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BAGHDAD — For nations the young generation always holds the hope for a better future but with thousands of its children forced out of school into the labour market to make ends meet, Iraq seems to be an exception.

“My mother told me that I had to leave school and even knowing there isn’t choice, I tried to convince by showing my good marks in math and science but it just made her angrier,” says Waleed Saleh, 11.

One year ago his father, a waiter, was killed in a suicide attack on his restaurant in downtown Baghdad.

Saleh, the elder of his four brothers, had to find a job to help support the family with his house-keeper mother.

“She found me a job as helper in a carpentry factor near our home,” he said.

Child labour has been increasing in Iraq since the 2003 US-led invasion largely because of the spread of poverty, unemployment and widows, observers say.

There are no accurate estimates on child labour but a 2006 UNICEF survey put the percentage at 11 in the 10-14 age group.

“It’s very difficult to know whether this number is increasing as a result of the deaths of so many family wage-earners between 2006 and 2007,” said Claire Hajaj, Chief of External Relations for UNICEF.

“However, anecdotal data tells us that many families are being pushed into poverty as a result of conflict and displacement,” she added.

“Boys are more likely to work than girls in an average of 12 percent versus 9 percent and the problem is far higher in rural areas where poverty is most intense.”

Five years after the US-led invasion, the daily lives of Iraqis have worsened with millions having insufficient access to clean water, sanitation, electricity and health care.

With estimates putting the death toll at between 100,000 and one million, millions of families are left without bread-winners.

Sons or Fathers

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‘I told her she was mother to a martyr’

As fighting between the Shia Mahdi army and the Iraqi national army continued yesterday, witnesses described scenes in the city to Ghaith Abdul-Ahad.

“Yesterday we were in the street and saw a black car coming. They stopped and two men opened the boot. They dragged out an Iraqi soldier and threw him in the street and they drove away.”

“He was a young soldier dressed in a military uniform, he had a bullet hole in his head and there was blood on his face - even his boots were covered with blood.

“We found his ID card, his name was Ahmad Raad al-Helfy. We went through his mobile phone and found a number marked “mum”, we dialled and an old women answered. I told her that her son had died and that she was the mother of a martyr; she started screaming and wailing.”

Said Abu Saleh, 30

“The situation is very difficult in Basra, all the side streets are controlled by the Mahdi army. Even if the army has lots of tanks, the Mahdi fighters are controlling the streets. The fighters are driving in captured Iraqi Humvees and waving new guns.”

Resident of Hayyaniya, a stronghold of the Mahdi army

“Our fighters are being targeted not by the Iraqi government but by government militias working for Moqtada al-Sadr’s rivals in the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council. They are a executing a very well-drawn plan. They are trying to exterminate the Sadrists and cut and isolate the movement before the September local elections. The Sadrists are the only Shia resistance movement against the occupiers [Americans] and we have wide popularity.

“We are going through a battle of existence. We will fight to the end; we either survive this or we are finished.

“We have captured lots of their vehicles, machine guns and mortars. We have new rocket-propelled grenades we got from their supply trucks. Our fighters know how to use the side streets as their battle space.”

Sheikh Ali al-Sauidi, a senior commander in the Mahdi army speaking in a telephone interview

Source: Witnesses to the battle for Basra describe scenes in the city | World news | The Guardian

See also: We’re fighting for survival, says Mahdi army commander for a fuller account.

DAMASCUS, Mar 3 (IPS) - More Iraqis continue to flee their country than the numbers returning, despite official claims to the contrary.

Thousands fleeing say security is as bad as ever, and that to return would be to accept death.

“Return to Iraq?” asks 35-year-old Ahmed Alwan, an Iraqi engineer now working at a restaurant in Damascus. “There is no Iraq to return to, my friend. Iraq only exists in our dreams and memories.”

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported September last year that there are between 1.2 and 1.4 million Iraqi refugees in Syria alone.

Most, like Alwan, do not intend to return.

“I shall never return to Iraq until the last American soldier and Iranian mullah leaves,” Alwan says. “It is their country now, not ours. The only thing that might take me back is when I decide to fight for Iraq’s real liberty.”

Iraqi refugees in Syria speak of lack of security back home, lack of services, fear of the future, mistrust of Iraqi politicians, and loss of homes. Most are simply too afraid to return.

A UNHCR report issued last month contradicts reports by mainstream media in the U.S., and claims by the Bush administration, that more Iraqis are returning to their homes than the number leaving.

The report says that from February 2006-October 2007 Syria received between 30,000-60,000 refugees each month. Immigration officials at al-Tanf on the border say the daily average for those entering Syria from Iraq in late January was over 1,200, while the daily average crossing back was less than 700.

“Many assassinations take place all over Iraq, including Baghdad, and military operations are still being carried out the same way as 2004 and 2005,” Nayil Mufeed, a security advisor with a mobile phone company in Baghdad told IPS. “We have advised our employers that moving out of Baghdad to Amman is a definite necessity in such a fragile security situation.”

“Even if we believed that security is better in some areas, we know it is worse in other areas, and that it changes suddenly from one place to another,” Farooq Munim, a retired school headmaster from Mosul, now a refugee in Syria told IPS.

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We wish all our Muslim readers a holy, happy, and peaceful New Year, for our Iraki brothers and sisters we pray especially that God bring us freedom, peace, and fortitude, and that he drive the American barbarians from our sacred soil.

Ali, Ali Ibn Hussayn, Fatima Jameel, Haleema Al-Azzawi, Hussein Al-Bayati, Khaled Al Basrawi, Khalil Ibn Hussein, Maryam, Mohammed Al-Hamadani, Mohammed Hashi, Mohammed Ibn Laith, Nur Hussein Ghazali, Omar Khdhayyir, Ra’ed Al-Bayati, Saba Ali, Suheila Jamil, Um Thalit, Yusuf Al-Jezani.

1429 Muharram 1

Irak.