"In Sadr City, children trade childhood for a livelihood; Robbed of their early years by violence, poverty" by Jeffrey Fleishman and Raheem Salman, Los Angeles Times | October 24, 2008
BAGHDAD - Come to Sadr City and follow the children, the one hauling flour on his donkey, the one collecting garbage on his tractor, the two brothers with bowl haircuts and greasy hands hoisting mufflers and car batteries in the late morning heat.
A lot of kids here can't read. They have no time to play. They work from dawn until after the moon is high. They are children in size only.
The new school year began recently, but not for Karrar Raad, 12, and his 10-year-old brother, Allawi. They work for car mechanics in adjacent garages that are smaller than a rich woman's closet. Their father is ill and has no job, and the boys have to support eight children and two adults. They earn $2.70 a day, plus tips.
"I'm making a living for my family," said Karrar, a willowy kid with nervous eyes and oil-stained trousers. "I'd like to go to school. I've never been in one. Not a single day. My friends tell me school is very beautiful."
Ali Rashed owns the muffler shop. A big man with nicked hands and seven grown children, he spotted Karrar and Allawi collecting tin cans in the street months ago and offered them jobs. He said boys shouldn't live off tin cans, and, besides, the streets are too dangerous to be picking things up. Cans can be booby-trapped with gunpowder and fuses.
"There are too many poor families and too many children working in Sadr City," Rashed said. "It's better for these boys here than in the streets where they face bombs and explosives. I don't think they will have a good future. They are not educated, and their family can't help them. They sometimes don't have anything to eat. How can you have a future if you have nothing to eat?"
It's not a long one, that's for sure!
What does a boy think when he listens to this? To hear that there is nothing better than what he sees right now: blackened walls, mufflers dangling overhead, a hacksaw on a hook, a poster of the Imam Ali the only color in the dimness.
The Raad brothers, and tens of thousands of children like them in this poor, walled-in Shi'ite Muslim neighborhood, have been shaped by war, honed by poverty.
And WHO brought that all to them, 'eh?
They are witnesses to sectarian violence, Shi'ite militias, angry sermons echoing through mosques, Humvees gurgling through streets and pictures of religious leaders and wanted men hovering on billboards. These children might not know grammar and punctuation, but they know what to do when the bullets come, how to take cover, to hide from kidnappers, militants, and soldiers.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, see Occupation Iraq: Israel's IEDs and associated links within. Yes, I do get tired of the horse shit Zionist propaganda, readers!
Bloodshed and years of unrest are harsh teachers, especially in Sadr City, where 30 percent of children have quit school, according to a Baghdad human resources office. That estimate is probably low. A United Nations report found that 94 percent of boys in Iraq attend elementary school, but that drops to 44 percent by high school. For girls, 81 percent start elementary school; 31 percent go on to high school.
In another world, boys like the Raad brothers might dream of being engineers or doctors, or hip-hop pretenders. But here the uniform and the gun command respect, the soldier wearing dark sunglasses, a 50-caliber machine gun tight in his hands. The soldier and the policeman offer protection; no classroom or Encarta program can guarantee that, not in this neighborhood, a riot of clatter, of dusty houses and tin roofs, spreading like a gray sea from the tailor's shop to the corners where the sheep cry before slaughter.
Thank God AmeriKa isn't like that, 'eh, Amurkn?
"we pay tribute to the brave men and women who wear the uniform."
There is no classroom in Ali Kadhim Baidani's long day. His father is bent and old, and Ali, 15, collects garbage on his tractor to help provide for his family of nine. In 2001, his clan moved to Sadr City from the marshes southeast of Amarah. The tractor was meant to farm the fields rimming Baghdad, but at 5 a.m. each day Ali drives it from the furrows to pick up trash in streets and alleys, heading toward the dump about 2 p.m.
When he returns home, his younger brothers circle to hear stories from the city. They help him wash his hands, brush the dust from his clothes. The eldest son, Ali has never been to school; his childhood is like his tractor - turned over to other responsibilities. He attends funerals and weddings in place of his father, the family representative to neighbors and the world.
"The happiest moment for me," he said, "is when I receive money from the [garbage] contractor and give it to my father to spend on my family. . . . I will work in this job and when the job is finished, I will search for another."
I'm always amazed at how much stronger the family bond is amongst Muslims as opposed to Americans. The effect of Zionist brainwashing and division, no doubt!
Ali's tractor route crosses the same streets as a donkey cart driven by 12-year-old Sajjad Hassan Saadi. He quit school in the fourth grade to sell government-rationed flour at the Jamilia market. It's illegal, but, like many things here, it is an unnoticed, accepted misdemeanor of survival. He can earn $8 to $12 a day, but on a recent afternoon, he had no money in his pockets.
Sajjad Hassan Saadi, 12, sells government-rationed flour in Baghdad's Sadr City, a poor, often violent, Shi'ite district. About 30 percent of children in the area have quit school. (raheem salman/los angeles times)
A few blocks over, past buildings scarred by mortar shells and bullets, past knots of traffic and busy markets, past the hidden weapons of anti-US Shi'ite militias, the Raad brothers were busy amid batteries and mufflers, a battered set of tools, a blowtorch, a bald tire as smooth as marble.
Yup, nothing about AmeriKa's private mercenaries, their arms, or the permanent U.S. bases!
The corner burst with the static of radios. Policemen, sweating in white shirts, and soldiers wearing gray, urban camouflage, their guns black and shiny, stood guard. A lot could happen between the mechanic's shop and the corner, but security was there, vigilant against blast walls and barbed wire. It is the reason neighborhood streets have grown much safer. --more--"
Yeah, it is what Bush calls "liberation."
Imagine that: SEALING YOU UP in CONCRETE PRISONS is FREEDOM!!
That's SURGE SUCCESS!!!!
