Children of war: the generation traumatised by violence in Iraq

There's a fascinating article in the Guardian about the effect the Iraq war is having on Iraqi children.

The car stopped at the makeshift checkpoint that cut across the muddy backstreet in western Baghdad. A sentry appeared. "Are you Sunni or Shia?" he barked, waving his Kalashnikov at the driver. "Are you with Zarqawi or the Mahdi army?"

"The Mahdi army," the driver said. "Wrong answer," shouted the sentry, almost gleefully. "Get him!"

The high metal gate of a nearby house was flung open and four gun-toting males rushed out. They dragged the driver from his vehicle and held a knife to his neck. Quickly and efficiently, the blade was run from ear to ear. "Now you're dead," said a triumphant voice, and their captive crumpled to the ground.

Then a moment of stillness before the sound of a woman's voice. "Come inside boys! Your dinner is ready!" The gunmen groaned; the hapless driver picked himself up and trundled his yellow plastic car into the front yard; the toy guns and knives were tossed by the back door. Their murderous game of make-believe would have to resume in the morning.

What they are re-enacting is a scene they witnessed three weeks ago, when their teacher was hauled from his car and had his throat slit in front of them.

In a rare study published last week, the Association of Iraqi Psychologists (API) said the violence had affected millions of children, raising serious concerns for future generations. It urged the international community to help establish child psychology units and mental health programmes. "Children in Iraq are seriously suffering psychologically with all the insecurity, especially with the fear of kidnapping and explosions," the API's Marwan Abdullah told IRIN, the UN-funded news agency. "In some cases, they're found to be suffering extreme stress," he said.

Sherif Karachatani, a psychology professor at the University of Sulaymaniya, said: "Every day another innocent child is orphaned or sees terrible things children should never see. Who is taking care of the potentially enormous damage being done to a generation of children?"

There are well-founded fears, he said, that the "relentless bloodshed and the lack of professional help will see Iraq's children growing up either deeply scarred or so habituated to violence that they keep the pattern going as they enter adulthood".

Of course, help for the children of Iraq is minimal. When one is dealing with death and destruction on this scale psychological damage is something that is put on the back burner to be dealt with at another time, if at all.

However, as the war is about to enter it's fourth year, the damage that has been done to youngsters who have spent a large part of their formative years in the midst of civil war is incalculable, reflected in the fact that school attendance is down by 60%.

In a strange way, the re-enactment of their teacher's throat slitting incident is actually healthy. It would be far worse were the children to internalise what they had seen, rather than turn it into part of their game play.

However, I'm left wondering how many armchair generals would continue to support this immoral war were it their innocents who were re-enacting such horrors?

In Britain at the moment the airwaves are full of the story of the friendly fire incident which killed Lance Corporal Matty Hull and the fight to have video evidence admitted into the coroner's report.

I have great sympathy for the young American pilots who killed him. When he realises that he has killed "blue on blue" one of the young pilots, identified as POPOV35 says, "I'm going to be sick." When watching the video, it is hard not to share his sentiment.

The incident highlights the danger of war fought from such a safe distance, where possible targets become blips on a screen shorn of their humanity. You can see the video from the pilot's cockpit here and will notice how much the whole thing resembles a video game.

This is as near as armchair generals get to an actual war and it is why they find it so easy to support such carnage and to challenge the patriotism of anyone who objects.

As the trauma of Iraq's children proves, war is a very different matter when it is experienced up close and personal.

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tag: Iraq, Iraq war, blue on blue, war on terror