The World Cries for Iraq's Children of War by Farah Farouque The Age 1:16pm 13th Apr, 2003   April 13 2003    Iraq's children - there are more than 12 million of them - have long been no ordinary bystanders to war.    In recent years, they have been blighted three times by violent conflict: a cross-border war with Iran in the 1980s, the Gulf War of 1991 and the latest assault against Saddam Hussein's regime.    As the coalition consolidates victory, concerns remain for Iraq's war-weary young people. UNICEF, the United Nation's children's fund, holds grave fears for these most defenceless victims of war.    "Iraqi children are extremely vulnerable," said UNICEF chief Carol Bellamy. "When you factor in the loss of education and psycho-social trauma, there is no question that war takes its greatest toll on children."    Nabil Sulaiman, an Iraqi doctor who works in public health in Melbourne, survived the bombardment of Baghdad in 1991 with his young family. He said his two sons, now settled in Melbourne, still showed signs of trauma. "My younger son still has nightmares," he said.    The Western world has a glimpse of the nightmare Iraqi children have endured through the images and reports that have emerged from more than three weeks of war. There are pictures of maimed and bloodied children, children crying in markets after a strike hits civilians, a graphic account of US marines killing two children at a checkpoint when the driver of a car failed to stop.    An Australian nurse with Medecins Sans Frontieres, Fariba Saadvandi, has worked with children in Afghanistan and is due to depart for Iraq. Her experience of the trauma of children caught in conflict is stark. "They isolated and withdrew themselves from the others, and even from their families," she said.    While the exodus of refugees that was predicted in Iraq has not yet happened, aid agencies calculate the human cost of the war will still be high. Ms Bellamy said that however sophisticated the methods of war had become, the "end results are as bloody and tragic as they have been throughout the centuries".    Images of Iraqi children seem to reinforce this familiar story. Their fate has been further complicated by the effects of sanctions imposed after the first Gulf War.    Even before the start of this war, one in eight Iraqi children died before their fifth birthday. About 500,000 were acutely malnourished or underweight.    Primary schooling has fallen sharply during 12 years of sanctions, especially for girls.    Two psychologists who studied children, aged from four to 18, in Basra and Baghdad before the outbreak of war last month, found more than a third of those they spoke to felt "life was not worth living most of the time".    The researchers, who published their findings in a Canadian report, said: "It was almost shocking to us to learn that even children of four and five years possessed concepts of the real physical threats of bombs and guns: destruction of houses, burning homes, killing of people."    World Vision's international director for child protection, Heather Macleod, is in Jordan awaiting clearance to participate in the humanitarian effort that will be required in postwar Iraq.    She said the rescue of Iraq's children had to be multi-pronged. "We will need to find out how many children are separated from their families." "There will be orphan issues that we will have to look at as well." It was critical to bring certainty back to children's lives. That meant reopening schools and ensuring parents began to provide basic needs. "In war, some children will lose trust in the ability of their parents, and adults generally, to care for them."    What happened in the next few months could determine the fate of a generation of children. Visit the related web page
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