IRAQ: Toy guns in a real battle

The boy with the plastic AK-47 stood in the dust. He waited for others; they came, more boys with fake guns.

They scurried, ran around barbed wire and blast walls, shooting imaginary bullets, pretending to die. Their make-believe war was folded into a real one, and their laughter, echoing amid U.S. and Iraqi soldiers with real guns and metal bullets, was strange and paradoxical.

The streets are safer in Baghdad these days. That’s why the boys were out playing. But they were playing with guns, plastic, shiny guns in the sunlight.   

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The Iraqi government has urged shops to stop selling, and parents to stop buying, toy weapons. War has left enough of an imprint on Iraq’s children. And, at a glance, the guns easily could be mistaken for the real thing. But guns mean something. Iraqi boys see troops and policemen carrying guns every day. They know those guns protect them, guard their neighborhoods, help their sisters and mothers sleep better at night.

The boys want to be men too. They want to be brave, perhaps, before their time.

-- Jeffrey Fleishman in Baghdad

An Iraqi boy with a toy gun. Credit: BBC

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