AMMAN, Jordan – (MintPress) – Syria’s children, along with the rest of the civilian population, are not just under attack as the two-year civil war grinds on, but this particularly vulnerable group has been increasingly targeted by those fighting in the conflict, UNICEF and other aid groups have warned.
“As millions of children inside Syria and across the region witness their past and their futures disappear amidst the rubble and destruction of this prolonged conflict, the risk of them becoming a lost generation grows every day,” said UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake, raising the alarm bells in a report as the uprising’s second anniversary is marked.
The British-based charity, Save the Children, said that some two million children are trapped inside Syria are under constant threat of malnutrition, disease, trauma and early marriage, according to a similar report, “Childhood Under Fire,” recently issued. Also, a third of Syrian youngsters who fled to Turkey told the group that they had been kicked, beaten or actually shot since President Bashar Assad ordered a crackdown on his opponents in March 2011.
Aid workers have said that thousands of children are among the 70,000 Syrians who have died and they make up at least half of the more than a million people who escaped the war-ravaged country.
Children arriving at refugee camps have been traumatized by their experiences back home, said Save the Children’s Saba Mobaslat in Jordan. They witnessed loved ones killed, experienced attempts to drag boys into fighting and girls have been sexually threatened and abused.
“I keep seeing my uncles shot and bleeding from everywhere,” said Rasha, a 13-year-old girl at the Zaatari camp for refugees near Jordan’s border with Syria.
“My mother tells me a story to try to help me sleep, but it’s not working,” said the girl from the central Syrian city of Homs. Rasha complains that she suffers from constant nightmares.
Mubaslat said in addition to physical abuse, armed groups sometimes force young boys to serve as porters, runners and even human shields. A few have even taken up weapons to fight the regime.
A seventh-grade boy named Saud from nearby Daraa said his family fled to Jordan because his brother was wanted by the security forces.
“Usually the regime takes those on its wanted list and slaughters them in front of their family,” he said. “That’s why we escaped here.”
Another young Syrian recounts the story of how two of her female cousins, aged 14 and 16, were raped by government gangs or ‘shibiha’ in Homs and were now pregnant and in hiding.
Other young girls, they said, were being married off at an early age to men because their parents believe it will keep them from being violated.
Last autumn, the U.N. special representative’s report on children and armed conflict called the situation for children in Syria “dire.” It documented the deaths of girls and boys in neighborhood bombardments; children denied access to hospitals; government attacks on their schools; and children subjected to torture, including sexual violence, sometimes for weeks.
Meanwhile, a group that monitors Syria’s dead, wounded and missing, the Violations Documentation Center in Syria, has reported that about 5,500 children under the age of 15, including 3,800 boys and 1,700 girls, have been killed in the past two years. It also said that 901 boys and 28 girls are in detention, while about 100 children are missing. But other activists believe the numbers are higher.
The Syrian uprising, in part, was ignited after the detention and abuse of a half-dozen Syrian youths from Daraa who called for the downfall of Assad in scribbles on their schoolyard wall. Their abuse rekindled long-buried anger against the regime’s brutality and street demonstrations broke out demanding change.
In response, the government opened fire and killed four people. Shortly afterward, the death of youngster, Hamza al-Khatib, 13, and the return of his mutilated body ignited a spiral of more protests and deadly government crackdowns nationwide until the violence erupted into a full-fledged civil war with serious sectarian overtones.
“For millions of Syrian children, the innocence of childhood has been replaced by the cruel realities of trying to survive this vicious war,” said Carolyn Miles, who heads Save the Children.
“Many are now living out in the open, struggling to find enough to eat, without the right medicine, if they become sick or injured. As society has broken down, in the worst cases, hunger, homelessness and terror have replaced school for some of these young people,” she said.
“Bashar shelled us and my cousin died,” said Safa, a 13-year-old girl who fled with her family to Jordan’s desert Zaatari camp. “I want Assad to go away, so I can go back home to Syria.”