Shukria Ahmed Haider lives with her six children in the rundown, local morgue amid a city slum, the price for being a Shi'ite Muslim under Saddam Hussein.
Two years ago, she refused to let her son join Saddam's Ba'ath Party..
"You have to have values in life. Without values you are nothing," she says
"Saddam practiced the institutionalized ghettoization of the Shi'ites," says Manal Omar, the head of the local branch of the nongovernmental organization Women for Women International (WWI).
Mrs. Haider is one of thousands of women who suffered violent retribution under Saddam. Shi'ites, Kurds and anyone else who dared to defy or even annoy his regime were either killed, tortured or forced into squalor.
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