Iraq lawmakers move to ban toy guns

Children imitating sectarian divides in war games

Iraqi lawmakers, alarmed at the exceptional levels of violence children are exposed to daily, are about to pass a bill to ban the import of toy guns, an MP said on Wednesday.

"Our children see too much violence on TV, they have it on their video games, they hear their parents talk about violence every day. It is rampant in the streets," parliamentary committee on women and children chairwoman Samira al-Mussawi told AFP.Saying the bill has already been approved by the cabinet, Mussawi expects it to come before parliament before the end of the week.

According to Mussawi, children do not distinguish between toy guns and the real thing.

"They use them without knowing the reality of violence or killing," she said.

"We have to stop importing these kinds of toys and give our children others that will help them develop their brains.

"The lawmaker called on the education ministry to introduce subjects in schools dealing with matters such as non-violent conflict resolution and reconciliation.

Members of her committee, she added, backed efforts by the Iraqi army to curb the number of toy guns on the streets by going to schools and asking children to hand in plastic weaponry in return for other, creative toys.

Plastic toy guns, many imported from China, flood the shelves of toy stores, with shopkeepers saying the weaponry is the top seller, both for boys and for girls. Prices range from 5,000 to 40,000 dinars (four to 32 dollars), with the MP7AI rifle the favorite, as it resembles the type of weapons children see in American movies, shopkeepers told AFP.

Teachers say Iraqi kids play cops and robbers as do children in most countries, but that they also play war games, based on what is happening in the streets of their towns and cities. In some neighborhoods, it's police versus "terrorists", or army versus al-Qaeda. In other areas war games reflect the bitter sectarian divides

-- one side gets to be Shiite militiamen, the other Sunni insurgents.The only psychological study carried out in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 was on children by the Association of Psychologists of Iraq (API) in 2006.

It found that the violence was profoundly affecting them."The only things they have on their minds are guns, bullets, death and a fear of the U.S. occupation," said API spokesman Marwan Abdullah when he released the report.