BAGHDAD (AP) – In the steamy Baghdad night, sweat poured down the faces of the Iraqi teens as they marched around a school courtyard, training for battle against the Islamic State group.
This is summer camp in Iraq, set up by the country’s largest paramilitary force after Iraq’s top Shiite cleric issued an edict calling on students as young as middle-school age to use their summer vacations to prepare to fight the Sunni extremists.
These young fighters could have serious implications for the U.S.-led coalition, which provides billions of dollars in military and economic aid to the Iraqi government. The Child Soldiers Prevention Act of 2008 says the United States cannot provide certain forms of military support, including foreign military financing and direct commercial sales to governments that recruit and use child soldiers or support paramilitaries or militias that do.
Hundreds of students have gone through training at the dozens of such camps run by the Popular Mobilization Forces, the government-sanctioned umbrella group of mostly Shiite militias. It is impossible to say how many went on to fight IS, since those who do so go independently. But this summer, The Associated Press saw over a dozen armed boys on the front line in western Anbar province, including some as young as 10.
Of around 200 cadets in a training class visited by the AP this month, about half were under the age of 18, with some as young as 15. Several said they intended to join their fathers and older brothers on the front lines.