The Child Soldiers of the African Horn.

Ethiopia has been exploiting the youth again, bringing back memories and generational scars from when the Derg regime made Ethiopia the ‘capital’ of child soldier training camps. 

The Derg was a military junta with a stranglehold on Ethiopia and Eritrea after overthrowing the previous Ethiopian empire until 1991, when they were overthrown by the Tigrayan-led ethnic federalist coalition called Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF).

Famously, the Derg, mostly through their non-state affiliates, would go into towns conscripting people “my mother told me that she used to hide her younger brother in a barrel when the Derg came to her village.” @tigraymap

It is well documented that the Derg had child soldier training camps for the Sudan People's Liberation Army, the military wing of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement, SPLM/SPLA are used interchangeably, which later evolved into the ruling party of South Sudan, led by Salva Kiir. The SPLM administered refugee camps in Ethiopia and maintained a separate camp for boys. An estimated 17,000 boys were housed and trained in such camps.

These camps are also documented as being funded by the United States, according to a Washington Post article by David B. Ottaway from Nov. 10, 1996. The US government sent nearly $20 million of military equipment through the 'front-line' states of Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Uganda to help the Sudanese opposition overthrow the Khartoum regime. At this time Sudan was considered the No. 2 threat to national security, behind Iran, and in hindsight we know it was al-Qaeda’s main base until they were kicked out for trying to provoke the US to invade.

This diplomatic policy hasn’t changed, even with the continued involvement with child soldiers to this day. Foreign Office Minister Mark Field described the report as “very serious and well sourced,” with both the US and the UK have been directly linked to Sudanese child mercenary training in Yemen. Furthermore, the evidence shows that at least 40% of the these specific Sudanese mercenaries within coalition forces, in Yemen, are underage.

The United States is far more open and relatively transparent about the element of child soldiers. The Child Soldiers Prevention Act of 2008 (CSPA) bans the United States from providing military assistance or arms sales to governments that use children in combat. Although, there is a loophole built in the “national interest waiver” which allows the president to bypass the law if it is deemed in the U.S. national interest to do so.

Meaning the president is specifically responsible for the open funding of child soldiers but the US only acts as a loophole for Britain, USSF openly prefers to work with the Iranian backed Houthi rebels because they are better at killing al-Qaeda and also have their own child soldier crisis. 

The United States is the only UN member that has not ratified The United Nation's Convention on the Rights of the Child, which gives signatories the option to ban the use of child soldiers which, as far as we know, all signatories have. The two other holdouts were Somalia and South Sudan, which both signed in 2015.

When you try to look up child soldier training camps in Ethiopia, you find almost nothing. Most results bring back propaganda released throughout the years painting the Tigrayan rebels as if they were SPLA or Kony’s Lord's Resistance Army, who is also involved but not important to this story.

The TPLF does use child soldiers, although it’s denied, but many forces in the Global South use child soldiers. The Tigrayan forces are quite unique and are more comparable to the Kurdish Apoist factions, especially in regards to child soldiers being a focus of negative propaganda. Both factions seek their nations autonomy and independence, with radical feminism being a core value of their Marxist politics. One third of the TPLF and the EPLF (Eritrean People’s Liberation Front) were women when they overthrew the Derg regime in February 1987, however the EPLF numbers weren’t as high for female participation.

"The contribution of women as fighters in the liberation struggle against Mengistu’s Derg regime is almost legendary. It is widely regarded that fighter women were strong, if not stronger, than the men, and played a critical role in the success of the movement." From Child Soldier to Ex-Fighter, p.3.

There is a difference between justifying something and not condemning it, and while we would never justify child soldiers, it’s difficult to condemn these cases. Questions must be asked.

How bad does femicide have to be before a minor has the right to defend themselves?

How many rights are to be kept from women and girls before it’s justified for them to pick up arms?

How many rights are to be kept from women and girls before it’s justified fight for their existence?

This is not a question for us to answer, however, the only logical conclusion is that they would be worse off for it, not better.

“The Tigray region was identified among the only two rural sites, of 20, in the four major regions of Ethiopia which were “suffering famine deaths in 1973,”

This statistic would indicate that the Derg regime was inflicting famine upon the Tigrayans intentionally, which is ironic considering that the Derg were also Marxist and believed in resource redistribution. The TPLF formed three years later as a direct response to this clearly Stalinist attempt to weaponise famine to force submission as Tigray refused to kneel.

We talk further on this in our Tigrayan episodes for Let Them Eat Cake Episode 6 and Episode 7

“Continued to be so for some time.” Thus, the poverty factor could have played a prominent role in the mobilisation of impoverished children into the ranks of the TPLF.” - Child Soldiers In Intrastate Conflicts: An Empirical Analysis.

We could not identify a report which would specifically mention the recruitment of boy soldiers by the TPLF. Young girls who ended up in the forces were not a targeted group in the insurgency recruitment strategy, the presence of girls in this particular case is linked to a very special characteristic of the TPLF armed group which made it very attractive and popular for the Ethiopian women in the Tigrayan region. 

“In the areas under its control, the movement established a counter-government “that sought to address gender equality through legal reforms in the areas of marriage, divorce, education and land reform.” As to the girls, some of them were reported “to join the movement as a way of escaping early marriages.” - Child Soldiers In Intrastate Conflicts: An Empirical Analysis.

In a sense, the TPLF did not pursue a direct child recruitment strategy but ended up having girl soldiers as a result of particular inadequate state social policies towards equality of women. 

In the 2003 research paper "From Child Soldier to Ex-Fighter: Female Fighters, Demobilisation and Reintegration in Ethiopia" you will find that the child soldiers were never conscripted but are recruited, just like the Apoist factions of Kurdistan and the Northern Irish. Eighty per cent of the women in the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front, EPRDF, the coalition led by the TPLF, had completed 1–5 years of schooling and in general, the educational level of the fighters was higher than that of civilians.

"TPLF women report that their military socialization experience was generally empowering, unlike reports of substantial sexual exploitation and gender-based violence in other, particularly African, conflicts… Despite their politicization and political activity, these women are still fighting an unequal gender battle as individuals and often struggle economically and personally within the current system." 

In the writing, the women that were studied claimed they weren’t victims but felt empowered by the events that occurred, contradicting a lot of anecdotal evidence and studies around child soldiers.

This is why we chose to use the word "exploitation," because the polarity in the treatment of child soldiers and the factor of choice creates night and day scenarios. Current Ethiopian and Eritrean teenagers, who aren't even mature enough to have a stance on this war, are dying due to the blunders made by the elites of Ethiopia and Eritrea, and the whole world must condemn the exploitation of children that is happening by the elites in these two countries.

On the other hand, when we look at the global north we see more and more children, like Greta Thunberg, who are emerging as powerful, and influential global political leaders, praised as heroes. What about in areas where the military is the only pathway to empower the teenagers where the alternative is genocidal mass gang rape and murder, even sexual slavery, if the LRA gets you. 

“Emphasis on the child-soldier-as-victim denies the contradiction of demanding recognition of child ‘power’ in one for a while rendering them powerless in the political contexts of conflict." - From Child Soldier to Ex-Fighter: Female Fighters.

To learn more about the war crimes committed by the Derg regime visit the link tree in the bio of @5thgeniw and choose your preferred platform to listen to "Let Them Eat Cake 006 - Tigray, War of Nations." Which is followed by our new episode "Let Them Eat Cake 007 - Tigray Genocide, Ethiopia At War" which covers the modern conflict and the War Crimes committed by 2019 Nobel peace prize winner Abiy Ahmed. Additionally you can learn about the recruitment and empowerment of young girls by the Apoist factions in "Let Them Eat Cake 003 - Kurdistan, A Nation Without A State"