The Children Of Sadr City

Photo by Alper Taparli

I know that it´s going too fast. I wanted to write my time in Baghdad day by day or, at least, weekly but there is so much happening that I had to start from the end. Sadr City is in the east of Baghdad. As the name says, with more than 2.5 millon Shia population it is called the stronghold of the religious leader Mukteda El Sadr which has called his followers to protest against the gouvernment politics.
The reasons for this calling were obvious. Hundreds of joung people in Iraq are being arrested everyday, only because of suspicions and they usually don´t get a fair trial. I know some Iraqi young men who were detained for more than 2 years with no chance to fight their case. People are afraid of nightly searchings of the Iraqi and the American army because when they come, they come with humiliation and violance. In many of my interviews, the victims said that the Iraqi soldiers stole their money.

Mukteda El Sadr, who does not want to get into a conflict with the Iraqi gouvernment declared ceasefire for more than 7 months. It is just a logical conclusion that he called his followers to insurgency because of the bottom-up pressure that lasts on him. However, this situation and the still continuing fight between The Mahdi (Mukteda El Sadr´s militant armed forces) on one side, the Iraqi Army and the American Forces of the MNF-I (Multi National Forces-Iraq) on the other side showed that Mukteda El Sadr still has a remarkable army.
The US Forces, together with the Iraqi army try to force the militants on their knees for more than one month now but success is far away. The Gouvernment Spokesman Ali al Dabbagh, declares the civil deaths as "evils attendant on war" blames the Mahdi army for hiding between civillians.

But let´s not talk about what officials say and do, the war in Iraq has actually been going on for 5 years now and more than %80 of the victims are civillians. Nobody asks for these people anymore but their realtives in Iraq, fraught with hatred. The real victims of the air raids on Sadr City are the children. As many Iraqis say, this country is nothing but a wrack and hope is not in sight.