Tag Archives: Child Soldiers

Child Soldiers Take Revenge on ISIS

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Singled out for genocide by the so-called Islamic State and abandoned by the Iraqi Kurds, young Yazidis on Mount Sinjar in Iraq are flocking to the militias and ideology of a quasi-Marxist group blacklisted as a terrorist organization in the West.

Formed into what they’re calling Sinjar Protection Units, or YB?, the Yazidis—both male and female—have sworn to defend their homeland and to avenge ISIS’s campaign of rape, kidnapping and murder.

It’s been just a year now since the jihadists launched their assault on the Yazidis at the beginning of August 2014. ISIS had taken the second biggest city in Iraq, Mosul, weeks before. But Washington, slow to react, did not begin a bombing campaign to try to stop the group’s offensive until August 7 when President Barack Obama announced the United States would start a bombing campaign “to help save thousands of Iraqi civilians who are trapped on a mountain without food and water and facing almost certain death.”

So began America’s reentry into the complex and baffling war in Iraq and eventually Syria as well.

But the operation failed to save thousands of Yazidi men summarily executed and women sold as jihadist slaves, and this small ethno-religious group regarded as infidels and even devil worshippers by the militants of ISIS is still haunted by the shadows of genocide.

When an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known as the PKK, offered them the chance to train as fighters, they vowed never again. That Ankara, Brussels and Washington brand the guerrilla organization “terrorist” matters not at all.

“I came because I got the chance to protect my people, because this isn’t the first time there’s been a Yazidi genocide,” says 16-year-old female YB? fighter Ari. She says the Yazidis count 74 times others have tried to wipe them out. “I have found a chance to protect us and prevent a next time.”

Dressed in khaki fatigues and a woodland camouflage vest that holds her AK-47 magazines, Ari is relaxing beside half a dozen of her comrades in a house turned barracks on the north slope of Mount Sinjar. Similarly dressed and sipping tea, many are also still in their teens or early 20s.

They all say the Erbil-based Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and its troops known as Peshmerga, closely allied with the United States, abandoned the Yazidis when ISIS attacked their heartland surrounding this mountain in northwestern Iraq.

Read More: thedailybeast

U.S. Indicts Borno Govt. Over Use Of Child Soldiers

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Despite efforts by Nigeria’s central government to combat human trafficking and servitude, the Borno State government in the country’s north east, plagued by Boko Haram insurgency, actively supported the recruitment of child soldiers in the last one year, the United States government has said in its latest report on human trafficking.

The report, released Monday, praised the Nigerian government for its efforts at fighting trafficking and ranked Nigeria in its Tier two category – the same rating the country received in 2014.

The report however criticised the Borno government headed by Governor Kashim Shettima for supporting a group involved with the recruitment and use of child soldiers in the fight against Boko Haram insurgency.

It noted that although Mr. Kashim had “warned the CJTF that the recruitment and use of child soldiers was prohibited”, “state government support for the group continued”.

Civilian Joint Task Force, CJTF, is a local vigilante group assisting the Nigerian military in the fight against Boko Haram.

Mr. Shettima was on President Muhammadu Buhari’s entourage to the U.S. last week, and attended talks between President Buhari, U.S. President Barack Obama and secretary of states, John Kerry.

The Department of States, which authored the trafficking report, said while Nigeria remains a main hub for trafficking in persons internally and externally, the government in the last one year continued to take stringent steps to curtail the menace.

“Nigeria is a source, transit, and destination country for women and children subjected to forced labor and sex trafficking. Nigerian trafficking victims are recruited from rural and, to a lesser extent, urban areas: women and girls for domestic servitude and sex trafficking and boys for forced labor in street vending, domestic service, mining, stone quarrying, agriculture, textiles manufacturing, and begging,” the report noted.

“Young boys in Koranic schools, commonly known as Almajiri children, are subjected to forced begging. Nigerian women and children are taken from Nigeria to other West and Central African countries, as well as to South Africa, where they are exploited for the same purposes.

Nigerian women and girls are subjected to forced prostitution throughout Europe. Nigerian women and children are also recruited and transported to destinations in North Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia, where they are held captive in the sex trade or in forced labor.”

Read More: premiumtimesng

Chad’s Army Rescues 43 Boko Haram Child Soldiers In Nigeria

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Col. Azem Agouna, Chadian Army Spokesman, said on Wednesday that they have repatriated 43 children, who had been kidnapped by Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram and forced to become child soldiers.

He said in N’djamena that the children, who are aged 12 and older and are Chadian nationals, were found in the Nigerian town of Damasak, in North-Eastern Borno. Damasak was under Boko Haram control until Chadian and Nigerian forces recaptured the town in early March.

Agouna said the children managed to escape during the clashes between the insurgents and soldiers, while the local families helped them to hide from the jihadists.

He disclosed that when it was certain that Boko Haram had been defeated and would not return to the town, the children came out of their hiding places and asked Chadian security forces for help. The spokesman said the army would look into how and when Boko Haram abducted the children from Chad.

Credit: vanguardngr

Abductions by Uganda’s Rebels on the Rise

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Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army rebels have launched a string of attacks across central Africa with a “steady increase” in abductions, the United Nations said in a report seen Thursday.

 The elusive jungle insurgents, who raid villages and enslave residents, have abducted 432 people so far this year, a “steady increase” from last year and more than double the number in 2012, the report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) read.

Those captured, often children, are forced to work as fighters, sex slaves or porters.

Long driven out of Uganda, small bands of LRA fighters now roam forest regions of Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan and South Sudan, launching over 150 attacks and killing at least 22 people this year.

Over 160,000 people have been forced from their homes in areas of DR Congo, CAR and South Sudan where the rebels operate, including over 30,000 living as refugees in neighbouring nations.

Rebel chief Joseph Kony, who launched a rebellion in Uganda two decades ago, is wanted by the International Criminal Court along with fellow top commanders on war crimes and crimes against humanity charges including murder, sexual slavery and for using child soldiers.

The US Department of State is offering a $5 million bounty for information leading to his capture.

Kony, who claims mystical-religious powers, has long been reported to be based in the Sudanese-controlled Kafia Kingi enclave straddling the border with South Sudan, as well as in neighbouring Central African Republic.

The Ugandan army is leading a US-backed African Union force tasked with capturing the LRA’s leaders.

According to the UN, the LRA has killed more than 100,000 people and kidnapped more than 60,000 children in almost three decades of attacks.

Credit: Yahoo News