Child soldiers
Treatment of children in any society
offers an insight into the morality of that society
December 27, 2004
iranian.com
Those who are familiar with my band know that we
support three charity organizations: Musicians
on Call, MuST (Music in Schools
Today), and Warchild. All three of these organizations work extremely
hard to benefit the lives of children in one way or another.
Warchild, the Canadian organization, is the closest to my heart
because as a child of war, I am very sensitive to the use and
therefore abuse of children during war.
Earlier today while reading U.S. News I came across a world
map highlighting areas where children fight wars. According to
U.S. News there are an estimated 300,000 children in 40 countries
who serve as combatants. Disconcertingly a portion of these children
are, reportedly, in Iran. For those of you intrigued enough to
know which other countries use child soldiers you can visit:
Child-Soldiers.org.
Admittedly I could not believe this to be true about Iran.
After all an ancient civilization like Iran would surly not be
involved in such abuse. I therefore set out to research this
myself.
One of the first facts I found was that 15 was
the minimum recruitment age specified by the United Nations Convention
on the Rights of the Child (CRC) in 1998
and by October 2004 the UN Child Soldiers Treaty which
"prohibits the participation of children under the age of 18
in hostilities
and all forced recruitment of children" had been ratified
by 85 states and signed by 116.
Interestingly, according to a
2002 article in Newsweek the U.S. and Somalia were the only
two countries in the world not to have ratified the U.N. CRC
- the
primary legal instrument available to stop the use of child
soldiers.
Yet, as I stumbled across this piece of information I immediately
asked myself if it is possible that in the last fifteen years
and specifically between 1998 and 2004 Iran has used children
under the age of 15 as government accepted combatants.
I remember as an 8-year-old boy, when I was still in Iran,
the tale of a young boy's death at war which was depicted
as so heroic that his certain martyrdom was presented to us as
the ultimate goal we should all strive for. To this day, I remember
the story of this boy who armed with a grenade had thrown himself
under an Iraqi tank to defend his country.
This act of heroism
was then depicted in stamps, as murals on school walls, and
talked about frequently by my school teachers. But, even then
I took
this for a story, a war time propaganda, and not fact. Could
it have been true? Iran has a population of between 69 and
71 million people and almost 28 to 30 million of this population
is under the age of 18. Although 19 is the recruitment age
for
regular forces, 15 is the recruitment age for parliamentary
forces.
The national recruitment legislation of Iran states, "the
government is obliged to provide a program of military training,
with all requisite facilities for all its citizens, in accordance
with the islamic criteria, in such a way that all citizens will
be able to engage in the armed defense of the Islamic republic
if Iran" (Article 151). Further, Act 2 of the Public Conscription
Act specifies that as of the 21st of March 1998 "the minimum
age for the armed forced for the purpose of receiving military
training is 16." Even as recently as this year (2004) the
National Youth Organization, a governmental organization, said
that 16 remains the minimum age to be in the "stable or
contractual cadre of the army".
The "Pasdaran" (Iranian Revolutionary Guard) who
were formed in 1979 fit under the umbrella of the military which
means that the Basij militia, as an auxiliary unit of the Pasdaran,
is also part of the Military. For the Basij Militia the minimum
age to recruit is 15 and even though the Basij recruits from
volunteers there have been reports that at times due to a shortage
of recruits, especially in eastern Iran, the Basij has recruited
directly out of schools and villages by force.
There is also
the "Ansar-e-Hizbollah" which is a vigilante group
that also recruits from the Basij and has no minimum age limit
for its recruits and receives the toleration of the government.
In 2003 many recruits of the Ansar-e-Hizbollah were used to
combat the student demonstrations.
Still more disturbing is that when groups of Iranian-Kurdish
refugees in Sweden were interviewed a minority admitted to having
joined the guerilla movement at the ages of 13 or 14. From the
interviews it became clear that there was "great pressure
at school" to join the Kurdish fighters.
 To put things in perspective for you, these are children who
have witnessed horrific violence, they are children who have
used AK-47s and M-16s, they have been used as human mine detectors,
and they have been used as suicide-bombers; all of which is possible
because children are vulnerable and easily intimidated and therefore
obedient soldiers. What makes this even more of a tragedy is
that because of their lack of experience as soldiers and because
of their lack of judgment as men, child soldiers suffer much
higher rates of casualty that adult soldiers.
Back in 1996 the UNICEF stated that "children need be
the victims of war only if there is no will to prevent it".
Having discovered that in Iran children as young as 13 or 14
were used as soldiers I am left to wonder how it came to be that
Iranians of all people found the will to victimize children in
this way. After all Iran is unlike, to my mind, at The Sera Leone
or Sudan. who are also know for the use of Child soldiers. Iran
has thousands of years of civilized history.
The problem may be that even though Iran has a long history
it is still considered a nation experiencing a transition from
rural-based society to a semi-industrialized society and therefore
faces the challenges of unemployment at around 25%, uneven distribution
of wealth an income, inequality of of opportunity, with a high
rate of poverty with an estimated 17 million people living well
below the poverty line and the people of many rural areas still
suffering from malnutrition.
All these reasons could go some way in explaining why children
who themselves and/or whose families suffer under any or all
of these conditions would be more easily coerced into becoming
soldiers. Further, according to recent figures by The Economist Iran has around 2 million orphaned children. The promise of
food,
shelter, and money is often more than enough to recruit these
children in need.
I am of the belief that the treatment of children in any society
offers an insight into the morality of that society. I am talking
about the kind of morality that brings with it responsibility
to one's own conscience. So what does all of this mean.
One thing is certain: During the Iran and Iraq war Iran's
military used Child Soldiers and although there may be very little
if any use of children in the military at this time, until quite
recently, there had been.
For me personally this means that my memories of the young
boy who threw himself under tank are most probably memories of
a real tragedy and not a piece of heroic propaganda. I am now
left with the question of how to judge the morality of my mother
nation whose recent history does not conform to my standard of
right; and more importantly to try and understand why they would
sink below this standard.
 Samuel Butler once said, "Morality is the custom of one's
country and the current feeling of one's peers".
still, I find it incredibly unbelievable that the recent feelings
of my peers in Iran would allow for the use of Child Soldiers.
Then again it was Erich Fromm who put it best when he wrote,
"Freedom, the ability to preserve one's integrity against power,
is the basic condition for morality". Looking back at the
map in U.S. News I notice that the people of non of the 40 countries
highlighted really have freedom.
About
For more about Buddahead, aka Raman Kia, and his band, visit buddaheadmusic.com
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