Talabani's Wife: Unemployment Leads to Extremism

Hero Ibrahim Ahmed, wife of Iraqi president Jalal Talabani, said that unemployment would lead to an increase in the number of armed extremist groups. In her first international speech at the annual (Women in Trade) international conference in London, Ahmed criticized Iraqi civil servants who received salaries without having to work and predicted it would become a crisis for Iraq. Ahmed, a businesswoman and founder of the Kurdistan Women's Union, warned that unemployment could significantly increase, especially in central and southern Iraq, and could lead youth to be trapped by extremists. She described inflation in Iraq as "terrible and dangerous."