Uzma Bashir reports on the dire situation of children in a city under occupation
BAGHDAD, September 11, 2003
Today Iraq lies in ruins. In the ground floor restaurants, every meal attracts a crowd of kids who press their faces against the glass in a mute appeal for food.
Here are just two of their stories, which could be multiplied a thousandfold:
Ziman, 12, pretends to be a boy
Ziman is 12 years old. She usually sleeps on the traffic island by the checkpoint in front of the Sheraton and Palestine hotels. She keeps her hair cropped short to look as much like a boy as possible. Like most of the street kids, she lives in terror of the thieves, rapists and paedophiles who prey on the children after dark.
Her earliest memories are of being taken from an orphanage by a man who claimed to be her father. After his wife had a child of their own, they told Ziman she was not their child, and sent her out to beg. Her arms are scarred with burns from the days she did not earn enough. She ran away and has been living on the streets ever since.
Once she was taken to a Hawza “House of Mercy” where she was given a drug which made her sleepy. The head man showed the children pornographic videos, and one night she woke up naked. She says she does not know if anything happened.
She has many stories about men and older street kids hitting her, knocking her down and trying to “do things” to her.
Zeinab, old before her time
Zeinab is perhaps 16 or 17, but could pass for twenty years older. Most of the time she can be found in a near stupor from glue sniffing. In more lucid moments she will discuss her two babies, who died when she “dropped them in the street”. Having revealed this much, she retreats into herself, wrapping her arms tight around her shoulders, rocking and moaning. Trying to discuss her earlier life brings the same response.
Before the war needy children were housed in a number of orphanages and care homes, most supported by the state, some by mosques. During the invasion, many of the children ran away. Most never went back. Add to these the numbers orphaned by the war and the relatively small number sent out to beg by families with no other means of support. These most vulnerable residents of the city have become the prey of organised and powerful criminal gangs.
Rumours abound of these gangs kidnapping children for sale to Saudi and other oil-rich states. One such ring was broken up recently, but others continue to operate. The kids on the street are raided nightly by thieves, rejected and despised by their highly conservative society. So their “liberation” is complete.
Drug abuse was a very minor social problem before the war, but it is catching on fast. Glue or solvent abuse is almost universal among the street children. Some of the older boys have been seen with bags of pills, which appear to be some kind of amphetamine.
Enfants du Monde, a French relief organisation which has been operating in Baghdad for about three months, had planned to open a night shelter. After objections from the funding body, UNICEF, this was changed to a drop-in centre, where children are fed, bathed and turned out at night but Enfants du Monde does plan to open a 24-hour shelter in the near future, which is a clear social need.
We have been here through the war and the invasion. We have seen the battlefields, the hospitals, the human cost of war, but for all of us, working with these children has been a turning point. Listening to, recording the horror stories that their lives have become and then sending them back onto the street is not something we can do.
But to give these street kids a permanent refuge requires money.
We plan to start by opening a house in Baghdad for a few of these children. If we can raise the cash we can offer them the most basic support, food, a roof over their heads, some security, but most of these kids need more than that. We are looking for people with experience of working with street kids and/or abused children to save these children from the consequences of the occupation.
We have volunteers who are willing to go, despite the dangerous situation in which westerners working there face injury or death.
And, of course, we need money. Please make a donation now so we can start this valuable work. Better still, you could set up a monthly standing order with your bank or building society. All the money raised will be used directly on premises rent, food, security and expenses for staff.
Please send donations to:
Lloyds TSB, sort code 30-97-07, account no: 00723748.