"Children haunted by Iraq war"

Posted Sat, Apr 12, 2003 at 5:32 pm

From this:

Stockholm - They may be thousands of kilometres away from the fighting in Iraq, but children in Sweden are haunted by a war which stokes their worst fears about the world they live in, psychologists fielding calls on a war hotline said.

"The global state of affairs affects children as individuals. If parents in Iraq don't have the ability to protect their children, to stop this violence, then it can come to anybody," Sevil Bremer, psychologist at the Save the Children crisis centre in Stockholm, told AFP...

"How many children have died? What happens to the wounded? Is there enough medicine? What if Saddam is not found? Those are the questions we expect to get now," said Bremer, who added that one child had wanted to know "whether Syria will be next".

Hopefully, Sven, they will be. (I guess Swedish children are better at geography, or the child was from Syria.)

Comments

Joanne Jacobs (not verified)

Tue, 04/15/2003 - 13:08

Swedes kept WWII away from the kiddies by appeasing the Nazis, who were allowed to travel by train through Sweden to invade Norway. But the kids were still traumatize: Just look at Hans Blix.

scooterboy (not verified)

Mon, 04/14/2003 - 13:57

How did Swedish children make it through WW2.

pbird (not verified)

Sun, 04/13/2003 - 08:59

True David. I lived through Viet Nam and any number of smaller conflagrations and I don't remember being very concerned. It was just weird far-away adult stuff. Like the house and air and so on, just there.
Years later, I began to think about Viet Nam and grieve for those we lost. Even later, I became fully concerned with national matters and a complete news freak.

David Gillies (not verified)

Sun, 04/13/2003 - 07:47

This is such a crock. Kids don't get traumatised by wars happening in far away countries of which they know nothing. They don't even get traumatised by fairly low intensity wars involving their own country. The war in Ulster occupied most of my life, and I was 12 when Argentina invaded the Falklands. Did I get all broken up over that? No, of course not. Pissed off when the Argies sank one of our ships, sure, but hardly traumatised.