Fuck Money, Iranian Child Soldiers Want Kebabs

When you think of child soldiers you immediately think of Africa and horrible images of young kids forced into the hell of war with the promise of food and cash. The reality unfortunately is far harsher with many ending up dead and the rest left with the psychological consequences of having to murder people from the age of seven.

Whilst Africa get’s the most attention when it comes to child soldiers, other continents have been just as guilty. In Columbia, child soldiers are used by both sides of the civil conflict with the government backed militias using them as expendable sentries and the FARC guerrillas  using them as shock troops. In 1998 workers at the Guatape Hydroelectricity facility reported that a FARC raid consisted of many young soldiers some as young as eight years old armed with machine guns and rocket launchers.  In Europe during the Kosovan war in the late 90’s many KLA brigades were made up of young teens forced to defend their homes from marauding Serb forces. But it’s in Turkey where the most child soldiers have been found, since 1994 the Kurdish separatists have been actively recruiting children into their ranks, going so far as to creating child-only regiments in the ongoing conflict with the Turkish government.

Recently though the spotlight has swung back to Iran who have a long history of using children as foot soldiers. Last week there were reports in the media that the feared Basij militia and Revolutionary Guard had been deploying young boys of the age of 13/14 to crack down on Green Movement protesters. Iran’s glorious history of using child soldiers started during the Iran-Iraq conflict of the 80’s when massive gains by Saddam’s armies forced the Ayatollah of Iran to proclaim that children from the age of 12 should fight in the Holy War. Thousands of young boys had to say goodbye to their families as they were sent to the frontline armed with only a few grenades and antique weapons, usually with only one magazine of ammunition. They were also given a grim set of keys to hang around their necks, keys to the gates of heaven.

I got in-touch with Aaron Rhodes from the International Human Rights Campaign for Iran to learn about the current use of child soldiers in Iran.

Vice: Why are child soldiers being used in Iran, surely there are enough Revolutionary Guard who like to beatdown on protesters?

Aaron: Child soldiers are often used because it’s easier to manipulate them into doing things that adults won’t want to do. Iran suffers from a lot of social problems that are a result of misguided government initiatives and so there are not a lot of opportunities for young men, making it easy to entice them into groups such as the Basij militia. In these groups they receive benefits and better opportunities that gives them some sort of future.
These people are both victims and victimizers, they’re victimizers because they beat, harass and impose on peaceful demonstrators but they are also victims themselves because they are manipulated and coerced into this activity by the Revolutionary Guard.

Do they volunteer or are they forced into this role?

I wouldn’t say categorically that they are not being forced but I think that they are encouraged to join and one of the reasons why they join is that there aren’t many other alternatives available to them.

Do they get paid to rough up these unlucky demonstrators?

I believe they get some ort of salary and some receive motorbikes that they can also use to attack protesters and some our lured into the job by the promise of  a local Tehran delicacy, the Chelo Kebab. They have an opportunity to push other people around, which is something that adolescent boys very often like to do. They are being lured into a violent course of action that is very unhealthy for them and their victims.

Where are they getting these young boys from?

Very often they’re from rural areas so when they are ordered to crack down on peaceful protestors they’re not coming into conflict with the population with whom they have much sympathy.

Is their a general animosity then between city dwellers and the rural folk in Iran?

I don’t know how general it is but there can be massive differences between culture and orientation like in every country.

Are these kids being deployed in a specific role or are they just told to rough up anyone who thinks the Ayatollah is a dick?

Well they are a part of a command structure in the Revolutionary Guard, they take orders from the highest echelons of the Iranian state and those orders generally involve basic crowd control and continuing harassment of any protestors.

How are these young guys armed? Sticks and stones or machetes and rifles?

Typically they would be armed with batons and clubs but I’m not sure about firearms.

Have you come across any deaths attributed to these youths?

Oh yeah sure, I think there have been many over the course of the massive demonstrations since 2009, this is by no means a new phenomenon.

What’s the legal stance on using child soldiers?

Well it’s a breach of international law because the convention on the rights of the child, to which Iran is a signatory like virtually all countries, disallows bringing people under the age of 15 into the military and some of these children in Iran are younger than that, maybe 13/14 years old.

So what can the international community do about that?

The international community needs to press Iran and at the moment the current section of the Human Rights Council are looking through a proposal that will establish a special resolution for Iran and the resolution has the support of the EU, the US, Africa and more importantly support from Middle Eastern countries and we hope this resolution is a step towards making the Iranian authorities realise they are being held to account for the many human rights violations they have been committing over the past few years. We hope this pressure will spur the Iranians into confronting their human rights issue as for the last 6 years they have denied UN special investigators access into the country and have not responded to any of the urgent appeals in regards to certain cases.

Why do you think the Green movement’s protests this year have faltered when in 2009 they looked as if they could’ve toppled the regime?

First of all the Green Movement is not a coherent movement, it’s made up of many different political orientations and different ethnic and cultural groups who don’t like their human rights to be violated the way they are, they all share a dissatisfaction with the denial of their rights. This group of dissatisfied citizens has by no means shrunk in size since 2009, in fact it’s grown in size but the only difference between now and 2009 is that the government has been so brutal, even by Iranian standards, on cracking down on any protests and the government has shown the extreme lengths it will go against people willing to stand against it by it’s increased execution rates, arbitrary detainments and the lack of due process in the jailing of dissidents.

Henry Langston