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Child soldiers: Easy to train, willing to kill
By Sudha Ramachandran

BANGALORE - The recruitment of children and adolescents as combatants, while common among militant groups, is also practiced by some governments, since many children and young people are easily lured to a life of adventure, danger and patriotic duty and easily conditioned to follow orders.

The United Nations and its Convention on the Rights of the Child define children as those under 18 unless national lawa defines majority earlier. According to that definition, the United States, the United Kingdom and other nations routinely recruit volunteer children into the ranks of their armed forces and civil defense organizations.

The issue of child soldiers, however, tends center on armed insurgent groups in developing countries, though not exclusively so.

In South Asia, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) is perhaps the most notorious recruiter of children as combatants in the conflict in Sri Lanka. And this recruitment is said to be continuing, despite LTTE having pledged to halt the practice. In October alone, truce monitors received around 80 complaints, yet it was in October that the LTTE and the United Nations opened a joint rehabilitation center for former child soldiers.

For many years, the LTTE denied recruiting children. Later, it claimed that children were not sent to the battlefront and did not wield weapons. They were, the Tigers insisted, only put on guard duty, administrative and political work.

However, it is well-known that the Tigers deploy children in combat operations, even in suicide missions. This correspondent met several adolescent Tigers in the LTTE-controlled areas in the Jaffna peninsula in Sri Lanka’s Northern Province and the eastern district of Batticaloa. Both boys and girls were heavily armed.

In 1998, the LTTE promised the UN Secretary General's special representative for children and armed conflict, Olara Otunnu, that it would stop recruiting children. A ceasefire has been in place in Sri Lanka for almost two years, but the LTTE seems to have continued to recruit children throughout this period -- an act the government considers hostile. The LTTE routinely denies recruitment of children.

There are no figures to indicate how many children are in the Tiger ranks. Data on captured Tigers suggest that 40 percent of its fighting force consists of children between nine and 15. This high percentage could be the result of children getting captured more easily than adult fighters.

Children recruited in protracted conflicts
Although children are more susceptible to capture, militant groups all over the world are not averse to using them as fighters. This is especially so when the pool of adult males for recruitment starts dwindling, as often happens in areas where conflicts have been protracted.

Militant groups find children useful as spies and couriers as well as frontline fighters. "They are less likely to be suspected of being militants," a former fighter of the Hizbul Mujahideen, a militant group active in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, told this correspondent.

Explaining the reasons for the growing number of child soldiers, Rory Mungoven, co-ordinator of the London-based Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, told this correspondent, "The widespread availability of modern lightweight weapons and small arms means that even the smallest child can become an efficient killer in combat." Besides, children are often recruited because of "their very qualities as children - they can be cheap, expendable and easier to condition into fearless killing and unthinking obedience."

In Jammu and Kashmir, where Muslim insurgents seek independence from India, children were involved in militancy right from its inception in 1989-90. On instructions from adult militants, children would throw grenades at the Indian security forces. Over the years, the number of children joining the militant ranks has increased. According to police sources, about a hundred boys below the age of 18 crossed into Pakistan for training last year. That number is said to have quadrupled since January this year.

In the early years of the militancy in Kashmir, adolescent boys joined up voluntarily, attracted by the romance of risk and adventure that life as a militant promised. Today, most of the boys in militant groups here are said to have been kidnapped or coerced into picking up arms. Poverty too pushes many into the career option of militancy where life may be more materially rewarding.

According to an Indian intelligence source in Srinagar, schools, playgrounds and mosques are favorite hunting grounds. It was in a mosque that 17-year-old Afaq Ahmed Shah, the first suicide bomber in Kashmir, was recruited for his deadly mission. Afaq was depressed as he had failed his school examinations twice. He started spending a lot of time in the local mosque. Unbeknownst to his parents, jihadis were indoctrinating Afaq, convincing him to do something meaningful with his life - like carry out a suicide mission. On April 19, 2000, the teenager drove a car filled with explosives into the gates of the heavily guarded Indian Army headquarters in Srinagar.

Orphans especially susceptible
Orphanages and schools have been important recruiting and training grounds for the Tigers. Amnesty International cites the case of a mother who had left her child to be brought up in an LTTE-sponsored orphanage. Three years later, she received the remains of the 13-year old in a sealed coffin.

Children, especially adolescents, are easily indoctrinated and are more willing than adults to carry out risky missions. The thrill of wielding weapons and the power that flows from being armed draws many into the militant groups. Orphans are easily recruited because militant groups provide them with food and a sense of belonging, a family.

It was in the madrassas (religious schools) in Pakistan that the Taliban was born. While not all madrassas are nurseries that produce terrorists, it is from these schools that boys continue to be recruited into terror organizations like the Lashkar-e-Toiba, the Jaish-e-Mohammed and others. Poverty forces many parents to send their sons to madrassas for schooling. The boys end up being sent across the border into India and Afghanistan. There are reports that senior jihadis sometimes sexually abuse the young recruits.

Leftist insurgents in South Asia too are recruiting children. These groups claim to be fighting economic and social exploitation, and are theoretically opposed to child labor, as it is the result of poverty. Yet, they do not hesitate to exploit children themselves. According to the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, as many as 30 percent of Nepal’s Maoist fighters are below 18.

Indian leftist insurgent groups also use children. The Peoples War Group (PWG), which is active in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Orissa, as well as the Maoist Community Center (MCC), which is active in Bihar and Jharkhand, have several children working for them as couriers, cooks and spies, sometimes even as combatants. At one time, the PWG had as many as 800 children in its ranks.

Guns empower poor children
For children from the socially or economically disadvantaged sections of society, carrying guns and being able to use them is hugely empowering. They and their families have suffered because of the caste system or at the hands of landlords. They are impressed by the way gun-toting boys and girls from socio-economic backgrounds similar to their own, can command and punish the local landlords. They see life in the insurgent groups as an escape from poverty and a path to empowerment.

Governments publicize the recruitment of children by militant groups in an effort to discredit them. However, governments worldwide also recruit "as volunteers" under-age boys and girls into the armed forces, civilian defense forces and other groups.

In Sri Lanka, for instance, other Tamil militant groups and paramilitaries assisting the armed forces in fighting the LTTE have children, some as young as 13 years of age, among their ranks. These young fighters belonging to groups like the Peoples Liberation Organization of Tamil Eelam and the Eelam Peoples Revolutionary Liberation Front (Raseeq Group) are paid by the Sri Lankan government. A teenage fighter this correspondent met in a camp near Batticaloa town admitted he had participated in combat operations but quickly added that he hadn’t killed anyone yet.

Both India and Pakistan recruit volunteers at 16 but claim they do not deploy them in military operations before they turn 18. But recruiting child soldiers is not exclusive to developing countries. "The UK and the US are in the company of Myanmar, Sudan and Afghanistan when it comes to deploying under-18s into combat," observed Mungoven.

"The UK recruits even 16-year-olds and routinely sends 17-year-olds into combat. The US has deployed under-age troops in the Gulf War, in Somalia and in the Balkans." A survey of the Organization for Security Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in 2000 found that more than half of all OSCE member states accept under-18s into their forces.

For many youngsters who opt for life as combatants because of idealism, patriotism or the excitement that comes with living on the edge, the romance fades soon enough. It is near impossible to opt out of a militia, as seniors will not let them quit and the security forces treat them like they would an adult militant. With exit routes blocked, their dreams simply die young.

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Dec 19, 2003

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