According to a document published by Amnesty International in January 1999, child soldiering is one of the worst forms of child labor abuse. Participation of children in the armed forces, especially in armed conflict, has devastating effects on their physical and mental integrity. Due to the small size and agility of children, they may be used in very hazardous assignments, and inexperience and lack of training may cause higher casualty rates among children. However, 1999 was among the same years that the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) was smuggling the children of its members from Europe and America to Iraq, to join its so-called Liberation Army.
On May, 2024, Amir Yaghmai, a former child soldier of the MEK published a photo from that era on his account on X social network and wrote:
“MEK claims that it has had no child soldier. This is a picture of me at the age of 14 in a military uniform at Camp Ashraf. After 1 year of active brainwashing by the authorities, I was transferred from Paris to Iraq in 1998, and this captivity lasted for 6 years. until the arrival of the American forces.”
Amir Yaghmaei at Camp Ashraf-Iraq
According to Amnesty International Child soldiering is usually a full-time occupation, which implies long hours of work and little possibility of returning home. Child soldiers are separated from their homes/families and rarely receive education.
On August 7, 2024, in the comments of Amir Yaghmai’s post and in order to validate it, another former child soldier named Azadeh Masoom published a photo of herself and two other child soldiers of the MEK. In this photo, the famous face of the child soldiers of the ME#K, Alan Mohammadi, can be seen next to Azadeh. In a few short sentences in caption, Azadeh refers to several dimension of child soldiering in the MEK’s army:
“This is the photo of Alan, 13 or 14 years old, who the MEK said she committed suicide with his weapon. What was a 13 or 14-year-old kid doing with a weapon? I was 17 years old sitting next to her, and Maryam Zuljalal, who is sitting on my left, I guess she was 17 years old because we were classmates when we were children.”
Alan Mohamamdi-Azadeh Maasoum and Maryam Zoljalal
Based on the Amnesty International document, most of the children who participate as soldiers in the conflicts either never went to school or dropped out in the early years of school. This concept can be proven in a sentence from Azadeh Masum. She does not know exactly how old was the girl on her left, Maryam Zuljalal, but based on this, she guesses that she is the same age as she was at the time, seventeen years old, because they were classmates when they were children. This means that these two teenage girls stopped going to school before the age of 17 and were deprived of education while they were under the legal age. Alan’s condition was worse. She was no more than thirteen years old when she was brought to Camp Ashraf.
Another former child soldier, Mohammad Reza Torabi also emphasizes the reality of Alan’s child soldiering and her opposition to staying in the oppressive and suffocating environment of Camp Ashraf by re-sharing the photo of Azadeh Masoom:
“Another crime of the MEK. Azadeh, who like me managed to escape from the grip of the MEK cult, is talking about Alan Mohammadi, a girl who was tricked by the MEK when she was 13-14 years old and was sent from Europe to Iraq and Camp Ashraf. From the very first days, live all of us, she started receiving military training and was given a Kalashnikov to guard in the towers around the isolated camp. Finally, due to the pressure of the MEK organization, Alan decided to end her life by pulling the trigger of her Kalashnikov in the watchtower. She preferred death to continuing her stay in the MEK cult.
Now MEK say, we didn’t have child soldiers. So what was Alan doing with Kalashnikov in the guard tower?
Curse the Mujahideen and Rajavi!”
The presence of a young teenage girl in the guard tower of a military barracks with a Kalashnikov is a clear example of a child soldier in a hazardous environment. The hazardous and accident-causing environment is one of the criteria that is discussed in details in the article 3 of the Amnesty International document.
Based on the article, child spldiering as a hazardous work is determined by the followings:
(a) work and activities which expose children to physical, emotional or sexual abuse;
(b) work underground, under water, or at dangerous heights;
(c) work with dangerous machinery, equipment and tools, or which involves the manual handling or transport of heavy loads;
(d) work in an unhealthy environment which may, for example, expose children to hazardous substances, agents or processes, or to temperatures, noise levels, or vibrations damaging to their health;
(e) work under particularly difficult conditions such as work for long hours or during the night or work which does not allow for the possibility of returning home each day.
The above-mentioned cases are all the hazardous conditions that the child soldiers of the MEK were exposed to in the camps of the group, including Camp Ashraf. In many of the available photos of child soldiers at Camp Ashraf, they are clearly in military uniform, Kalashnikovs in hand, and riding tanks and other military vehicles.
In the memoirs of child soldiers, we constantly hear and read about the dangers that threatened children’s spirit, body and dignity every moment inside the MEK. IN 1999, the Amnesty International document has recommendations to the international community on the necessity of banning the participation of children in war. These recommendations require the existence of a separate article in this regard in the convention against of child labor.
This is despite the fact that in the same years, between 1997 and 2002, the MEK brought at least 300 child soldiers from Western countries to Iraq. Many of them are still trapped in the MEK’s camp in Albania, a number of them were killed during violent clashes, and some of them, like Alan Mohammadi, committed suicide. And, some like Amir, Azadeh and Mohammad Reza are brave and self-made survivors of that era who chose to live in the free world not with the help of human rights conventions and Amnesty International, but with a little aid from the United Nations and with their own efforts.
Mazda Parsi