The Heady, Lazy Days of Summer Camps

"We've been called to defend the nation. I am not scared because my brothers are fighting alongside me."
Asam Riad, 15, Baghdad

"God willing, when I complete my training I will join them [father fighting with Shiite militias, brother fighting in Beiji], even if it means sacrificing my life to keep Iraq safe."
Jaafar Osama, 15, Baghdad

(AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed, File).  In this Sunday, March 15, 2015, file photo, young Shiite volunteer militia fighters pose for a photo before battle against Islamic State fighters in Tikrit, Iraq

"[The United States is] very concerned by the allegations on the use of child soldiers in Iraq among some Popular Mobilization forces in the fight against ISIL."
"We have strongly condemned this practice around the world and will continue to do so."
U.S. Embassy, Baghdad

"[There may be] some isolated incidents [of underage fighters joining combat on their own]. But there has been no instruction by the Marjaiyah (the top Shiite religious authority) or the Popular Mobilization Forces for children to join the battle."
"We are a government that frowns upon children going to war."
Saad al-Harithi, Iraqi Prime Minister's office, Baghdad

In this Tuesday, July 14, 2015 photo, Iraqi volunteers with Popular Mobilization Forces train at a volunteers center in Baghdad, Iraq. The Associated Press has found that militia forces battling the Islamic State group are actively training children under 18 years old. (AP Photo/Vivian Salama)

Iraq's top Shiite cleric has issued an edict that students as young as middle-school age would be well advised to make use of their summer vacations in a practical, entertaining manner. And so, Iraqi teens march around a school courtyard, training to become future combatants in the war against Islamic State. They're dressed in military fatigues and dedicate themselves to the art of war, a romantic vision of defending their country.

There are dozens of camps scattered around Iraq with hundreds of young students having been initiated in the combat training. No one knows how many of these proud graduates continued on, and travelled the necessary distance to a war front, to fight the good fight against the jihadi Sunni fanatics that have captured at least a third of their country's geography into their grand caliphate.

The Associated Press reports having witnessed well over a dozen boys armed and active on the front line in western Anbar province. Some of the boys appear to be as young as ten. About half the 200 cadets in a training class that AP reporters visited, were under 18 years of age; some as young as 15. Several of the boys proudly stated their intent to join fathers and older brothers on the front lines.

(AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed, File).  In this Sunday, March 15, 2015, file photo, a young Shiite volunteer militiaman passes under the Quran, the Muslim holy book, as a Shiite cleric blesses him before going to the battlefield against Islamic State

Infamously, in Iran, in its eight-year-long exhaustive slaughter of a conflict with Iraq, young Iranians were sent into combat situations, deployed in areas known to be minefields, to be detonated into oblivion, making the way clear for seasoned Iranian fighters to grapple with the enemy. The children were blessed by clerics and informed they would be given a direct entry-ticket to Paradise and there live as honoured martyrs, forever after.

Hamas, the terrorist overlords of Gaza, sets up annual summer camps for Palestinian children to be taught the art of war; how to handle firearms, and learn combat skills for future deployment as fighters against the State of Israel. The young boys are taught to recognize their mortal enemies; Jews, Zionists, and their duty to destroy the Jewish State to return the land upon which it sits to Palestinian rule, which seems puzzling since the maps of the area that appear in school curricula don't even show Israel, only 'Palestine'.

In the Middle East, as in some tribal African societies there is no moral or ethical distaste in grooming children to hate, to aspire to become warriors, to be taught that sacrifice is incumbent upon them for the greater glory of Islam. And this presents as a dilemma to the United States which is supporting Baghdad's battle against Islamic State, since the Child Soldiers Prevention Act of 2009 states that the United States cannot give military support including foreign military financing to governments that recruit and use child soldiers.

Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani called on the public to volunteer to fight Islamic State. This influential cleric inspired hundreds of thousands of men to join the Popular Mobilization Forces as well as some of the earlier-established Shiite militias most of which gain support from the Islamic Republic of Iran and act as their proxy militias, just as Hezbollah in Lebanon does.

When children were discharged from school for the summer the Ayatollah issued a new fatwa in urge of young people in college, high school and middle school to make good use of the time their summer vacations afforded them to "contribute to (the country's) preservation by training to take up arms and prepare to fend off risk if this is required." The response was the setting up of summer camps.

(AP Photo/Vivian Salama). In this Tuesday, July 14, 2015 photo, Abdulhakim, 5, the son of a trainer, holds his father's pistol at a volunteers center for Iraqi militia volunteers in Baghdad, Iraq.
According to Kareem al-Nouri, the camps offer "lessons in self-defence". Underage volunteers are encouraged to return to school come September, and not travel to practice what they've learned, at the battle front. At one training camp in western Baghdad young cadets discussed openly their intention of joining the battle. Their trainers, overhearing them, did or said nothing in contradiction of those plans.

Hussein Ali, 12, and his cousin Ali Ahsan, 14, Baghdadians both,joined their fathers on the battlefield once their final exams were done with. In the Anbar desert they boasted of liberating the Sunni province from ISIL militants, AK-47s in hand. "It's our honour to serve our country", said Hussein Ali, alongside some of his classmates also fighting.