Press Release
The Children of Iraq ... a Dreadful Reality and a Future that Promises Years of Stagnation!
(Translated)

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said in a report released on Friday 19/1/2018 that 270 children were killed in Iraq last year because of the war waged by the Iraqi government on ISIS. The war also caused the displacement of 1.3 million children among the 2.6 million displaced as a result of the war which lasted three years. According to the statement, four million children in Nineveh and Anbar provinces were affected by violence and many children were forced to fight in the front lines. The statement revealed that poverty and conflict caused the interruption of the educational process of three million children across Iraq, some of whom never had a chance to sit in a classroom in their life, while more than a quarter of children in Iraq live in poverty.

The information and statistics revealed by the statement—despite its enormity --is neither new nor surprising, since for many decades, civilians in Iraq - especially children and women - have been paying the price of the internal conflicts and brutal wars, waged directly by the colonizers, such as the US occupation of Iraq in 2003, or proxy wars through their agents such as the withdrawal of Maliki’s Iraqi forces before ISIS in Mosul which was followed by Al-Abadi’s fighting ISIS and the regaining of Mosul!! Iraq hardly emerges from one crisis or war before entering another, and the common denominator between these wars and crises is the destruction of the country and the transformation of the lives of its people into hell to serve the interests of the colonialists.

It is evident from this report and through other published reports and news that the "great victory" declared by Haider Al-Abadi in his war on ISIS was a victory over children and women, a victory in which hundreds of them have been killed and wounded and millions have been displaced. It is a victory in which civilians in Mosul and other areas were trapped between the jaws of ISIS and the Iraqi forces, and thus suffered from hunger, increased incidence of disease among children, especially infants due to malnutrition and lack of medicine, and children being used as human shields and in some cases forced to participate in the fighting.

In light of these figures and statistics that reveal the dire reality of the children of Iraq and warn of a more painful future with the high rates of poverty and illiteracy among them, we ask: Is this the terrorism that this war was ignited to eliminate?! Are not the perpetrators of these wars and their tools the real terrorists?!

O Muslims:
How long will wars continue to ignite in our country and the blood of our innocent sons and daughters be spilled? How long will they live a miserable life and in hard conditions, while the colonizers reap the fruits of these wars?! Is not time for the Islamic Ummah to declare its announcement and regain its position among the nations?! Is it not time for it to uproot those rulers, the tools, and appoint in their place a sincere ruler to govern us with the Book of our Lord and restore our dignity and glory?! Do the souls not yearn for the days of glory in which Harun ar-Rashid addressed the clouds to rain wherever it wanted for its harvest will return to the Islamic State's treasury, “Bayt Mal al-Muslimeen”?! Do the souls not yearn for the days of pride where the honor and blood of Muslims are defended and the answer to any attack on them, is "the answer is what you see and not what you hear"?! Yes, by Allah, they yearn. So, are there in the armies of Muslims those who will answer the call and win the goodness of this world and the Hereafter and bring back those great days?!

(وَيَوْمَئِذٍ يَفْرَحُ الْمُؤْمِنُونَ * بِنَصْرِ اللَّهِ يَنْصُرُ مَنْ يَشَاءُ وَهُوَ الْعَزِيزُ الرَّحِيم)

“And that day the believers will rejoice. In the victory of Allah. He gives victory to whom He wills, and He is the Exalted in Might, the Merciful.” [Ar-Rum: 4-5].

Women’s Section
in the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir