HOUTHI MILITANTS CONSCRIPTING CHILDREN TO JOIN THEIR FORCES
Even primary school pupils are being recruited as part of strategy to boost beleaguered rebel army
Yemen’s Houthi militants are storming public schools in rebel-held areas to recruit pupils as fighters, taking some by force without telling their families, locals have told The National.
Yemeni news sites on Sunday published a letter from the president of the so-called Supreme Political Council, which rules Sanaa and other rebel-held territory, to the chairman of the rebel movement’s Revolutionary Committee.
In it he orders the chairman to begin recruiting male pupils for military training from all primary and secondary schools, and public universities under Houthi control.
The letter did not stipulate the age of the pupils who should be “recruited” but pro-government forces have in the past arrested Houthi fighters as young as 10.
Reports say the Iran-backed rebels are also taking boys from Sanaa’s orphanage.
“The Houthis started to come to the public schools, especially the secondary schools, to encourage students to stand with them against the enemy and the Saudi ‘colonisation’, as they say,” said Hamood, a resident of Ibb province.
“They give them religious handouts and encourage them to register for military training.”
If the pupils do not sign up voluntarily, “then they start to select the older ones and take them by force to begin a short period of military training before sending them to the battlefronts”.
Hamood said the Houthis were doing this without informing the pupils’ families of their whereabouts.
It comes as the rebels are losing ground to forces fighting to reinstate the internationally recognised government of Abdrabu Mansur Hadi, backed by the Saudi-led coalition, on several fronts.
They including the western province of Hodeidah and the northern province of Al Jawf.
Mugamal, another Yemeni who spoke about the Houthis’ recruitment of school pupils, said the son of his former neighbour in Sanaa disappeared about a month ago.
The boy went to school one day and never returned home.
“Osama’s family searched for him everywhere but they couldn’t find him,” said Mugamal, who has lived in a government-controlled area of Marib province since May last year after fleeing his home in Sanaa.
“Last week, a Houthi military vehicle stopped in front of his family home and Houthi fighters called on his relatives to come out and take his corpse, congratulating them on Osama being a martyr.”
“They told Osama’s family that he was killed at the Nehem battlefront to the east of Sanaa.”
It was not clear if Osama, who Mugamal said was aged about 13, had volunteered to fight for the Houthis or had been taken by force.
The Houthis have also targeted schools in other provinces under their control, including Dhamar, Amran and Saada.
Ramzi Mokhtar, a fighter in Al Jawf province, said that 45 civilians – most of them children – from the Gabal Al Shariq area of Dhamar province, south of Sanaa, had been forced to fight in Al Jawf.
When Yemeni army forces arrested 50 Houthi fighters in Al Jawf’s Al Khab and Al Shaab districts a week ago, 30 were among the children who had been taken by force from Gabal Al Shariq, Mr Mokhtar said.
Some of these children said they had been taken by the Houthis from school.
The Yemeni minister of information, Moammar Al Eryani, tweeted on Saturday last week: “Field reports confirm that Houthi Iran militias are giving citizens options of arrest or to send them to battlefronts for fighting.
“They abduct children from schools and the orphanage house in Sanaa.
“The legitimate government is the only institution that owns the right for opening up the door to military recruiting within the line of military forces as per the constitution and law.
“We highly recommend to people not to follow the misleading instructions by militias, which may harm them.”
A Houthi commander who turned himself in to members of the UAE Armed Forces in Yemen has ordered his tribesmen to fight alongside the Saudi-led coalition.
Sheikh Hamir Ebrahim, who commanded the Hyais and Al Kokha fronts in Hodeidah province, ordered his tribesmen to help the coalition “liberate entire Yemeni territories”, Wam said.
“Whoever dares to reject their orders will be targeted and expelled, along with his family, from their tribe and from the entire area,” said Sheikh Ebrahim, who is better known by his nickname, Ebrahim Adabu.
He said he had received fair and decent treatment from the Armed Forces since he turned himself in.
The tribal leader surrendered on Saturday, along with 50 of his men, a military spokesman said. The Yemeni army and Armed Forces are fighting together in Hodeidah.
Yemeni troops and coalition forces were continuing to advance towards the district of Hyais in Hodeidah yesterday.
UAE troops have secured a road south of Hyais that served as the Houthis’ supply line between Hodeidah and neighbouring Taez province.
The UAE is a leading member of the Saudi-led coalition that has been fighting to restore the internationally recognised government of president Abdrabu Mansur Hadi since March 2015.
Also yesterday, the coalition said two Saudi pilots were rescued after their jet crashed in Yemen. Coalition spokesman Col Turki Al Malki said the jet crashed at 3.40pm on Sunday after technical trouble, but he did not say where.
“The Arab Coalition Forces Command implemented a private joint operation to evacuate two pilots,” Col Al Malki said.
He said the pilots were not injured.
The Yemeni army announced yesterday that its troops had achieved gains in the Saada province district of Al Bukua.
It said that troops had liberated the Om Al Adem mountain chain, which is close to the road linking Al Bukua with Saada city, the provincial capital.
The commander of government forces in Saada, Maj Gen Obeid Al Athlah, said this had cut the rebels’ supply route to the Saudi border.
The Houthis, who are backed by Iran, seized the Yemeni capital Sanaa in September 2014 and later advanced south, prompting the Saudi-led coalition to intervene.
The coalition has since helped Mr Hadi’s government, which is based in the second city of Aden, to retake large areas of the south from the Houthis, who still control Sanaa and much of the north.