War isn’t kids’ play

The courage shown by Malala Yousafzai in speaking out against Taliban human rights abuses was remarkable and it’s good to see she was evacuated to a hospital in Birmingham after she was brutally shot by the Taliban (Riaz Khan, Irish Examiner Oct 16).

Another un-named girl, also critically injured in the same attack was not evacuated. We should also be wary of such children being used for propaganda.

Far too few injured children are evacuated from war zones, especially when these injuries have been partly caused by “collateral damage” in unjustified wars.

In 1993 little Irma Hadzimuratovic was evacuated from Sarajevo to England amid worldwide publicity, yet her death from her injuries two years later, around the time that the international community stood idly by as up to 8,000 men and boys were massacred at Srebrenica, was not as well reported.

In the Iraq war a similar media event surrounded the evacuation of little Ali Abbas injured when his home was destroyed in a US missile attack that killed 16 of his family.

In Iraq up to 250,000 children died due to Western/UN imposed sanctions from 1992 to 2003 and a similar number died as a result of the subsequent Iraq war.

The over-publicised rescue of three children from three wars does little to compensate the other victims of wars that could and should have been avoided if even a fraction of the money spent on war was spent on efforts to make peace.

Edward Horgan

Castletroy

Limerick