The death toll continues to rise on yesterday's Baghdad bombing. The truck bombing targeted the Sadr City section of Baghdad Vivian Salama (AP) notes 62 dead with another 125 injured. Reuters notes, "A Reuters witness at the site saw fruit and vegetables mixed with blood
and body remains littering the blast crater. The market, in a
northeastern suburb, is one of the largest wholesale food markets in the
capital."
The wounded will have to struggle in a never-ending war zone, one that is not known for making concessions to those disabled by war. Wassim Bassem (Al-Monitor) reports:
According to 2014 statistics from the Association of Short Statured People and People with Special Needs, there are about 4 million disabled people in Iraq. They face neglect and isolation and take on strenuous occupations; dire poverty leads these disabled people to street begging.
Al-Monitor looked for these disabled persons and examined the living
conditions of some of them, including Saad al-Dabisi, 55, from Babil,
who lost his left foot on a mine while fighting in east Basra during the
Iran-Iraq War (1980-88).
Dabisi said that the $150 per month pension the Ministry of Labor and
Social Affairs pays him is not enough to support his wife and three
children, which forced him to sell cigarettes to pedestrians.
In his worn-out wheelchair, he crosses 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) daily to reach al-Arbaeen Street in the Hillah region, where he displays his merchandise.
Mazen al-Adhami, the chairman of Al-Amal Association for the
Disabled, confirmed this dire situation of the disabled in Iraq, saying
to al-Araby al-Jadeed on June 1, “This category lives under very
difficult conditions amid obvious governmental neglect.”
A lot of disabled people in Iraq — whether their disability is
congenital or caused by wars and various accidents — are forced to work
in inadequate occupations, such as begging, to make ends meet.
Although the Iraqi Constitution
guarantees people with special needs access to 5% of government jobs,
given the large disabled population, it is not applied on the ground.
