Archive for April 13th, 2008
U.S. Military Aid for child soldiers
Washington is providing military aid to six of the countries cited in the U.S. State Department’s latest series of human rights reports for recruiting and using child soldiers. They are Afghanistan, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sri Lanka, Sudan and Uganda.
A new study by the Washington-based Centre for Defence Information (CDI) charges that, while child soldiers are often recruited and deployed by rebel groups over which the government has little control, in other cases the recruitment is being carried out by directly by governments and government-supported paramilitaries.
from William Fisher at IPS
The New U.S.-backed Dictator of Iraq
“Al-Maliki is a dictator who must be removed by all means,” 35-year-old Abdul-Riza Hussein, a Mehdi Army member from Sadr City in Baghdad told IPS. “He is a worse dictator than Saddam; he has killed in less than two years more than Saddam killed in 10 years.“
Following the failed attempt by the U.S.-backed al-Maliki to crack down on the Mehdi Army militia of Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, the situation in Iraq has become much worse. Iraq appears to be splintering more widely under this rule than under Saddam’s.
Full Article from IPS
Twist: SAHB
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