By Shaan Sachdev
It seems unlikely that a country sporting the infection of a stale war, pickling in the displacement and death of millions, can still tend to ordinary problems. As schools in the developed world are still being closed and re-opened due to swine flu scares, nearly 2,500 schools have been shut down in Iraq due to rumors about a swine flu influx.
Dr. Ihsan Jaafar, general director of the Public Health Directorate in the Health Ministry, attributed such panic to "irresponsible announcements", insisting that Iraq has been relatively unaffected by the pandemic. Indeed, Iraq has only seen 121 confirmed cases of swine flu, a remarkably small number in comparison to its neighbors and other states.
Still, parents seem paranoid, ensuring that their children wear surgical masks and stay at home. Some children, like Zahra Ahmed, seem perturbed by such hysteria. "I miss my teachers and friends from school," says Zahra, a sixth grader who has been forced to stay at home for nearly a week.
For a moment one might be tricked into believing that Iraq has returned to normalcy, once again able to worry about issues that the rest of the world shares. Upon closer inspection, it becomes obvious that Iraqis are either living in a fantasy world or are so dulled by the atrocities of war that minor issues have become more worthy of their reaction.
For as schools shut down around the country because of swine flu scares, others do so for graver reasons. Mustansiriya University, a prestigious university in northeast Baghdad, closed its 24,000-student campus after a violent gang called the Students League assaulted a professor.
The Students League, a politically-motivated group of armed Shiites, have murdered, tortured, and raped several students, and shot three professors to death. The beating of this particular professor finally caught the country's attention after he personally went to Prime Minister al-Maliki's office, "wearing his bloodied clothes and with untreated gashes on his face and head".
More than 335 students and staff members have been killed at Mustanisiriya University since 2007, due to bombings and such attacks, and yet the institution had remained open, unwilling to submit to the products of instability. It is darkly ironic that schools around Iraq are reacting vehemently to a swine flu scare, as the murder and torture still raging around them have become old news.
The views expressed in this blog are my own and do not reflect those of CNN or Time Warner.
It does seem weird that Iraqis are particularly concerned with a possible pandemic that has so far claimed a relatively-modest 121 lives than with the larger problems of war and militant violence. I agree about the irony of the situation: though its goal of protecting children is admirable, it should focus on the thousands who are displaced and killed due to war violence than the possibility of the flu. Iraq should turn its attention to these more pressing problems.
ReplyDelete-Sue
Today over 130 Iraqis were killed in a suicide attack in Baghdad...right there in one shot, more than the 121 lives taken by swine flu! The frustrating thing though, is the question of what the ordinary Iraqi civilian can do to address such violence.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if Iraqi civilians have much control over the preoccupations of their government; I feel like addressing the most pertinent issues will have to be a top-down initiative. Also, focusing on swine flue may be the government's way of feeling like it has preventative control over at least one thing affecting its citizens- it's easier to close schools and provide vaccines that halt insurgency violence, etc.
ReplyDelete