flattened broad swaths of the Gaza Strip. Thousands of people have been killed and hundreds of thousands have been displaced.
And all that is happening in a tiny, densely populated coastal enclave.
Gaza is tucked among Israel, Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea. The strip is 25 miles (40 kilometers) long by some 7 miles (11 kilometers) wide. It has 2.3 million people living in an area of 139 square miles (360 square kilometers), according to the CIA Factbook.
That’s about the same land size as Detroit, a city that has a population of 620,000, according to the US Census Bureau. It’s about twice the size of Washington and 3½ times the size of Paris.
Gaza has a population density of about 14,000 people per square mile (5,500 per square kilometer). That’s about the same as London, a city brimming with high-rise buildings, but also many parks. Gaza has few open spaces, especially in its cities, due to lack of planning and urban sprawl.
Gaza’s density is even tighter in its urban cores like Gaza City or Khan Younis, where tens of thousands are packed into cramped neighborhoods and where density rates become more comparable to certain cities in highly populated Asia.
An Israeli-Egyptian blockade, imposed after the Hamas militant group seized power in 2007, has greatly restricted movement in and out of Gaza, adding to the sense of overcrowding.
‘Living dead’: Tunisian villages suffer drought, climate change
- About 300,000 of Tunisia’s 12 million people have no drinking water in their homes, according to the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights
OULED OMAR, Tunisia: Tunisian villager Ounissa Mazhoud ties two empty jerry cans to a donkey and cautiously descends a stony hill toward the last local source of water.
The North African country, in its fourth year of drought, is grappling with its worst water scarcity in years.
Mazhoud — like other women in the remote village of Ouled Omar, 180 kilometers (110 miles) southwest of the capital Tunis — wakes up every morning with one thing on her mind: finding water.
“We are the living dead ... forgotten by everyone,” said Mazhoud, 57, whose region was once one of Tunisia’s most fertile, known for its wheat fields and Aleppo pines.
“We have no roads, no water, no aid, no decent housing, and we own nothing,” she said, adding that the closest source of water is a river about an hour’s arduous walk away.
Providing water for their families, she said, means that “our backs, heads and knees hurt, because we labor from dawn to dusk.”
The World Bank predicts that by 2030 the Middle East and North Africa region will fall below the “absolute water scarcity” threshold of 500 cubic meters yearly per person.
Tunisia, already the 33rd most water-stressed country according to the World Resources Institute, has dropped to 450 cubic meters per inhabitant.
Its dams — the primary source for drinking water and irrigating crops — are filled at just 22 percent capacity, despite brief showers recently, according to official figures.
Some 20 dams have already gone out of service, mostly in the most arid south.
Last spring, Tunisian authorities introduced water rationing to limit household use even in major cities.
But in remote villages, where water scarcity impacts crucial farming and livestock, the issue takes on even greater weight.
Ounissa’s 65-year-old husband, Mahmoud Mazhoud, said their village has become unable to support livestock, forcing him to sell half of his cow herd so he could afford to keep the rest alive.
Ouled Omar is home to 22 families who share the only remaining spring.
They say it yields only about 10 liters (2.6 gallons) of water per day in total, but that it is undrinkable.
Ramzi Sebtaoui, a stockbreeder in his thirties, brings water to his family every day by driving to the closest source, some 20 kilometers away in the city of Maktar.
“Two or three years ago, the situation was much better, with many natural sources of water that we could use for livestock,” he said.
“Today, due to climate change and other factors, almost all sources have dried up, and the roads are destroyed.”
Last week, Ouled Omar residents traveled almost 50 kilometers to the city of Siliana to protest outside governorate offices, demanding a paved road and access to clean water.
“They don’t have a source of drinking water, not even taps,” Houda Mazhoud, a researcher who has been advocating for Ouled Omar’s access to clean water for years, told AFP.
“As a result, they use a natural source. But with climate change, it’s starting to disappear.”
The only road that leads to the village is decrepit and hasn’t been paved in decades, and residents say this only deepens their sense of isolation.
Some villagers have felt pushed to move to urban areas or abroad.
About 300,000 of Tunisia’s 12 million people have no drinking water in their homes, according to the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights.
Ounissa’s cousin, Djamila Mazhoud, 60, said her son and two daughters had all left in search of better lives.
“We educated our children so that when we grow old, they take care of us, but they couldn’t,” she said.
“People are either unemployed or eaten by the fish in the sea,” she added, using a common phrase for migrants who attempt the dangerous sea voyages for Europe.
Entire families have already left the village, said Djamila.
“Their houses remain empty,” she said, explaining that elderly people feel they have no choice but to follow their sons and daughters.
“Can an 80-year-old go to the river to get water?“
