Hi Amman 10 December 2004

Part One -The Children of Iraq

When the 'coalition of the willing' waged their dirty, illegal war on the long-suffering people of Iraq, they attacked a country where around half the population are aged under 18 years - it was, in effect, as if they were bombing a giant schoolyard.
The children of Iraq, most of them only knowing a life under sanctions, are now used to the sights and sounds of war - bombs, gunfire, soldiers, tanks, humvees, checkpoints, helicopters, concrete blast blocks and razor wire are all seen everywhere everyday. The same helicopters, humvees and more bombs and gunfire interrupt their sleep nightly. This is the norm for these children. Would you want this to be the norm for your children?
To most Iraqi children the sight of a dead body, blood, bombed buildings or maimed people is nothing special. The effect this has on them differs from child to child.
I have returned home 6 hours after a roadside bomb went off outside the appartment to find my neighbours' children - Hamsa and Ayar, amongst others - playing happily and giggling. They, just hours before, saw two dead bodies lying bloodied and mutilated in their own street. But play continues. Would this happen with the children if a bomb went off in your neighbourhood?

Most Iraqi children don't have any toys. Those that do will almost certainly have a toy version of some sort of weapon - usually a toy AK47, but perhaps a toy pistol, or a toy tank, or maybe even a toy military helicopter. I cannot count how many times a toy gun has been pointed at me in playful delight by the children of Iraqi friends. Of course, when the trigger is pulled I have to feign a slow, tortured death to the squeals of laughter of the gun wielding child. I hate doing this, especially if I am then handed the gun to do the same back. It upsets my very soul to play such a horrible game. But I only protest a little - this is Iraq, not Wales and taking the moral high ground on such issues is not only difficlt, it is nigh impossible. Anyway, I think it is more important to make the children laugh. But it is so difficult for me to do. I know too many vegan and peace activist friends who would never let thier children play with anything more representatively deadly than a water pistol and I know, if I had children, I would certainly take the same stand as them on the issue.
The market toy stands up on Saduun Street are littered with such items and they are very cheap. Military helicopters which light up and whirr, tanks which race across the floor like toy cars - they are all there in a macabre toy collection representing war and death - the norm.

Seeing guns in the family home is also the norm. Most homes have an AK47 or maybe a pistol for home protection. Thankfully these guns are usually only brought out for celebratory events such as weddings or victorious football matches, but it all adds to the acceptance of guns as part of life and children see and learn this young in Iraq.

A year ago I attended a lecture in Iraq which estimated the amount of Iraqi children suffering from PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) to be a staggering 50% and it is sure to be more than that now. The same lecturer told how the number of child psychiatrists in Iraq was woefully low - virtually zero in a heavily traumatised country.

In a mentally worn out society, few Iraqis discuss their personal suffering with each other.
'Abu Ali' just does not bother telling 'Abu Mohammed' about the death or injury of loved ones in the war, about his house windows or car being damaged in a roadside bomb, or what the electricity cuts are doing to his business. What's the point? 'Abu Mohammed' has probably been through the same, maybe even worse. (Although it has to be said that many Iraqis will tell outsiders of their experiences/opinions/troubles).
But often this silent suffering is seen in the children, who sometimes seem barely effected by horrors they have endured.
I have told you about Noor and Ammar before.
I met Noor in a friend's office with her father. She is an effervescent, chatty, confident 12 year old girl. Clearly very intelligent - when I asked her about school she was proud to inform me that she was top of her year. When asked if she had any brothers or sisters, she replied "Just one sister". She went on to say that her two brothers had been killed in the war while defending their country -one at Kut, the other at Mussayib, near Hilla. She continued that later in the year, during Ramadan, her mother had died of a broken heart. It is hard to imagine how anyone, let alone a 12 year old girl, could cope with such personal, devasting tragedy. But here was Noor recounting events as if she were detailing a school outing.

Ammar, in the National Theatre, was the same. Dancing joyfully to music, wearing a 'Gap' t-shirt and waving a red Communist Party flag, I could not resist taking a photo of this happy youngster. Photo taken, he came and sat by us - he had made new friends. When he discovered that I was not American, he apologised profusely to my translator. He hates Americans.
During the fall of Bagdad in April 2003, his 5 year old brother had been shot and murdered by American soldiers as the Iraqi Army had retreated across Oqaba Square, near the family home. The family, unable to leave the house that day due to the heavy bombardment, had found the body of their poor little son and brother lying dead in the street the next day. Ammar told us how his mother was still griefstricken. She had been so happy to give birth to son as a brother for Ammar 5 years earlier.
He told us of this horror with unflinching reserve. When he finished, he was up out of his seat and dancing again - you would never know his sadness to see him dancing like this.

One of 'our' boys, Ahmed, 12, never told me how much aeroplanes and helicopters bothered him. One night I was leaving the boys' home in Al Wazerya and saying goodbye to him - he had come out to the road to see me off. A plane was flying quite high up overhead as I turned around to Ahmed. He quickly removed his hands from his ears and looked embarrassed. I crouched down before him and asked why he did this. With his broken English he shyly explained that all the planes frighten him, he doesn't like the noise. All I could do was cuddle him.
Noor does not like the helicopters, well, neither do the adults. But I have seen too many chilldren, including teenagers, cover their ears at the sounds of any planes or helicopters, remembering what terror and death they brought to their homes during the war.

Hasan, our good friend, Abu Ali's, 13 year old son, seems to hide his trauma well. Living in Zafarania, Bagdad, this child had seen and heard a fair amount of bombing during the war.
Hasan has always been sickly and was about the size of an 8 year old. Abu Ali suspected that Hasan's sickness was due to exposure to chemical weapons that he himself had been subject to during the Iran/Iraq War. He had returned contaminated by the chemical warfare and his wife had become pregnant. Hasan had been born requiring constant medical treatment and blood donations.
The doctors now say Hasan's physical health is improving day by day. His mental health, however, is worrying. Although always ill, he was a happy, chatty, outgoing child before the war. Now he is very different. When I visited the family home of Abu Ali, I was at first regarded with suspicion by Hasan, although he soon relaxed with me in the room with the family. But he is a quiet, withdrawn boy, clearly troubled, sullen, almost sulky, though obedient.
He was just starting to do well physically when the war came along, which now certainly seems to have caused him a different set of problems.

Abul Azziz's brother, Ibrahim, 5, used to go up to American soldiers to say hello. After Abdul Azziz's leg was lost after an American soldier shot at him for no reason whatsoever, Ibrahim's attitude to soldiers changed drastically. Now, if he sees soldiers, he shouts swear words in English at them. (Many Iraqi children who know no English at all know the rude words - care of the fowl mouthed US troops.)
Once his mum caught and stopped him trying to throw stones at the soldiers - she was terrified they would shoot him and claim they thought he was throwing a grenade. One day Ibrahim was found pulling some old car tyres around the front yard. When asked what he was doing, he replied that he was collecting bombs to throw at the American Army.
I have visited Abdul Azziz's family several times and they are just lovely. Ibrahim is always concerned about my white face for a while in case I am American. Indeed, the first time I was there, it took him around 2 hours to smile at me. But he is a beautiful little thing and when he calms down he is really funny and loving. Now he cuddles up to me, usually after a clothes-changing extravaganza, when he spends around an hour putting on different sets of clothes to show off. This little fashion show features all styles, from dishdasha to shorts and t-shirt. But his mind is well and truely disturbed. And even though he is lucky enough to have a strong and loving family around him, I fear he will grow up so angry and resentful.
Abdul Azziz's sisters, aged from 8 to 18 years, are also mentally anguished. Raghad, just 8 years, cannot fall asleep without holding her mother's hand, all have regular bad dreams and Ekbal, 15, with dark sad eyes, won't imagine what the future may hold incase she dies tomorrow. Whenever Ekbal sees an American soldiers, she shouts "Don't shoot."

Then there is Ali, also 5, the youngest son of a family I visited in Hilla. As coaltion forces approached their neighbourhood in Hilla at the end of March 2003, the sounds of bombing and aircraft and tankfire became louder and louder as it got nearer and nearer to their house in a residential suburb of the city. On 1st April they were awoken in the early hours, the fighting was so close now, and their house was shaking all over with each terrifying blast. The Iraqi Army were attempting to defend Hilla from the main road near the houses. The family got up and decided to leave to the countryside just hours before the whole residential neighbourhood was cluster bombed killing and mutilating hundreds. They hurried to a friend's farmhouse some 10 kilometres away, but having so narrowly escaped being cluster bombed in their home, they were to be cluster bombed here out in the countryside as a battle took place nearby.
The family, all physically unharmed, returned to their neighbourhood later that day to find their house badly damaged, all the windows shattered. About 330 people in the area were killed. They felt grateful to be alive and unharmed.
Not long after this they started to see a change in Ali. He would loose his temper in terrible rages and tantrums and hit out at his mother, 4 sisters and 3 brothers. He would bully the little daughter of his older brother and often try to beat his mother. He would scream, shout and sulk and throw food around at meal times in fits of rage. When he awoke from sleeping he would start shouting and this incuded swearing and damning God. His mum and dad say he is naughty all the time he is awake, with more than 10 incidents daily. They do not know what to do with their desperately and heavily traumatised son.
The whole family may have survived the cluster bombs without even an injury, but how their lives have changed and what does the future hold for Ali and his terrible tantrums?

Then there are the child soldiers. These are not coerced, bullied, unwilling combatants such as those we hear of in Uganda or Sudan, for example, but youngsters who want to fight and defend thier homes and do so proudly and courageously.
I saw one boy, 11, in Fallujah, wrapped in a red yeshmack with his AK47, almost as big as him. I have detailed his astounding fighting skills in an earlier report. Although he is most definitely skilful and brave, I wonder what mental scars he will have to endure as he grows up. Indeed, I wonder if he is alive at all now after the recent annihilation of Fallujah.
I also met a small 15 year old boy driving his father's minibus as an ambulance, risking his young life to collect the dead and dying in the beseiged sniper-ridden city. What horrors has he witnessed to take with him through life? What horrors have all the children in Fallujah witnessed or had happen to them or loved ones?

There are many accounts of children fighting alongside older family members in Sadr City. Sadr City, the impoverished, mainly Shia area of Bagdad, has much more that the national average of around 50% under 18 years of age. These boy soldiers are eager to defend their neighbourhood against the unnecessary presence of the US Army in their area.
A friend from Sadr City told me of one 8 year old whose favoured weapon was an RPG (rocket propelled grenade) - how on Earth does an 8 year old fire an RPG - well, apparantly quite well, by all accounts.

Nargy,9, lives in Kufa Mosque. I met this little fellow on our tragic humanitarian mission there in August. He is an orphan, no one quite knows what happened to his parents, but he was a delight and everybody made a huge fuss of him. He absolutely loves the Mahdi Army guys and, of course, hated the Americans. Although not actually a child soldier, he used to hand bullets to the fighters and told us that he wanted to fight for Moqtada to drive the Americans out of Iraq. He also told us that he wanted to die as a martyr. It is just so sad. Nargy is surrounded by love, kindness and attention, but look what the war and occupation have done to his mind. I don't even know if the child still lives - one week after our visit there the mosque was attacked by 2 US rockets and many were killed and injured.

All these child soldiers are sure to suffer from some sort of PTSD in the future - that is if they survive the ongoing brutal occupation.

To be continued ...

All for now
Helen Williams
Amman Jordan