http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/DailyNews/iraq030122_militias.html
Catching ’Em Young
Iraqi Kids Train as Saddam’s Soldiers — But Will They Put Up a Fight?
By Leela Jacinto
Jan. 22 — In the blazing heat of the Iraqi summers, when most people keep their daytime outdoor activities to a minimum, thousands of young boys have been undergoing arduous military training to emerge as potential foot soldiers in the vast security apparatus that has propped up Saddam Hussein's regime.
Burdened under the weight of Kalashnikov rifles, sweating — and often fainting — under the scorching sun in their all-black uniforms, the lads go through three-week training courses in light weapons training, hand-to-hand combat and basic soldiering, accompanied by a shrill political indoctrination that pledges absolute loyalty to their leader.
They are the Ashbal Saddam, or Saddam's Lion Cubs. These cadres of Iraqi boys, aged between 12 and 17, are trained along the lines of the Hitler Youth, the Nazi movement founded in Germany in the 1920s that remains one of history's most disturbing examples of organized youth indoctrination.
Founded in 1998 to "arm the child with an inner light," the Ashbal is arguably the first rung of a complex labyrinth of Iraqi military and civilian organizations ostensibly formed to maintain Iraqi security at home and abroad. But most experts and Iraqi exiles say the main function of the often competing security units is to ensure the protection of the president and his family.
In their quest to quash any domestic opposition to Saddam's Baathist regime, experts say the extensive security network has permeated virtually every level of Iraqi society following the popular uprisings that broke out in northern and southern Iraq in the immediate aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War.
While some units loosely operate within the state's political and legal structures, experts say there are a number of civilian or popular units that operate above and beyond the law.
And as Washington's war drums beat louder, international attention in recent weeks has focused increasingly on various Iraqi popular forces. Some military experts warn that civilian support for Saddam, no matter how sporadic, could complicate a ground war in Iraq.
For its part, Baghdad has been flaunting the country's civil defense network in the past few weeks, with parades of civilian volunteers marching through the streets of several Iraqi cities and the official Al Thawra newspaper reporting that thousands of Iraqis have been volunteering for extra military training.
The public displays have been accompanied by bellicose speeches by the Iraqi dictator warning the world that his people would resist a U.S.-led invasion "with the reeds of the marshes, with stones and with all we have."
Popular Militias, Unpopular With the People
But few experts take Saddam at his word.
"Popular militias are always unpopular with the people," says Phebe Marr, an Iraqi specialist and former instructor at the National Defense University. "Of course they are supposed to be voluntary, but that's questionable."
One of the most unpopular Iraqi paramilitary groups is the Fedayeen Saddam, Saddam's Men of Sacrifice, a notoriously violent security unit founded in the mid-1990s by Odai Hussein, Saddam's eldest and by all accounts very troubled son.
Comprised primarily of young men from Saddam's own al-Bu Nasser tribe and other Sunni-dominated tribes from the region around his hometown of Tikrit, the Fedayeen is believed to number between 18,000 and 40,000 troops.
"The Fedayeen Saddam is basically Odai's private militia, that is very selectively recruited — it does not have a mass mobilization like the al-Jaysh al-Sha'bi (Iraqi People's Army)," says Ibrahim al-Marashi of the California-based Center for Nonproliferation Studies. "But they basically receive no formal training and are used to crush domestic dissent."
Women Beheaded in Public
With their black outfits, including, at times, a black balaclava, the Fedayeen caught the attention of the international community in 2000, when human rights groups recorded several witness accounts of public executions of women in the streets of Baghdad and the southern port city of Basra.
According to witness reports, several women were publicly beheaded outside their homes in 2000 and 2001 by Fedayeen death squads in what was called a "cleanup" of "prostitutes."
Even given Iraq's human rights record, the executions came as a shock for Iraqi human rights activists. "It was a very new phenomenon, the first time women in Iraq have been beheaded in public," says Muhannad Eshaiker of the California-based Iraqi Forum for Democracy.
"Many of the women were professionals, some of them wore hijab (Islamic veil) and had been outspoken against the regime or their families were opposed to the regime. It was terrible. It's the worst way to shame a woman in Iraqi society."
In the grisly pecking order of violent vigilante justice meted out by various Iraqi security units, experts say the Fedayeen ranks at the very top. "I don't think the ordinary Iraqi policeman, even the undercover policeman, would do such a thing," says Eshaiker.
"For the most, there are some honest people trying to make a living, some of them genuinely believe they are serving their country. But the Fedayeen, there's no way to control the Fedayeen — it's the most brutal force comprised mostly of young men who can't get into universities and who wouldn't otherwise make it in life."
‘A Child With His Mind Ruined’
In a country where more than a decade of economic sanctions have shrunk the middle class and impoverished all but the political elite, many Iraqi men, not surprisingly, look to the vast security services for steady employment and a means to gain access to power.
With a number of Ashbal Saddam members working their way up the ranks of the lucrative Fedayeen, it's a lesson many Iraqi boys learn at a young age.
But members of the Iraqi opposition in exile say it's a troubling marker of the state of Iraqi society today. "It's worrying because even childhood is not allowed in Iraq," says Haidar Ahmed, a spokesman for the London-based Iraqi National Congress.
"Families are forced to send their children to the camps to fill up the vacancies, and parents have no say over their children's future because when you put them through such training and indoctrination, you don't know what kind of child you'll end up having. You'll get a child with his mind ruined."
The Big Question
Although Ashbal Saddam members are viewed as the future bastion of the Baath Party, most experts are unwilling to predict the extent of the resistance Saddam's civilian security units would put up if there were a ground war in Iraq.
"That's the big question," says Marr. "I don't know if anybody knows the answer. I don't know if Saddam knows either, and it's certainly a lot more serious question for him."
Ahmed says he's prepared for the worst. "I have learned that Saddam is unpredictable," he says. "He has been known to use dirty tactics — what kind of dirty tactics, I can't guess and using children to defend his regime will not surprise me."
Given the often public nature of Iraqi paramilitary groups' brands of justice, Marr warns against the possibility of a period of score-settling in a post-Saddam Iraq.
"The real difficulty is a very serious potential problem of retribution," she says. "I believe there are a number of people in Iraq who want to kill a lot of other people. There are a number of scores to be settled in Iraq."
Catching ’Em Young
Iraqi Kids Train as Saddam’s Soldiers — But Will They Put Up a Fight?
By Leela Jacinto
Jan. 22 — In the blazing heat of the Iraqi summers, when most people keep their daytime outdoor activities to a minimum, thousands of young boys have been undergoing arduous military training to emerge as potential foot soldiers in the vast security apparatus that has propped up Saddam Hussein's regime.
Burdened under the weight of Kalashnikov rifles, sweating — and often fainting — under the scorching sun in their all-black uniforms, the lads go through three-week training courses in light weapons training, hand-to-hand combat and basic soldiering, accompanied by a shrill political indoctrination that pledges absolute loyalty to their leader.
They are the Ashbal Saddam, or Saddam's Lion Cubs. These cadres of Iraqi boys, aged between 12 and 17, are trained along the lines of the Hitler Youth, the Nazi movement founded in Germany in the 1920s that remains one of history's most disturbing examples of organized youth indoctrination.
Founded in 1998 to "arm the child with an inner light," the Ashbal is arguably the first rung of a complex labyrinth of Iraqi military and civilian organizations ostensibly formed to maintain Iraqi security at home and abroad. But most experts and Iraqi exiles say the main function of the often competing security units is to ensure the protection of the president and his family.
In their quest to quash any domestic opposition to Saddam's Baathist regime, experts say the extensive security network has permeated virtually every level of Iraqi society following the popular uprisings that broke out in northern and southern Iraq in the immediate aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War.
While some units loosely operate within the state's political and legal structures, experts say there are a number of civilian or popular units that operate above and beyond the law.
And as Washington's war drums beat louder, international attention in recent weeks has focused increasingly on various Iraqi popular forces. Some military experts warn that civilian support for Saddam, no matter how sporadic, could complicate a ground war in Iraq.
For its part, Baghdad has been flaunting the country's civil defense network in the past few weeks, with parades of civilian volunteers marching through the streets of several Iraqi cities and the official Al Thawra newspaper reporting that thousands of Iraqis have been volunteering for extra military training.
The public displays have been accompanied by bellicose speeches by the Iraqi dictator warning the world that his people would resist a U.S.-led invasion "with the reeds of the marshes, with stones and with all we have."
Popular Militias, Unpopular With the People
But few experts take Saddam at his word.
"Popular militias are always unpopular with the people," says Phebe Marr, an Iraqi specialist and former instructor at the National Defense University. "Of course they are supposed to be voluntary, but that's questionable."
One of the most unpopular Iraqi paramilitary groups is the Fedayeen Saddam, Saddam's Men of Sacrifice, a notoriously violent security unit founded in the mid-1990s by Odai Hussein, Saddam's eldest and by all accounts very troubled son.
Comprised primarily of young men from Saddam's own al-Bu Nasser tribe and other Sunni-dominated tribes from the region around his hometown of Tikrit, the Fedayeen is believed to number between 18,000 and 40,000 troops.
"The Fedayeen Saddam is basically Odai's private militia, that is very selectively recruited — it does not have a mass mobilization like the al-Jaysh al-Sha'bi (Iraqi People's Army)," says Ibrahim al-Marashi of the California-based Center for Nonproliferation Studies. "But they basically receive no formal training and are used to crush domestic dissent."
Women Beheaded in Public
With their black outfits, including, at times, a black balaclava, the Fedayeen caught the attention of the international community in 2000, when human rights groups recorded several witness accounts of public executions of women in the streets of Baghdad and the southern port city of Basra.
According to witness reports, several women were publicly beheaded outside their homes in 2000 and 2001 by Fedayeen death squads in what was called a "cleanup" of "prostitutes."
Even given Iraq's human rights record, the executions came as a shock for Iraqi human rights activists. "It was a very new phenomenon, the first time women in Iraq have been beheaded in public," says Muhannad Eshaiker of the California-based Iraqi Forum for Democracy.
"Many of the women were professionals, some of them wore hijab (Islamic veil) and had been outspoken against the regime or their families were opposed to the regime. It was terrible. It's the worst way to shame a woman in Iraqi society."
In the grisly pecking order of violent vigilante justice meted out by various Iraqi security units, experts say the Fedayeen ranks at the very top. "I don't think the ordinary Iraqi policeman, even the undercover policeman, would do such a thing," says Eshaiker.
"For the most, there are some honest people trying to make a living, some of them genuinely believe they are serving their country. But the Fedayeen, there's no way to control the Fedayeen — it's the most brutal force comprised mostly of young men who can't get into universities and who wouldn't otherwise make it in life."
‘A Child With His Mind Ruined’
In a country where more than a decade of economic sanctions have shrunk the middle class and impoverished all but the political elite, many Iraqi men, not surprisingly, look to the vast security services for steady employment and a means to gain access to power.
With a number of Ashbal Saddam members working their way up the ranks of the lucrative Fedayeen, it's a lesson many Iraqi boys learn at a young age.
But members of the Iraqi opposition in exile say it's a troubling marker of the state of Iraqi society today. "It's worrying because even childhood is not allowed in Iraq," says Haidar Ahmed, a spokesman for the London-based Iraqi National Congress.
"Families are forced to send their children to the camps to fill up the vacancies, and parents have no say over their children's future because when you put them through such training and indoctrination, you don't know what kind of child you'll end up having. You'll get a child with his mind ruined."
The Big Question
Although Ashbal Saddam members are viewed as the future bastion of the Baath Party, most experts are unwilling to predict the extent of the resistance Saddam's civilian security units would put up if there were a ground war in Iraq.
"That's the big question," says Marr. "I don't know if anybody knows the answer. I don't know if Saddam knows either, and it's certainly a lot more serious question for him."
Ahmed says he's prepared for the worst. "I have learned that Saddam is unpredictable," he says. "He has been known to use dirty tactics — what kind of dirty tactics, I can't guess and using children to defend his regime will not surprise me."
Given the often public nature of Iraqi paramilitary groups' brands of justice, Marr warns against the possibility of a period of score-settling in a post-Saddam Iraq.
"The real difficulty is a very serious potential problem of retribution," she says. "I believe there are a number of people in Iraq who want to kill a lot of other people. There are a number of scores to be settled in Iraq."
