War games in Baghdad

Baghdad: From Cowboys & Indians to Doctors & Nurses and Cops & Robbers, children have always had a tendency to turn their surroundings and environment into a form of play.

The situation is no different in Baghdad, where young boys have taken to patrolling the war-ravaged streets with toy guns and chanting battle cries of a Shiite militia, in make-believe games of bombers and terrorists.

"You coward! I will kill you," shouts 6-year-old Haidar Faraj, who plays a Shiite militiaman from the Shiite Mahdi Army militia in Hurriyah. His younger brother Abbas is the Sunni "terrorist."

In Sadr City, the Baghdad stronghold of the Mahdi Army, the "bad guys" are "Wahabbis," or Sunni religious extremists. Sometimes the game becomes "Sadr City vs Azamiyah," referring to a nearby Sunni neighbourhood.

In New Baghdad, a mixed area where Shiites are most prominent, kids play "police and terrorists." Some of the children even dress up in black shirts that resemble Mahdi Army attire, while those playing the cops put on black ski masks, often used by Baghdad police to hide their identity.

Some adults try to discourage such games, fearing they only contribute to sectarian hatred. Others believe there is little they can do to stop it, given the horror that children in Baghdad experience nearly every day.

Rabab Qassim, a school teacher and mother of three from Hurriyah, where Shiite militiamen drove out hundreds of Sunni families last year, said, "Playing such games is normal. It has become part of the kids' lives. It is not a figment of their imagination. It is in front of them everywhere and they live it every day."

Abu Ali sells toys in Baghdad's Shorja market, and said most of the children who visit his store are looking for the "biggest and most harmful toy guns," adding that around 95 per cent of the toys he sells are guns.

So many toy guns, many of which are startlingly realistic looking, are circulating in the city that Trade Minister Abed Falah Al Sudani is considering banning them.

Many of the children playing the games are taking their inspiration not just from the television, but from the everyday violence they witness as young people growing up in Iraq.

However, there are worries that games are distracting children from their studies and making them more violent. It's hard to tell whether war games, or the general state of life in Baghdad, are to blame.