"War is waged by adults, but it's the children who suffer the most"

Pondering the Slaughter of Innocents

by Eric Ringham

The day after Christmas is a good time to ponder the slaughter of innocents. Naja Salman, a girl, age 2, killed by gunfire. Razzaq Salman, a boy, age 11, also gunfire. Rafid Georgis, a boy, 10, dead from a car bomb.

It's hard to come by a good estimate of the total number of Iraqi civilians killed in the current war. But it's easy to find descriptions of individual Iraqi dead, thanks in part to Iraqbodycount.net. Name, age, gender, place and cause of death -- it's all there, a memorial to as many victims as the IBC organization can identify.

Like Nada, 6, and her sister Estabraket, 9, killed by gunfire. And Rami Qais, 4, who died with Sami Qais, 6, both boys, in a mortar attack.

In a war against insurgents, you cannot always tell a combatant from a noncombatant, which is one reason for the confusion about the number of civilian victims in Iraq. Most guesses range between 10,000 and 20,000, though other estimates run much higher. The British medical journal Lancet recently suggested the total may be close to 100,000.

Remember, though, that almost half the population of Iraq is 18 years old or younger. Whatever the overall number of civilian casualties turns out to be, it will include an awful lot of children.

Shilan Rashid, 3, a girl, killed by a car bomb. Ali Abbas, 13, a boy, also by a car bomb.

It's true enough that these kids would have faced an uncertain future under Saddam Hussein. Who knows? They might have suffered and died in some other act of violence. Instead, though, they are dying in a war the United States started, by choice, and that makes us responsible.

"War is waged by adults, but it's the children who suffer the most," said UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy in a statement last month. She was talking not about deaths, but about health; severe malnutrition has almost doubled since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.

That's saying something. Prior to the war, one in eight Iraqi children died before the age of 5. Acute malnutrition was reported at 4 percent. Now that figure stands at 7.7 percent, and the Washington Post reports that an estimated 400,000 children are afflicted by "wasting," with chronic diarrhea and other symptoms. Experts blame dirty water.

At a pediatrics teaching hospital in Baghdad, an administrator told the Post that health officials had expected big improvements under American occupation. Instead, health care is worsening. Many international aid agencies have packed up and left.

"Oh God, help us build Iraq again," said the hospital administrator. "For our children, not for us. For our kids."

A UNICEF report points out that Iraqi 18-year-olds are living through their third war. Some of them, anyway.

But not Rabha Rekaad, 16, a girl, "gunfire or bombing." Nor the other Rekaad children who died that day: Zahra, 15, girl; Ali, 12, boy; Hamza, 6, boy, and Fatima, 4, girl. Nor Arnood Talib, 2, a girl; nor her sister (or was she a cousin?), Kholood, age 6 months on the day last May when she was killed by "gunfire or bombing," never having lived a day of peacetime, in a country we promised to liberate.

© 2004 Star Tribune