Houthi Summer Camp for Kids Is All About Exporting Terror | Opinion

There is nothing more innocent or beautiful than the birth of a child, especially in places where children can grow into well-developed adults. But there are other parts of the world where a staggering number of children are being used, abused, and brainwashed into becoming the world’s worst nightmare: future terrorist suicide bombers in our own backyards.

So, I am sounding the alarm.

The photo that sticks in my mind is one I took in 2010 while covering a coffee conference in Sana’a, Yemen. It was a time when Yemen was balanced between emerging as a prosperous, peaceful country or the Houthi-held terrorist state it is today. The descent felt rapid, and the world sat silent.

On that trip, I saw group of girls, colorfully dressed, with knapsacks and sketchbooks adorned with Disney characters who were happily leaving school. It was a time when America was greatly admired in the Middle East. Juxtapose this against the 1 million children forced to attend terror training summer camps, a number proudly released by the Houthi-led Foreign Ministry.

To take the souls of these children, robbing them of a life of liberty, learning, and fulfillment, is sacrilegious and an evil most of us can’t imagine.

The world has turned a blind eye too long to the plight of others in foreign lands, and this lack of understanding will ultimately cost Western civilization its freedom and lives.

The UN has identified 14 countries, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen, where children are widely used as soldiers. Last July, as in many summers prior, Hamas also trained children and teens in weapon use and tunnel warfare.

In January of this year, Israel’s President Isaac Herzog unveiled an internal document detailing Hamas’ Al-Qassam Brigades’ plan to host summer training camps to “advance the resistance culture and values of jihad, standing strong, and sacrifice within the children… to contribute to the militarization of society.” Some of these children have been recruited as suicide bombers.

This summer, Gaza is in ruins, and one positive outcome is that children won’t be participating in these camps anytime soon.

These free camps are either forced on families or families are lured through incentives offered in primarily poor communities.

The Media Line exposed a story about the seven years this has been happening in Yemen. The article reveals that parents who refuse to enroll their children in the camps could be labeled disloyal to the state and denied basic humanitarian aid, such as purchasing cooking gas at a subsidized rate.

Yemeni Minister of Information in exile Moammar Al-Eryani shared that tens of thousands of children attend these camps annually. No one is certain of the numbers, but new children attend each year, so possible that the number could be as high as 1 million who have been taught the Houthi path for life.

Tens of thousands of these children have been marked as child soldiers or killing machines. One teacher told The Media Line, “These students are being prepared to die for the Houthis’ sake and not for the country’s sake.”

One needs to understand the Houthi mentality, born out of hate for the West, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Jews, and anything not aligned with their philosophy, beholden to Tehran.

The sequence of events we are witnessing, including the Houthi’s targeting of cargo vessels and warships in the Red Sea, is merely a test.

The Houthis are one of the most dangerous terrorist groups today. Situated in the Red Sea, they have shown the world they can fire missiles at Israel, seize and attack maritime vessels in one of the world’s busiest trading passageways, and they are threatening to ramp up their assaults if the world doesn’t heed their demands. An immediate ultimatum is an Israeli ceasefire in Gaza, as the Houthis back their sister proxy group Hamas in the ongoing war.

For years, when I talked about Yemen, most Americans had no idea where the country was, let alone its impact on the rest of the world. The Houthis, officially known as Ansar Allah—Supporters of God—is a Shia Islamist political party created in the 1990s under the leadership of Hussein al-Houthi. They are currently leading an ongoing civil war against the elected Sunni government of Yemen, which is in exile in Saudi Arabia.

Yemen’s Houthis will further disrupt international shipping, seize additional vessels and crews, continue to acquire long-range weapons and utilize them, and possibly cut the internet cables in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. They will hold their people hostage and cut off media reporting.

So why is no one listening?

Why are close to 1 million children being indoctrinated by this same group for hate and potentially used as weapons of war, and why is no government working to end such atrocities?

Imagine what the Houthis could do with tens of thousands of child fighters. It is not unthinkable that we could be fighting off these child warriors as adult terrorists in the streets of New York or London as they slip through porous borders.

It is time to listen to what the leaders of these terrorist groups are saying. They mean what they say, and they need to be stopped.

What can America do?

Wake up, America and the world. Use your intelligence services, houses of government, and influence to stop the terrorists in their tracks, or these indoctrinated child suicide bombers could blow up themselves, and many innocents, in our backyards

Felice Friedson is president and CEO of The Media Line news agency and founder of the Press and Policy Student Program, the Mideast Press Club, and the Women’s Empowerment Program. She can be reached at ffriedson@themedialine.org.

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.