ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The Kurdistan National Congress (KNC), an umbrella group of Kurdish movements from across the Middle East, has condemned Iranian attempts to hinder the Kurdistan Region’s moves towards independence.

In a statement, the KNC said Iran would seek to divide the Kurds as a means of blocking the quest for independence in what is now the territory administered by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).

“No regional or world country has the right to meddle in the struggle of Kurdistan and make decisions on behalf of people of Kurdistan,” said the statement from the KNC, which was established to pursue a common political vision for Kurds from across the Middle East.

Last month’s collapse of the Iraqi army in Mosul and other Sunni areas of Iraq has effectively cut the Kurdistan region from the rest of the country. Kurdish forces are now defending a border of around 1,000 km with the self-declared Islamic State, formerly the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Iraq’s internal crisis prompted Massoud Barzani, KRG president, to ask the parliament in Erbil to prepare for a referendum in which the people of Kurdistan would determine their future.

Tehran has rejected any Kurdish independence bid and has issued warnings against holding a referendum.

Salahadin Muhtadi, a Kurdish politician from Iran, said Kurdish unity was the best weapon with which to confront such attempts to sabotage the Kurds’ long awaited dream of independence.

“Iran is a big country. Any big country that borders a smaller people like Kurds can impact it and can do harm to it,” Muhtadi told Rudaw.

“But Kurds have their own weapon. Unification of all parts of Kurdistan, cooperation, and assistance are the guns in Kurdish hands. If we can help each other, we can convince the bigger countries,” he added.

Last week, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, the Iranian deputy foreign minister, referred to alleged attempts to break up Iraq as a “Zionist plot” that Tehran would never allow to succeed. “We will not forget that in recent days the only official who, with excitement and much happiness, supported the independence of Iraqi Kurdistan and encouraged the region to secede was Netanyahu,” he told al Alalam TV, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“We shall never allow Netanyahu’s dreams in Iraq and our region of splintering an important and sensitive region of Western Asia to come true,” Amir-Abdollahian said.

Last month, Netanyahu was among Israeli leaders who said he would welcome the creation of a Kurdish state in northern Iraq.

Iran’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham has since declared: “Undoubtedly the vigilant Iraqi people will not allow the Zionist regime and enemies of a unified Iraq to carry out their plots and realize their immature fantasies in the region.”

The view of the Tehran authorities was echoed in Iran’s Resalat newspaper, which accused Kurdish leaders of conspiracy with the Israelis to divide Iraq. “No doubt Barzani and Kurdish leaders are aware of the risks of dividing Iraq and a declaration of Kurdistan State. Not just Iraq, but Iran, Syria and Turkey would not accept Kurdistan separation in the face of the dangerous plots of Zionism, America and particularly Britain,” the newspaper said in a signed editorial.

The KRG’s diplomats in Tehran rejected the charges. “No other ethnic or religious community in Iraq has done as much as the Kurds to implement the law and practice democracy,” said Muhammad Sidiq, the KRG’s deputy representative to Tehran.

“What President Barzani says is the reflection of people’s views and will. Our government and people are not a part of any foreign plot against our neighbors, in particular the Islamic Republic of Iran,” he added.

Despite the threats coming from Tehran, the leader of the Kurdish Komala Party, Said Ibrahim Ali Zada, said Iran cannot do much to stop Kurds from holding a referendum, although it could interfere afterwards.

“The Islamic Republic cannot hinder a referendum of the people of Kurdistan. But if Kurdistan becomes independent, certainly, the Islamic Republic would confront it with all its powers and efforts,” Ali Zada told Rudaw.

Ali Zada said Turkey’s potential support for an independent Kurdistan could prove ephemeral once independence was declared. “Not just the Islamic Republic, but also Turkey will oppose Kurdistan independence despite pretending it would not reject it. If it happens, the Turkish state will stand against it,” he said.

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Shafaq News/ The video on his phone shows the boy firing a heavy machine gun mounted on a tripod through a hole in a crumbling building, his slender body shaking from the kickback, Reuters said in a report seen by “Shafaq News”.

“We were kind of nervous, not because we are cowards, because it was our first fight and we were still young,” said the youth, a former teen soccer star from Baghdad.

He says he was 15 when an Iraqi Shi’ite militia first sent him to Iran for training by the Revolutionary Guards in hills outside of Tehran in March. He spent his 16th birthday four months ago in Syria fighting on the frontline near Damascus.

Now, he says he is back in Iraq fighting against Sunni insurgents.

“We got some military experience in Syria with raiding, and skills we learned in Syria help us in Samarra,” he said, referring to a frontline Iraqi city where Shi’ite paramilitaries helped government forces halt an advance by Sunni militants.

No one knows for certain how many underage fighters are participating in Iraq’s civil war. The official recruitment age for Iraq’s army is 18. Shi’ite militia which fight alongside government force also say they do not recruit children.

But with Sunni insurgents sweeping across the country and thousands of Shi’ites answering a cleric’s call to take up arms against them, there is anecdotal evidence that child fighters are being sucked into Iraq’s sectarian war.

Witnesses say they have frequently seen adolescents among the Sunni fighters at checkpoints in the north.

The Shi’ite youth, who spoke to Reuters in Baghdad during what he described as a few days respite from the battlefield in Samarra to visit his family, says he was drawn to the war to save his fellow Shi’ites from the Islamic State, a Sunni group that says all Shi’ites are heretics who must repent or die.

His name is not being printed to protect his identity. Reuters was not able to see documents to verify his age, but if anything he looked even younger than 16. His parents declined to be interviewed.

The Badr Organisation, a Shi’ite group which the youth said recruited him, denies it fields underage fighters.

“We respect childhood because children are the promising future of Iraq,” said Ali Al-Allaq, a senior member of the Badr Organisation. “We are the most prominent group in liberating areas so far, so some young people may be bragging that they are fighting for us. But that is not true.”

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s office said the government demanded that paramilitary groups refrain from recruiting children: “The government has been clear that volunteers should be of adult age and should all come under the command and control of Iraqi security forces.”

“GO, SON, DO YOUR DUTY”

After his brief training in Iran earlier this year, the youth said he spent six weeks in the Damascus suburb of Melliha with a Shi’ite unit fighting against the Nusra Front, al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria. Nearly half of the 130 fighters in his contingent were wounded or killed there, he said, describing intense fighting on rooftops and alleyways.

He is not sure if he has killed anyone, but he watched one of his fellow militia fighters drill a bullet between the eyes of a Nusra Front militant who sneaked into the building where they were sleeping.

When he returned to Iraq, the Sunni group then known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant had launched its lightning advance from Syria across the north of Iraq. He went to Samarra to help halt the advance on Baghdad, with his family’s blessing.

“Mum was happy. She said, ‘Go, son, do your duty,’” he said.

At the front, he worked as a member of a patrol helping to round up Sunnis suspected of aiding the insurgents.

“I find Sunnis who collaborate with the Islamic State but pretend to be shepherds. I interrogate them then I hand them over to my commanders,” he said.

He showed Reuters a video on his phone of him and a fellow fighter questioning two men wearing traditional robes sitting on the ground. He said they later turned the men over to his commander after finding messages on their mobile phones with coordinates of the militia’s local checkpoints.

Outside Samarra there was a close call when Iraqi federal police backing his paramilitary unit fled mid-battle, leaving the fighters exposed. The youth said that showed why militia volunteers were so important: “We fight out of our belief, while police are there only for their salaries.”

“SURPRISED HOW YOUNG THESE GUYS WERE”

Two fighters from the Iran-trained Kata’ib Hezbollah and the Abu Fadl al-Abbas Brigades that have also sent thousands of volunteers to Syria told Reuters they attended training this month in Baghdad with boys turning 16 or 17.

“I was surprised how young these guys were,” said a 19-year-old Kata’ib Hezbollah member, who asked for his name not to be used in order to speak freely. “They didn’t know how to load a magazine or shoot their gun. I asked and they told me they were born in 1997 and 1998.”

An 18-year-old fighter who joined the Abu Fadl al-Abbas Brigades said he attended training at the Taji military camp in northern Baghdad, a Defence Ministry-run training site. He said there were younger teenagers there, some of whom he believed would be sent to the battlefield with inadequate training.

“The younger guys don’t know how to fight,” he told Reuters by phone about the teenagers at his training camp.

“SIGNING UP ALL AGES”

Iraq is a signatory to the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, which calls on governments to shield children younger than 15 from participating in combat. Reuters was not able to find evidence of fighters that young, although there was substantial evidence of fighters close to that age and below Iraq’s official recruitment age of 18.

Although the government says it takes steps to keep underage fighters out of the fray, and the Badr Organisation says that it does not accept them, at a neighborhood office one Badr recruiter said that in such urgent circumstances he was taking applications from volunteers of all ages.

Sifting through forms, he said he had collected about 7,000 applications to join the battle since Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq’s most senior Shi’ite cleric, issued a fatwa on June 13 calling on Shi’ites to mobilize.

“We are signing up all ages, even women. We don’t reject anyone because these people came in response to Sistani’s call,” he said. Asked if he had come across fighters as young as 16, he said: “Yes, and also boys younger than that. Some are still in training, and some have already taken part in the fight.”

The recruiter said Iraq was in no position to abide by rules banning the recruitment of child soldiers.

“In other countries, in normal circumstances, maybe you observe this international law because you are not in this state of war. But now the country is in danger and there is a fatwa, and this has become a religious duty.”

Asked if he had sons and whether he would allow them to fight, the recruiter said: “They are young,” he replied. “Three and ten years old. But I’ve already put down their names.”

Across town, the Baghdad youth on his war leave discussed his time in combat in Syria and closer to home, scrolling through photos on his phone to older images of a happier time as a star on a youth soccer team who traveled for tournaments in Gulf countries.

“I’d prefer to play football than fight in a war, because football is my talent,” he said. “But I feel I have a duty. If I don’t go, if my neighbor doesn’t go, who will go to fight?”

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