Students Fleeing Iraq with Parents
As Death Stalks Iraq, Middle-Class Exodus Begins
NY Times - Sabrina Tavernise
BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 18 — Deaths run like water through the life of the Bahjat family. Four neighbors. A barber. Three grocers. Two men who ran a currency exchange shop.
But when six armed men stormed into their sons' primary school this month, shot a guard dead, and left fliers ordering it to close, Assad Bahjat knew it was time to leave.
"The main thing now is to just get out of Iraq," said Mr. Bahjat, standing in a room heaped with suitcases and bedroom furniture in eastern Baghdad.
In the latest indication of the crushing hardships weighing on the lives of Iraqis, increasing portions of the middle class seem to be doing everything they can to leave the country. In the last 10 months, the state has issued new passports to 1.85 million Iraqis, 7 percent of the population and a quarter of the country's estimated middle class.
The school system offers another clue: Since 2004, the Ministry of Education has issued 39,554 letters permitting parents to take their children's academic records abroad. The number of such letters issued in 2005 was double that in 2004, according to the director of the ministry's examination department. Iraqi officials and international organizations put the number of Iraqis in Jordan at close to a million. Syrian cities also have growing Iraqi populations.
The following is a link to the whole article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/19/world/middleeast/19migration.html?ex=1148702400&en=86624c6bc0361733&ei=5070&emc=eta1
As the violence continues, students are fleeing Iraq with their parents. Continued violence in schools and the killing of teachers is "paraylized neighborhoods and smashing families." That is why War Kids Relief's Youth Center Work/Study Program is so improtant. Learn more at http://www.vvaf.org/programs/war-kids-relief/
NY Times - Sabrina Tavernise
BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 18 — Deaths run like water through the life of the Bahjat family. Four neighbors. A barber. Three grocers. Two men who ran a currency exchange shop.
But when six armed men stormed into their sons' primary school this month, shot a guard dead, and left fliers ordering it to close, Assad Bahjat knew it was time to leave.
"The main thing now is to just get out of Iraq," said Mr. Bahjat, standing in a room heaped with suitcases and bedroom furniture in eastern Baghdad.
In the latest indication of the crushing hardships weighing on the lives of Iraqis, increasing portions of the middle class seem to be doing everything they can to leave the country. In the last 10 months, the state has issued new passports to 1.85 million Iraqis, 7 percent of the population and a quarter of the country's estimated middle class.
The school system offers another clue: Since 2004, the Ministry of Education has issued 39,554 letters permitting parents to take their children's academic records abroad. The number of such letters issued in 2005 was double that in 2004, according to the director of the ministry's examination department. Iraqi officials and international organizations put the number of Iraqis in Jordan at close to a million. Syrian cities also have growing Iraqi populations.
The following is a link to the whole article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/19/world/middleeast/19migration.html?ex=1148702400&en=86624c6bc0361733&ei=5070&emc=eta1
As the violence continues, students are fleeing Iraq with their parents. Continued violence in schools and the killing of teachers is "paraylized neighborhoods and smashing families." That is why War Kids Relief's Youth Center Work/Study Program is so improtant. Learn more at http://www.vvaf.org/programs/war-kids-relief/
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