Four years ago, the Syrian security services arrested 14 children, all of them under 13 years of age, for writing anti-government slogans on the walls of their school in Daraa in southern Syria. The children were then reportedly tortured. Incidents like this this may seem unthinkable to the rest of the world, but not in Syria where human rights groups estimate that the regime has killed over 18,000 children and imprisoned many more during the ongoing conflict. Many more of Syria's youngsters have been traumatised by the bloodshed and the displacement caused by the conflict. Some have watched as members of their families and neighbours have been killed or wounded. Psychologists note that these children may have difficulty readapting to normal life once the guns are silent. As the war drags on, many of them are being recruited as child soldiers or as support personnel in various militias. Sometimes the recruitment is voluntary, and sometimes it is coerced. Sometimes it happens with the parents' permission and sometimes without it. Teenagers, angry at threats to their local communities and impressed by the gun-toting adults they see around them, have walked into recruitment centres to volunteer. After a few weeks of training, many have been sent to the battlefront, and some, as in the case of teenagers fighting for the Islamic State (IS) group, have been used to carry out suicide missions. Hamza Al-Khatib, one such child victim of the war in Syria, was a seventh grader from a poor village in southern Syria. The Syrian security services arrested him a month after the revolution started for taking part in a peaceful march protesting the regime's blockade of the nearby city of Daraa. Hamza was put in prison, where he was tortured and ultimately killed. The regime then handed his bloody body back to his family. A video showing Hamza's body was uploaded onto social media, shocking all who saw it. He became an icon of the revolution, but his story was by no means exceptional. The brutality against children was just starting. Over the course of the war, children have been used as a means of intimidation and as human shields. They have been abducted for ransom and brainwashed to take part in fighting. Even those who have stayed at home have often found their neighbourhoods bombed and have had to flee the violence, sometimes on several occasions. Human rights groups say that Syrian intelligence and its auxiliary militia outfits often subject children to torture as a way to force their parents to cooperate with the regime. Many teenagers are said to have died under torture. Last summer, the regime killed more than 400 children in Ghoutet Dimashq, the agricultural area surrounding the capital, with chemical weapons. Overall, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, an NGO, nearly 18,000 children have died in the conflict thus far, most of them killed by regime troops. Statistics indicate that around six per cent of the victims on both sides are children. It is estimated that around 300,000 people have been killed in the past four years of conflict. Schools to barracks: The Syrian regime has turned schools, stadiums and sports clubs into barracks for military and security forces or into detention facilities. Pro-regime militias have reportedly raided hundreds of schools, looting computers and sabotaging labs and even destroying student records. UN reports indicate that the regime has destroyed nearly one quarter of the country's schools, while using another quarter as military facilities and depriving half the country's children of their right to education. According to the Syrian Supreme Council for Childhood, an umbrella group, one child is arrested every day and another is maimed. According to a report submitted to the UN Security Council, most Syrian children have seen acquaintances or family members killed or injured. In one documented incident, the regime arrested children as young as 11 on charges of belonging to armed groups. In prison, children are routinely ill treated or tortured, a tactic meant to force family members into cooperating with the authorities. The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) recently reported that two million Syrian children are in danger of turning into a “lost generation.” Sources in the Syrian opposition say that some five million Syrian children have been displaced inside Syria. Of these, about three million have stopped going to school. Of the three million children believed to have crossed the border into neighbouring countries, up to 1.3 million are believed to have dropped out of school. The 100,000 or so babies born to Syrian families living in refugee camps lack registration or identity papers. Baraa Al-Agha works for the Syrian Network for Human Rights. She says that urgent help is needed. “No one can imagine what will become of Syria's children in the future,” said Al-Agha. “We are facing the loss of a complete generation. We must start rehabilitating the children now, especially orphans and those with physical disabilities.” Moreover, almost every military outfit in the country has used children in their operations. The worst perpetrators are believed to be the pro-regime militia groups, IS and the Kurdish People's Protection Units. While there are no statistics on the number of children bearing arms, anecdotal evidence indicates that thousands of children now operate on both sides. They are used in active combat, for manning roadblocks, monitoring and surveillance, for spying and running messages, as well as for guarding and transportation. Bassam Al-Ahmad, spokesman for the Centre for Documenting Violations in Syria, says that most parties to the conflict are guilty of recruiting children. The US-based rights group Human Rights Watch has called on all armed outfits in Syria to ban the recruitment and use of children and to dismiss all fighters under the age of 18. It has also urged donors to stop arming and training groups that use child soldiers. But it is not just the youngsters involved in the fighting who have been affected by the conflict. Even those who are too young to fight exhibit behaviour consistent with growing up in areas of active conflict. Michel Shammas, a rights lawyer, says that Syrian children often re-enact the war in the games they play. “One of the results of the scenes of violence seen in Syria every day is the simulated fights that go on among children. I see them in Damascus carrying plastic pistols and guns, pretending to shoot at each other,” he said. Trained to kill: Abdel-Fattah Qassem, who documents violations for the rights group Horreyat, says that the National Defence Army, Popular Committees, Baath Brigades and other pro-regime auxiliary outfits accept recruits under 18. After brief training, the teenagers are sent into battle. Some are sent to Iran for a three-week course that qualifies them for sniper duty. The sectarian nature of some of the pro-regime militias makes it easier to recruit youngsters, who are often eager to defend their communities. Many Alawite children, influenced by the media and religious leaders, have volunteered to engage in what they see as a fight for survival. Qassem says that the Popular Committees, formed by the regime to defend certain neighbourhoods, are the worst offenders. Up to 40 per cent of the members of these committees are below 18 years of age. One Alawite woman from the village of Duweir Raslan near Tartus said that she had encouraged her son, aged 15, to enrol in a Popular Committee. He died only a month later, in fighting in central Syria. She now intends to send her other son, just 14, to fight too. “If we don't kill them, they will kill us,” she said. Abu Yehya, from the nearby village of Dahr Al-Tahun, lost his son Ghayth, 15, in a similar manner. He blames pro-regime militias for his son's death and says that he had opposed Ghayth joining the militia, which he called “cannon fodder for the ruling class.” According to Abu Yehya, the militia tempted his son with money. “They exploited the fact that he had no money and loved guns, like many teenage boys. We tried to change his mind, but we couldn't lock him up in the house to stop him going.” The IS, which now controls one third of Syria and is mostly run by non-Syrians, puts children in training centres specially set up for youngsters. The children are referred to as ashbal, or cubs. IS reportedly pays parents to send their children to such centres. With poverty and hunger widespread in the conflict areas, many parents are forced to agree. In some cases, IS has abducted children and forced them to attend military training without their parents' consent. Men of religion associated with IS exhort children to join the group. Parents who allow their children to enrol in the training receive a monthly stipend of $100 to $200, a substantial payment for families with hardly any other sources of income. The group has several child-training camps in Raqqa in northern Syria, Deir Al-Zur and Bukamal in the west, and Reef Halab, the countryside outside Aleppo. Al-Zarqawi Camp, Osama Bin Laden Camp, Sharia Camp for Cubs, Sharkarak Camp and Talaye Camp are all IS-run facilities training children under 16 years of age. In some cases, teenagers are sent into battle after only one or two days of training, but the training can also be longer. Activist Abu Ibrahim from Raqqa says that children are first given a brief religious course and then begin military courses lasting 45 days. After that, they are sent to the frontline. If things are quiet, they come back for more IS religious training. In May 2014, 13-year-old Hamadi went missing. His parents eventually located him in a camp run by IS in their city. The camp commander at first denied Hamadi's presence in the camp, but after the family paid a ransom the child was handed back to his parents. Other endings are less happy. Nearly 30 children recruited by IS in the past six months have been killed in battle. One of them, Bassel Homeira, is known to have carried out a suicide attack against the Kurds in northern Syria. Aseed Barho was 14 when he enrolled in an IS training camp in Raqqa. The IS gave him the choice between becoming a fighter or a suicide bomber, and he chose the latter. But two months before carrying out his suicide operation, he defected, turning himself in to Iraqi security personnel stationed in front of a mosque in Baghdad. IS video clips show Syrian and non-Syrian children executing prisoners with firearms. One Russian child was shown killing a Free Syrian Army fighter with a knife, while his Russian father gave him instructions. According to Syrian rights groups, the IS has sent some 500 Syrian children to their deaths in battle over the past two years alone. Kurdish girl fighters: Children under 18 years of age have been taken by the Kurdish People's Protection Units and Kurdish security forces known as asayesh. Both these outfits are affiliated with the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), which has declared a self-rule area in northern Syria, some say in preparation for secession. The PYD is interested in deploying not only boys, but girls as well. In some cases, it has been accused of abducting girls and using them for both combat and non-combat duties. In the PYD camps, a considerable number of youngsters received training in the aftermath of the IS attack on the city of Kobani, also known as Ein Al-Arab. Nearly 20 Kurdish teenagers, both male and female, died in the fighting. The PYD, accused by opposition groups of having secret ties with the Syrian regime, does not try to hide its recruitment of teenagers. Because of the threat IS poses to the Kurds, parents rarely complain when their teenage children join the fighting. But there have been cases where the families have spoken up. Hermin, a 13-year-old girl, was reportedly taken from her house without her parents' knowledge or permission by the PYD and sent to a training camp in the Qandil Mountains, stronghold of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in northern Iraq. Hermin's family was told to keep quiet, but they told the story to journalists. Hadiya Youssef, a member of the PYD, defended the recruitment of underage girls. “Is volunteering by girls to protect themselves a crime?” Youssef asked. “Are girls who are subjected to molestation in our society supposed to be better off than those who want to defend themselves?” Overall, armed opposition groups are believed to have been responsible for the deaths of nearly 300 children deployed in combat and non-combat roles over the past four years. Moataz, 13, keeps his eyes fixed on a regime plane as it hovers overhead, getting ready to drop its load of barrel bombs. “[Syrian President] Bashar Al-Assad hasn't given us anything good to remember him by,” he says. Hashem, 16, lost his father in a barrel bomb attack by the regime in Aleppo in northern Syria. His family moved into a camp on the Turkish border, and he left his mother there and returned to Aleppo to fight. He enrolled in an outfit that also hired many of his relatives and was immediately given a rifle. Ezzat, 14, left Gobar, a rural area near Damascus, to live with relatives in the capital. But even there he wasn't safe. “We faced death more than once. The last time was when a barrel bomb hit our house and killed my uncle and little brother. My father and my brothers are all fighting now. But I still cannot carry a gun, perhaps next year,” he said. The armed opposition claims that youngsters are mainly used for non-combat duties. One commander with Ashbal Al-Tawhid, or Cubs of Monotheism, said that teenagers were rarely recruited by the opposition. “We do not recruit children. We already have no shortage of young fighters, many of whom have military experience having served in the army or done their military service,” he said. “When we agree to enrol someone younger than 18, we only teach him how to defend himself if the need arises. We do not force anyone to fight. But even children must learn the basics when they are living in a time of war,” the commander, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said.
