Parents Bemoan Video Craze

An angry father charges through the flimsy curtain that serves as a door for a makeshift video-game parlour in this southern Iraqi town. A dozen children and teenagers in the tiny, smoke-filled room gawk as the man lashes the child with his belt and yanks him out the door.

"I've told you again and again not to come here," he shouted at his nine-year old son, as the others keep playing simulated football matches, while still others squat on stacks of school books awaiting their turn to play.

In Saddam Hussein's time, the growth of centres was curtailed by the stiff tax of up to 100 US dollars a month, demanded by Udai Hussein's Iraqi Olympic Committee. But with the tax gone, video parlours are springing up a half-dozen to the block in some areas.

Indeed, with the fall of the old regime, an explosion of unlicensed video-game parlours has swept the city, luring children away from class, spending their parents' money and drifting into worse trouble.

Officials at the al-Jihad school in Hilla say that the centres "cause an absentee rate of about 5 per cent". While relatively low overall, that figure can translate into the full time absence for some children.

"My son spends all his school hours in the video- games centre," said Ahmed Aliu the father of one boy. "The headmaster recently informed me that he hadn't been to school in 15 days."

Not all the children actually play the games - some of them simply use the centres as a refuge from school.

"I'm bored of going to school, but my family makes me go," said one child of about ten. "Instead of going to school, I go to the centres. At noon I go home, and tell them I've been in class."

Still, the main thing is to play, and that can be expensive.

The usual rate is about 1000 Iraqi dinars per hour (60 US cents), and that means a child can spend money roughly about as fast as a mid-level government employee can earn it.

The high costs are also viewed as promoting theft.

"My son has gotten used to steal from me, because the money we used to give to our son is not enough for him to play," said father Basil Ali Karim.

Parents are also concerned that the parlours, where six-year-olds mix with 16-year-olds, are breeding grounds for delinquency.

In some, the handles of kitchen knives peek out from children's jackets, while in others teenagers have the glazed and distracted look of drug users.

Asked why he lets in children during school hours, the owner of one Hilla centre looks momentarily annoyed. "The important thing," he said, "is that it brings in money."

Ali al-Khayyat is an IWPR trainee in Baghdad.