‘Mom, I’m Scared’ As Child Traumas Compound Syrian War Cost
By Donna Abu-Nasr Mar 10, 2014 10:45 AM ET
A toddler when the conflict in Syria began, Abdel-Nour has lived through war for most of his life, learning to correctly identify an outgoing shell from an incoming one before he’s even managed to master the alphabet.
“It’s the kind of knowledge I wish my son didn’t have,” said his mother, Manar Makhoul, 31. “There’s a whole generation of Syrian children who have been robbed of their childhood because of this crisis,” she said by telephone from Damascus.
Syria’s conflict enters its fourth year this month with no sign that the war that has killed more than 140,000 people will end soon. As on all battlefields, children have been the most vulnerable victims, living horrors beyond their years. At least 10,000 of them have died, more than a million are living as refugees and millions more are displaced inside their country, according to a United Nations report last month.
They’ve been summarily executed, recruited for combat, sexually abused, detained and tortured, according to the report. Both Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government and the rebels trying to topple him are to blame, it said.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-09/-mom-i-m-scared-as-childhood-traumas-compound-syrian-war-cost.html