By Supna Zaidi
A couple of years ago UNICEF estimated that at least 300,000 children were involved in 30 armed conflicts worldwide. I am not talking about victims. As victims, children number in the millions from the murdered, to the maimed, left homeless or parentless internationally. UNICEF is talking about perpetrators. Children who are combatants, messengers, porters and cooks and those forced into providing sexual services. Or more accurately, children who are abducted or forcibly recruited to fight for one side in armed conflict.
African child soldiers are often discussed in the media as are little boys in left wing guerrilla forces in Latin America. No one questions their status as manipulated victims. Surprisingly, little is said about the child suicide bomber, who is kidnapped, bought, drugged or indoctrinated to not only kill others, but him or herself as well.
Why?
Yemen, the latest front in the war against terrorism, attempted to address this issue by initiating a campaign last year to end the recruitment of children with one simple message on a poster. To combat the "Believing Youth" rebel movement, a Yemen government poster depicted d a boy with detonator in one hand, and shirt raised to reveal a bomb belt around his waist, with text stating simply, "No to the exploitation of children for destructive operations and terrorism."
In a country where purportedly 50% of soldiers are children, such a campaign might seem crucial. That is until one realizes, that Yemen in the same country that hosted a Hamas run children’s festival in 2006, where children dressed as suicide bombers were paraded around and or that this is the same nation that in May of 2009 named a hospital after the first Palestinian suicide bomber.
Sure, it may be said that one’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter. But where do children fall in this debate. The Geneva Conventions dictate that no child under the age of 15 may fight in armed conflicts. The optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict sets the minimum age at 18, yet terrorism by some analysts perspective is not the same as armed conflict.
Non state actors like Al-Qaeda or the Taliban are not members of the UN, or any other international organization. They are engaged in acts of un sanctioned warfare, where even the use of the word war is debated. From strictly strategic terms, their use of children is practical. Warring with a nation like the US is uneven and asymmetric. With no tanks or nukes, these enemies will use the resources they have. As one member Taliban commander stated, "Children are tools to achieve God’s will, And whatever comes your way, you sacrifice it…"
Why is there no international outcry against such use of children? Where are organizations like Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, etc? Hamas as used children as human shields, Iraqi insurgents have been known to drug or remotely detonate children to make sure an attack goes off without a child getting scared or changing their mind.
It might be because, as the media simply puts it, the war on terror is our fault. Root causes are to blame for "their anger against us." Heaven forbid that the reference to "their" is not a reference to the people but the autocratic power hungry leadership of Islamist movements. These men do not differ from the dictators who preceded them like Saddam Hussein or anti-democratic leader after another in countries from Egypt to Pakistan.
And, "the people" in most majority Muslim countries are being force fed an anti-western, anti-semitic, and archaic worldview without any meaningful challenge from within, and total silence from the international community.
The UN has passed resolution after resolution against the use of children in armed conflicts, yet almost ten years after 9/11 has made no headlines addressing the use of children as suicide bombers in acts of terrorism. UN silence shouldn’t come as a shock considering the OIC’s successful lobbying. Its ability to censor any substantive debate on Islamist issues, 9/11, naturally segue into deterring addressing the ideology behind terrorism and its manipulation of children. Without whom, Islamists would lose a dramatic number of foot soldiers.
If they did, the UN would be forced to address nations from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan on a variety of issues from telethons for the families of suicide bombers, to madrassa indoctrination, and direct and financial support of terrorist organizations by its citizenry who naturally look the other way when the children of poorer families disappear towards an Islamist heaven that doesn’t exist.
One possible solution – Divestment. Making US support of the UN contingent on accountability towards human rights violations where the UN is complicit in supporting indoctrination of Muslim youth towards Islamism, jihadism and violence.
One simple example is UNRWA, a UN agency that has been repeatedly criticized for running schools in Gaza with Hamas approved curriculum. Rep. Rothman of New Jersey is the first American politician to push for a divestment policy against UNRWA. If successful, maybe Palestinian children can be the beginning of educational reform in the region towards something more meaningful than martyrdom.
(Supna Zaidi is assistant director of Islamist Watch, a project at the Middle East Forum and editor of Muslim World Today.)
