Member of the Syrian Opposition Coalition’s (SOC) General Assembly, Ayman Al-Asimi, welcomed the US State Department’s report on the practices of the PKK and PYD terrorist organizations regarding the use of child soldiers in Syria and Iraq.
Al-Asimi pointed out that the practices of these terrorist organizations do not differ from those of ISIS and the Assad regime, especially with regard to recruiting children and sending them to carry out suicide operations amongst innocent civilians.
Al-Asimi stressed that the recruitment of children by the PYD terrorist militia did not stop despite all international warnings and calls. He called for ending support for this militia and holding it accountable for its crimes and violations against civilians, including children.
The US State Department had submitted its report on “human trafficking” to the Congress within the framework of the Trafficking Victims Prevention and Protection Reauthorization Act of 2022. The report found that the PYD militia had recruited children as young as 12 years old in Syria, forcing them to bear and train on arms. It said that since 2017, the PYD recruited—at times by force—children from displacement camps in northeast Syria.
The report pointed out that the ISIS and PKK terrorist organizations, along with the Iranian-backed militias, also recruited children in Iraq. It indicated that the PKK included dozens of children coming from Kirkuk to Sinjar in 2021 in its ranks and forced them to take up arms in order to prepare them to fight.
(Source: SOC’s Media Department)
