The State Department has acknowledged that America’s top partner in Syria, the Kurdish-led “Syrian Democratic Forces” (SDF), is still using underage fighters after more than 10 years of similar allegations. The Pentagon continues to work closely with the group regardless, as US troops illegally occupy large swaths of territory in northeastern Syria.
Published Tuesday, the department’s 2024 Trafficking in Persons Report highlighted a number of armed factions employing child soldiers in Syria, among them notorious terrorist outfits like ISIS and al-Qaeda as well as more US-friendly groups.
“The recruitment or use of children in combat and support roles in Syria remains common, and since the beginning of 2018 international observers reported continued incidents of recruitment and use by armed groups,” the report said.
Those include several Kurdish militias, such as the People’s Protection Units (YPG), an affiliated all-female brigade known as the YPJ, as well as the US-backed and armed SDF. The latter org is an umbrella group containing several others, including the YPG, and has long served as Washington’s main proxy force in Syria.
Another related Kurdish faction, the Revolutionary Youth Movement, was said to have tricked minors into joining up using “fraudulent announcements for educational courses in northeast Syria.”
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