{"id":1263,"date":"2020-03-05T18:48:00","date_gmt":"2020-03-05T15:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ikhrw.com\/en\/?p=1263"},"modified":"2020-03-05T18:48:10","modified_gmt":"2020-03-05T15:18:10","slug":"northern-syria-child-soldiers-three-pictures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ikhrw.com\/en\/report\/northern-syria-child-soldiers-three-pictures\/","title":{"rendered":"Northern Syria: Child soldiers, three pictures"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Introduction<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

J. is\na young German who has been in Syria for more than three years and has lived\namong PKK militias in northern Syria called the YPG. Due to her abilities, she\nbecame one of the top officials of the foreign branch of the YPG, sending this\nmemoir specifically to the Iranian Kurdistan Human Rights Watch. Before getting  to Syria, J. was an anarchist and leftist,\nbut is now a human rights activist. She lives in Germany now. In this note, she\nobserves the fate of three child soldiers belonging to PKK affiliated groups in\nSyria. Sje writes as follows:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nportraits of child soldiers in Northern-Syria   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every\ntime I read an article or see the news talking about children’s rights, three\npeople I have known personally come to my mind. Three persons that have\nsuffered a lot at a very young age, while they should be in school, not at war.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

KAMURAN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nfirst one of them is a boy called Kamuran. I have not known him personally, as\nhe was killed before I travelled to Syria, but I have had the time to get to\nknow his mother quite well. G. came to my office, as she was looking for a job.\nI visited her home and gave her money a few times. G. was a mother in her early\nthirties who raised her four children alone in the city of Til Temir. Her son,\nKamuran, was sixteen years old when ISIS fell into the small town. Kamuran was\nlured in the battle by the few senior PKK members and made up the resistance\namongst other local youngsters. His mother stayed to help with the wounded in\norder to be near him and his older sister D. (18) fought in the ypj at that\ntime. G. ‘s son got gravely wounded in battle and died in her arms at provisory\nhospital ran by heyva sor.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

G.\ntold me her son was small for his age, and was into playing football with his\nfriends. He was interested in technical stuff and would fix broken devices at\nhome. He wanted to study and become an engineer wjen he grew up. G. herself was\nleft behind with her four other children, that she raised on the small wage\nmalbata shehiden would provide them. She kept looking for a job in the many\norganisations that tev-dem set up in town but remained unsuccessful. As a young\nwoman living alone, there were many rumours about her. Kamuran’s sister got out\nof ypj right after the death of her smaller brother. Traumatised as she was,\nshe found her refuge in smoking cigarettes and shisha and hanging out with\nfriends. She did not continue her education, as she felt she didn’t have a\nfuture anyway.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

R.\nFROM ASAYISH<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 The second person I recall, is the girl\nassigned for my personal security. At the small office I ran, we had a very\nyoung security guard called R. She was a member of the asayish. R. was sixteen\nyears old at the time, and very quiet. I have never seen her smile. Though she\nwould sing heartbreaking tunes whenever I asked her. At the beginning of the\nSyrian civil war, her father died from illness and her brother fled to Turkey.\nHer brother did not bother to call home. R. lived in a very small house with\nher mother and 7 year old brother. They were very impoverished. She tried to\ninvite me home many times, but I only went once. The house didn’t have carpets,\nwe would sit on plastic chairs or on the concrete floor. Neither did the house\nhave glass windows, just some plastic stabled and taped to the wooden\nframes.  The three-person-household lived\nfrom R. ‘s wage.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

R.\nstayed at my office for three months. She would guard the main entrance and\naccompany me around town. After that, the Asayish called her to their\nheadquarters where she received further <\/p>\n\n\n\n

training.\nShe didn’ t want to go, but simply couldn’t refuse since the Asayish provided\nthem a living. I have learned later on, that she was sent to Raqqa. I wonder if\nshe’s still alive or not.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

V.\nAND HER NAILPOLISH<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 The third person was a young girl called V. I\nmet her in Iraq, in the camp where the people that fled from Ypg\/pkk were held.\nV. was sixteen years old at the time, and had spent the last two years at\nKobani. When she was only fourteen years old, she was recruited in her hometown\nnear the Syrian border in Turkey to come and fight against ISIS. She had\nescaped death many times. V. was very young and naive. I remember her crying\nfrom happiness when she put on nailpolish for the first time in years. She was\nvery eager to tell me her stories, that were mostly about the female commanders\nthat told her to smile less, talk less and play less, and ofcourse the boy she\nfell in love with and died. The boy, she said, was only a year older than\nherself.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

V.\nwas reunited with her parents after a few days and left for her home country.\nShe was looking forward to go back to school.    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\nare hundreds of children still fighting in Northern-Syria, mostly lured in by\npropaganda or forced by their parent’s poor economical status. I have seen\ndozens of them, but have tried to provide you with different examples. Children\nshould be in school and play with friends, not hold guns, stand guard or serve\ncommanders.    \n\nEvery\ntime I read an article on children’s rights or watch a news story, three people\nI have personally seen come to my mind. The three at a very young age suffered\na great deal while they could go to school, not war.\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Introduction J. is a young German who has been in Syria for more than three years and has lived among PKK militias in northern Syria called the YPG. Due to her abilities, she became one of the top officials of the foreign branch of the YPG, sending this memoir specifically to the Iranian Kurdistan Human …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1264,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,41,92],"class_list":["post-1263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-report","tag-child-soldiers","tag-pkk","tag-pyd"],"yoast_head":"\nNorthern Syria: Child soldiers, three pictures - Iranian Kurdistan Human Rights Watch<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ikhrw.com\/en\/report\/northern-syria-child-soldiers-three-pictures\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Northern Syria: Child soldiers, three pictures\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Introduction J. is a young German who has been in Syria for more than three years and has lived among PKK militias in northern Syria called the YPG. 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