On Monday, the Taliban allegedly kidnapped more than 400 people – mostly teenagers – from a group of students and teachers near their school in North Waziristan. According to the Associated Press, the “abduction occurred about 20 miles from Razmak Cadet College” where the students were from. According to an eyewitness:
About 30 buses, cars and other vehicles were carrying the students, staff and others when they were stopped along the road by a large group of gunmen in their own vehicles, according to a school employee who was among those who escaped. He said the vehicle he was riding in happened to be behind a truck on the road and thus it was less visible and able to slip away unnoticed.
The employee requested anonymity out of fear of Taliban reprisal and said the school’s principal was among those abducted. The staffer said the assailants carried rockets, Kalashnikovs, hand grenades and other weapons. He estimated about 400 captives were initially involved.
Most of the abducted were teenagers. According to AP, “Cadet colleges in Pakistan are usually run by retired military officers and educate teenagers.”
See this earlier posting on Child Soldiers in Afghanistan: Video showing child soldiers being recruited, trained, and killed in Afghanistan.
Filed under: Afghanistan, Al Qaeda , Afghanistan, child soldiers, Human Rights, Taliban, War
Former general from the Rwanda Civil War and now Liberal Senator in Canada, Romeo Dallaire adamantly stated on Tuesday that Omar Khadr should not face trial at Guantanamo Bay since he was 15 at the time of his arrest, and was therefore a child soldier. Dallaire says Khadr should be rehabilitated and re-introduced into society and not be tried in Guantanamo. From this article:
Mr. Khadr, now 21, has been detained in Guantanamo Bay for six years. He faces multiple charges in connection to a 2002 afghan firefight in which an American soldier was killed. One of those charges is murder, and if convicted, Mr. Khadr could spend the rest of his life in prison.
Khadr was 15 at the time of his capture in Afghanistan.
Mr. Dallaire said that it is very clear Mr. Khadr was a child soldier at the time of his capture, “unless you don’t want to see it.”
ALSO: Stay tuned for another posting tomorrow on the CHARLES TAYLOR TRIAL: Charles Taylor’s former vice president, Moses Blah discusses the use of Small Boy Units (SBUs).
Filed under: Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, Guantanamo, Laws, Treaties , Afghanistan, child soldiers, Dallaire, Guantanamo, Guantanamo Bay, Omar Khadr, Rwanda Civil War
I think this article from February 6, 2008 on Al Qaeda recruiting young boys, bears revisiting considering the NPR broadcast the other day (see April 15 post) on the increasing number of IDPs (internally displaced persons) in Iraq – nearly 3 million – many of which are children.
The concern, of course, is that the IDCs (internally displaced children), exposed and hardened by war and facing violence and tragedy on a regular basis, are ripe for recruitment by Al Qaeda.
If you missed the article, the new propaganda tapes released by Al Qaeda to MultiNational Forces-Iraq show:
masked Iraqi children between ages of 6-14 being taught how to hold AK-47s, stop a car and carry out a kidnapping, break into a house and break into a courtyard and terrorize the individuals living there.
Footage aired for reporters showed an apparent training operation in which the boys are seen storming a house and holding guns to the heads of mock residents. Another tape showed a young boy wearing a suicide vest and posing with automatic weapons.
They also are shown being taught to use rocket-propelled grenade launchers.
I’m not going to directly post the video, mainly because I refuse to assist Al Qaeda with propagating it across the Internet. But here is a link to a blog that has the video posted on it. Indirect posting.
Check out the next section of the article:
The kidnapping ring that was broken last week had recorded 26 other kidnappings. Coalition forces did not know how many had ended in release, and how many in death.
Iraqi Defense Ministry spokesman Mohammed al-Askari told reporters that militants are kidnapping more and more Iraqi children, though he could not offer details or numbers.
“This is not only to recruit them, but also to demand ransom to fund the operations of Al Qaeda,” al-Askari said.
Filed under: Al Qaeda, Iraq, Media/TV/Films , Al Qaeda, child soldier, children, crime, Iraq, war in iraq
