U.S. troops face Afghan enemy too young to kill

[AdamG]

"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.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE66B0A220100712

[40below]

This happened to British forces in Sierra Leone with the West Side Boys, too. Once. They got over it.

[subrosa]

the leaders of the TTP and Haqqani network are both 30 years old. i guess part of the reason is that when it comes to the tribes the sons take over.

[jmm99]

From Larry J. Woods and Colonel Timothy R. Reese, Military Interventions in Sierra Leone: Lessons From a Failed State (The Long War Series, Occasional Paper 28, CSI Press 2008) pp. 77-78 pdf:

On Friday, 25 August 2000, British Major Alan Marshall, stationed at Benguema Training Camp decided to make a visit to one of UNAMSIL’s battalions near the town of Masiaka, about 65-kilometers east of Freetown. Marshall and his men were part of the stay-behind British training contingent. Accompanying him on this visit was an SLA liaison officer and 11 soldiers from the Royal Irish Regiment. After visiting with Colonel Jehad al-Widyan, commander of the UNAMSIL battalion, he decided to take his patrol to the WSB base in nearby Magbeni. Marshall received an intelligence report that only a few rebels were present at the base and he wanted to check out the situation. His three Land Rovers were armed with .50-caliber heavy machine guns and the soldiers with SA80 rifles. As the patrol approached Magbeni, located 50 miles east of the capital in Freetown, the WSB blocked the road and denied them movement. Major Marshall tried to reason with them, but they insisted that he wait until their leader, 24-year old “Brigadier” Foday Kallay arrived.

As they waited, Major Marshall carried on a conversation with the boys and offered them cigarettes. Communication with the base at Benguema Training Camp was established via radio and the base camp was informed that the patrol was being detained. Once Kallay arrived, the situation turned tense. Kallay began issuing orders to his armed soldiers, became angry with Marshall for entering an unauthorized area without coordination, and surrounded the patrol with soldiers and a captured SLA truck mounted with a 14.5-mm heavy machine gun. As Marshall made attempts to reason with the WSB, he was physically beaten. Within 5 minutes, the rest of the Royal Irish soldiers were overwhelmed, disarmed, stripped, and taken by canoes upstream, across Rokel River, to Gberi Bana, Kallay’s headquarters.

and, when all was said and done, with rescue effected (p. 83 pdf):

British forces killed 25 and captured 18 WSB members.

What if the WSB in the initial encounter were treated as the armed combatants that they were ?

No statements are OTR.

Regards

Mike

[40below]

The ROE were drastically revised after that incident and child soldiers were treated as real ones by western militaries operating in Africa, even if they wore dresses, wigs and makeup and fought drunk out of their minds. If not for the existence of Lord's Army Resistance and their untouchable record of sad weirdness, these guys would be the most whackjob insurgent force in modern times.

Interesting takeaway from that and other such conflicts is that without the AK, we wouldn't have child soldiers at all, or at least far fewer of them.

[Ken White]

The ROE were drastically revised after that incident and child soldiers were treated as real ones by western militaries operating in Africa...

They'd better treat them all as real ones. A twelve year old can kill you just as dead as can his Father. Lot of foolish angst over 'child soldiers' for no good reason. A ten year old who throws a grenade in your lap as has happened here and there for a great many years may not be a Soldier in many senses but he's a fighter, he's your enemy even if he doesn't fully understand why, he's dangerous and deserves a shot as quickly as an adult.

Interesting takeaway from that and other such conflicts is that without the AK, we wouldn't have child soldiers at all, or at least far fewer of them.

Before the AK there were far fewer people in the world, so the second clause is correct. The first, not so much...

History shows that fighting children is far from a modern phenomena, there are just more kids and better communication. Nor are or were they all in Africa or 'third world' nations. The third pic is Polish, WW II, the second Russian, the White Army. Note the webbing on the WW I trench cleaning kid in the first one...

[40below]

History shows that fighting children is far from a modern phenomena, there are just more kids and better communication. Nor are or were they all in Africa or 'third world' nations. The third pic is Polish, WW II, the second Russian, the White Army. Note the webbing on the WW I trench cleaning kid in the first one...

My point was not that there have never been child soldiers, only that a malnourished 14-year-old can handle the recoil of a bullet hose like an AK (and with eight moving part on some models and not real picky about maintenance in the field) far better than from a western rifle where aim and upkeep counts, let alone the kick from a WWI Lee-Enfield or a similar battle rifle. I fired the latter in the Arctic when I was on presence patrols with the Canadian Rangers (they still use our WWI stock from stores because unlike plastic guns they don't shatter when you drop them at 50C below), and the average child soldier would get about one shot in his active military career before seeking treatment for a broken collarbone and a dislocated shoulder, maybe a broken jaw too.

[AdamG]

They'd better treat them all as real ones. A twelve year old can kill you just as dead as can his Father. Lot of foolish angst over 'child soldiers' for no good reason.

Just ask Law Enforcement types about lethal feral youths on the streets of urban America. Without moral compasses, you get "Lord of the Flies" and all that goes with it.