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(Washington, DC) US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson should return Burma and Iraq to the US list of governments using child soldiers, Human Rights Watch said today. Reuters reported that Tillerson overruled State Department officials and senior US diplomats in ordering the two countries to be removed from the list, which will be announced on June 27, 2017.

The United Nations and nongovernmental organizations, including Human Rights Watch, have continued to report on the use of children by regular or militia forces in Burma and Iraq. The UN documented child recruitment by Burmas armed forces in 2016, and just last week the Burmese army released dozens of child soldiers. Human Rights Watch has documented child recruitment by militias linked to Iraqs government. In March, a State Department report said that at least a dozen children fighting with government-affiliated militia in Iraq had been killed in combat in 2016.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson

Taking Burma and Iraq off the list when they continue to use child soldiers is both contrary to US law and harms children still in the ranks, said Jo Becker, childrens rights advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. Secretary of State Tillerson apparently believes the list is subject to backroom political calculations, rather than facts on the ground and US law. Unless Tillerson reverses this action, he will gravely damage US credibility in ending the use of children in warfare.

The State Department is required by the Child Soldiers Prevention Act to annually identify and list governments that recruit or use child soldiers in their armed forces or provide support to militias that do so. Absent a presidential waiver, the law prohibits governments on the list from receiving several categories of US military assistance.

Burma has been listed under the Child Soldiers Prevention Act each year since the list was first published in 2010. In 2012, Burma signed an action plan with the UN to end its use of child soldiers. Since then, it has allowed the UN limited, periodic access to military facilities, and has released 849 children and former child soldiers from its ranks, including 67 on June 23.

However, new cases of child recruitment, although fewer in number, continue to be documented, and the government still has multiple steps to fully implement its action plan. For example, Burma has not yet adopted a law to criminalize the recruitment and use of children for military use, nor allowed the UN access to ethnic armed groups using child soldiers in order to negotiate action plans with those groups.

This isnt the time to let Burma off the hook for its use of child soldiers, Becker said. US and UN pressure has led to important progress, but as long as children are still being recruited and found in its armys ranks, Burma should stay on the list.

In Iraq, units of the governmentsPopular Mobilization Forces(Hashd al-Shaabi orPMF) have recruited and used children to fight Islamic State forces (also known as ISIS). Human Rights Watch found that two units, commanded by Sheikh Nishwan al-Jabouri and by Maghdad al-Sabawy, recruited children as young as 14 from a camp for displaced persons near Erbil throughout 2016. A 17-year-old who joined one of the units told Human Rights Watch that when he added his name to a list that fighters were passing around, he saw that of the 31 names on the list before his, eight were younger than 18.

After Iraq was included in the State Departments list for the first time in 2016, President Barack Obama issued a presidential waiver, which allowed military assistance to Iraq that would otherwise have been prohibited under the law. In fiscal year 2016, Iraq received over US$3 billion in categories covered by the Child Soldiers Prevention Act, including foreign military financing, training, and excess defense articles. While presidential waivers by the Obama administration undermined the effectiveness of the law, the list itself was generally accurate and fact-based, Human Rights Watch said.

One omission from previous lists was Afghanistan, where the Afghan Local Police, a government-backed militia engaged incombat operations against the Taliban and other insurgents, recruits and uses children as soldiers. The State Department excluded Afghanistan, claiming that the Afghan Local Police fell into a gray area not covered by the Child Soldiers Prevention Act. That decision appears contrary to the plain meaning of the law, Human Rights Watch said. The law covers governmental armed forces or government-supported armed groups, including paramilitaries, militias, or civil defense forces, that recruit and use child soldiers.

The State Department typically publishes the list of countries subject to the Child Soldiers Prevention Act every June as part of its Trafficking in Persons report. The president has until the end of September to decide whether or not to waive any of the military sanctions imposed by the law in the interests of national security.

The Child Soldiers Prevention Act gives the president some discretion in applying sanctions against countries using child soldiers, but it doesnt give the State Department discretion to take off countries that belong on the list, Becker said. Tillerson should do what the law requires and return Burma and Iraq to the list.

Read more from the original source:
US: Return Burma, Iraq to Child Soldier List - Human Rights Watch (press release)

Bill Clinton ordered the attack on Friday, June 25. But the raid was delayed a day so it would not fall on the Muslim Sabbath. | AP Photo

On this day in 1993, President Bill Clinton ordered U.S. warships stationed in the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea to launch Tomahawk cruise missiles against the headquarters of the Iraqi Intelligence Service in downtown Baghdad.

In all, 23 Tomahawk missiles were fired from the destroyer USS Peterson in the Red Sea and from the cruiser USS Chancellorsville in the Persian Gulf, destroying the building. Iraq claimed that nine civilians were killed in the attack and three civilian houses destroyed.

Story Continued Below

The early Sunday morning American missile attack was meant to retaliate for an Iraqi plot to assassinate George H.W. Bush during the former presidents visit to Kuwait, where he was to be honored for his role in leading the coalition that drove Iraqi invaders from that country during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Clinton administration officials told The Washington Post that Brent Scowcroft, Bush's former national security adviser, was kept apprised of the investigation into the assassination plot, and that Clinton called Bush minutes after the missile attack was launched to give him the news. Secretary of State Warren Christopher flew to Kennebunkport, Maine, to brief the former president.

(Bush, asked to comment after being reached at his summer home in Kennebunkport by The Associated Press, said: I'm not in the interview business, but thank you very much for calling.)

On April 13, the day before Bush was scheduled to arrive for a three-day visit, Kuwaiti authorities foiled a plan to assassinate him. They arrested 16 alleged perpetrators. The plots ringleaders, they said, were two Iraqi nationals. The next day, they found a car bomb hidden in a Toyota Land Cruiser that had been driven across the Iraqi border into Kuwait City on the night before.

In ordering the missile strike, Clinton cited compelling evidence of direct involvement by Iraqi intelligence operatives in the thwarted assassination attempt. Two days later, Madeleine Albright, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told the U.N. Security Council that the attack was designed to damage the terrorist infrastructure of the Iraqi regime, reduce its ability to promote terrorism, and deter further acts of aggression against the United States.

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Clinton ordered the attack on Friday, June 25. But the raid was delayed a day so it would not fall on the Muslim Sabbath, a White House aide said. About a dozen U.S. allies and friends in the region were told in advance that the attack was coming; the reaction, the aide said, was mostly favorable.

The missiles struck between 1 a.m. and 2 a.m. Baghdad time because Clinton reportedly wished to minimize possible deaths of innocent civilians.

The regime, led by Saddam Hussein, organized a protest rally in Baghdad and vowed to retaliate against what it termed an unwarranted act of aggression one that it said dashed any hope of reconciliation with Washington.

SOURCE: THE SURVIVOR: BILL CLINTON IN THE WHITE HOUSE, BY JOHN F. HARRIS (2005)

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Clinton orders attack on Iraq, June 26, 1993 - Politico

Maj. Julie Bridges hugs her daughter, Celeste, as they said goodbye.

Approximately 400 to 500 Fort Bliss soldiers have been deployed to Iraq in support of Operation Inherent Resolve.

On Sunday, soldiers said their goodbyes to their loved ones.

Its still emotional, said Maj. Julie Bridges.

She said she was fortunate to be able to spend quality time with her two kids and husband before the deployment.

Her 11-year-old daughter, Celeste, had a hard time holding back tears.

"Sad, she said. She's been my whole life and I don't want her to leave."

This is Bridges third deployment.

Her first deployment happened when Celeste was only four months old.

"I've been to Iraq once before, went to Afghanistan a few years ago, and now I'm back to Iraq, she said.

She told KFOX14 that she continues to keep her mission in mind.

"We're trained. We're ready. We want to go out there and do our jobs and come back safely, Bridges said.

With bags packed and last minute hugs, family members are hit with reality.

"Starting sixth grade is going to be hard, it's going to be a hard year, Celeste said, with tears in her eyes.

"It's going to be alright, I'll be home before you know it, said Bridges, while comforting her daughter.

Their deployment is expected to last nine months.

Visit link:
Around 500 Fort Bliss soldiers deploy to Iraq - KFOX El Paso

You will recall that Donald Trumps first executive order banning travel to the U.S., issued back in January, provided a preferential option for Christian refugees from Iraq and the six other majority-Muslim countries it covered.

Not that the order mentioned Christians by name. Rather, it instructed the secretaries of state and homeland security to prioritize refugee claims made by individuals on the basis of religious-based persecution, provided that the religion of the individual is a minority religion in the individuals country of nationality.

Get it?

The object, of course, was to honor Trumps oft-repeated campaign promise to help Christian refugees, whom he falsely insisted had been disfavored under the Obama administration. It was part of the agenda that enabled him to win 81 percent of the white evangelical vote in November.

Evangelical leaders did not all drink the Kool Aid. Some even thrust it aside.

But staunch Trumpistas like Jerry Falwell, Jr., Franklin Graham, and Ronnie Floyd gave it their blessing and 75 percent of white evangelicalssupportedwhat the president himself liked to call the Muslim Ban.

The second executive order the watered down one (as Trump put it) issued in early March after adverse court decisions did away with the preferential option, and took Iraq off the list, but with no apparent loss of evangelical support. A guys gotta do what a guys gotta do.

It now turns out that to get off the list, Iraq had to agree to take back any Iraqis that the American government chooses to deport. Whereupon, over a hundred Chaldean Christians in the Detroit area were rounded up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and, if it hadnt been for a temporary restraining order issued by a federal judge in Michigan last week, they would now be back in a country that has seen their communitiesall but destroyed, most horrifically by ISIS.

It should not be glossed over that the detainees are immigrants who have at one time or another during fallen afoul of the law. Butaccording to their ACLU lawyers and members of their community, most have paid their debts to society. Even a minor criminal misdemeanor committed decades ago, however, entitles you to deportation in the Trump dispensation.

A group of evangelical leaders including Leith Anderson, president of the National Association of Evangelicals and Russell Moore of the Southern Baptist Convention sent a letter to the secretary of homeland security urging that the Chaldeans not be sent back.

As for the Trumpistas, Franklin Graham has taken to Facebookto say that he finds the plight of the Chaldean Christians very disturbing, but so far not a peep out of Falwell or Floyd. God forbid they question wisdom of their God-given Cyrus.

You might think that the President, obsessed as he is with reliving his astonishing electoral triumph, might realize (if nothing else) that he owes his 11,000-vote victory in Michigan to the 121,000-strong Chaldean community, which vigorously supported him because of his vows to defeat ISIS and rescue their brethren.

But nary a tweet from him on the subject even as his Justice Department did its level best to argue that U.S. District Judge Mark Goldsmith had no authority to halt an immigration judge deportation order.

The lesson from this sorry state of affairs ought to be that sending people who have paid their debt to society into harms way is wrong, whatever their religious identity. But if Falwell, Floyd, and company talk to their friend in the White House solely on behalf of their co-religionists, so be it.

Lets see how much clout they havebefore the judges restraining order expires next week.

More:
On deporting Christians to Iraq - Religion News Service

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A Thai worker paints on a large statue of the Goddess of Mercy, known as Guan Yin at a Chinese temple in Ratchaburi province, Thailand. Guan Yin is one of the most popular and well known Chinese Goddess in Asia and in the world. Guan Yin is the Bodhisattva of Great Compassion in Mahayana Buddhism and also worshiped by Taoists

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French journalist dies of injuries after reporting on Isis war in Iraq - The Independent