ARESEARCHNOTE

The Cost of War: The Children of Iraq

Shereen T. Ismael*

In late 1970s, Iraq was among the most developed countries in the Middle East, with a sophisticated human infrastructure and the second largest oil reserves in the world. However, the Iraq-Iran war from 1980 to 1988, followed in 1991 by the American blitzkrieg to oust the Iraqi forces from Kuwait, sent Iraq back to the pre-industrial age. Imposed on Iraq through the United Nations, the subsequent Anglo-American sanction regime dilapidated the socioeconomic infrastructure of the country for almost thirteen years. Most recently, the invasion of 2003 has engulfed Iraq in a state of lawlessness, widespread insecurity, and corruption at many levels. Predictably, Iraq's children have been particularly vulnerable to these societal upheavals. This paper argues that the traumas imposed on modem Iraq, having stunted its development and alienated it from the region, have wiped out any happy prospects for its children. The 1991 Gulf War and Sanctions Refusing any possible negotiations or diplomatic settlement, the Anglo-American response to Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait was a bombing campaign.' Subsequent declassified documents reveal that in US-led campaign, its forces deliberately destroyed Iraq's water treatment capacity, knew the necessary chemicals were blocked by sanctions, and fully understood the implications for Iraqis.^ The Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) identified Iraq's water treatment systems as vulnerable because of their reliance on foreign materials already blocked by sanctions. "Iraq will suffer increasing shortages of purified water because of the lack of required chemicals", the DIA wrote in January 1991. "Incidences of disease, including possible epidemics, will become probable unless the population were

* School of Social Work, Carleton University, Canada . ' For the details of a specific opportunity at diplomacy spumed by the US and ignored by the media, see Knut Royce, "Secret offer Iraq sent pullout deal to US", Newsday (New York), August 29, 1990, pp. Iff and R.W. Apple, "OPEC to increase oil output to offset losses from Iraq", New York Times, August 30, 1990, pp. Alff. For more examples and discussion, see Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy (London: Verso, 1991), ch. 6 and Mark Curtis, The Ambiguities of Power: British foreign policy since 1945 (London: Zed, 1995), pp. 194-96. ^ Felicity Arbuthnot, "Allies deliberately poisoned Iraq public water supply in Gulf War", Sunday Herald (Glasgow), September 17, 2000, p. 2 <www.sundayherald.com/printlO837>; Thomas J. Nagy, "The secret behind the sanctions: How the US intentionally destroyed Iraq's water supply". Progressive (Madison), vol. 65, no. 9 (September 2001), pp. 22-25; Greg Barrett, "12 years later, sanctions targeting Saddam Hussein strike civilians", Gannett News, August 1, 2, 4, 5, 2002.

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careful to boil water."^ Predictably, the most vulnerable in America's illegal targeting" of Iraq's basic infrastructure were the children. Further US intelligence documents, observing the degradation of Iraq's water supply under the bombing continued, noted the particular impact on children.' Within months of the war, the UN secretary general's envoy reported that Iraq was facing a water and sanitation crisis, predicting an "imminent catastrophe, which could include epidemics and famine, if massive life-supporting needs are not rapidly met"; US intelligence agreed.* In October 1991, The Intemational Study Team sent a task force of 87 researchers and professionals specialized in a wide variety of disciplines, including medicine, health care and child psychology, to conduct an in-depth comprehensive study of the impact of the 1991 Gulf War on Iraqi civilians, particularly children. The study covered all of the Iraqi govemorates without interference or supervision from the Iraqi govemment. The study was based on 9,000 household interviews in more than 300 locations.' The study pointed to: an increase in infectious diseases correlated with contaminated water supplies; malnutrition caused by a collapse in crop production and the inability to import sufficient food; a sharp increase in infant and child mortality immediately following the war; and, severe impacts on the social and psychological well being of women and children. With the sanctions in place, the crisis of the health care system, which the war created, was further exacerbated. The study reported an immediate and startling increase in child mortality rate associated with the destmction of the physical infrastmcture and the collapsing the health care system, which the protracted sanction regime ultimately wiped out. The study estimated that mortality rate for children under 5-years old increased 380 after the onset of the war: for age 1-year old or less, the increase in mortality rate was 350 percent. The study estimated that there were approximately 46,900 excess deaths during the first eight months of 1991. The Intemational Study Team, using the practices established by the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics, investigated the level malnutrition, deigning children as "malnourished" where they fall 2 standard deviations (-2 DS) from the media reference value. Observing a disturbing trend, the Study Group observed the percentage of children below minus 2 SD: 21.8% for stunting, 11.9% for underweight, and 3.4% for wasting, as determined by weight-for-height comparisons. The mental health of the children was no better than their physical well-being. In-depth
' Defense Intelligence Agency, "Iraq water treatment vulnerabilities", 22 January 1991 <www.gulflink.osd.mil/declassdocs/dia/19950901/950901_511rept_91.html>. " Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol 1), June 8, 1977, Article 54, "Protection of objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population", <www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/WebPrint/470FULL?OpenDocument>. Though the US refused to ratify this protocol, it is considered customary intemational law, binding on all states at the time of the 1991 Gulf War regardless of whether or not they ratified any particular treaty. See the authoritative International Committee of the Red Cross' list of customary rules of international humanitarian law in Richard Falk, Irene Genzier, and Robert Jay Lifton (eds.), Crimes of War: Iraq (New York: Nation, 2006), pp. 8-24, particularly rule 54 on p. 14. ' See Nagy, "The secret behind the sanctions", op. cit., p. 24. * Patrick E. Tyler, "US officials believe Iraq will take years to rebuild". New York Times, June 3, 1991, pp. A Iff. ' "Health and Welfare in Iraq after the Gulf Crisis: An In-Depth Assessment" The International Study Team, October 1991, War Child Canada, Suite # 420- 401 Richmond Street West, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5V 3A8

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interviews with children of primary school age from the Amariyah shelter and from Basrah revealed high levels of anxiety and stress, as well as pathological behavior among the children, which the psychologists have not seen in their 15 years of field work in warravaged countries. Nearly two thirds of the children interviewed believed that they would not survive to become adults. Eighty percent reported daily fear of losing their families through death or separation. Nearly 80% also reported experiencing shelling at close range. The intrusive thoughts of war have emotionally disturbed the children, according to the Study. All efforts, on the part of the child, to block the thoughts, were futile: "I try everyday, but it is impossible not to think about it," said one child. It was found that 50 percent of the children continue to dream about the war, 66 percent find it difficult to sleep because of the event, 63 percent find it difficult to concentrate and 75 percent feel sad, guilt-ridden, and need the company of older people. The Study has found that the ravages of the war migrated into the minds ofthe children, and thus, affected their contemplation ofthe future; 78 percent thought they would lose their family, and 62 percent would not live to adulthood. All such mental fears were set in a political framework of conflict with the US where the details were, in most cases, not clear for the children. Hence, another war, according the children, could happen again, which multiplied the fears. When psychologists pressed for the reasons behind the war, the answer of most children was "It is an attack of the USA", personified by the name Bush, about whom children of 6-7 years talk. For the younger age. Bush was aboard an aeroplane, from which he bombed Iraq. Older children, however, talked about revenge. In concluding the psychological assessment, the authors made it clear their definite feeling that sanctions, rather than the war, generated the feelings of aggression, revenge and negative anti-Amehcanism.^ The US and Britain maintained the arbitrary and severe character of the sanctions against Iraq for the next 13 years.' According to much literature on the subject, the sanctions regime was the leading cause for the death of hundreds of thousands among the most vulnerable: the children.'" Numerous surveys of Iraq since the Gulf War by various organizations found the degree of severe malnutrition in Iraqi children ranged as 3-13 percent for wasting, 14-30 percent for under nutrition, and 12-32 percent stunting. A small survey in Kerbala by the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization found the situation worse than in the capital Baghdad: 27 percent were stunted, 18 percent were underweight, and 5 percent were
* Ibid. Psychological assessment, pp. 162-173 ' See Joy Gordon, "Cool war: Economic sanctions as a weapon of mass destruction", Harper's (New York), vol. 305, no. 1830 (November 2002), pp. 43-49 <www.harpers.org/CoolWar.html>. The proceedings of the UN committee that oversaw the Iraq sanctions were never public but Gordon obtained many of the key confidential UN documents. She concluded that "they show is that the United States has fought aggressively throughout the last decade to purposefully minimize the humanitarian goods that enter [Iraq]." For a thorough rebuttal of the arguments offered in defense of the sanctions, see Eric Herring, "Between Iraq and a hard place: A critique of the British government's case for UN economic sanctions". Review of International Affairs (London), vol. 28, no. 1 (January 2002), pp. 39-56 <http:/ /uk.geocities.com/dstokesl4/Eric/HardPlace.pdf>. ' For examples, see World Food Programme, "Time running out for Iraqi children", September 26, 1995 <www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/51/047.html>; UNICEF, "Situation analysis of children and women in Iraq", April 30, 1998 <www.childinfo.org/Other/Iraq_sa.pdf>. For the overall picture at the end of the decade, see "Report of the second panel established pursuant to the note by the president of the Security Council of 30 January 1999 (S/1999/100), concerning the current humanitarian situation in Iraq", UN doc. S/1999/356 (March 30, 1999), annex 2, pp. 30-53 <www.casi.org.uk/info/undocs/sl999-356.pdf>.

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wasted." As a result of the sanctions, the Iraqi economy collapsed, producing high unemployment, hyperinflation, rising prices, and a scarcity of decent jobs. In order to survive, Iraqi families had to resort to extreme measures like taking their children out of school to put them to work. After nine years of sanctions, the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) found that only the desire to learn remained; Iraqi teachers' salaries had fallen from $450 to just $3 a month. When AFSC visited the al Bakr School for boys in Nasiriyah, they found there were no desks and no chairs; the windows were broken and there were no supplies of any kind. The principal of another school estimated that between seven and eight students faint each day from the lack of food.'^ There was an oil-for-food program implemented in the mid-1990s to help ease the phght of Iraqis. Denis Halliday (who resigned as the UN's humanitarian coordinator in Baghdad in disgust, feehng the sanctions amounted to genocide) recognized that the oil-for-food program made a difference and Iraqis would have been worse off without it. Still, Halliday wrote in 1999 that the program was a largely ineffective response to the humanitarian crisis and failed to tackle the underlying problem of infrastructure that had been destroyed by coalition forces in 1991, in contravention of intemationai conventions.'' As Hans von Sponeck (who resigned the same UN post for similar reasons) noted, the positions taken by the US in the Security Council during the 13 years of sanctions reveal concern first and foremost with nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, not the humanitarian implications of its Iraq policy.'" Though the US and Britain made no efforts to investigate, Iraqi doctors suspected a fourfold increase in cancer in children. By the late 1990s, Westem evidence was offering support for those Iraqi doctors. The likely culprit was depleted uranium (DU). A1991 intemal document, given by Britain's atomic energy authority to the military, stated that if the DU fired by US tanks during the 1991 war was inhaled, it could potentially cause 500,000 deaths. It added that it would be unwise for people to stay close to large quantities of DU and that this would obviously be a concem for the local population. As British Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk noted more than seven years later, no one has bothered to even suggest a cleanup. This was the first time that DU-tipped munitions had ever been used in warfare. The consequences of ingesting DU dust are comparably worse than the serious health hazards associated with lead, another toxic heavy metal. Conservative estimates put the amount of DU debris scattered across 1991 Gulf War battlefields at 300 tons." In early 2003, the San Francisco Chronicle reported from Baghdad that increased incidence of malignancy tumors was killing children: a fact, which Iraqi doctors attributed to the presence of depleted uranium in the soil. The Pentagon was swift to deny any relation between DU and the incidences of
" Dr. Peter L. Pellet, "Sanctions, food, nutrition, and health in Iraq" in Amove (ed.), Iraq under Siege, pp. 159-60. '^ George Capaccio, "Sanctions: Killing a country and a people" in Anthony Arnove (ed.), Iraq under Siege: The deadly impact of sanctions and war (Cambridge, MA: South End, 2000), pp. 143-46. " Denis J. Halliday, "Iraq and the UN's weapon of mass destruction". Current History (New York), vol. 98, no. 625 (February 1999), p. 65. " Hans von Sponeck, "Iraq and the United Nations", Spokesman (Nottingham), no. 86 (2005), p. 42. " Robert Fisk, "The West's poisonous legacy". Independent (London), May 28, 1998, p. 13; Fisk, "The evidence is therewe caused cancer in the Gulf, Independent (London), October 16, 1998, p. 4. Both reprinted in Amove (ed.), Iraq under Siege, pp. 93-95, 98-101. Katy Kelly, "Raising voices: The children of Iraq, 1990-1999" in ibid., p. 122.

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cancer, citing a lack of any definitive scientific evidence. Since 1990, cancer incidence has increased by five-fold among Iraqi children, congenital birth defects and leukemia have tripled, and overall cancer rates among all Iraqis have risen by 38 percent, according to the Iraqi govemment. American official statements may explain the reasons behind the denial of DU and cancer correlation. Defense Department spokeswoman, Barbara Goodno, argued that Depleted Uranium is "an important component in the U.S. arsenal." Despite being engaged multiple times, during the Gulf War, often at close range, by Iraqi tanks and antiarmor weapons, not a single U.S. tank protected by DU armor was penetrated or knocked out by hostile fire." Military experts say that the crucial edge that DU technology affords makes it too effective to pass up. However, Doug Rokke, Ph.D. in physics and a recently retired professor from Jacksonville State University in Alabama, and former director of the US Army's Depleted Uranium Project affirmed that all Americans who came in contact with DU dust during the 1991 War were contaminated, and most of them have suffered serious health problems in the following years, and too many have died. He, himself, has "5,000 times the recommended level of radiation in his body" and has called the health woes among residents of southern Iraq and his own colleagues "the direct result" of DU exposure." Steve Leeper, co- director of the Global Association for Banning DU Weapons, stated, "The reason there is no proof of causality between DU and any particular disease is that no one has seriously looked for it, the biggest problem with radiation, especially involving a lowlevel radiation source that is also a toxic chemical, is that it can get you in so many ways. Which disorder you contract depends on where the DU ends in your system and what sort of damage it does to what sort of cells. To really find an effect, the govemment would have to study all the veterans, especially the 205,000 that have applied for medical help from the Veterans Administration, and the people of southem Iraq and test for uranium in their urine, organs and bones, then look for correlations with various pathologies."" But the US govemment is resistant to test its own soldiery, let alone the dying children of Iraq. In March 16,2(K)4 (one year after the US invasion and occupation of Iraq) Lawrence Smalbnan reported from Baghdad an explosive increase in leukemia among all ages in Iraq. Baghdad, alone, has received 200 tons of DU, out of the 1,700 tons dropped on Iraq, which have irreversibly mixed with the soil. This condition alarmed Dr. Ahmad Hardan, a special scientific adviser to the UN World Health Organization, and the Iraqi Ministry of Health. The effects are already seen in Baghdad - every form of cancer has jumped up at least 10% with the exception of bone tumors and skin cancer, which have only risen 2.6% and 9.3% respectively. To manage the health disaster. Dr. Hardan solicited intemational medical expertise. He arranged for a delegation from Japan's Hiroshima hospital to come and share their expertise in the radiological related diseases Iraqis are likely to face over time. He also invited a world famous German cancer specialist. The Americans, however, refused permission for either of them to enter Iraq. Without immediate action the future of Iraq's children is lost forever.'*

" Ibid. " Lawrenee Smallman, "Iraq's Real WMD Crime", March 16, 2004, URL: http://english.aljazeera.net/ NR/exeres/B93DF501..832A-423B-9E33-5F4325676A46.htm

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Douglas Westennan reported in April 2006 that Dr. Asaf Durakovic, a former U.S. Army Colonel, who founded The Uranium Medical Research Center (UMRC) was asked by the US Veteran's Administration to lie about the risks of incorporating depleted uranium in the human body. Dr. Durakovic: "Yes, uriinium does cause cancer, uranium does cause mutation, and uranium does kill If we continue with the irresponsible contamination of the biosphere, the denial of the fact that human life is endangered by the deadly uranium isotope, then we are doing disservice to ourselves, disservice to the truth, disservice to God and to all the generations who follow."" Dr. Durakovic was, first, warned to stop his work, and then he was fired from his position; his house was ransacked, and he has also reported receiving death threats.^" In his report, Westerman says that DU has a half-life of 4.7 billion years, which means that thousands upon thousands of Iraqi children will suffer for tens of thousands of years to come. He quotes the head oncologist at Saddam Teaching Centre, and who was educated in Britain, Dr. Jawad Al-Ali, who stated in a conference in Japan that: "Two strange phenomena have come about in Basra which I have never seen before. The first is double and triple cancers in one patient, for example, leukemia and cancer of the stomach. We had one patient with 2 cancers one in his stomach and another in the kidney. Months later, primary cancer was developing in his other kidneyhe had three different cancer types. The second is the clustering of cancer in families. We have 58 families in personal circles with more than one person affected by cancer. Dr Yasin, a general Surgeon has two uncles, a sister and cousin affected with cancer. Dr Mazen, another specialist, has six family members suffering from cancer. My wife has nine members of her family with cancer. Children in particular are susceptible to depleted uranium poisoning. They have a much higher absorption rate as their blood is being used to build and nourish their bones and they have a lot of soft tissues. Bone cancer and leukemia used to be diseases affecting them the most, however, cancer of the lymph system, which can develop anywhere on the body, and has rarely been seen before the age of 12 is now also common. At one point after the war, a Basra hospital reported treating upwards of 600 children per day with symptoms of radiation sickness; 600 children per day?"^' Because DU bonds with the DNA, and causes it to mutate, it raises the incidence of all sorts of cancer, the unborn children of Iraq are being asked to pay the highest price, the integrity of their DNA. The US mainstream Media have, nevertheless, maintained uncanny silence on the correlation between DU and incidences of cancer, despite the thousands of afflicted American soldiers, whose symptoms were dubbed "the Gulf Syndrome". The subject in the media is almost a taboo. John Hanchette, one ofthe founding editors of USATODAY, and a journalism professor at St. Bonaventure University informed the DU researcher Leuren Moret that he had prepared news breaking stories about the effects of DU on Gulf War soldiers and Iraqi citizens, but on every occasion he was about to publish, he would receive a phone call from the Pentagon asking him not to print the Dr. Keith Baverstock, The World Health
" Douglas Westerman, "The Real WMD in Iraq-OURS", American Chronicle, April, 17, 2006. ^'' Douglas Westerman, "Depleted Uranium far worse than 9\H" URL: http:// www.informationclearinghouse.info/articlel2903.htm 2' Ibid. Douglas Westeman, "The Real WMD in Iraq-OURS", Op. Cit.

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Organization's chief expert on radiation and health for 11 years and author of an unpublished study has charged that his report " on the cancer risk to civilians in Iraq from breathing uranium contaminated dust was deliberately suppressed."^^ By January 2002, the Iraqi government informed the United Nations that 1,614,303 Iraqis including 667,773 children under five had died from diseases that could not be treated because of the sanctions.^' Even taking into account the possibility of Iraqi exaggeration, nearly three years earlier, two prominent US strategic analysts concluded that "Economic sanctions may have been a necessary cause of the deaths of more people in Iraq than have been slain by all so-called weapons of mass destruction throughout history."^'' Historically, sanctions have an embarrassingly poor record of achieving their political objectives." In the case of Iraq, the publicly stated goal was disarming Iraq of chemical and biological weapons and ending its pursuit of a nuclear weapon. In reahty, the policy of the US government was regime change.^* As a result, the sanctions served not as a means of persuasion to change the Iraqi dictators behavior, but instead a message to other Third World states, making clear the consequences of disobeying the world's only superpower." In no small part, that message was written with the blood of Iraqi children. 2003 Invasion and the Children under Continuing Occupation Right after the invasion, UNICEF representative Carel De Rooy warned that Iraqi children, especially, would suffer the consequences ofthe country's destruction, namely malnutrition, traumatic socio-psychological disposition, dropping out of school, exploitation and even international trafficking for child labor and sexual abuse.^* Most children of Iraq have only known life under the sanctions-an unfathomable experience made worse by the daily souhds and sights of war, bombs, gunfire, soldiers, tanks, checkpoints, helicopters, concrete blast blocks and razor wire- all seen everywhere everyday. This is the daily life ofthe Iraqi child. Would you want this to be the norm for your children? The sight of a dead body, blood, bombed buildings, maimed people or charred corps means nothing special to the Iraqi child whose innocent dreams and honest sensibihties have been crushed by the cruel realities of the war and ongoing occupation. Paul Flynn recounts that he returned to his apartment to

^^ Ibid, Douglas Westerman, "Depleted Uranium far worse than 9\H", Op. Cit. ^^ Geoff Simons, Targeting Iraq: Sanctions and bombing in US policy (London: Saqi, 2002), p. 82. ^* John Mueller and Karl Mueller, "Sanctions of mass destruction". Foreign Affairs (New York), vol. 78, no. 3 (May/June 1999), pp. 50, 51. ^' See Robert Pape, "Why economic sanctions do not work". International Security (Cambridge), vol. 22, no. 2 (Autumn 1997), pp. 90-136. ^^ See former chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq, Scott Ritter, Iraq Confidential: The untold story of America's intelligence conspiracy (London: IB Tauris, 2005). '" See Joy Gordon, "A peaceful, silent, deadly remedy: The ethics of economic sanctions". Ethics and International Affairs (New York), vol. 13 (1999), pp. 123-42 and Roger Normand and Christoph Wilke, "Human rights, sanctions, and terrorist threats: The United Nations sanctions against Iraq", Transnational Law and Contemporary Problems (Iowa City), vol. U , no. 2 (Fall 2001), pp. 299-343. 2" UNICEF, "The Situation of Iraq's children", March media_7609.html?q=printme>. 19, 2003 <www.unicef.org/media/

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fmd his neighbor's children, Hamsa and Ayar, who witnessed two dead bodies in the street, mutilated by a bomb, just giggling.^' In late 2003, it was estimated that about 50% of the Iraqi children were suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), which must be much higher now. Yet, the number of child psychiatrists in traumatized Iraq is virtually zero. The British Member of Parliament, Paul Flynn recalls that Iraqi people endure silent suffering, and do not talk about the death of the loved ones or other woes of the war because, almost certainly, they are already too burdened to express emotions in any healthy way. This silent suffering is, also, seen in the children. Noor is 12-year old girl, chatty, intelligent and confident. She told Paul Flynn about her school, that she was on the top of her class. Paul asked her about brothers and sisters; "Just one sister because the two brothers were killed in the war defending their country, and my mother died of a broken heart," says Noor"". A devastating tragedy, recounted as if it were a mere school outing. The British MP has documented, in the children's own words, much detail about the horrors of the American-led war, which the children have obviously been forced to endure. Another Ahmad, 12-years old, like many other children, and even teenagers, can not stand the sound of aeroplanes, or helicopters and cover his ears because planes or helicopters, flying high or low, remind him of what terror and death they brought to his loved ones during the war and the ensuing occupation. Ibrahim, 5-years old, saw American soldiers shoot his brother who lost his leg. Ever since, Ibrahim has changed from a loving docile boy to a resentful and foul-mouthed misfit swearing at the Americans. His sisters are also mentally traumatized. Raghad, just 8 years, cannot sleep without holding her mother's hand, and regularly suffers nightmares. A young teenager girl, Ekbal, 15, with dark sad eyes, dares not imagine what the future may hold, instead resigned to the ever-present threat of death. Whenever Ekbal sees an American soldier, she shouts, "Don't shoot."^' There are, also, many accounts of child-soldiers who fight alongside older family members in Baghdad's Sadr City slum. The feeling of revenge and aggression, which the sanctions and the wars have unleashed within the psyche of the children, has almost certainly, brought on the child-soldier phenomenon, of which more than 50% are under 18-years of age. These boy soldiers are eager to defend their neighborhood against the unnecessary presence of the US Army in their area. Paul Flynn reported that there was an 8-years old boy from Sadr City, whose favorite weapon was an RPG (rocket propelled grenade) and who used it very well by all accounts. All these child-soldiers are certain to suffer from future mental pathologies, like PTSD - that is if they survive the ongoing brutality of the occupation.'^ The reality that the British MP witnessed and reported confirmed the worries predicted earlier in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) about the mental health of the children of Iraq, which in essence confirmed the persistence of the negative psychological tendencies discussed in the 1991 International Study.

" Paul Flynn, "The Children of Iraq", December 2004. He is a British MP who went to Iraq to witness for himself the ravages of the war and the impact on children. URL: http://www.paulflynnmp.co.uk/ mustreaddetail.jsp?id=954#

'" Ibid. " Ibid. " Ibid.

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In February 15,2003, BMJ reported the findings of their psychological assessments of Iraqi children, based on a sample of about 300 children. The two psychologists who wrote the report found that the children had a great fear of a war they perceived to be hanging over their heads. Children, as young as four, described clear ideas about the horrors of war. The report said, "Children are fearful, anxious, and depressed about the prospect of armed confiict, and many have nightmares, and 40% do not think that life is worth living."" The current status of schools and educational facilities deepens the tragedy for Iraqi children. In January 27, 2006 the Iraqi psLp&r Azzaman, quoting the education minister, revealed that there were 4 million children eligible for primary education in 14,000 primary schools, of which only 10,000 schools were available, with about 106,000 students attending schools that are without running water or functioning toilets. With the prevalence of lawlessness threatening every aspect of living, about one million Iraqis have left for Jordan and many thousands for Syria, Egypt, and the Gulf states.'"* As an indicator of the crushing effects of lawlessness, the New York Times reported on May 19,2006 that an increasing portion of the middle class seems to be leaving the country. It said that during the last 10 months, the state has issued new passports to 1.85 million Iraqis, that is 7 percent of the population and a quarter of the country's estimated middle class. Lawlessness and a deteriorating school system force students out of the country. Since 2004, the Ministry of Education has issued 39,554 letters permitting parents to take their children's academic records abroad. In 2005, the number of such letters was double that in 2004, according to the director of the ministry's examination department." Unemployment is high (68 percent),^' a result ofthe invasion, and was further compounded by an already high dependency ratio of 74." Dozens of religious organizations^' and about 160 US-based relief agencies came together, and set up InterAction group to support some 6.5 million people (25 percent ofthe population), who still remain heavily dependent on food rations and are therefore vulnerable. The group also takes care of other areas of support, such as healthcare, water/sanitation, and protection of vulnerable populations, like women, children and the elderly." According to Reuters in November 2005, the US-sponsored government of Iraq does not seem able to offer any significant support to alleviate the

" Jocalyn Clark, "Threat of war is affecting mental health of Iraqi children", BMJ, February 15, 2003, URL: http://bmj.bmjjournals.eom/cgi/content/fuIl/326/7385/356/b " Jonathan Steele, "The Iraqi brain drain". Guardian, March 24, 2006, p. 14 <www.guardian.co.uk/print/ 0,,329441751-103550,00.html>. " Sabrina Tavernise, "As Death Stalks Iraq, Middle-Class Exodus Begins", NY Times, URL: http:// w w w . n y t i m e s . c o m / 2 0 0 6 / 0 5 / 1 9 / w o r l d / m i d d l e e a s t / 19migration.html?ex=1148702400&en=86624c6bc0361733&ei=5070&emc=etal ^^ "Unemployment rate in Iraq is 68% and the government is sending for 1 million Egyptian workers", Al-Furat (Baghdad), July 24, 2005 translated by IraqUpdates.com. " Ministry of Planning and Development Cooperation, Iraq Living Conditions Survey 2004 (Baghdad, 2005), vol. 1, pp. 15, 17. Dependency ratio is a measure of the portion of a population which is composed of dependents (people who are too young or too old to work). The dependency ratio is equal to the number of individuals aged below 15 or above 64 divided by the number of individuals aged 15 to 64, expressed as a percentage. '* <www.peacemakers.ca/research/MiddleEast/IraqHumanitarianRelief.html>. " See <www.interaction.org/iraq/index_press.html>.

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hardship of Iraqis living in these conditions.'* From 2003, the number of people living below poverty line has progressively increased to 20 percent. Out of two million Iraqis under poverty line - which international criterion defines as one dollar per person per day - only 171,000 persons receive social assistance of $30-35 per month;"' and given the state of lawlessness, women cannot safe work place to help financially. In contrast to the present situation, women in 1976, held aliiiost one third of all positions in the educational and medical professions. After the American-led war in 1991, women lost many of those jobs. Now, facing widespread public violence, many women and girls have been forced to stay at home, especially after women's employments have disappeared following the invasion."*^ It was reported on May 15,2006 that a government survey backed by the UN highhghted that people were still struggling to cope three years after the overthrow of Saddam and the subsequent occupation, and that the children have been the major victims of food insecurity. The situation, according to the report, was alarming as a total of four million Iraqis, roughly 15 percent of the population, and up from 11 percent in a 2003 report remained in dire need of humanitarian aid including food."" In response to the widespread insurgency, the US military resorted to aerial bombing and massive assaults on urban centers suspected of harboring insurgents, and this, by August 2005, had produced about 450,000 homeless families, 54,000 in Baghdad alone.** Education Since Iraq's 1958 revolution, access to all levels of education and healthcare was progressively free. Despite the war with Iran, in 1989 Iraq allocated 5 percent in the budget to education, while neighboring countries never exceeded 3.8 percent. A UNESCO fact sheet in March 2003 reported "The education system in Iraq, prior to 1991, was one of the best in the region, with over 100% gross enrolment rate for primary schooling, which is compulsory, and high levels of literacy, both of men and women. The higher education, especially the scientific and technological institutions, was of an international standard, staffed by high quality personnel". The director of UN University Jairam Reddy reported that the 2003 invasion resulted in 84 percent of Iraq's higher education institutions being burned, 2,000 laboratories being destroyed, and 30,000 computers needing to be replaced. Under the Anglo-American occupation, one in four students does not have access to pre-university education. Paul Hetherington, a spokesman for Save the Children UK, told the UN Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN) that almost 50 percent of children do not go to school because their parents are too scared to send them, having heard the stories about children being kidnapped and held for ransom."^
*" Seif Fouad and Khaled Farhan, "Iraq's forgotten poor struggle to survive", Reuters, November 17, 2005 <www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/attack/consequences/2005/l 118 survival.htra>. " "One Iraqi in five living in poverty", Agence France-Presse, 25 January 2006 <www.reliefweb.int/rw/ RWB.NSF/db900SID/VBOL-6LDEVT?OpenDocument&rc=3&emid=ACOS-635P5D>. "^ Meera Subramanian, "V-Day spotlights the women of Iraq", Choice! (New York) online, February 16, 2005 <www.plannedparenthood.org/pp2/portal/files/portal/webzine/globaldispatch/gd-050216-vday.xml>. "Dahr Jamail, "Easily Dispensable: Iraq's Children", May 22, 2006, URL: http://www.truthout.org/ docs_2006/052206A.shtml ** "Housing problems increase as conflict hits hearth and home", IRIN, 4 August 2005 <www.irinnews.org/ print.asp?ReportID=48443>. "' "School attendance falling due to fear of abduction", IRIN, October 7, 2003 <www.irinnews.org/ print.asp?ReportID=37058>.

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UNICEF circulated a report on 5*, April 2006 that 74 percent ofthe 600,000 Iraqi children who, for a variety of reasons have missed out on their formal education, were girls; nearly 21 percent of primary school age girls are not enrolled in school, and almost 24 per cent of children drop out before completion of their primary education."* According to UNICEF, thousands of schools have been seriously damaged during the invasion and occupation and many operate on a shift system at present. In addition, more than half are without water or sanitation. UNICEF quoted an eleven-year-old girl, Zainab Jabbar, who explained the reasons behind low attendance and high dropout rates: "Our school is under rehabilitation now, and so we moved to study in a nearby building until work finishes there. If only streets could be cleaned and the open sewage channels and garbage disappear, our city would be nice and children would become healthy." The most significant obstacle to education remains the worsening security situation in Iraq. Parents are too frightened to let their children out of their homes and school repairs are in In this atmosphere of violence and occupation, adult literacy has fallen to below 60 percent, according to a March 2006 report by the Associated Press.''* According to a 2004 UN Development Programme report, the Uteracy rate for women in Iraq has stagnated, and the gender gap is diminishing due a drop in the literacy level of men.'" There are also regional differences in illiteracy rates. Among the urban population, ilhteracy tends to be 21 percent; among the rural population illiteracy tends to be 39 percent. Among all Iraqis, 15 percent have had only six years of elementary schooling and about 22 percent have never gone to school, with 10 percent among the age of 15-24 years never having any schooling at all. Twenty-five percent of Baghdad residents have never completed elementary school, and while the enrollment rate in elementary and preparatory levels are high on paper, actual attendance is significantly lower due the prevalence of lawlessness, killing, and kidnapping.^" Indeed, the deliberate murder of university professors and top-ranking experts has led to a consistent brain drain that is undermining the whole educational system. Owing to the worsening situation of the children and youth. War Child Canada has entered into partnership with a local Iraqi organization, Muslim Hands, as of 2006, to rehabihtate local public schools, and improve educational resources and infrastructure in support of the educational and emotional needs of approximately 2,000-3,000 children. The project will also focus on improving professional skills in order to better care for children both physically and psychologically. Working with its local partner. War Child Canada provides training in peace building, confiict resolution and youth engagement. The project will estabhsh a resource and training center, in Baghdad, for youth, especially girls, who will be connected through War Child Canada's existing and innovative No War Zone website to a community of youth around the world working together for peace, human rights and understanding. The primary focus of this War Child Project is to provide the opportunity for children, youth, women and

" http://www.unicef.org/media/media_33185 .html "' http://www.unicef.org/emerg/iraq/index_23628.html '" Alexandra Zavis and Bushra Juhi, "Schools Also on the Front Lines in Iraq", Associated Press, 25 March 2006. "' Iraq Living Conditions Survey 2004, vol. 2, p. 99. '" Iraq Living Conditions Survey 2004, vol. 1, p. 80.

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other vulnerable community members to recover and rebuild from the trauma of war, violence and poverty." Child Labor In late 2004, UNICEF spokeswoman Ban Dhayi told the UN Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN) that the lack of security and social safety nets, which accompany deepening unemployment and poverty in Iraq, has forced ever increasing numbers of children to work or beg on the street, desperate to support dwindling family income or replace their dead or unemployed parents. More than one miUion such children are out on the streets, and vulnerable to sexual abuse. In fact, the newspaper al-Sharq al-Awasat in its January 10, 2006, edition reported on the phenomenon of "street children", referring to thousands of children less than eighteen years, who now roam the streets in search of anything of value in order to support their families, especially where the bread-and-butter provider has been killed. These children sell cigarettes, newspapers and other small household items, but many others, according to the Iraqi Red Crescent Society, make living through the drug and / or sex trade. Worse still is the employment of children under the age of twelve years by the Iraqi government for street cleaning. It is estimated that by late 2004 nearly 1,300,000 children between the age of eight and sixteen were working; 27 percent of children worked over eight hours daily, 9 percent were injured, and 58 percent suffered violence, which arose from the need to work. There are no labor laws that protect child labor. In late April 2005, the Ministry of Public Works and Social Affairs supported the opening of Mercy House in Baghdad, where poor and street children receive support, education, and protection from abuse." In the desert town of Al-Nahrwan the misery of "Street Children" takes on a different form. In that town, where the temperature reaches 50 Celsius in summer, children as young as five endure Industrial Revolution-like conditions, and street children, here, face something like slave labor. Seven Kilometers outside Al-Nahrwan, which has no clean water, there is a network of 100 factories, where 30,000 people work; some brick factories, here, spew out gray-black smoke containing huge amount of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide, which the workingwomen and children are forced to breathe. The children form the backbone of the workforce, and bring the mud to make the bricks and cany the baked bricks away on donkeys. While the factory owner makes a fortune, the children, for this back breaking labor, earn as little as 80 pennies for a 72-hour week. All the children have blackened faces and blackrimmed eyes. In the brickyard, there was Hayder, a nine-year-old, who has never gone to school in his life, had no desire to go and has never had any playtime. Fatima is a nine-yearold, dressed in a filthy blue dress, who worked for about 3 pennies an hour. Omahmed, a mother-of-five, had come to the factory for the 'brick-building season', between April and November, when jobs are plentiful. She, her husband and all her children, the youngest five, are employed there. The whole family lives on site for all these months, which means they never escape the filthy pollution. There are no schools or hospitals for the children, only just work and little brick houses. The people who work in this hell often die young mainly from

" http://www.warchild.ca/projects_detail.asp?ID=30 " "Focus on child labor", Reuters, May 10, 2005 <www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/37/ 11114/printer>.

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respiratory diseases. Their lives are filled only with work and their minds know nothing else." Family Life Given the prevailing atmosphere of violence and confusion, the orphans houses department ofthe Iraqi ministry of Labor and Social Affairs has no reliable statistics on the number ofthe orphans in the country, as a result of bombings, assassinations and the sectarian violence that currently plagues the country. Officially, there are 642 registered orphans, but the department director Abeer Mahdi al-Chalabi estimates that this represents a mere 10 percent of the true number nationwide. Orphans, hungry and traumatized, live in the ruins of buildings after they have lost their families, and in the dayhght, before they disappear once more into the night they trawl through dumps, sleep outdoors and hang around hotels, busy intersections, mosques, and US military installations begging. Some are even used as sex slaves and prostitutes, drug runners and spies. They are the invisible children, and one of the many hidden casualties ofthe occupation. However, informal estimates are very different. They put the numbers of orphans across Iraq from 1.5 million to 5 million, and the continuing chaos renders any national program to re-integrate the orphans into society futile.^'' A 2005 report by the US Agency for International Development pegged the number of orphans at 5,000 in the Baghdad alone. In April 2006, there were 23 orphanages with a capacity for 1,600 orphans in Iraq, indicating that there are many times more children without homes than spaces to care for them. "We are taking care ofthe orphans, trying to give them love," an Iraqi woman told the National Catholic Reporter. "But they are traumatized. They don't speak."" As a result of war and deprivation, several million Iraqis have been uprooted and displaced inside and outside Iraq as refugees, asylum seekers and rejected asylum seekers, migrants and internally displaced persons. (IDPs) Internally displaced children are the most at risk in war-affiicted Iraq, and displacement unravels the body of human rights guaranteed to the child in international law. Displacement frequently results in the breakdown of family and community structures, the disintegration of traditional and social norms, and an increase in female-headed households which places displaced children at greater risk as regards to their psycho-social well-being, including death, abuse, malnutrition, poverty, discrimination and other human rights violations. Conflict-induced displacement, as is the case in Iraq, often produces more vulnerable clusters of children, such as unaccompanied children, children in detention, street children and child soldiers. For example, displaced boys and girls, separated from parents and family, are more often targets of abduction and forcible recruitment by
" Greg Lewis, "Iraq Child Slave Shame", Wales on Sunday, URL: http://www.paulflynnmp.co.uk/ mustreaddetail.jsp?id=903 '" Billy Briggs, "Estimates of the true numbers of orphans across Iraq range from 1.5 million to 5 million...". The Herald, UK, URL: http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/7540 " "Ministry copes with rising numbers of orphaned children", IRIN, April 18, 2006 <www.irinnews.org/ print.asp?ReportID=52836>; Joan Chittister, "'Our childhood is killed in Iraq. It is killed'". National Catholic Reporter (Kansas), vol. 4, no. 2 (April 10, 2006) <http://nationalcatholicreporter.org/fwis/ pc041006.htm>.

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resistance and paramilitary groups or even govemment by forces. Many former child soldiers of different fighting factions also become displaced owing to the potential dangers of reprisals that they may face upon return to their residence area. In addition, both displaced boys and girls are vulnerable to rape, sexual exploitation and enslavement though girls are the principal targets.'* In May 24, 2006, the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) expressed, in its Human Rights bimonthly report for March / April, 2006, its serious concem at the scale of death and injuries in Iraq caused by ongoing violence and the coalition forces. The Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General in Iraq, Ashraf Qazi stated that political violence resulting in the slaughter of civilians is an act of terror that is unacceptable whatever the cause. He warned that the persistent violence continues to result in thousands of displaced families and that this displacement involved both Shi'a and Sunni civilians who are being intimidated, threatened or killed. The report concluded that the conflict negatively impacts on the situation of women, children and the elderly, severely affecting their access to basic services and undermining their living standards." Attempts by the UN and the Intemational organization for Migration to extend assistance to the displaced people from Falujah, Ramdi, al-Qim and Najaf, which the occupation forces severely devastated covered a small number of IDPs, and supplied them with only the necessary non-food i t ^ * However, the wanton killing of civilians by the American-led coalition and the eruption of sectarian violence by the armed militias have created waves of families fleeing their homes without a trace. A govemment official told IRIN in late April 2006, that some 25,000 people had fled their homes in the preceding 3 weeks, bringing the total displaced people to 13,750 families or about 90,000 individuals. Similarly, the Iraqi Red Crescent Society has registered 11,000 displaced families.'' In June 27,2006, the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) has estimated that 1.3 million individuals have been displaced inside Iraq, almost 5 percent of the total Iraqi population.*^ The problem with statistics on the intemal displacement of families is that the number of people can not be known at any given moment because on one hand, families seeking safety do not report their whereabouts, and on the other, the number of IDP is always in state of flux. Assistance to these people is also frequently of patchwork nature. School age children, though offered clothes, are not offered schools for re-admission; stolen or looted properties of intemally displaces people are not compensated for; craftsmen who lose their shops lose, thus, their livelihood, and tensions between the IDP and the new hosting communities often intensify as a result of increasing prices, which in tum, hamper the integration of the IDP into the new communities, with serious sense of alienation among the children.

http://www.db.idpproiect.org/8025708F004D404D/(httpPages)/ 95A22FF4149949858!52570A1004696FC? " http://www.uniraq.org/ = Ibid. '' "Increasing numbers of displaced families in need of assistance", IRIN, April 26, 2006 <www.irinnews.org/ print.asp?ReportID=52983>. http://www.news24.com/News24/World/Iraq/0,,2-10-1460_1958776,00.html

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The 2003 war predictably worsened the health and living condition within Iraq. However, there was the hope that with the occupation and the lifting of sanctions the situation would improve. Statistics compiled by the World Health Organization (WHO) on the health conditions in Iraq cannot mirror the worsening present situation, which is fluid and dangerous. According to 2004 survey, which was conducted by the US-sponsored Iraqi authorities in late 2004, only 15 percent of the population get about 12 hours of electricity per day; in Baghdad, only 4 percent. In urban areas, about 66 percent have access to safe drinking water and the rate in the rural centers goes down to 43 percent. About 63 percent are not connected to the sewage system and 37 percent of those who are connected suffer various levels of problems.*' In a September 2005 study commissioned by Iraq's Central Organization for Statistics and Information Technology, the World Food Programme and UNICEF found this tragic situation has actually grown worse since the March 2003 invasion. According to a May 2006 UNICEF report, a full 25 per cent Iraqi children between 6-months and 5-years-old suffered from either acute or chronic malnutrition, and one in three Iraqi children were malnourished and underweight. The danger of malnutrition in young children is that it arrests optimal mental and cognitive development, as well as physical growth. Aggravating the situation are recent price increases: "My son is suffering from malnutrition because I can't afford to give him a balanced diet," Salua Kamar, a mother of three, told IRIN.*^ On March 18, 2006, the director of the pharmacy of Yarmmok hospital in Iraq Entisar Mohammad Ariabi told an American gathering in Florida that many of Iraqi hospitals in cities like Baghdad, Al-Qaim, and Fallujah were bombed and destroyed and medical staff and ambulances attacked. Diseases that were under control under the regime of Saddam Hussein, such as cholera, hepatitis, meningitis, and polio, have retumed, particularly affecting children." Death due to cancer has also increased because treatment programs have stopped and medicines are simply not available. Moreover, pregnant women prefer, now, to give birth at home for fear for their lives and, as a result, many babies die unnecessarily.*^ According to Dr. Entesar, under the sanctions regime Iraq was number 80 in the worldwide list of child deaths under 5 years. Now, Iraq is number 36, and the rate of severe malnutrition among Iraqi children has almost doubled to 8 percent since the occupation. This percentage translates to roughly 400,000 Iraqi children suffering from wasting; a condition characterized by chronic diarrhea and dangerous protein deficiencies.*' Twelve percent of that age group suffers from general malnutrition, 8 percent from acute malnutrition, and 23 percent from chronic malnutrition. Many of the sick could not afford payment to health services, especially in rural areas, where 30 percent cannot use health services owing to poverty.** Dr. Entisar emphatically
" Iraq Living Conditions Survey 2004, vol. 1, pp. 28, 32, 34-35. " "UN report cites vast under-nutrition among children", IRIN, May 8, 2006 <www.irinnews.org/ print.asp?ReportID=53203>. " Entesar Mohammad Ariabi, "Welcome to liberated Iraq", West Palm Beach, FL, March 18, 2006 <www.alternet.org/module/printversion/33771>. Ibid. " Dahr Jamail, Op. Cit "Iraq Living Conditions Survey 2004, vol. 1, p. 55.

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told the audiences that the US has not shared its knowledge or medical technology, nor have the American given the Iraqis new equipment, let alone basic medicines despite the rhetoric from the US Administration. The US, however, supplied Iraq voluntarily, with many more morgues." It is estimated that 270,000 children bom after the war have had none of their required immunizations, and routine immunization services have all been but disrupted. In addition, the existing stock of vaccines has become useless as a result of the destruction of the vaccine refrigeration system.** In fact, the widespread violence and lawlessness, combined with insufficient electricity generation and frequent power interruption, have rendered any health system ineffective because health services depend so heavily on reliable availability of power, which the occupation has not restored. Iraqis nationwide receive on average less than 12 hours of power a day. For residents of Baghdad, it was six hours a day in December 2005. According to the Washington Post on January 2, 2006, half of the US$18.4 billion, allocated to reconstruction projects, has been spent on security issues. There is, now, no intention to assign more American funds for restoring electricity grid, water systems, and sewerage; works which are estimated in tens of billions of dollars. Brigadier General William McCoy, the Army Corps of Engineers commander overseeing the work, is reported to have said, "The US never intended to completely rebuild Iraq. This was just supposed to be a jump-start."*' Religious Life Under the Ba'th regime, the Iraqi state was secular, and religion was confined to the teaching of rituals and the personal cultivation of moralities. The courts applied secular laws to family issues, including those regarding children. Thus, Shi'te and Sunni versions of Islamic legal thought were subordinated to the dictates of the state, which created the misperception that there was a unity of mind on the subject. With the overthrow of the Ba'th and the ensuing occupation, a new constitution was drafted in December 2005 and subsequently approved. This new constitution emphasizes religion as the source of law and leaves much ambiguity as to what version of legal thought will be in effect. According to Islamic law expert Clark Lombardi, the area of family law and personal status, and its effect on the children is problematic. Whether the courts should apply a body of national law that has been determined to be consistent with the broad principles of Islamic sharia, or whether the constitution should require that the courts apply to every Iraqi the Islamic version of family law consistent with his/her sect remains debatable, and replete with significant complexities. The cataclysmic change from a secular to religion-focused environment, amidst violence and lack of security, will have an indelible impact on Iraqi children, though at the moment, it cannot be fully grasped. The present Islamic religious organizations have been bom out of conditions of
" Ariabi, "Welcome to liberated Iraq", op. cit. " Cesar Chelala, "Another round of misery for the children of Iraq", Seattle Times. November 22, 2004, the author is a public health consultant in New York. URL: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/ opinion/2002097353_chelala22.html " Ellen Knickmeyer, "US Has End in Sight on Iraq Rebuilding", quoted in URL: http://www.globalpolicy.org/ security/issues/iraq/reconstruct/2006/0102rebuilding.htm Clark Lombardi, "Even with constitution, Iraq faces major crises". Council on Foreign Relations, August 17, 2005 <www.cfr.org/publication/8625/islamic_law_expert_lombardi.html>.

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occupation and resistance, which make them militant, and the involvement of children in such organizations affords them a sort of hazardous support because the children are the eyes and the transmitters of the whereabouts and the actions of the enemy. Being actively a part of the religious militant organizations is not only life risking, but may also have the long term effect of militarizing the mindset of the future generations of Iraqi as well as the children's conceptualization of the roles of religion. Children - and for that matter, Iraqis in general cannot afford to do without the protection of the militant religious organizations. Thus, the humanitarian role that religions, such as Islam, play in the lives of the people have been transformed inadvertently by the occupation to belligerency and aggressiveness. Child Abuse and Neglect The UN Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN) reported in late August 2005 that hundreds of families in Iraq have found the sex trade of children a means of living under the deterioration of the security conditions in Iraq, where there are no voices of protest concemed about the involvement of these children." In December 2005, the IRIN reported that street children are subject to all sorts of violence because, according to one such a child, "People don't care who we are and where we come from".'^ Many such children do not have a choice, as poverty and widespread violence have killed their caregivers. Further, there are no laws in place to punish the abusers, and even if there were, there is no enough force to implement them. A senior official in the ministry of public work and social affairs, Safa'a Muhammad, admitted that only few programs were available to help street children and protect them from abuse and neglect, and sexual abuse is one of the most common dangers they face. Making matters worse, corruption in the ministry has sabotaged or delayed all of the programs, according to Safa'a. The Iraqi Red Crescent Society has reported that lack of financing and constant insecurity have prevented the organization from effectively helping street children. Women for Peace, an Iraqi non-governmental organization reported that that incidence of sexual abuse has increased during 2005, resulting in at least one case of a girl being raped weekly and one boy every two weeks. Under the age of sixteen years, girls suffer 70 percent of abuse and boys 30 percent, according to the spokeswoman of the ministry of social affairs. [CITATION?] either in endnote 71 or 72 Intemet source. Iraqi children, as a result of their living conditions, resort to illicit drugs to face their daily ordeals. According to the director of the drug-control program at the ministry of health, Kamel Ali, the number of registered heroin addicts in suburban Baghdad has more than doubled in 2005; it went up from 3,000 in 2004 to 7,000." Further, the Iraqi state is not only seemingly indifferent to the abuse of children, but as it relates to the Iraqi prison system, actually complicit in it. The London newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi reported in February 2006 [CITATION?] that the Iraqi Minister of Human Rights admitted that there were 1,070 children under the age of sixteen years in the prisons which have been revealed to be involved in

" "Focus on boys trapped in commercial sex trade", IRIN, August 8, 2005 <www.irinnews.org/ print.asp?ReportID=48485>. '^ "Street children face hunger and abuse", IRIN, December 26, 2005 <www.irinnews.org/ report.asp?ReportID=50850&SelectRegion=Middle_East>. " Ibid.

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systematic torture."* Earlier, in March 11,2005 the BBC revealed that children as young as 11 years-old were detained with adults at the notorious Iraqi prison, Abu Ghraib. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has obtained documents through the Freedom of Information Act, in which Brigadier General, Janis Karpinski, who was in charge ofthe prison from July to November 2003, gave details of the children and women held there. The Pentagon did not deny detention of children and women, but denied abuse of children in prison, which Karpinski challenged. In the documents, witness statements read that four drunken Americans took a 17-year-old female prisoner from her cell and forced her to expose her breasts and kissed her. In another documented incident, it is stated that troops have thrown mud on the detained 17year-old son of an Iraqi general and forced his father to watch him shiver in the cold. Karpinski said that she often visited the prison's young inmates and thought one boy looked like he was eight years old. Karpinski added, "He told me he was almost 12 years, and that his brother was, there, with him, but he really wanted to see his mother. Could he please call his mother? He was crying."'' Recognizing the archaic juvenile legal system of the Iraqi State, UNICEF Special Representative for Iraq, Roger Wright stressed, in mid April 2006, that the Juvenile Justice and protective institutions must take the particular developmental needs of Iraqi children who do not live with their families into account. He added, "We know that children can be taught the difference between right and wrong, and go on to lead productive lives that contribute positively to their communities and society. While it is critical to address how children in detention are being treated, it is also crucially important to focus on reducing the vulnerabilities and circumstances that push children to the edge of crime and into lifestyles which often result in law-breaking and criminality."''* According to the UN Representative in Iraq, Ashraf Qazi, conditions in Iraqi detention facilities continue to be inconsistent with international human rights standards." While admitting that kidnappings increased dramatically after February 2006, Iraqi government officials dismissed as exaggerated a survey conducted by 125 NGOs that estimated about 20,000 people had been kidnapped in the first 3 and a half months ofthe year. According to the NGO survey, nearly half of them were women or children. The Baghdad-based Organization for Women's Freedom in Iraq estimates that more than 2,000 women have gone missing since the 2003 invasion. Many of these kidnapped girls are part of something virtually non-existent under Saddam Hussein: sex trafficking. One 14-year-old Iraqi girl who told her story to Time magazine was kidnapped and imprisoned in a dark house in Baghdad's middle-class Karada district for three weeks. There, she was tortured, beaten, and insulted while here captors haggled over her selling price to a man from Dubai, who finally settled on $10,000. After the US invasion, an armed gang took another 18-year-old Iraqi girl from an orphanage to brothels in Samarra and Mosul before they drugged her, dressed her in a suicide belt, and sent her to bomb a cleric's office. A 'Western official in Baghdad' told Time in April 2006 that sex
'" For the historical context and much of the contemporary fact, see Alfred W. McCoy, A Question of Torture: CIA interrogation, from the Cold War to the war on terror (New York: Metropolitan, 2006). "BBC News, "US held youngsters at Abu Ghraib", March 11, 2005, URL: http://news.bbc.co.Uk/2/hi/ americas/4339511 .stm " http://www.unicef.org/media/media_33369.html "http://www.uniraq.org/

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trafficking had become a serious issue: "It is a problem, definitely. Unfortunately, the security situation doesn't allow us to follow up on this." Iraqi women's advocates are trying to set up halfway houses to care for survivors of kidnapping, but the new Iraqi government has set up a number of bureaucratic roadblocks. "They want to close our women's shelter and deny our ability to open more", says Yanar Mohammed.'* What the Future Holds In a country plagued by occupation, indiscriminate killing, massive unemployment, loss of basic infrastructures, lawlessness and armed resistance, the future must look depressing particularly for the most vulnerable like children, the elderly, and women. Captain Jonathan Powers, who served for fourteen months in Iraq, returned to the US and reported recently to the newspaper, "Statesman General" that there are at least 5,000 orphans in Baghdad alone, and this number did not include those whose families had lost everything. According to the report, the surviving children are literally starving and more than 3.4 million school-aged children could not attend schools because schools were targets for violence. Wars, sanctions, depleted uranium and the occupation have created in Iraq a generation of youth traumatized by violence, carcinoma-gene-mutations, besieged by a sense of hopelessness, and adrift amid the collapse of civic institutions that would normally provide the framework for an ordered life. Captain Powers told the paper that the US reconstruction projects did very little for Iraqi children though half of the Iraqi population was under the age of 18 years. He said, " A youth center can be refurbished for just $50,000, complete with computers and the generators necessary to supply power. For $200,000, the center can run for two years. Compare this sum with more than $250 billion already spent on the war."'' The Anglo-American war has unleashed primordial social affiliations of tribalism and ethnicity that are further complicated by divisive religious animosity. Reconstruction projects have not aimed at nation rebuilding through national dialogue or genuine national reconciliation; American reconstruction projects have fueled resistance and exacerbated lawlessness. The American brokered Constitution of Iraq in December 2005 has legalized the divided and sectarian conditions in Iraq, and the present government is no more than a religio-ethnic entity masquerading as ministries and cabinet, and has only compounded the bleakness of the future Iraqi landscape. In March 2006, the US President, Mr, Bush proclaimed: "Despite massive provocations, Iraq has not descended into civil war, most Iraqis have not tumed to violence and the Iraqi security forces have not broken up into sectarian groups waging war against each other."*" When progress is defined in negatives, you have a measure of how bad the situation is. In far too many ways, things have not improved since the 2003 invasion of Iraq either. Poverty in Iraq has steeply increased, and those who were surviving on the

" "NGOs' report puts kidnappings this year at 20,000", IRIN, April 20, 2006 <www.irinnews.org/ print.asp?ReportID=52884>; Brian Bennett, "Stolen away". Time (New York), vol. 167, no. .18 (1 May 2006), pp. 37-38 <www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,1186519,00.html>. " Marie Cocco, "Vet will keep fighting for Iraq's kids". Statesman General, April 1, 2006 <http:// 159.54.226.83/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060401/OPINION/60331012/1049>. * Jonathan Steele, Guardian, "The challenge of ensuring stability: Rule of terror and chaos in Iraq", Dawn (Karachi), April 1, 2006 <www.dawn.comy2006/04/01/int9.htm>. See also <http://iraqwar.mirror-world.ru/ article/83948>.

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margin due to the sanctions and deprivation have sunk even further, and their children are given little nutrition, almost no health care, no education, no constructive present and no future. There are others who suffer, now, because the family wage earner has been killed, detained, or has lost employment. The more fortunate among the Iraqi families are those whose source of income, like a shop, factory or farm has not been destroyed, but in general, it is simply impossible to feed a family under the existing economic conditions of high costs and low- to- nil income in Iraq. The situation in the Northern Iraq-American paradigm of Kurdistan- is little better. In March 2006, a report on the living conditions of children in city of Sulaimaniyah stated that young children, as young as seven were seen assisting their families in searching the city garbage dumps. The children would accompany their parents to the dumps before going to school in the morning in order to look for reusable items such as shoes, clothing and electrical equipment which are then resold in order to make ends meet.*' Furthermore, According to Dr. Haydar Salah, a pediatrician at the Basra Children's Hospital, the mortality of children in Basra has increased by nearly 30 percent since the Saddam Hussein era. Children are dying daily, Salah said in April 2006, and no one is doing anything to help them. According to doctors and NGOs, the primary causes of this high infant mortality are unsafe water, diarrhea, malnutrition, infectious diseases, maternal stress, and poverty.*^ The independent journalist Dahr Jamail, among the very few left in Iraq, was an eyewitness to the following event, which has continued to be reflective of how the American military conceive of Iraqi civilians, particularly children. He says, "On December 17,2003, at the al-Shahid Adnan Kherala secondary school in Baghdad, I witnessed US forces detain 16 children who had held a mock, nonviolent, pro-Saddam Hussein presentation on the previous day. While forces from the First Armored Division sealed the school with two large tanks, helicopters, several Bradley fighting vehicles and at least 10 Humvees, soldiers loaded the children into a covered tmck and drove them to their base. Meanwhile, the rest of the students remained locked inside the school until the US military began to exit the area. Shortly thereafter the doors were unlocked, releasing the frightened students who flocked out the doors. The youngest were 12 years old, and none of the students were older than 18. They ran out, many in tears, while others were enraged as they kicked and shook the front gate. Surrounded by frenzied students, one yelled, "This is the democracy? This is the freedom? You see what the Americans are doing to us here?" Another student cried out to me "They took several of my friends! Why are they taking them to prison? For throwing rocks?" A few blocks away I spoke with a smaller group of students who had run from the school in panic. One student who was crying yelled to me, "Why are they doing this to us? We are only kids!" The tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles that were guarding the perimeter of the school began to rumble down the street beside us, on their passage out. Several young boys with tears streaming down their faces picked up stones and hurled them at the tanks as they drove by. Imagine my horror when I saw
*' Dahr Jamail, OP.Cit. *' "Iraq: Doctors, NGOs warn of high infant mortality in Basra", IRIN, April 11, 2006 <www.irinnews.org/ print.asp?ReportID=52727>.

The Cost of War: The Children of Iraq the US soldiers on top of the Bradleys begin firing their M-16's above our heads as we ducked inside a taxi. A soldier on another Bradley, behind the first, passed and fired randomly above our heads as well. Kids and pedestrians ran for cover into the shops and wherever possible. I remember a little boy, not more than 13 years old, holding a stone and standing at the edge of the street glaring at the Bradleys as they rumbled past. Another soldier riding atop another passing Bradley pulled out his pistol and aimed it at the boy's head and kept him in his sights until the vehicle rolled out of sight. One of the students hiding behind our taxi screamed to me, "Who are the terrorists here now? You have seen this yourself! We are school kids!""

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This American military attitude has persevered. Robert Fisk reports on June 3,2006 that he was in the Baghdad mortuary, counting corpses, when one of the city's senior medical officials, who is an old friend, told him of his fears. "Everyone brings bodies here," the doctor said. "But when the Americans bring bodies in, we are instructed that under no circumstances are we ever to do post-mortems. We were given to understand that this had already been done. Sometimes we would get a piece of paper with the body, like this one." Fisk adds, "And here the man handed me a US military document showing with the hand-drawn outline of a man's body and the words "trauma wounds."^ After the massacres of Haditha and Ishiaq, any observer of the unfolding violence in Iraq must re-consider his\her suspicions of who is dumping the innocent bodies of children, women and the elderly on garbage heaps? According to the Fisk article, the horrors of Abu Ghraib are already buried away, because the West, the US in particular, never really cared about Iraqis, which explains why the US refused to count their dead. When the US belatedly began counting civilian Iraqis shot by its military machine for condolence money, it was hoped this would decrease the desire for revenge among Iraqis. The amount was $2500 per dead Iraqi against $400,000 insurance money for each dead American. The remark made by President Bush, ""Every human life is a precious gift of matchless value" applies only to Americans.*^ When the Americans regard themselves as the brightest, the most morally superior, who combat terror, and terrorists worldwide, they dress themselves up as Crusaders, and tell those whose countries they invade that they are going to bring them democracy. How can the US be held to account?*' No peace can come out from violence and lies, and peace is the nurture of happy children who form the base of a happy future of any country. But as one Iraqi woman commented: "Our childhood has been killed in Iraq. It is dead."" To quote Carson McCullers, "But the hearts of small children are delicate organs. A cruel beginning in this world can twist them into curious shapes." The Iraqi children, who make up the future generation of the Iraqi People, may become the next force the US must confront in the Middle East.

" Dahr Jamail, Op.Cit " Robert Fisk, "The way the Americans Like Their War", The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, June 3, 2006.It is also in URL: http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0603-27.htm " Andrew Bacevich, "What is an Iraqi life worth?", Washington Post, Sunday, July 9, 2006, P. BOl * Robert Fisk, OP Cit. * *' Chittister, "'Our childhood is killed in Iraq. It is killed'", op. cit.