Violence forces Iraqis to give up meat

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BAGHDAD -- Once-flourishing middle-class families in Baghdad are now eating meat only sparingly, if at all, as violence across the city prevents people from working and farmers from delivering food to the capital's markets.

Some women are eating less in order to give their food to their children, residents say, while others try to make meals for a family of five from a portion of meat that would barely make a single hamburger.

"Even my family does not eat meat too much; maybe when we have visitors and guests," said Jenan, a university graduate whose family once was very well off, but is now crippled by the lack of work.

"I don't like to eat it. I prefer that my nephews and nieces have my share. You get the idea," said the tall Iraqi woman, who has unwillingly lost some 20 pounds in the past two years.

"I eat some rice, some veggies, some salad," she said, asking that her last name not be published.

Jenan's family has had its land seized by Shi'ite militiamen and now faces death threats. They are leaving their home in one of Baghdad's safer mixed neighborhoods and, like hundreds of thousands of other Iraqis, are moving to Syria.

Jenan, however, will stay behind. In a culture where the men typically are the wage-earners, her work as a translator provides the family's only source of income.

"Now many jobs are closed because of terrorism, people are afraid of being killed or injured from the bombs," said Hassan, a Shi'ite whose family is struggling with 120-degree temperatures and just one hour a day of electricity.

Without electricity, residents cannot store meat or any other perishable food. But the raging sectarian violence leaves people less willing to go out to the markets, which are frequent targets for suicide bombers.

Farmers are discouraged from bringing food to the city by the risks on the roads and by tedious delays and demands for bribes at a network of checkpoints. Baghdad streets are now home to small flocks of sheep that eat the trash piling up in empty lots.