Strange is the world of Middle East.
An area always in turmoil with a host of problems facing some nation or another, it is now the turn of Syria to fight Assad.
As Assad hardens his stand , so are the rebels .
What is bizarre is that their killing machine is a 11 year old boy,Mohammed Afar called as Little Lion.
Read On.
Over the top of his faded yellow jacket a Free Syrian Army vest holds three extra clips, each full with live ammunition, and a walkie-talkie. An FSA badge sits on one side and a rendering of the Islamic Shahada, in Arabic calligraphy, on the other.
He says he does not miss school or want to stay at home with his mother and two sisters.
“I want to stay as a fighter until Bashar is killed,” he says, referring to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
The fighters surrounding him, all claiming to be from Liwa al-Tawhid, pass him a sniper rifle and offer to take him to a frontline, so he can demonstrate his shooting.
“He is a great shot,” says his father, Mohammed Saleh Afar. “He is my little lion.”
Over the course of its grinding 21-month insurgency, Syria’s children have endured numerous abuses.
Caught-up in shelling, airstrikes, and sniping, they have additionally been subject to arbitrary arrest, torture and rape, as reported by the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Syria in August; which, additionally, noted “with concern reports that children under 18 are fighting and performing auxiliary roles for anti-Government armed groups.”
Both the Geneva Conventions and the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Children carry provisions that call for not using combatants under the age of 15, while the International Criminal Court’s Rome Statute makes it a war crime.
Mohammed quickly disengages his magazine and presents it, before skillfully reinserting it, but not chambering a round. The older fighters surrounding him— some of whom are little more than boys themselves —praise his speed and mirror his father’s earlier statements, calling him a “good shot.”
He says he admires the fighters from Jabhat al-Nusra—composed of hardline Islamists subscribing to Takfiri ideology—and recently designated a foreign terrorist organization by the United States. Al-Nusra have proven effective in battle, winning itself scores of supporters.
http://www.vice.com/en_au/read/the-little-lion–syrias-11-year-old-killing-machine
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