## Jordan Forcibly Deporting Syrian Refugees
Jordanian authorities have “forcibly deported vulnerable Syrian refugees, including wounded men and unaccompanied children, back to Syria in violation of Jordan’s international obligations,” Human Rights Watch said on Monday. A Jordanian government spokesmen denied that Jordan deported the refugees, claiming they had been “relocated in other hospitals to get the proper treatment by practicing doctors.”
The country has allowed thousands of Syrian wounded by war to seek treatment inside the country, “coordinating with field hospitals run by Syrian opposition groups to transport urgent cases over the border and into Jordanian medical facilities.”
International humanitarian workers claim that Jordan closed its border to nearly all refugees in September. According to a Syrian Needs Analysis Project report, “5,000 Syrians were stranded [in the border] with the [Jordanian Armed Forces] denying humanitarian agencies access to the area.”
Also on Monday, Chris Gunness, spokesman for U.N. refugee agency UNRWA, said that the Jordanian government barred entry for Palestinian refugees from Syria after 15,000 were admitted, and that there had been over 100 cases of involuntary deportations of Palestine refugees from Jordan to Syria.
Jordan, home to more than 600,000 Syrian refugees, like many other countries neighboring Syria, is struggling to deal with the large influx of Syria refugees who are thought to reach 3.59 million by the end of the year.
Aid organizations have repeatedly called on the international community to step up to provide protection and assistance to the millions of Syrians trying to escape Syria’s brutal war, to help alleviate the burden on neighboring countries that are host to 96% of Syria’s refugee population.
ISIS Recruiting Children to Battle in Iraq and Syria, Committing Abuses Against the Most Vulnerable
“Across the vast region under ISIS control, the group is actively conscripting children for battle and committing abuses against the most vulnerable at a young age,” the AP reports.
The recruitment of children for combat by armed groups, including the Free Syrian Army and Jabhat al-Nusra, has previously been reported in Syria, “but no other group comes close to ISIS in using children in such a systematic and organized way,” AP writes.
“What is new is that ISIS seems to be quite transparent and vocal about their intention and their practice of recruiting children,” said Laurent Chapuis, UNICEF regional child protection adviser for the Middle East and North Africa.
“All the tools used to attract and recruit children are used by this group,” he said, adding that children as young as nine or 10 are used for ‘various roles’.”
A United Nations panel investigating war crimes in the Syrian conflict said in a recent report that ISIS “prioritizes children as a vehicle for ensuring long-term loyalty, adherence to their ideology and a cadre of devoted fighters that will see violence as a way of life.”
In a wave of extremist education, the militants have altered local school curricula to fit their strict ideology, and recruited boys for training camps and religious camps in their de facto capital of Raqqa.
A recent investigation found that “jihadist organizations in Iraq and in Syria are operating at least 46 military training camps, designed to indoctrinate and train recruits,” according to the Telegraph. The Long War Journal report identified 14 ISIS training camps in Syria, and dozens of camps belonging to Jabhat al-Nusra and several other smaller hard-line groups.
U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel Resigns Facing Discord on U.S. Policy in Iraq and Syria
President Obama announced the resignation of Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on Monday, “leaving under pressure as President Barack Obama faces critical national security challenges, including fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria,” Reuters reports.
Hagel recently said that the unmitigated brutality of ISIS has “led to one of the most challenging periods in American leadership.’
“We’ve never seen an organization like ISIL that is so well-organized, so well-trained, so well-funded, so strategic, so brutal, so completely ruthless.”
According to Reuters, “Hagel raised questions about Obama’s strategy towards Syria in internal policy memos that leaked this fall, saying the president’s policy was in jeopardy due to its failure to clarify its intentions towards Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.”
In an interview at the Pentagon Wednesday, Hagel claimed that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had indirectly benefited from the U.S. military strikes on ISIS.
U.S. President Obama has insisted the U.S. can go after ISIS without addressing Assad, a strategy that has put him at odds with Turkey and sparked resentment with some Syrians who claim that ISIS can’t be defeated without addressing or removing the Assad regime.
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Photo Courtesy of AP Images