By Aisha Robertson
www.islamonline.net
May 9, 2004

On June 16, 2003, Dr. Ali Hameed Rasheed, an Iraqi psychiatrist, submitted a proposal to the Ministry of Health in Baghdad to create a psycho-social mental health referral system for children in Iraq. Though such systems already exist in many countries, Iraq is lacking one. The goal of the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Program for Iraqi children is to increase mental health awareness and reduce stigmatization of mental illness in the community.

Dr. Rasheed’s focus is on the children of Iraq who have been experiencing unbelievable desensitizing and traumatic experiences over the past 15 years. The main source of their trauma has been from three wars and twelve years of economic sanctions. This PTSD Program was developed to train adults who come in regular and consistent contact with children to recognize symptoms of mental distress and refer the children to professional mental health workers for help. Therefore, training for recognition of mental health distress is to be provided to teachers and primary health care workers with the aid and collaboration of religious leaders in local communities.

by Laurie Hasbrook
May 9, 2004

Chicago — Mother’s Day 2004. My 6- and 8-year-old sons, under their father’s supervision, will “surprise” me with breakfast in bed, handmade cards, lots of hugs and kisses and promises of perfect behavior and brotherly cooperation in the year to come. I’ll bask in that simple joy of spending the day together as family.

I am acutely aware, though, that for mothers with sons or daughters in Iraq, this day will be one of tremendous longing and anxiety. For mothers whose children have died in Operation Iraqi Freedom or in the occupation, Mother’s Day will be a day of grief and mourning, a day of loss that those of us who have not suffered the death of a child can never fully comprehend. Many Iraqi mothers also know this loss.

The cruelties of war led Julia Ward Howe to write in the original Mother’s Day Proclamation of 1870: ” . . . `Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.’… ‘Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.’”

As a mother raising sons in a country whose government is using the deaths of its young people in war to extol the virtues of sacrifice, honor and devotion to family and country–as do all governments in time of war–I have never been so acutely aware that war, far from being a necessity in a terror-plagued world, is a foreign policy failure that actively contributes to terrorism.

It is a challenge, while our politicians and military leaders masterfully weave a national narrative that gives military service God’s imprimatur, to say loudly and clearly that I will not raise my children to be killers. Teaching my sons the distinction between being willing to die for their beliefs as opposed to being willing to kill for them is difficult in a culture that melds the two.

As I grieve for the families who receive word that a beloved son or daughter has been killed overseas, I reaffirm my commitment this Mother’s Day to help build a world in which all violence, whether it is individual or state-sponsored, is rejected.

VOICE OF THE PEOPLE (LETTER) Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune

By Jo Wilding
May 8th

A loud scraping noise and a jolt announced the arrival of the other car in the back driver side of ours. It was gentle, as collisions go, and the deformity of the bumper was quickly rectified but the debate over whose mother had been a canine looked like taking a bit longer to settle, so we paid the driver and found another who, admittedly, didn’t know the way but at least he was moving.

The highway towards the university is partly on a flyover which affords a perfect view of the layers of smog that envelop the city. For a lot of the way the road was quiet, which is not common. “I hope there’s not another Fatwa,” Anna said, referring to the order not long ago from Al-Sadr that students should not go into university.

The young women were all immaculately dressed, not a hair astray between them, let alone an eyebrow, black lines around their eyes, lips painted. This is the only place they get to meet up with their friends, the most likely place to meet a future husband, so apparently it’s worth getting up at stupid o’clock and making the kind of effort I and my friends only used to make for a big night out. I’m sure the wearing of hijabs on campus is less down to conservatism or religious belief than the only way out of hours of tortuous hair styling.

Anna teaches English conversation to the final year students at Baghdad University, who wanted to talk to someone with a British accent and I wanted to talk to them about university twinning links. Because it’s all over the news here the same as everywhere else and because I introduced myself as a clown and trainee lawyer, the topic of conversation moved quickly onto the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere.