TEHRAN, December 30 - Saudi Arabia has been luring children surviving the deadly conflict in Sudan’s Darfur region to fight its ongoing war against Yemen, a new report has revealed, shining more light on the darker depths of the Riyadh regime’s new quagmire.
TEHRAN, Young Journalists Club (YJC) - Trapped in a deadly war they started in March 2015, Saudi leaders are now offering as much as $10,000 to Darfur’s poor families in exchange for the services of their teenage children, the New York Times revealedin a harrowing report on Friday.
“Families know that the only way their lives will change is if their sons join the war and bring them back money,” said Hager Shomo Ahmed, a 16-year-old Sudanese boy who had been approached by Saudi military recruiters two years ago.
Ahmed said at first he could not even locate Yemen on the map, 1,200 miles away, and that his mother was appalled when she first heard the offer.
At least 14,000 Sudanese mercenaries have fought the Yemen war in tandem with other Saudi-led forces at any moment over the course of the conflict, the Times reported, citing Yemeni fighters and concerned Sudanese lawmakers.
The report warned that thousands of those fighters have been children, plucked away from their poor families in Darfur for small amounts of money.
Fighters who had returned from the conflict said up to 40 percent of their units were made up of children, aged between 14 and 17.
Most of the Sudanese boy soldiers came from the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary, a tribal armed group previously known as the Janjaweed.
The militia is responsible for many acts of rape and other war crimes during the Darfur conflict, which has killed some 300,000 people and displaced 1.2 million people since 2003.
Saudi training, American weapons
Saudi and Sudanese jets departed the capital Khartoum or Nyala, Darfur, carrying 2,000 to 3,000 soldiers at a time to Saudi Arabia. The soldiers were taken to bases inside the kingdom, where up to 8,000 mercenaries were being held.
There, they were given uniforms and weapons that they said were made in America. They were sent to the frontlines after two to four weeks of training.
The fighters said their commanders stayed away from conflict zones and used GPS devices and radios instead to send the Sudanese children to battlefronts or order them to retreat.
“The Saudis told us what to do through the telephones and devices,” said 28-year-old Mohamed Suleiman al-Fadil, who returned from Yemen late last year. “They never fought with us.”
“The Saudis would give us a phone call and then pull back,” agreed Ahmed, 25. “They treat the Sudanese like their firewood.”
Upon announcing the military invasion of Yemen, Saudi Arabia and its allies – including the United Arab Emirates—said they would continue the aggression until the Houthi Ansarullah movement is destroyed and the poverty-stricken country’s fugitive former president, Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, is reinstated.
The war has put as many as 12 million people to the brink of starvation and killed some 85,000 children, data by aid groups show.
More than four years later, however, the Saudis, led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman have burnt through a big chunk of their oil-based wealth to outsource the war and extend it as long as they have.
Payment included combat rewards
The Saudi military paid more experienced Sudanese fighters the equivalent of $530 a month in Saudi riyals while younger ones received about $480 a month. An additional $185 to $285 was paid for any month of combat. At the end of a six-month rotation they were also paid around $10,000 in Sudanese pounds.
A spokesman for the Saudi-led military coalition has denied the reports of hiring Sudanese children, calling them “fictitious and unfounded.”
However, Sudanese fighters insisted that they were the main barriers against the Houthi advancements and Saudi-led forces would have long lost the war without their help.
“Without us, the Houthis would take all of Saudi Arabia, including Mecca,” Fadil said.
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