It's a lengthy history lesson with a sad twist. Or, Know Your Enemy!!!
In pondering the behavior of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, I cannot help but
think of the 500,000 plastic keys that Iran imported from Taiwan during
the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88. At the time, an Iranian law laid down
that children as young as 12 could be used to clear mine fields, even
against the objections of their parents. Before every mission, a small
plastic key would be hung around each of the children’s necks. It was
supposed to open for them the gates to paradise.
“In the
past,” wrote the semi-official Iranian daily Ettela’at, “we had
child-volunteers: 14-, 15-, and 16-year-olds. They went into the mine
fields. Their eyes saw nothing. Their ears heard nothing. And then, a
few moments later, one saw clouds of dust. When the dust had settled
again, there was nothing more to be seen of them. Somewhere, widely
scattered in the landscape, there lay scraps of burnt flesh and pieces
of bone.” Such scenes could henceforth be avoided, Ettela’at assured
its readers. “Before entering the mine fields, the children [now] wrap
themselves in blankets and they roll on the ground, so that their body
parts stay together after the explosion of the mines and one can carry
them to the graves.”[1]
The children who thus rolled to
their deaths formed part of the mass “Basij” movement that was called
into being by the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979. The Basij Mostazafan –
the “mobilization of the oppressed” – consisted of short-term volunteer
militias. Most of the Basij members were not yet 18. They went
enthusiastically and by the thousands to their own destruction. “The
young men cleared the mines with their own bodies,” a veteran of the
Iran-Iraq War has recalled, “It was sometimes like a race. Even without
the commander’s orders, everyone wanted to be first.”[2]
We, in the west, have no idea what we're up against. The suggestion that Hisballah could have killed those children in Qana is dismissed by most, and yet the history is there.