Militias 'recruit child bombers'

Insurgent groups in Iraq are recruiting children as suicide bombers, according to a United Nations official. The findings of the UN special representative for children and armed conflict echo concerns expressed by the US military about insurgent tactics.
Radhika Coomaraswamy, the UN envoy, made her comments at the end of a week-long fact-finding visit to Iraq. Last month, the US released footage of what it said was al-Qaeda propaganda showing children being trained. The US says children are being taught how to use guns and carry out kidnappings in addition to other terrorist activities.
Ms Coomaraswamy told a news conference in the Jordanian capital of Amman that the use of children in the ongoing violence is "intolerable". "Since 2004, an increasing number of children have been recruited into various militias and insurgent groups, including as suicide bombers," Ms Coomaraswamy said, adding that children were the silent victims in Iraq.
"Many of them no longer go to school, many are recruited for violent activities or detained in custody, they lack access to the most basic services and manifest a wide range of psychological symptoms from the violence in their everyday lives."
She said approximately 1,500 children are also "known to be held in detention facilities".
Ms Coomaraswamy found that only 50% of primary school children are attending school, down from 80% in 2005 and only 40% have access to clean drinking water and there is a continuing possibility of outbreaks of cholera.
She called on religious, political, military and community leaders to send one clear message to Iraqi children: "Stay out of violence and go back to school."
Ms Coomaraswamy strongly urged all parties to the conflict in Iraq "to strictly adhere to international humanitarian standards for the protection of children and to immediately release any children under the age of 18 years who are associated with their forces in any way"
[from www.news.bbc.co.uk]

Another example here of how religion is being misused as a tool to motivate impressionable young people into carrying out suicide bombings. Now this is being extended to children who should be in school. No doubt they have been indoctrinated by promises of eternal paradise in the afterlife. I have often wondered why suicide bombers never seem to be over 40 years old and are usually a lot younger that that! I have reached the conclusion that individuals who reach 40 tend be much more aware of their own mortality and to value life much more than the young. When we are young it seems that death too far away to concern us. The middle aged have grown wise enough to know that promises of the afterlife are by no means a certainty and that nobody really knows what will happen when they die. Knowing this they value what life is left to them. Even among the most fanatical Islamic extremists and their supporters we seldom if ever see an old suicide bomber!
You might think that as these older jihadists have less life left to them they would be more willing to sacrifice themselves rather than to encourage young people to do it, but this is not the case.