By Hina Khan-Mukhtar

My beloved three-year-old son recently developed a case of the stomach flu, resulting in days and nights interrupted by fits of vomiting and diarrhea. It broke my heart to have to deliberately ignore his weak yet insistent requests for solid foods and milk while watching him steadily lose weight and color over the course of a week. I tried in vain to turn a deaf ear to all of the concerned relatives discussing his poor health, for I had valid reason to believe that his “malnutrition” was something that would soon be overcome. After all, I had a pediatrician who could prescribe the appropriate medication, a pharmacy that could deliver it and a grocery store to provide healthy snacks to help him regain his vigor.

But what if I were a mother in Iraq?

How much reason to hope would I have after knowing that half a million children under the age of five had died of malnutrition during the first five years of the sanctions imposed on my people? That typhoid fever, pneumonia, leukemia, tuberculosis and cholera were on the rise, with even polio and measles making a comeback? This sense of helplessness would only be exacerbated after seeing hospitals periodically plunged into darkness in order to conserve electricity. I wonder just how strong my faith in the medical facilities would be after the odors of antiseptics had been replaced with the stench of urine, feces, and decay. How would I feel if I were the grieving mother of two-year-old Nemya, who died of meningitis, when a 50-cent tube – impossible to obtain under the U.N.-enforced sanctions – could have saved her life? The Iraqi mothers’ sense of frustration is even more intense upon knowing that only ten years ago, malnutrition was almost non-existent and hospitals were state-of-the-art.

Once my toddler was feeling better, my husband and I could resume our day-to-day life of work, worship, and planning for the future. I have hopes of sending our boys to an Islamic school one day, but my husband wants us to take advantage of the brand-new public elementary school located just around the corner from our home. Should our sons study to become doctors or teachers or huffadh (memorizers) of the Qur’an? The possibilities seem endless.

Parents in Iraq, however, aren’t blessed with as many options as their Muslim brethren in the United States. Many children, forced to help their impoverished families earn money, are dropping out of the educational system much earlier than usual; a quarter of the children eligible to enroll are not in school. In 1991, during the Gulf War bombings, 3,000 schools were destroyed. Today, 60 percent of school buildings require renovations and, according to the 1999 UNICEF Briefing on Iraq, “approximately 50 percent of schools in the south and center of Iraq are unfit for teaching and learning.” While the quality of education has deteriorated with textbooks, paper and pencils often in short supply, chronic malnutrition has damaged the children’s capacity for learning. The University of Baghdad, which once had the reputation of being the best medical school in the region, drawing applicants from throughout the Middle East, now only has 10-year-old equipment and a trickle of current medical journals and textbooks to offer its students. The circumstances are such that even Hans von Sponeck, United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq, was compelled to admit, “The most serious situation in Iraq is the plight of the young people – we are grooming a generation that is deprived of the ability to prepare for the future.”

When it comes to guiding our sons and teaching them the values and disciplines of Islam, I know that I have my husband’s support and love. I work hard at keeping a clean home and warm food on the table, the children bathed and neatly dressed, while my husband puts in long days at the office. We sing nasheeds (Islamic songs) before bedtime and learn the alif-ba-ta’s of Arabic before naptime. My husband leads us in our prayers and makes sure that I always have more than enough cash in my purse. To any outsider who happens to observe us, this is the way a Muslim family operates. This is the way it used to be in Iraq as well.

Humanitarian workers in Iraq told a visiting Seattle Post reporter that economic sanctions have not only caused the deaths of thousands of children each month, but have created a breakdown of the family structure, with many children now forced to help with the family income. Instead of studying literature and history, many of Iraq’s youngsters are on the streets, learning English while trying to convince visiting diplomats to allow them to run errands, and learning arithmetic by counting the change they earn shining shoes. School-age boys scramble through the refuse in a landfill on the outskirts of Baghdad, looking for something of value, just to survive. Walid, 14, and his brother Ramy, 15, have been working the streets of Baghdad for nine years, the same length of time sanctions have been in place. The number of orphanages in Iraq is growing, along with the divorce and suicide rates, as more families abandon children. Von Sponeck says that the sanctions “are turning the social structure upside down.” Out-of-work engineers drive taxis, and doctors are taking second jobs to supplement a salary that, because of inflation, now averages only about three to five dollars per month. Baghdad’s unemployment rate is more than 50 percent; in the second-largest city, Basra, unemployment hovers around 75 percent. Growing numbers of professionals are fleeing the country, compelling Von Sponeck to label the brain-drain phenomenon as “immigration without noise” because so many people are quietly leaving their lives behind.

Robert Watkins, head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in Iraq, describes Iraq before the Gulf War and before the sanctions as an oil-rich country with a sophisticated infrastructure. Well-designed highways linked its cities to the surrounding countries, hospitals were state-of-the-art, education was free through the college level, and malnutrition was almost non-existent. The Gulf War destroyed nearly all of the country’s oil industry, water treatment plants and electrical generating plants. Today, sanctions limit the ability of Iraq to rebuild nearly ten years after its defeat in the Gulf War.

I tuck my sons into their beds at night and I say a prayer over them. I am so grateful to Allah Most Merciful for the clean water and the soft beds and the nourishing meals He has enriched us all with. My children hear lullabies and not bombs when they drift off into slumber. As I watch them sleep, oblivious to the miseries of their brothers and sisters struggling to survive on the other side of the world, I whisper a silent prayer for the people of Iraq as well.