The Name Is Love

The name is love,

The class is mindless,

The school is suffering,

The governorate is sadness,

The city is sighing,

The street is misery,

The home number is one thousand sighs.

This poem was written by a thirteen-year old Iraqi boy named Jassim back in 1998. Jassim  was lying sick from leaukemia in an Iraqi hospital that had been deprived of its capabilities due to the debilitating sanctions enforced on Iraq after the first Gulf War in 1991. Furthermore, it is believed that Jassim's cancer was caused by the radiation from depleted uranium that was deployed during the first Gulf War (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium).

He was waiting for medication to arrive from an European aid agency. As a result of the sanctions imposed by the United Nations (UN) and the United States and their allies, the capacity of Iraqi hospitals to treat ilnesses have been severely compromised. 

During the thirteen years of sanction from 1990 to 2003 (just before the Iraq invasion), more than 1.5 million Iraqis have died as a result of the sanctions imposed on them. About half a million of those dead were children under the age of five. 

During those years of sanctions, the average Iraqi could only afford to have roughly USD 185 spent on them for various necessities. Meanwhile, the United Nations spent about USD 400 per year on every dog it used for bomb-sniffing operations in Iraq. This was just for food. Yes, the life of a UN dog is roughly worth the life of two Iraqis.  And I am quite sure that these dogs got better healthcare than the almost 50 million Americans (and hundreds of millions more around the world) without health insurance.

Anyway, to cut the story short, Jassim died before his medication could arrive. 

The End.