{"id":391045,"date":"2018-12-30T21:05:42","date_gmt":"2018-12-30T20:05:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/us-tax-dollars-help-pay-for-it\/"},"modified":"2018-12-30T21:05:42","modified_gmt":"2018-12-30T20:05:42","slug":"us-tax-dollars-help-pay-for-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/us-tax-dollars-help-pay-for-it\/","title":{"rendered":"US Tax Dollars “Help Pay for It”"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cAmerica is now aiding and abetting the use of child soldiers.\u201d<\/p>\n

That was how Ari Rabin-Havt, deputy policy director for US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), <\/span>responded<\/a> <\/span>to a <\/span>New York Times <\/span>report<\/a> <\/span>on Friday detailing Saudi Arabia\u2019s use of Sudanese child soldiers as young as 14 years old to wage its vicious assault on Yemen, which has resulted in the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.<\/p>\n

According to the <\/span>Times, \u201cFive fighters who have returned from Yemen and another about to depart said that children made up at least 20 percent of their units. Two said children were more than 40 percent.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTo keep a safe distance from the battle lines,\u201d the <\/span>Times <\/span>noted, \u201ctheir Saudi or Emirati overseers commanded the Sudanese fighters almost exclusively by remote control, directing them to attack or retreat through radio headsets and GPS systems provided to the Sudanese officers in charge of each unit, the fighters all said.\u201d<\/p>\n

The <\/span>Times <\/span>report was met with horror by anti-war activists, who highlighted the fact that\u2014by continuing to send the Saudis arms and provide other military assistance\u2014the United States is directly complicit in the kingdom\u2019s use of children as soldiers in its years-long war on Yemen.<\/p>\n

\u201cChildren paid to kill children. This is how our \u2018ally,\u2019 Saudi Arabia, wages its disgusting war in Yemen,\u201d <\/span>wrote<\/a> <\/span>Joe Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund. \u201cAnd we help pay for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the <\/span>Times <\/span>reported, nearly all of the Sudanese soldiers paid by Saudi Arabia to fight in Yemen \u201cappear to come from the battle-scarred and impoverished region of Darfur, where some 300,000 people were killed and 1.2 million displaced during a dozen years of conflict over diminishing arable land and other scarce resources.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Get the latest news and thought-provoking analysis from Truthout.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Taking advantage of its \u201cvast oil wealth,\u201d the <\/span>Times <\/span>noted, the Saudi kingdom has offered thousands of dollars to desperate Sudanese families in order to lure…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cAmerica is now aiding and abetting the use of child soldiers.\u201d That was how Ari Rabin-Havt, deputy policy director for US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), responded to a New York Times report on Friday detailing Saudi Arabia\u2019s use of Sudanese child soldiers as young as 14 years old to wage its vicious assault on Yemen, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-391045","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391045"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391045\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}