Yousif is like all other Iraqi children who are deprived of their beautiful childhood. Instead of spending his time in a children library or an amusement park, he spends it either in the street or in watching TV shows which adults always watch. When my father told me this, I realized that children in Iraq need to learn many things and I think the first step should be taken by parents.
In every Eid, Yousif and the other children who live in the same street, gather in their fancy Eid clothes and take to the streets playing. They don’t have dolls or educative toys. Instead, they have pistols and rifles. I remember seeing Yousif imitating a security contractor guarding a convoy and pointing his gun at his friends, who are in the shoes of average people in the street. Dhuha, his 5-year-old friend imitated a woman scared and running in the street while Younis, his 5-year-old brother, who always repeats his father words against the U.S. forces, imitated an insurgent carrying his rifle and calling his friends to chase and kill another friend, Omar, who was imitating an American individual. They were accurate in performing the misery of our life. I spent an hour, shocked, watching them playing, or to be more accurate, fighting.
What a tragedy! Instead of making the new generations learn how to build their country, they are learning how to destroy it. This phenomenon is not new, but of course it increased since the US-led invasion to Iraq in 2003. since then, Iraqis, mostly children, became familiarized with images of weaponry and violence; images of US forces, US security contractors and insurgents are shown on Television and in reality.
Back in the early 1980s, my father never bought a toy weapons for me. Instead, he brought children magazines and books. Of course, that was the same with my friends, relatives, and almost all Iraqi children at the time. Although Iraq was in an 8-year-long war with neighboring Iran, education was much better than now.
I believe that the reason behind seeing children playing a “war game” is the negligence of their parents who are being busy with the difficulties of their life in an endless war with insurgents and occupiers.
After dinner, I flipped through Al-Sabah newspaper. A title drew my attention, “A new Iraqi Educative TV Channel to be established and directed to children.” The article said that there are efforts being paid to establish a channel for the Iraqi children sponsored by The Childhood Cultural House, a pioneer center that is dedicated to educate Iraqi children.
The center also said that last year, it republished one of the most famous children magazines, “Majalati” and “Mizmar” and that they distribute them now to children for free. That cheered me up because these two magazines were my favorites along with other magazines like “Superman” and the different scientific and artistic books the center used to publish. The center also said that they reopened the Children’s Library in Baghdad which was burned and looted after and during the invasion.
Now, I think parents should do their best to seize this opportunity. They have to send their children to this center to read. I know, it is hard to get there but at least they should try. They should avoid making their children looking at US forces or insurgents fighting with each other. They should let them see a picture of an engineer in a construction location, a doctor in a hospital, or a teacher in a classroom. On the other side, I hope the image of fighting stops or at least becomes less in residential areas where children play and go to schools. Teachers in schools should also stop their personal attitudes concerning America, the west, or insurgents. They have to focus on how to create a new generation that thinks of building the country rather than imitating people that will leave sooner or later.
