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Babylon & Beyond

IRAQ: More and more find divorce the solution

By Alexandra Zaviswriter 
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For years, most of the solemn young couples who sought out Sayid Rafid Husseini were looking for a marriage certificate. Now, the robed cleric says, many who make their way to his office near a revered Shiite Muslim shrine want a divorce.

‘I try to convince them not to do it,’ Husseini says.

But times are hard. Waves of killing and displacement, not to mention sectarian pressures, have ripped families apart. And soaring unemployment is adding unbearable strain, turning what was once an almost unthinkable taboo into an increasingly common reality of Iraqi life.

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The number of divorces granted annually by Iraqi courts has doubled since U.S.-led forces invaded in 2003, from 20,649 that year to 41,536 in 2007, according to figures provided by the Supreme Judicial Council, which oversees the nation’s courts. But the real number is probably higher.

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— Alexandra Zavis in Baghdad

Babylon & Beyond
Alexandra Zavis

Alexandra Zavis is a former writer and editor on the Los Angeles Times’ Foreign Desk who has reported from more than 40 countries. She spent a decade with the Associated Press, covering Liberia, Sierra Leone, Congo, Sudan, Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan, among other war-torn places. After joining The Times in 2006, she has served as a Baghdad correspondent and as a California reporter covering poverty and veterans issues. She is a recipient of the American Academy of Diplomacy’s Arthur Ross Award for distinguished reporting on foreign affairs and was part of teams of reporters awarded the Society of Professional Journalists’ Sigma Delta Chi Award for foreign correspondence and APME’s International Perspective Award. She is a graduate of Oxford University and City University in London.

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