Gorilla’s Guides discussed missing children yesterday, starting with a 2007 UNICEF report on the subject. (Story originates with Al Jazeera, no link to UNICEF)

- An estimated 2 million children in Iraq continue to face threats including poor nutrition, disease and interrupted education. - Many of the 220,000 displaced children of primary school age had their education interrupted.

- An estimated 760,000 children (17 per cent) did not go to primary schools in 2006.

- An average 25,000 children per month were displaced by violence or intimidation, with their families seeking shelter in other parts of Iraq.

- In 2007, approximately 75,000 children had resorted to living in camps or temporary shelters.

- Hundreds of children lost their lives or were injured by violence and many more had their main family wage-earner kidnapped or killed.

That’s the big picture.

For a closeup:

Abu Muhammad, a Baghdad resident, found it difficult to let go of his daughter’s hand but he had already convinced himself that selling her to a family outside Iraq would provide her with a better future.

“The war disgraced my family. I lost relatives including my wife among thousands of victims of sectarian violence and was forced to sell my daughter to give my other children something to eat,” he told Al Jazeera.

In 2006, Abu Muhammad and his family were forced to leave their home in Adhamiya, a district of Baghdad, after militia fighting claimed the streets in his once tranquil neighbourhood.

They began living in a makeshift refugee camp on the outskirts of Baghdad, but he soon lost his job and the children, unable to make the daily trek, quit school.

“There wasn’t enough money to spend on books, clothes and transport,” he said. His daughter, Fatima, the youngest of four children, began to show signs of malnourishment and a local medic said she had become anaemic.

Desperation

By mid-2007, conditions for his family had become desperate and his children, once healthy and bubbling with life, had become gaunt and lethargic.

It was then that a translator and a Swedish couple claiming to be part of an international NGO arrived in the makeshift refugee camp.

“They heard about my situation and the woman, who said she could not have babies, offered some money to give her my youngest daughter of two years old,” he said.

“I refused in the beginning but the Iraqi translator was constantly coming at the camp and insisting with the same question. One day I found that my children would die without food and a clean environment and the next time he came to my tent, I told him that I agreed.”

He gave the translator all personal documents and after a week the couple came with new documents for Abu Muhammad to sign, authorising the adoption and to pick up his daughter.

Abu Muhammad, who received $10,000, believes he is now damned by God, but he says his inner turmoil is allayed somewhat by his belief that Fatima will have a better life than many in Iraq.

“I could see her love in the first time she looked at her,” he said of the adoptive mother.

I usually like to comment on stories like this. I’m too ashamed of what my country has wrought to say anything.