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The war against Iraq's children
Amal Kashf Al-Ghitta, a member of the Iraqi National Assembly, directs the Islamic Foundation for Women and Children.
by Amal Kashf Al-Ghitta
Iraq’s children have suffered more than just successive wars and economic sanctions. The loss of parents and family resources has boosted child labor, homelessness, and inclinations towards violence and rebellion. They often now live in homes where 25 people live in a space of 40 square meters. Even intact families may comprise parents and five children in a single six-meter room.
The increase in child labor reflects families’ dire economic situation: children are frequently a family’s only breadwinners, and they work cheap. Contractors in municipal services, for example, prefer to use children in order to cut costs. Here, a child may be used for agricultural labor or for janitorial work. Many work in piles of garbage, either removing them to another place or collecting empty bottles and cans to sell.
Other children load and transport items in the markets, where they must pull carts weighing 60-70 kilograms and carry boxes weighing 15 kilograms in temperatures of 50 degrees centigrade. Two children may unload a truck carrying 1,000 kilograms of food items.
Not surprisingly, Iraq’s child workers suffer from a wide array of serious health problems. Children who work in the garbage dumps are prone to skin and respiratory problems, while those who work with paints eventually become addicted to the intoxicants that they inhale. And all working children are vulnerable to malnutrition, as their diet typically lacks the items necessary to build body tissues.
Nor is there any official authority to protect children and defend their rights in case of incapacitation or sickness. On the contrary, children are often beaten by family members if they do not provide the daily wage expected of them, or by their bosses when they are inattentive or make a mistake.
Indeed, Iraqi children are exposed to beating without regard for their age and for myriad reasons, thus growing up insecure, hostile, and violent. Moreover, they are prone to being kidnapped by criminal gangs, trained to steal or pickpocket, or, worse, placed at the mercy of terrorists for use in attacks.
The deterioration of families’ financial situation has also left poor children deprived of educational opportunity. For many children, even when they do attend school, the collapse of infrastructure, the unavailability of electricity and water, and high temperatures in the summer are hardly conducive to successful study.
The small number of schools, the poor condition of buildings, and the collapse of relationships between students and teachers is also at fault. Older children sit in classrooms with much younger children, growing frustrated and violent, rather than becoming role models for others to emulate.
Iraqi girls suffer no less than boys – and often more. At one end of the spectrum of deprivation, their opportunities are more constrained. When a family’s income is insufficient to pay school fees for every child, girls are typically denied an education, owing to the traditional belief that marriage is a girl’s final destiny. They must perform household chores and are subject to beating if they do not carry out orders issued by male family members. In poor households, they are also likely to receive less food than boys, placing their physical health and development at even greater risk.
At the other end of the spectrum, rape, adultery, early child bearing, and abortion have become ordinary matters. Increasingly, Iraqi girls interpret anything given to them as a means to have sex with them.
Orphans, whose number has increased sharply over the past quarter-century as a result of wars, economic sanctions, and terrorism, are especially vulnerable to the cruelest type of physical and psychological violence. Having lost their homes and parents, they sleep in alleys, sell cigarettes or newspapers, and beg. Grandparents are often unable or unwilling to care for them, and the pathological education given to them by criminal gangs often puts them beyond the reach of any institution’s ability to rehabilitate them.
Simply put, children in Iraq have been reduced from human beings worthy of care to tools of production and instruments of violence. We are quite literally breeding a new generation of disorder.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2006.
www.project-syndicate.org
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The war on children
This is Ibrahim Sa'ad Al-Jabouri. At just five, a Shiite boy cannot be expected to comprehend what the past three years have been about in Iraq.
But it is not surprising he has retreated into his own very small and empty world. Ibrahim became an orphan when Sunni insurgents forced him to watch as they executed his father, a brother and two uncles. He had already lost his mother to illness
Naivety
C Parsons, there is a slight difference between a Six Day War and a thirty-eight year occupation. Can you guess what it is?
That Iran and Hamas will soon ”take care of the situation” demonstrates that you clearly have little idea about the Middle East. Israel, armed to the teeth by America and backed by it, has the fourth-strongest army in the world and has, illegally, acquired nuclear weapons. Iran has no nuclear weapons and Hamas has no army so your proposition is fanciful.
I didn't say that history is bunk although, given the fact that humans never seem to learn from it, one could make that point. What I am concerned about is trying to get people to concentrate on stopping the looming catastrophe between the ”might-is-right”, American-Israeli coalition vs oil-rich Iran (if America occupies Iran it will then control the second and forth largest oil fields in the world, giving it a powerful economic lever over all nations).
People need to work together on this, C. Urgently. How about it?
Fanciful That!
Let me have a stab at it, Daniel Smythe.
The Six Day War was a war of annihilation launched against Israel on three fronts intent on destroying the state and massacring or expelling its Jewish population before there was an occupation, just as the Jewish population of East Jerusalem and the West Bank had been massacred or expelled two or more decades earlier. Is that it? Or is it the fact that another aggressive war was launched seven years later, after the aggressors of '67, and their allies, had declared their intention to not recognise or negotiate with Israel and to continue the war?
How about the fact that the occupation of the Sinai ended after twelve years, and settlements removed, when Egypt agreed to a peace treaty? Or the fact that the occupation of the Gaza ended a bare few months ago even without a treaty? Does that have any relevance to the question? Perhaps the vicious terrorist campaigns on civilians by the murder gangs for all of those years? Would that have any impact on policy if you were making it? The naked undisguised antisemitism going back before the Second World War at the core of the attacks on Israel's existence? The aggressive rejectionist posture of the Soviet Union and most of the Arab states (and Iran) throughout most or all of those years? The intense military build up by those states?
I could go on but that's roughly my guess. What's yours, Daniel?
I do not know whether Israel has nuclear weapons or not. They certainly seem to have a reactor. But for the sake of the discussion let's assume Israel has acquired such weapons. What is the basis for your assertion that this would be illegal?
What is your best guess why Iran needs an enormously expensive nuclear energy program, despite the diplomatic efforts and opposition of nearly every country on the planet, given that it is so oil-rich?
Do you accept that it just might be because they are trying to (illegally) build nuclear weapons as quickly as possible? If so, do you accept that Israel (and the US and Europe and the rest of the world) just might have legitimate grounds for concern, especially given what Iran repeatedly says what it thinks about Israel's, and Jews', right to exist and what it intends to do about it?
Did you accept C Parsons’ invitation to view the Hamas videos he linked? If so, what would you call those guys marching in green uniforms with rocket launchers over their shoulders? Parking meter inspectors? How about the PA armed forces now under Hamas control? What about Islamic Jihad under direct Iranian control in close cooperation with Hamas? What did you think of the Hamas spokesmen and what they said about Israel and Jews and what they intend to do to both?
C Parsons’ propositions are far from fanciful. I only wish they were. With respect, I think it is you who clearly have no idea about the Middle East. Or worse.
An Indication of the Veracity of Your Claims.
Geoff Pahoff: "The Six Day War was a war of annihilation launched against Israel ...".
You must have forgotten this:
Note: Pre-emptive.
Also, could you list the allegations against Ariel Sharon of war crimes and crimes against humanity including the dates and places they are alleged to have happened?
Bomber Bob Fights the War Again. And Again.
We have had this conversation before, Bob Wall, or have you forgotten?
I believe it is you who should note the word "pre-emptive". Try looking it up in a standard dictionary.
Israel was able to successfully defend herself against the aggressive war of annihilation launched against her from armies and air forces massed on three fronts at least in part because she was able to catch much of the Egyptian air force on the ground. Just in the nick of time. In fact we now know that Nasser was able to persuade Amman to join the attack by lying to Hussein that returning Israeli warplanes were Egyptian planes attacking Israel as planned. Despite Israel's best diplomatic efforts, and a direct appeal, to keep Jordan out of the war.
The Israeli attack on the Egyptian air force in June 1967 was an act of defence against unprovoked military aggression and as such has provided the classic case study of a lawful pre-emptive strike in international law courses ever since.
Why have you never been able to muster the intellectual honesty to admit this? There can hardly be any honest doubt about it given the wealth of the sources. Why have you done your best to muddy the waters about this? Do you feel confident that Israel and her population would have survived 1967 but for the attack on the Egyptian air force during the first hours of the war? Do you believe that it would have been lawful for the Israeli Government not to attack the air force when it did given what was at stake? I don't. Indeed, would you have preferred Israel had lost this war for survival launched against her and its population had suffered the consequences?
Ariel Sharon has never been charged or convicted of any war crimes or crimes against humanity and there are no allegations of such from any credible source or other source that I would dignify by listing dates or places of alleged events that are alleged to be linked to Sharon only by those who prefer lying propaganda to honest intellectual inquiry.
I have Not Forgotten.
Geoff, I will mention only one matter, that being your claim:
Was there not an Israeli inquiry - Kahan Commission I believe it was - into the West Beirut massacres of 1982 that found he was indirectly responsible? I have seen claims that the finding was firmer than that but the usually reported version will suffice. Are you saying that that inquiry was not credible? Did that Commission indulge in lying propaganda?
Kahan and Sharon
The Kahan Commission did not allege that Sharon committed war crimes or crimes against humanity nor did it recommend that charges for such crimes be laid against him.
Its findings are public.
Working for peace - Hamas and The Islamic Republic of Iran
Daniel Smythe: "People need to work together on this, C. Urgently."
Indeed, they do, Daniel. To help you in this matter, please have a look at these Hamas videos.
And yes, Iran needs the fissionable materials because it's energy starved.
In the words of the pro-democracy Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi: "Aside from being economically justified, it has become a cause of national pride for an old nation with a glorious history. No Iranian government, regardless of its ideology or democratic credentials, would dare to stop the program..."
Perhaps Israel needs its nuclear weapons for national pride, too.
Hamish: if you're going to have this argument with Daniel, CP, just for a change of pace can you please keep a focus on questioning and arguing with him and suss out the nuance of his position. I for one would be interested. If you keep arguing with the same straw man it is very repetitive. Thanks.
Who, me?
Hamish: if you're going to have this argument with Daniel, CP, just for a change of pace can you please keep a focus on questioning and arguing with him and suss out the nuance of his position.
Like, I so did not bring up Israel.
That was part of Daniel's explanation of why he supported the 1991 invasion of Iraq, when Hawke was in office. But not the actual overthrow of Saddam Hussein, when Howard was in office.
He asked me why Israel was occupying Gaza and the West Bank. That's all. The Hamas videos help explain the other side of the story.
The Iranian feminist-pacifist thingy is merely a community service announcement. You know? Gender balance?
That's all.
I have nothing more to add on the topic.
Double standards
C Parsons, hello! Yes, I did support military action against Iraq's invasion and occupation of Kuwait. No country has the right to use military force to take over and brutalise another sovereign country.
So why has the West allowed a brutal, thirty-eight year occupation by Israel of the Palestinian Territories? Why are three countries (America, Britain and Australia) currently occupying oil-rich Iraq? Why is the world allowing America once again, using lies, to set the scene so they can invade and occupy Iran? Hitler used invasion and occupation as part of his strategy to take over the world. It could be argued that America is doing likewise.
To me, debating the past is not as important as dealing with the gathering war clouds that threaten to destroy our world.
The 'History is bunk' syndrome
Daniel Smythe: "So why has the West allowed a brutal, thirty-eight year occupation by Israel of the Palestinian Territories?"
I think it had something to do with the outcome of the Six Day War - something hardly ever referred to in the shrill, almost hysterical anti-Israeli rhetoric that passes for "discussion" about Middle Eastern politics these days.
Anyway, Hamas and Iran are about to take care of that situation too, so just have another café au lait and try not to think about it.
Daniel Smythe: "To me, debating the past is not as important as dealing with the gathering war clouds that threaten to destroy our world."
It shows.
Welcome back, Marilyn Shepherd
Marilyn Shepherd :"Her husband had risen up against Saddam and spent years in Abu Ghraib before escaping."
"The world has an enormous responsibility to the people of Iraq because we are absolutely responsible for this genocide of people who did us no harm."
Marilyn, so good to hear from you again! It's been ages.
Should the world perhaps have completed the job properly in 1991, instead of waiting for George W Bush to take care of Saddam in 2003?
I mean, this is what Bob Brown was saying about the situation in Iraq in 1991;
Also, Marilyn, what do you think of those people who, like the Australian Wheat Board, went sanction busting in support of Saddam's regime?
Hell Hereafter
There are many such hells on earth, but as Daniel points out, we, a "free and democratic society" are accountable for this one. The results of this environment on the children is described in excruciating clinical detachment here. It explains why, despite Brigadier Paul Symon’s optimism, things will not get better.Northern Ireland
American expertise.
Amal, as an Australian citizen, I apologise for what John Howard helped to do to your country and its people. He did it against the wishes of the majority of Australian people, including me.
The valuable experience Australia, Britain and America have gained in Iraq using torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium shells, napalm, the devastation of Falujah, etc, they are about to bring to bear on oil-rich Iran. They may also use mini-nuclear weapons for added effect.
I bet the people of Iran can't wait to experience the joys of the American “dream”. Unfortunately, most people see the American “dream” as an unfolding nightmare, one that Australia has become hopelessly entangled in.
Citizens like me, powerless to stop the war-mongers, can only hope that Bush, Blair and Howard, one day, will be forced to answer for their war crimes
Again, I apologise.
Our role in the downfall of Saddam Hussein
Daniel Smythe, hello. Strong words indeed.
So, did you support Bob Hawke's involvement in the 1991 war in Iraq?
And what was your attitude toward the UN Sanctions on Iraq and the subsequent Food for Oil programme to mitigate the negative effects of the Sanctions?
Would be good to revisit some of these matters now we have the benefit of some hindsight, wouldn't it?
And when they come here
I hope Justin Wilshaw is reading this and weeping and I want to tell the story of a sweet little boy I met called Yusuf.
I met him with his mum and little sister a few years ago. He was six and he pulled up his t-shirt to show me this huge scar on his chest. It was from his throat to his navel and he was so proud of it.
His mum cringed and told me what happened to her son. He was born in the hell that is Basra to a family of Shi'ites. Her husband had risen up against Saddam and spent years in Abu Ghraib before escaping. The son was born with a serious heart condition and the family were told by doctors in Iraq that the only way he could have it fixed was in the West so the family took money from all their relatives and got to Australia on a boat in early 2000.
Mum was pregnant again but relieved to be out of Iraq so anyone would think that a sick little boy would get immediate medical care, wouldn't they? Wrong. Six months after arriving in the hell that is Woomera - Mum told me it was worse than Abu Ghraib - a note to DIMIA says, "this little boy has been known to have a life threatening heart condition for 6 months and ACM don't understand why it has not been repaired. We cannot care for this boy and he will die".
A day later, after months of collapses, going blue and passing out, the child was flown as an emergency patient to Melbourne with his dad to have open heart surgery. His mum was in Woomera still because her little girl had just been born.
A person would think then that after all that trauma and sickness that this little boy and his parents would be allowed out of Woomera to get on with their lives. Wrong again. The little girl was three months old before DIMIA reluctantly agreed they had been Iraqi refugees all along.
This stunt causes the mum nightmares every day of her life - her son that she tried to save nearly died in the land of the fair go.
A year later some of her extended family tried to follow to save their children from the hell explained above and drowned on SIEV-X.
The world has an enormous responsibility to the people of Iraq because we are absolutely responsible for this genocide of people who did us no harm.
In all 1084 Iraqi children came to the mainland with their parents, 146 drowned, 240 got sent to the Pacific and another 100 were turned away like criminals, into the sea, without a thought to their survival. So very few among the hundreds of thousands who perished and we just could not get it right or decent.
Justin, think on that.