My parents told me stories of how they had to walk miles through rain and snow to get to school when they were children. What will today’s generation of young Iraqi’s tell their children about their own treks during the war?
That they had to walk past corpses and hulks of blown-up buses?
Down streets running with blood?
Between cordons of U.S. troops and sectarian militias?
That they had to stay home because it was too dangerous to venture outside?
That their school had to close because there were too few students and teachers?
That their school (like the one in the photograph) had to close because it was a Sunni girls and was attacked by Shiites?
That they eventually put away their school books and toys and joined the insurgency?
Millions of Iraqi children are being robbed of their childhoods. You might called it armed robbery.
The Iraqi Ministry of Education estimates that only 30 percent of the 3.5 million Iraqi elementary-age children are attending school now, down from 75 percent last year.
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