Tough calls in child-soldier encounters

So far, US troops have faced only limited fire from children, as in the 1993 Somalia operation. But that could change. For example, in the Philippines, American soldiers are aiding in the pursuit of the Abu Sayyaf rebel group, which has recruited or bought boy soldiers aged 11 to 15, according to human rights groups. The Iraqi regime, which Washington seeks to overthrow, has trained thousands of 10- to 15-year-old youths known as Ashbal Saddam, or Saddam's Lion Cubs, in small-arms and infantry tactics.

Students from Pakistani religious schools, or madrassahs, have long supported Afghanistan's former Taliban regime.

Indeed, an estimated 10 percent of all current combatants are child soldiers, defined as youths "under 18 years of age engaged in deadly violence [of a noncriminal type] as part of an armed force," according to Peter Singer of the Brookings Institution here. Children "have become integral parts of both organized military units and nonmilitary, but still violent, political organizations such as terrorist groups."

Especially in failed or weak states, children have emerged as a low-cost way for both governments and rebel groups to mobilize and replace armed forces. Many children are forcibly recruited after being orphaned or cut off from their families by war, poverty, or other disasters.

Using today's smaller, lighter, more powerful weapons, children with minimal training can constitute a lethal force.

Often drugged, the children are beaten or threatened with death unless they fight battles and commit atrocities such as killing people from their own villages. They also serve as decoys, mine cleaners, spies, and early-warning systems – vulnerable to losing their lives to protect adult troops. Two million children have been killed and twice that many disabled in conflicts in the last decade, according to UN child advocates.

Nevertheless, with nowhere else to go, many child soldiers grow dependent on a life of combat. "I kept pulling the trigger for three years," says Ishmael Beah, a former child soldier from Sierra Leone. "I ran out of tears to shed."

Columbia, Burma, Sri Lanka, and the Democratic Republic of Congo are notorious for their child warriors, who total an estimated 80,000. Yet the problem is widespread, affecting 75 percent of the world's conflicts, experts say.

The UN and human rights groups are working to ban child soldiering, prosecute recruiters, and impose trade sanctions on violators. The Bush administration is expected to sign soon an optional protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child that would prohibit the US military from sending youths under 18 into combat, according to Pentagon officials.

Yet despite such efforts, some military experts believe the problem of child soldiers will persist or worsen. Even as humanitarian programs help demobilize thousands of child soldiers, thousands more are being abducted or re-recruited, say UN officials and human rights experts.

"My sense is this will grow rather than diminish," says Colonel Gangle. "This is a very easy way for individuals to recruit armies and sustain those armies when they take a high number of casualties."

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