By Aseel Kami

BAGHDAD, Sept 16 (Reuters) - Years of war have left many Iraqi women widowed, illiterate and desperate, and their deteriorating status has made them ripe for exploitation by militants, Iraq's minister for women's affairs said.

Nawal al-Samarraie warned of a "disaster" if more was not done to assert women's rights, also eroded by a rising tide of fundamentalism and sectarianism that has rolled back many of the freedoms Iraqi women once enjoyed.

"This deteriorating status threatens us with disaster unless we find some avenue for besieged women through the rapid education of society," Samarraie, from the minority Sunni Arab political bloc, said in an interview on Monday.

She spoke just hours before another female suicide bomber blew herself up, killing 22 people north of Baghdad.

There have been more than two dozen female suicide bombings this year, something Samarraie said highlighted the desperation of women and their vulnerability to exploitation by militants.

Rehabilitation programmes, education about women's rights and literacy campaigns are among the means she wants to use to improve the situation.

According to the minister, there are more than 1.5 million divorced women, 2 million widows and around 4 million illiterate women in Iraq. Divorcees and widows, once reliant on their partner's income, often struggle alone.

DAUGHTER FOR SALE

Poverty, illiteracy and displacement are not problems exclusive to Iraq's women, but their diminishing status within even their own homes has compounded their plight.

Women's rights peaked in Iraq in the 1980s, when they were broadly comparable with the West. Since then, war and sanctions have confined many women to the home. The U.S.-led invasion in 2003 ushered in the steepest decline in women's fortunes.

"Women are suffering from marginalisation and exclusion, from oppression," Samarraie said. They were considered "a minor thing in the family".

The minister said she knew of one case in Diyala province where a family sold their daughter for money to become a suicide bomber. In other cases, women may want revenge after seeing family members killed, or after having been attacked themselves.

"The woman who commits a suicide (attack) is either desperate or forced by the husband or the parents...She does not have an opinion," Samarraie said.

The U.S. military says Sunni Islamist al Qaeda militants like to use female bombers because they can escape detection by police reluctant to search women. A 15-year old girl who gave herself up before conducting a suicide attack last month said she may have been drugged by relatives.

Such women should be treated with sympathy, Samarraie said, and placed in rehabilitation centres.

As well as such centres, facilities for women's training and safe houses should be founded, and society in general should be educated about women's rights, Samarraie added.

The government aims to start a five-year nationwide campaign next year to eradicate illiteracy, she said.

"The solution will not be rapid but we should start now as we are already too late ... We need at least 10 years to change the status of Iraqi women," she said. (Editing by Mohammed Abbas and Mark Trevelyan)

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