BAGHDAD (AFP) -- Oblivious to the rumble of American tanks and the buzz of helicopters hovering overhead, a group of women in Baghdad's luminously white marshlands take a breather from their back-breaking toil of extracting salt.

In the Al-Shaab salt marshes, in the slums southeast of the capital, life has not changed for better or worse since the fall of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, and the daily routine of these women is as sad as ever.

"The only change we have felt is the lack of security," said Kadamiya, one of the black-clad women.

"We are afraid that a car might stop and the drivers kidnap us or rape us. Anything can happen these days," she said.

Since 1991, Kadamiya and two of her neighbours have been toiling in these salt marshes to earn up to 1.50 dollars a day that is necessary to feed their 10 children. "Our husbands are retired and they don't get any pension. We are the only bread winners of the family," said Fawziya.

"Women are made to stay at home not to go out and work," she complained.

The women are all in their 50s but but look older because of the harsh conditions of their job.

They suffer from chronic back pain, from the hours of squatting in the marshes, their hands covered with blisters and their legs with festering wounds.

The skin on their faces is taut and burnt from the reflection of the sun on the white layers of salt.

During the summer the women worked 11 hours, starting at 08:00 in the morning. They wade to their knees in the water to collect the salt by hand, without gloves. In winter they pick dates for a living.

Every day they manage to fill five or six big sacks, which they turn over to a factory in the area which uses it to make animal feed.

They all dream of better lives for their daughters, saying with pride that they are "too pretty" to work in such surroundings. "We had hoped that things would change with the arrival of the Americans and that our salaries would rise but we continue to live as badly as before, when Saddam Hussein was around," said Hayat.

The former dictator, whose regime was crushed by the U.S.-led coalition nearly six months ago, continues to be a source of fear for these three neighbors.

"If he heard what we are saying he would kill us," one of the women said.

Like a ghost from the past, Saddam, or rather his voice, has come back to haunt these women on several occasions when Arabic satellite TV channel have broadcast tapes attributed to him.

When that happens, the women pray that the Americans will never leave the country.

"As long as they are here, he will never return," said Hayat.

"Even if they take all our oil, they have liberated us from this dictator. Or at least that's what we hear each day on television," one of the women said, before digging her hands in water to take out another fistful of salt.