JUMADA-AWWAL 7, 1429 A.H.
TUESDAY, MAY 13 2008
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Iraqi Youth: Rebuilding their lives one day at a time
By Altaf Husain
What is your daily routine like? Wake up, pray, eat, go to school, study, eat, pray, play, come home, relax, pray, study, pray, eat, pray, and go to sleep? Does that just about sum it up? Oh, I forgot to include this: surf the net, chat, send text messages, and respond to e-mails. A fairly stable routine, right? Must be what life is like for most Muslim youth, right? Wrong! In fact, if you think specifically about young people living in countries that are currently occupied or struggling with civil and regional warfare, there is absolutely nothing routine about their daily lives. In this article, we examine what challenges young people face in general and particularly in Iraq as they grow up surrounded by a climate of war and fear. What hope is there for the Iraqi youth to rebuild their lives? What about those Iraqi youth who have already fled Iraq with their families and must now attempt to develop an identity in a totally strange and new country? We can only imagine what life must be like for other youth living in war-torn countries whose stories are not reaching the front pages of the media in the same way the war in Iraq makes headlines daily. Imagine
Imagine what it must feel like if overnight, without warning, your entire routine is turned upside down. Loud sirens signal incoming enemy planes set to bomb targets very close to your home. Everyone rushes to the closest bomb shelter if one is available. Sometimes the threat passes in a matter of hours; other times the bombing is relentless and you must spend perhaps an entire day, sometimes two, just waiting for the bombing to stop. The bombing stops, and you come out of the shelter and witness the debris and destruction. The air is full of dust and there are people screaming and shouting in the streets as they discover that some of their relatives and friends were not fortunate enough to make it to the bomb shelter in time or were simply turned away because the shelters were full, and, with nowhere to run to, they were caught in the cross fire and killed.
Forget about going home because it turns out the military just missed its intended target and ended up destroying a section of your neighborhood, including your family's home. Forget about going to school because it turns out the enemy planes mistook your school for a military target and bombed it out of existence. Forget about going to the playground because it turns out the bombs have landed close to the park and the shrapnel (fragments of metal and other materials which break apart from the bomb and scatter all over the place) is literally all over the park. Playing there, you would risk being injured because many of the metal pieces are dangerously sharp. Forget about going to the local grocery store for milk, bread, eggs, or your favorite candy because it turns out the bombs did not spare the store, which the enemy mistakenly identified as a place where insurgents were hiding.
Within only a few hours, the sirens sound again and the entire routine is repeated: The bombing has started again and there will be more deaths and destruction. So with some relatives either dead or wounded, no house to return to, no school to attend, no park to play at, and no store to shop at, what would life be like for you?
Impact of War on Young People
Among the most vulnerable in the midst of war, all of whom are designated according to Islamic teachings as noncombatants, are children, women, and the elderly. While war is not new by any means, gross and inhumane acts of aggression have been committed, in the name of religion, political ideology, nationalistic tendencies, and outright racism. Children suffer the most during war because they are unable on the most part to make sense out of the seemingly rational choices which lead nations to war. Often the most difficult part of war for young people is the loss of parents, siblings, and relatives, and the possibility that they would witness firsthand the death and destruction of property and sitesfamiliar to them such as their local masjid, their school, their playground, and so on.
Over the last century or so, out of the experience of World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, and the most recent War on Terror, research has been conducted to study the impact of war on children and, in general, the impact on children of exposure to violence. Experts at the National Center for Children Exposed to Violence at Yale University developed a list of common reactions that can be noticed in young people who have been exposed to violence, especially war (see box). If you think about what is going on in the world, you will find there are many places where young Muslims are caught in the cross fire, witnessing again and again a dreadful pattern of death and destruction. Perhaps the worst crisis today is the severe negative impact the war in Iraq has.
Young People of Iraq
The people of Iraq have suffered the consequences of war over the past two decades: The Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, the first Gulf War in the early 1990s, the inhumane and genocidal sanctions against Iraq for most of the 1990s and part of the early years of the 21st century, and the most recent war against Iraq which started in March 2003. Throughout these years, much of the infrastructure of Iraq has been destroyed and the human toll in terms of the wounded, the dead, and the emotionally and psychologically scarred is immeasurable. As recently as 2004, the UNICEF (United Nations Children's Fund) stated the following in its country report on Iraq:
Almost half of the population is under the age of 18. Even before the most recent conflict began, many children were highly vulnerable to disease and malnutrition. One in four children under five years of age is chronically malnourished. One in eight children dies before their fifth birthday.
As the UNICEF report states, even without actual war, the over 12-year-old UN-imposed sanctions on the country of Iraq have left its people in a most miserable condition. In many parts of Iraq, there is no access to clean drinking water, something we in the West take for granted. There are so many water-borne diseases which are difficult for adults to deal with and are deadly for the young. Due to the sanctions and now the war, even basic food supplies are not readily available and are almost always never affordable for the average Iraqi family. Imagine not even being able to have one nutritious meal a week. Research has consistently shown the direct link between children getting adequate nutrition and being able to develop intellectually.
While there can be an attempt to count the number of young people who were killed or wounded, what is almost impossible to know is the extent of the psychological wounds of the Iraqi youth. Imagine what their personality must be like now, after years of being exposed to violence, death, destruction, and, on top of everything, watching the hanging of their president (regardless of whether they liked him or not) on national television. These young people will need counseling and our du`aa' so that they can learn to talk about the feelings of pain, grief, fear, anger, resentment, and guilt in some cases if they fled the country and left behind some relatives and friends.
What We Can Do
It is important for all of us, especially Muslims of the West, to take a keen interest in the well-being of those young people. Those who are still in Iraq deserve to live their daily lives in peace and security. Those who have fled the borders of Iraq and are in neighboring countries or have moved to countries in the West are considered refugees and will need lots of help to rebuild their lives.
First, even if you knew nothing about the suffering of Iraqis, you should start to include them in your daily du`aa' today — not just Iraqi children but all young people who were caught in the cross fire and are suffering from poor psychological health, from being wounded, or from the loss of their family, relatives, or friends who died as a result of war.
Second, you should take an interest in reading more and learning about the state of children all over the world, especially those in Iraq. The UNICEF website is a great place to start and you can use the "At a Glance" reports to learn about how children in so many countries live and about the challenges they face.
Third, it is critical that you find, with the help of your parents or school teachers, a nongovernmental organization that helps Iraq's youth. There are many nongovernmental organizations that existed even before the onset of the current war and some that were set up to respond to the humanitarian crisis resulting from the current war. You will discover that these organizations need help on many different levels. Sometimes they conduct campaigns to collect clothing, shoes, books, toiletries, and so on, to be shipped to war-torn countries. You can join their efforts by coordinating a local campaign in your neighborhood or at your school. You can make a brief presentation on the challenges Iraqi children face, and then you can discuss the campaign and invite others to help. Sometimes the organizations collect money and again you can help by asking your family, relatives, friends, and schoolmates to donate money which will be used by the nongovernmental organizations to purchase food, clothing, blankets, shoes, and other supplies and deliver them to the families in need.
If you know of Iraqi families who have been resettled in your country, then find out how to reach those families, especially their children. Prepare a welcoming event at the local masjid and invite the families; set up a mentoring system so that each young Iraqi is matched with another Muslim youth who can help them become oriented to the way of life in your country. This type of mentoring and matching is very important and our model for such a system is the ukhuwah or brotherhood/sisterhood system Prophet Muhammad set up between the Muhajirun (immigrants to Madinah from Makkah) and the Ansar (Muslims of Madinah). You should work with your family and friends to welcome the Iraqi families and children and help them rebuild their lives.
Finally, Iraqi youth can rebuild their lives one day at a time with the help of Allah, and with our du`aa' and actual assistance. We should never underestimate how much we can do tohelp them. Every little bit counts and no effort is too small. Let us work together to help the Iraqi children and indeed all children suffering around the world.
Altaf Husain is a Social Worker based in the USA.
