Iraq Press Roundup

The Iraqi Hezbollah Party's Al Bayyna Newspaper had an editorial with the title "A militia of widows and orphans" and said violence has become the basic way for people to gain their rights in Iraq.

The editorial said the "state of law" officials brag about doesn't exist and the rights of the poor and the oppressed are taken away.

"Will every part of the society need to form an armed group in order for the rulers of this country to pay attention to them?" the editorial asked.

It said Member of Parliament Samira al-Mousawi's call to pay attention to the widows and orphans didn't get any response from either the Parliament or the president of Iraq for two years.

The paper said al-Mousawi talked about this human catastrophe but was ignored, and she warned that if no solution were found, it will create long-term violence.

The paper said al-Mousawi also held the media responsible for not giving enough coverage to this human disaster. "This accusation is right; the media hasn't focused enough on this very importance issue," the paper said.

The editorial told lawmakers to go back to Articles 30 and 32 in the Iraqi Constitution that mention these two important parts.

"We warn everybody of the serious human catastrophes that the government didn't find solutions for," the Basra-based newspaper said.

Kitabat newspaper had an editorial devoted to the issue of orphans in Iraq, resulting from the violence that preceded the occupation, wars and Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. The editorial headlined: "Five million Iraqi orphans: Who has a homeland like Iraq?" said an international humanitarian organization that focuses on the rights of orphans announced the number of Iraqi orphans reached 5 million and counting.

"Five million orphans is not considered a high number generally but if compared with Iraq's 30 million population, it is a very high and frightening number," the paper said.

It said considering each family has five children, there are at least 1 million widows in Iraq, many of whom don't have jobs.

The editorial said that according to these figures, there is one orphan among six children. The most important issue here is to imagine how these orphans and widows live in a country with violence and chaos where men struggle to put food on their tables, the paper said.

"About 75 percent of orphans don't receive or have education … which could lead them to the streets to either beg … or worse get involved with groups that carry out violence."

"By the time these orphans reach the age of 15, Iraq would have an enormous street army militia; a militia that consists of illiterate, criminal and antisocial elements," the paper commented.

It said the violence we witness in today's Iraq is mostly performed by orphans who lost their parents during Saddam's dictatorship.

"The misery and sadness Iraqis lived through from unjustified wars, oppression by dictators and occupation led to terrorism, and have created this violent generation," it said.

The editorial said the instability and no attention to the 5 million orphans will turn them, after Iraq achieves peace and security, into bombs making the Iraqi government obliged to deal with an obstacle.

It said the government has to get ready now to face this obstacle and study the matter.

"Otherwise the Iraqi government will have to face 5 million problems added to its current ones," it said.