28/07/2015 - Guys, mostly children. They run through the streets of a Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad. They don't spend their holidays playing, but they train in urban warfare against the Islamic State. The instructors teach them how to move around the streets, handle small arms and make them work, protecting them from the sand.

The summer camps, established by the popular mobilization forces, were opened from Baghdad to Basra. Boys and girls, after an edict issued by the country's top Shiite authority, were 'invited' to train for battle, should it be necessary.

To date there are more than a hundred students enrolled in these courses, but it is impossible to determine the extent of these fields where they are taught to fight against Sunni extremists.

It was just a matter of time. "Educating", "educating", "plagiarizing" and "indoctrinating" children is a well-known technique. These schools of hatred represent the basin from which to draw to perform any kind of action in defense of national interests (and it is not certain that these are always of noble principles).

According to an estimate of the The Associated Press, who visited a class of 200 boys, about half had less than 18 years. Many fifteen-year-olds. Many of them are anxious to reach out to their family members on the front lines of the Islamic State. At least so they tell him.

It's just another trick to drag the kids into a brutal war with no rules. Sunni extremists were the first to use 10's children as suicide bombers. They were not the first to come up with these "defenseless" weapons against enemies. Last June, twenty armed children, many of them stuffed with explosives, were seen at the forefront of Shiite militias in the western province of Anbar.

The use of child soldiers is seriously embarrassing the Obama administration and could also resize the US-led coalition. The United States, on the one hand, supports the Iraqi government, but on the other, they distance themselves from the popular forces. To these, however, Washington provides arms and support even if indirectly. The popular militias, in fact, receive funds and weapons from the loyalist government, which in turn gets them from the Americans.

We were embarrassed. The "Child Soldiers Prevention Act" of the 2008 obliges the United States to stop foreign military funding and direct sales to governments that recruit and use child soldiers.

We are very worried - comments from the US embassy in Baghdad to The Associated Press - we condemn this practice all over the world.

Last year, it was Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the highest Shiite religious authority in Iraq, who invited the people to defend the holy places. Hundreds of thousands of men joined the popular forces together with some Shiite militias, supported by Iran. Last 9 June, al-Sistani issued new fatwas urging young people to train during the summer holidays and prepare for the worst.

They defend themselves from the popular forces "We give only self-defense lessons and the minor volunteers will go back to school in September, they will not go to the front". There may be isolated cases - say to the PA by the Iraqi government - there was no instruction of the Marjaiyah (highest Shiite religious authority) to mobilize children.

Franco Iacch

(photo: US DoD archive)