蜜芽传媒

Good Morning,

Near Mosul in Iraq there is a camp that holds around 1500 women and children, the families of former ISIS fighters. Known as 鈥淭he Daeshis鈥� by the locals, they are, among outcasts, perhaps the most reviled in the world.

My friend is a doctor who has just returned from Iraq where she worked in the trauma hospital treating the injured and sick from both sides of the war.
Whilst she had conflicting emotions in helping people responsible for horrendous atrocities her colleagues, the Iraqi medical staff, had to go the extra mile to help the relatives of people who had killed their own kith and kin.

To make things worse, my friend told me some of the ISIS women and children, refused to be treated, touched or helped in any way by the medical staff, particularly by the Iraqi Christians. Some of the women, she said, stared silently, hands balled into fists. Some children cried in reaction to being shown kindness 鈥� as though kindness was a perversion.

What to do with these children of ISIS? The hospital had little in the way of rehabilitation facilities. But a TV screen was set up to show DVD鈥檚. My friend said it had a remarkable effect on some. One of the most resistant children sat in front of the film 鈥� Finding Nemo 鈥� transfixed for two hours, a look of wonder on his face. It might just have been the colour and sound - television had been forbidden under the regime, but this film was in a language he didn鈥檛 understand and something was getting through. What was he seeing? Was this tale about a lost fish who is trying to find its parents resonating? Was it the shock of discovering that there were other ways of seeing the world; that there were other stories out there?

War is a voracious thief robbing children of their childhood. No child can be blamed for the crimes of their parents; or should be punished for being caught up in yet another war waged by adults. The children of ISIS, like the lost boys of Sudan or the child soldiers of Uganda, were coerced into fighting that war. They were told a terrible story; they have, to quote Jesus, been given a snake instead of a fish. And the poison of that snake paralyses the mind 鈥� and crushes the soul. To do this to children, he said, is a spiritual crime exacting a very tough justice.

But an innocent robbed of their innocence is still innocent, still in need of our help, still in need of rehabilitation. Skin can be stitched and blood can be replenished but the trauma and wounds to the psyche, especially of these children, needs a deeper and profounder repairing. Disney isn鈥檛 enough but as this lost boy shows, it鈥檚 a start; there are better stories for our children out there and telling them is key to their future healing.

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