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US military strikes Houthi targets in Yemen
(abcnews.go.com)
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this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2024
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What force? The article you provided says recruitment, not force. They are literally telling these kids that we can help support you if you help us fight these invaders. True, they are young. But the US literally has similar recruitment tactics for the poor and the desperate as well. If you're joining some kind of military organization, you're either patriotic or desperate (usually).
Also, survival is a necessity. So yes, it is necessary. Otherwise, these kids would go play soccer instead of picking up a gun.
Unfortunately, all of that goes against what they agreed to do in 2022:
https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/02/13/yemen-houthis-recruit-more-child-soldiers-october-7
"In 2022, the Houthis signed an action plan with the UN to end grave violations against children, including the recruitment and use of children in their forces, and committed to releasing all children from their forces within six months.
Tawfik al-Hamidi, the president of SAM, told Human Rights Watch that the Houthis use their government institutions in their efforts to recruit children, including the Ministries of Education, Interior, and Defense. “All of them are working together and coordinate to mobilize children and recruit them,” he said.
Another activist, who works as a human rights researcher, said that “[recruitment] activities in schools have increased massively [since October 7], including through the school scouts. They take students from schools to their culture centers where they lecture children about the Jihad and send them to military camps and front lines.”
By leveraging official institutions, including schools, the Houthis have managed to take advantage of a far broader swathe of children. The UN secretary-general has also reported on the Houthis’ use of educational facilities for military purposes."
And what happened in 2023 that made the Houthi's much more active and aggressive? What's Saudi Arabia doing to Yemen with US made weapons currently? If you and your neighbors are being massacred indiscriminately simply because you're the wrong ethnicity, it's not a stretch to think you would choose to pick up a gun and fight.
Definitely not a stretch for adults to pick up weapons and fight, but what they're doing to the kids by propagandizing them through religious indoctrination is entirely a different matter.
This is why the UN required them to stop using kids, which they agreed to in 2022...
https://youtu.be/angi1vwUkQc
No happy child willingly becomes a soldier. They're recruiting children who have known nothing but violence their entire lives. This is what people mean when they say people are radicalized due to the wars and suffering they've endured. Where do you think these militia groups come from? People who are happy and carefree? Or people who have had violence and oppression inflicted on them their whole lives and feel the need to fight back? This isn't the result of some kind of propaganda campaign like you claim it is. This is people fighting back against systemic oppression and violence they've been enduring for decades.
No child, happy or otherwise, legally becomes a soldier.
https://childrenandarmedconflict.un.org/six-grave-violations/child-soldiers/
"Human rights law declares 18 as the minimum legal age for recruitment and use of children in hostilities. Recruiting and using children under the age of 15 as soldiers is prohibited under international humanitarian law – treaty and custom – and is defined as a war crime by the International Criminal Court. Parties to conflict that recruit and use children are listed by the Secretary-General in the annexes of his annual report on children and armed conflict."
You're not saying anything wrong. You'll get no argument from me if you say child soldiers are bad.You're just sidestepping my point. Which is that the existence of child soldiers is due to the inhumane conditions foreign powers like the US have created in that part of the world.
No, the existence of child soldiers is due to illegal indoctrination and recruitment efforts. That's the entire purpose of thoe Jihadi "schools" run by the Houthi.
https://www.memri.org/reports/houthi-summer-camps-children-teach-jihad-sake-allah-hatred-west
https://sanaacenter.org/ypf/curriculum-changes-to-mold-the-jihadis-of-tomorrow/
Kids aren't signing up for this, they're bullied and brainwashed into it, and any legitimate military force would reject them.
I provided multiple articles.
Yes. They are manipulating people who's brains are not developed enough to make rational decisions like that. Which is why it is a war crime, a human rights violation, and not morally defensible.
I was referencing the article from this comment.
You're applying a very generous use of the word manipulate here, IMO. Yes, it's bad but the alternative is to either die by missile's or starvation. What would you choose?
No, I am not. Maybe you do not have experience with children. Telling them "fight for us and we'll give you stuff" is manipulating them. They do not understand the consequences of their actions. That's why it's illegal to convince them to have sex with you in most countries.
If someone came to a Houthi child and offered them everything they needed in exchange for sex, I assume you would be against that. And rightfully so.
I would definitely be against that. But a more accurate analogy would be if the kid ended up joining some kids group where they all prostitute themselves and some are just a bit older because they were able to survive the harsh situation. Would you not want to go against the people who made the situation where a group of kids are forced to do such things? These people have been in a civil war for a decade that has been perpetuated by western nations to re-install a leader more sympathetic to them, they're all in the same boat.
I would want to go against both the people who made the conditions possible and the people directly hurting the children. Many people here don’t seem to think the latter should be done.
You're not wrong for being angry and bitter about the situation. Children should be allowed to be children, I'll never argue against that. A lot of the Houthi's grew up with the oppression that made the civil war possible and necessary along with the civil war itself that is being continued by foreign powers. They were children too and they grew up in this environment. They are living the only way they know how.
I’m pretty sure they know how to tell a child not to take a gun from them.
You're kind of missing my point here....
Am I? Because, again, all the adults have to do is not allow the kids to fight. That's it. The kids aren't pushing past them and raiding the weapons lockers. They're being forcibly conscripted.
Again, what force? They're being recruited, not forced. I know what you said about them being young and impressionable, but no happy kid would rather go fight in a war instead of playing with their friends. So again, ask yourself here. Why do they feel the need to?
Yes, just like kids are "being recruited" for sex work.
Yet again, children's brains are not developed enough to understand the consequences of what they are doing. They are being forced to fight because they are being manipulated into doing it. That's why they "feel the need to."
It's like you don't even know what children are.
Question then. If I were to go to a group of young, impressionable kids in a developed country where they are living comfortably, how successful would I be in recruiting them to be in a militia?
Why on Earth would you think I know the answer to that? Do you think I've ever seen it happen? Experienced it?
Considering the number of young, impressionable kids who live comfortably that join cults, I'm guessing a good salesperson could be pretty successful at it.
And what kind of people do cults tend to attract? People that are in happy lives? Or the ones that are in desperate situations?
Lots of children of rich, successful people join cults.
For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squeaky_Fromme
This person was literally a drug addict who got kicked out of her house by her parents. She was homeless when she got recruited. This only reinforces my point.
Your point:
Apparently you answered your own question now: yes, those kids in that developed country would be successfully recruited to be in a militia. Or at least do a militia's bidding.
Nah, never happens in America.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyle_Rittenhouse
And do tell me about Kyle's tragic upbringing full of hardship.
You're giving me another singular example that i can probably nitpick. I'm giving you thousands. You're not familiar with the success of this strategy to recruit kids , as you said in a previous comment, because it doesn't happen where you live. It doesn't happen because people don't feel the need to, and kids don't want to do that by default. The radicalization didn't happen because someone came and said, "Hey kid, wanna get paid?". It happened over the course of decades as kids grew up with missiles flying over their heads repeatedly and their friends and families dying. What did you expect these kids to do?
And you are? How did you become familiar with it? Or is this just a guess on your part?
It's pretty obvious, man. I literally just explained why people like you and me, who live in a developed country, don't really see it happening.
Sure. Apart from the specific times I mentioned where you do see it happening. And all the other times you see it happening.
And it still doesn't make child soldiers either moral or excusable.
One. You gave me one example. I gave you thousands.
I never said it was moral or excusable. All I said is, what did you expect would happen given what we're doing to them. You have a lot of anger over the people forced to do bad things for survival but not against the ones who created the situation where they need to do these bad things. Why is this such a difficult concept for you to understand?
I gave you two actually. I can give you more.
Ah, so they are being forced. Thank you, that's what I was saying.
By the way, the idea that the only way you can survive is die on the battlefield doesn't make much sense.
No, you gave me one. I explained why the first one actually helped prove my point. Which is why you provided the second. And I'm too tired to read that person's biography to point to why he actually did it and give him some kind of justification. Unless you can give me some kind of substantive example where there are a huge number of kids in developed countries who are having happy lives you're point here is not justified.
Now you're just not even arguing in good faith here.
Is this your way of dismissing their suffering and their choices to defend themselves even in the face of overwhelming odds?
I gave you two. Squeaky Fromme and Kyle Rittenhouse.
If you're going to gaslight me, try harder.
Forgot about this, did you?
And again. I gave you thousands.
No, I didn't forget about it. But you're pretending the comment I made after that doesn't exist. It's some pretty pathetic gaslighting, I must say.