War Kids Relief

Name:

I served for 14 months in Iraq as a Captain in the 1st Armored Division. The most needy Iraqi children had an amazing affect on me. This is why I am working on the War Kids Relief to better their lives.

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Iraqi Boy Mutilated and Killed

Mutilated and Killed, Iraqi boy is sectarian victim - 5/23/06

By Michael Georgy

BAGHDAD, May 23 (Reuters) - Baghdad's sectarian hit squads don't spare the young.
The family of 12-year-old Hani Saadoun has been traumatised by that reality since his tortured body, mutilated by electric drills, was found on Tuesday. They had been in a state of fear since he failed to return home for lunch a day earlier.

It seems gunmen in three cars cornered him as he headed to work, helping out at his father's parking lot, Interior Ministry sources and relatives said.

The Shi'ite family started panicking when he had not turned up by Monday evening. By the time they learned of his fate on Tuesday he was just another statistic in Iraq's packed morgues.
The sense of loss mixed with shock as details of his brutal ordeal, shared by many dozens every day, became clear.

Saadoun's body was found dumped in southern Baghdad's violent, mostly Sunni Arab, district of Dora. It bore the hallmarks of sectarian tit-for-tat killings that have exploded since the bombing of a Shi'ite shrine in February.

The youngster, with a bullet hole in his head and another through the chest, was blindfold and his hands bound. He had been whipped with cables, tormented by electric drills and his body dragged through the streets behind a car.

There was no way of ruling out other possible reasons for his death. He could have been the victim of one of Iraq's bloody tribal feuds or criminal gangs. But one conclusion predominates in a country becoming familiar with corpses dumped by the road.

"This was definitely a sectarian killing," said the boy's uncle, a freelance journalist well known to Baghdad media, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals.

"Witnesses told us that gunmen in three Opel cars grabbed him at a checkpoint. We know he was tortured and we know they dragged him through the streets by a rope and dumped him."

NEW RUTHLESSNESS?

While thousands of young children have been kidnapped for ransom or blown up in bombings, few appear yet to have been caught up in planned tit-for-tat sectarian abductions and killings that have been described as a dirty war.

If Saadoun's death was a sectarian slaying, it raises the possibility of a new level of ruthlessness.
It was also appalling bad luck. On a day off from school, eager to earn some pocket money, he set off to work at his father's lot. Normally his father or older brothers would have gone with him but, for the first time, they had pressing business at home and the youngster set off alone.

That cruel combination of circumstances may haunt his loved ones forever, another Iraqi family still waiting for their leaders to deliver on promises of stability.

At Saadoun's funeral, women in traditional black Shi'ite shawls wailed as his mother Fatima Oraybi stared up at his crude wooden coffin on the roof of a car.

"Oh my son," she cried.

Others could not understand why he was targeted. Drilling victims of kidnappings and killings is not unusual in Iraq but the torture of such a young boy left his relatives shocked.

"What did he do? He was 12. He was not a general or a minister," said his cousin Amir Mohammad.

Saadoun's family are not taking any chances. They moved the mourning tent to a Baghdad district far from their neighbourhood for fear they will now be targeted.

"We are afraid we will be next," said the uncle.

New tough talking Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has vowed to use maximum force to crush the men of violence. But his security forces can be hesitant. Saadoun's uncle said police and troops refused to help recover the body because Dora was too dangerous.

"His father had to round up relatives and people from the neighbourhood to get the body," he said. "He had nothing to do with sectarianism or politics. He was just a boy." (Additional reporting by Lutfi Abu Oun, editing by Dominic Evans)

The following is a link to the article: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/GEO347014.htm

Reviving Iraq's Economy May Cut Deaths

Accoring to an AP story by Robert Miller, Lt. General Peter Chiarelli said the key to reducing American casualties in Iraq is getting a government that can revive the economy, "take the angry young men off the street" and give them an alternative to violence.

"I honestly believe that as this government begins work on the policies that will be required to put people to work and make use of the vast resources of Iraq that you're going to see a decrease in violence," Chiarelli, commander of Multi-national Corps Iraq, said in a video teleconference with reporters at the Pentagon'

This is the key element of War Kids Relief's Youth Center Work/Study Program. This effort will employ and educate over 28,000 Iraqi youth in 24 months. By keeping the young men and women engaged and enabling them to become part of the reconstruction effort we will help save lives.

To learn more about War Kids Relief, a program of the VietnamVeterans of America Foundation, visit our website http://www.vvaf.org/programs/war-kids-relief/

Friday, May 19, 2006

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/

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

CNN Reports: Four teachers Gunned Down Near Balad Ruz

CNN: Gunmen killed four teachers Monday near Balad Ruz, northeast of Baghdad, an Iraqi official said.

The teachers were traveling to work in a minibus Monday morning when the gunmen stopped their vehicle in the town about 50 miles (80 kilometers) northeast of Baghdad, said an official with the Diyala Joint Coordination Center.

The gunmen forced seven teachers and the minibus driver from the vehicle and shot four of the teachers. The other instructors and the driver were allowed to leave, the official said.
The attack came as the trial of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and seven co-defendants resumed Monday after a three-week delay.

Link to the whole story: http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/05/15/iraq.main/index.html

Violence like this leads to the Iraqi children not returning to school in incredible numbers. 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/

Monday, May 15, 2006

Washington Post Article

War Kids was discussed in a Washington Post article this past weekend.

Back from Baghdad

Bad stuff happened in Iraq, stuff Adam Reuter doesn't want to talk about. Not with his friends, not with the line cooks in the burger joint where he worked when he first came home or the tenants in the apartment complex he manages now...

To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/13/AR2006051301312.html?referrer=emailarticle

UNICEF - Iraqi Children suffer

12 May 2006 – Despite the laudable efforts of Iraq’s public distribution of food, many of Iraq’s poorer households still lack enough to eat, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said today, citing a new food security and vulnerability analysis.

The survey was considered very comprehensive, covering 98 districts and 22,050 rural and urban households, and employed seven leading indicators: stunting, underweight, wasting, per cent of population who were extremely poor and other factors.

“The chronic malnutrition rate of children in food insecure households was as high as 33 per cent, or one out of every three children malnourished,” said Roger Wright, UNICEF’s Special Representative for Iraq.

Chronic malnutrition affects the youngest and most vulnerable children, aged 12 months to 23 months, most severely. “This can irreversibly hamper the young child’s optimal mental and cognitive development, not just their physical development,” said Mr. Wright. Acute malnutrition was also of concern, with 9 per cent of Iraqi children being acutely malnourished.

The study, based on the most recent data from 2005, was successfully conducted by the Ministry of Planning and Development Cooperation and Central Organization for Statistics & Information Technology and the Ministry of Health/Nutrition Research Institute, supported by the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and UNICEF.

Continuing food insecurity in Iraq cannot be attributed to any one factor, but stems from several causes, including the lingering effects of war and sanctions, plus the ongoing conflict and insecurity, UNICEF said.

CBS: Youth soccer a uniting force

Allen Pizzey reported on training for the Iraqi national youth soccer team, in a follow-up after its attendance last month at an international youth tournament in Dallas. Pizzey said the time team members spent with Dallas families during their US visit was “freedom they can only dream about at home, an education for them and for their hosts who could never imagine how much the trip meant to them.” Footage shows team members playing video games, riding bikes and hitting a ball with American children. The report profiled a star player who lives in Sadr City and his father said he “lives in fear every time his son comes and goes” Pizzey said. This team is the exact opposite of what is happening in Iraq, Pizzey said: an example of working together that politicians would do well to emulate. “We are all Iraqis,” said one team member. “We are football players.” (Video link: P:\Strat Eff\STRATCOM\NewsClips\Network News Clips\11 MAY 2006 CBS EN.mpg)

Terrorists Hit and Run Strategy

According to Almada Newspaper, Iraqi security forces found document pertained to Al-Qaeda in Al-Yousifiya city south of Baghdad that describe the terrorist’s strategy in “Hit & Run.” They are to target innocent and civilian people in markets and schools and carry out attacks on Mosques & Hussainiyat to create sectarian sedition, and also the documents showed the terrorists are lacking and running out of new recruiters and new weapons among the Iraqi people to carry out their operations.

Monday, May 08, 2006

School Burning Condemned; IEDs, Weapons Cache Found

American Forces Press Service
BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan, May 5, 2006 – The commander of Combined Joint Task Force 76 here condemned today a terrorist attack on a children's school in Laghman province.
Eight people set fire to Katal School in Mehtar Lam on May 2, destroying the principal's office and a storage room filled with supplies, notebooks and Korans.

"This is another example of the Taliban's vision for the future of Afghan children," said Maj. Gen. Benjamin C. Freakley, CJTF 76 commander. "Extremists want to deny children and education in the name of religion, and they demonstrate their point by desecrating their most sacred books."

According to a witness, four of the eight criminals carried cans of gasoline into the school, while others toted rifles, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.
Investigators think an RPG was used to spark the blaze. There were no reported injuries to local citizens.

Elsewhere, a Task Force Tiger element discovered a weapons cache in the Parwan province during a patrol today. The cache contained 88 mortar rounds, eight rockets and three rocket warheads. An explosive ordnance disposal team destroyed the cache on site.

"Recovering and disposing these weapons increases the safety and security of Afghans, and reduces the danger in the area posed by enemies who might use those munitions indiscriminately to cause harm to the Afghan people, Afghan National Security forces or coalition forces," said Lt. Col. Paul Fitzpatrick, CJTF 76 spokesman.

Also, Afghan security forces and coalition forces found and disarmed three improvised explosive devices in Paktika, Zabul and Kandahar provinces May 2.

Two other IEDs detonated, one in Kunar province and one in Kabul.

A suicide bomber in Kabul killed himself and an innocent civilian, but failed to harm coalition members traveling in the targeted convoy. The Kunar explosion resulted in no injuries.

"The indiscriminate emplacement of IEDs and use of suicide bombs are the desperate tools of a desperate enemy," said Freakley. "These attacks continue to rob innocent civilians of their lives through the blatant and indiscriminant use of these tactics, which serve only to hold back the growth and progress of the Afghan people."

In other news, Combined Forces Command Afghanistan officials announced today the Afghan government will establish a permanent military presence in Kunar Province on May 7 by creating an Afghan National Army Forward Operating Base.

Coalition and ANA forces have conducted security operations in Kunar before. But the new base marks the first time the Afghan government will establish a military presence in Kunar to further peace and stability efforts reached through Operation Mountain Lion.

Iraq Official calls for support

AMMAN (AFP) - An Iraqi official urged the international community to help build skills in his war-scarred country at the opening of a four-day reconstruction trade fair in Jordan.

"I don't think it is right only to spend money on machines, cars and equipment," said Deputy Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research in Kurdistan Rizgar Jiawook.

"Machines are very simple to buy, but to build skills in people takes time. This is what we need," he said. "Technology is going very fast and we have been disconnected for many years."

See the complete story at http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060508/wl_mideast_afp/iraqreconstructionjordan_060508114208;_ylt=AuNDpADsnc13Lfv1ME.hh6tX6GMA;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

War Kids Relief Youth Center Work/Study Program is focused on filling this void. Learn more about our effort at http://www.vvaf.org/programs/war-kids-relief/

Child Labor

Child Labor is on the decline in most of the world, but unfortunatley not Iraq. The following is a link to a Rueters report on a UN study. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060504/ts_nm/un_children_labour_dc

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Postives for Iraq Schools

The Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) has released their current report on progress in Iraq. Inspector General Stuart Bowen Jr. reported that more than 90 percent of education projects have been completed, including the repair of 5,108 schools and the training of more than 47,000 teachers.

This speaks highly of USAIDs effort towards education. Unfortunately, because of the current violence, over 30% of the students are not returning to schools and the numbers are much higher in Baghdad. In the last 4 months over 331 teachers have been killed.

While schools are a focused and important effort, we must look beyond that simple solution towards alternative education and employment opportunities, such as the Youth Center Work/Study Program War Kids Relief has developed.

For more information on War Kids Relief visit, http://www.vvaf.org/programs/war-kids-relief/