One photograph shows a skin-and-bones boy lying on a bare floor, leashed like a dog to the pink bars of an unoccupied crib. Another shows more boys curled naked on the ground, one of them smeared with human waste.
Almost as jarring as the ghastly scenes was the response of an Iraqi official called upon Wednesday to explain how a state-run orphanage in Baghdad could have kept two dozen children in such conditions.
More Top Picks Best Echo Trimmers
Proving that not even orphans are immune from the political sniping that infests life here, the minister of labor and social welfare accused U.S. troops and the media of exaggerating the situation and distributing the photographs for political gain.
“Are they really concerned about how well the children are treated in that shelter, or is it just propaganda for their alleged kindness?” Mahmud Muhammad al-Radi said after the U.S. military released the photographs. A military statement said the pictures were taken June 10 after U.S. and Iraqi soldiers were tipped off about conditions at the orphanage in the Fajr area of western Baghdad.
Twenty-four boys, ages 3 to 15, were discovered. Most were emaciated and weak, and human filth covered the floors, the statement said. In a room of the orphanage, shelves of food and clean clothing lay untouched, to be hoarded and sold by adults working at the institution, the military alleged.
According to the statement, employees said the boys had been there less than a month after having been shifted from a nearby co-ed orphanage when it was decided that boys and girls should live separately.
Radi said U.S. troops brutalized the children with their nighttime raid.
“Of course the shelter is not as expected, as it is newly opened and still lacks a lot of services,” he said when asked about the absence of fans or air conditioning where the boys were sleeping. He did not explain why the children were lying on the floor with mattresses lining the walls.
Standing with Radi was orphanage director Diyaa Abdul Amir, who denied that the children were mistreated. He said the photographs focused on two boys with skin infections but that the rest were healthy.
To those who work with Iraq’s orphans and homeless children, whatever the truth about the photographs, the case illustrates the splintering of family and social ties as the war leaves extended families economically stretched and unable to take in additional relatives.
No verifiable statistics are available on orphans or homeless children in Iraq, but Claire Hajaj of the United Nations Children’s Fund, or UNICEF, said casualty trends indicate the problem has soared along with Iraq’s violence. Recent UN figures estimated that 100 Iraqis a day died in violence and that 90 percent of them are men, who tend to be primary providers.
Based on that estimate, “you would be looking at tens of thousands of children losing a parent due to violence in 2006 alone,” Hajaj said.