Why We Need To Win In Afghanistan

Reuters is reporting today that the Taliban fighters in Afghanistan are getting younger and younger.  If you remember, during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980's, Iran used child soldiers.  Keep in mind that Iran is fighting us in Afghanistan.  They are supplying weapons, training, and probably soldiers.

According to a Brookings.edu account of Iran's behavior during the Iran-Iraq War::

"Thousands of children were pulled from schools, indoctrinated in the glory of martyrdom, and sent to the front lines only lightly armed with one or two grenades or a gun with one magazine of ammunition. Wearing keys around their necks (to signify their pending entrance into heaven), they were sent forward in the first waves of attacks to help clear paths through minefields with their bodies and overwhelm Iraqi defenses. Iran's spiritual leader at the time, Ayatollah Khomeini, delighted in the children's sacrifice and extolled that they were helping Iran to achieve "a situation which we cannot describe in any way except to say that it is a divine country.""

 

This, unfortunately, is the mentality we are up against.  The Reuters article recounts what is happening in Afghanistan:

"Over the last eight to nine years there has been a dynamic change in the age of fighters. Most fighters now are between 14 and 18 years-old," said Lieutenant Colonel Guy Jones, commander of 2-508th Parachute Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division, based in Arghandab.

"In 2002, fighters were 22 to 30-years-old and commanders were between 32 and 40," said Jones who is on his fourth tour in Afghanistan.

Jones pulls out a piece of paper from his pocket to illustrate his point. On the paper are the names of recently captured detainees with their photographs beside them. Their ages range from 14 to 20.

One wounded boy caught firing a weapon at U.S. forces is now recovering in hospital at the main foreign air base in Kandahar. He is only 13, said Jones."

I don't know how you give children their childhood back after they have been forced (or brainwashed) into become soldiers while they are young teenagers.  I pray that we can do something in Afghanistan to stop that sort of child abuse.