The child soldiers fighting to stop the Islamic State
Iraqis are divided between supporters and opponents of the participation of young people in the war against the Islamic State.
BAGHDAD — Iraqi boys under 15 years old are joining, and dying, in the fight against the Islamic State (IS), despite a UN protocol forbidding their recruitment.
The UN Commission on Human Rights protocol stipulates recruits must be at least 15 years old to join any armed forces, but this protocol clearly has been violated for years. In the city of Karbala, 50 miles south of Baghdad, 13-year-old Saad al-Husseini joined the government's Popular Mobilization Units in December 2013 and volunteered to fight alongside his father in the nearby Jurf al-Sakhar area, where fierce battles liberated the area from IS on Oct. 25, 2014.
“I participated in the battles against [IS] members, and I fired on them. I participated in the withdrawal of the bodies of those killed in the fighting, and I dug trenches with fighters," Husseini told Al-Monitor.
Just like Husseini, dozens of other boys have volunteered to fight in the units and the Iraqi army in the war against IS — many in response to a jihad fatwa issued by religious authority Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani on June 13, 2014, writer and media figure Abofiras Alhamdani told Al-Monitor.
