military recruitment

By Chris Hedges, Truthdig

The military in the United States portrays itself as endowed with the highest virtues—honor, duty, self-sacrifice, courage and patriotism. Politicians, entertainers, sports stars, the media, clerics and academics slavishly bow before the military machine, ignoring its colossal pillaging of state resources, the egregious war crimes it has normalized across the globe, its abject service not to democracy or freedom but corporate profit, and the blind, mind-numbing obedience it inculcates among its members. A lone soldier or Marine who rises up inside the system to denounce the hypermasculinity that glorifies violence and war, who exposes the false morality of the military, who refuses to kill in the service of imperial power, unmasks the military for what it is. And he or she, as Chelsea Manning has learned, swiftly pays a very, very heavy price.

By Ali al-Mujahed and Hugh Naylor, The Washington Post

SANAA, Yemen — Abdullah Ali’s 15-year-old son disappeared from home one morning three months ago. A week later, the boy called his horrified family to say he had joined the Shiite insurgents known as Houthis — becoming one of a growing number of underage soldiers fighting in Yemen’s civil war.

“He’s just a child. He’s only in the ninth grade,” Ali, 49, a civil servant who lives in the city of Taiz, said recently. “He should be at school learning, not fighting.”

In February, the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) team reported that 89 children were abducted while doing exams, but said the actual number could be much higher.

The South Sudanese army (SPLA) has admitted forcefully recruiting children into its armed ranks in Upper Nile state, but claimed they were returned to their respective homes.

Army spokesperson Col. Philip Aguer told Sudan Tribune the military leadership directed the department of child protection to carry out joint investigation and found only 36 children in the army.

He however added that these children were successfully reunited with their parents.

ISLAMABAD: Keeping in view the state of children in the federally administered tribal areas (Fata), Unicef has recommended to the federal government to repeal Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) 1901. The recommendation states that constitutional amendments be made to bring Fata into the mainstream of the country. One of the most vital measures would be to repeal the FCR and introduce a more humane law to deal with adult criminals, separating them from child offenders, and enforcing the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance (JJSO) 2000 for the benefit of child offenders.

Unicef, in collaboration with the Commissioner for Children’s Complaints, Federal Ombudsman, Islamabad, in its comprehensive report on the state of children in Pakistan has also made 19 recommendations to improve the conditions of Fata’s children. “This is perhaps the first time that Fata’s children have been discussed in some detail,” the study claimed.