Hussam Muhammed, Baladi News, Damascus
Field sources within Syria have confirmed that bodies and organizations affiliated to the regime and its militias, whether local of foreign, are now promoting for recruitment of teenagers to defend the Syrian regime in Damascus and Al-Suwayda.
Many revolutionary committees in the southern area have pointed out that the regime has followed a policy for luring teenagers into fighting alongside the regime forces using financial inducements. Moreover, he has also followed other luring means through setting up recruitment networks by the Syrian intelligence for attracting the teenagers.
“The policy of recruiting the teenagers in the war-free regions has been witnessing a remarkable increase in the countryside of Damascus lately, where dozens of teenagers are joining the People's Committees in Sahnaya suburb”, according to the field activist "Abdul Malik al-Shami".
Al-Shami indicated that those teenagers are recruited by the People's Committees and deployed unarmed at the widespread military checkpoints. One week later they are allowed to hold a gun and stop people and vehicles to search them, then they give them big duties to let them feel the importance of their position.
He also added that dozens of those teenagers do not belong to al-Assad sect, but they belong to different sects. It should be noted that many of them have fled the areas that the regime destroyed. Moreover, the regime uses their poverty and fear to recruit them and send them to the battle fronts.
“National defense militias in the regime-held areas have intensified their recruitment of minors and young boys in al-Ba’ath city and many other cities reaching Al-Suwayda, noting that Rami Makhlouf is bribing some associations and organizations in order to recruit as many displaced people as they can", according to Abdul Rahman al-Jawlany, a field activist.
The regime criticized what it described as child labor in the areas out of its control and in asylum countries, turning a blind eye to the fact that those children were forced to fled their country by its own militias and many of them have lost a father, a mother or both. Those children are living premature aging due to the horrible conditions the regime caused.
Akram al-Qash, Dean of the Higher Institute of Population Studies and Research at the Syrian government said that the current estimates indicate that the proportion of child labor during the war has nearly doubled from 10% to 20% and has become rampant in Syria and asylum countries.