August 1, 2025: For the Ukraine War Russia has been forced to innovate. One of the more interesting innovations involves the use of under 18 children in the war effort. Russian teenagers 14-17 years old now have a military training course at school. Here they learn the basics of military life and are prepared for eventual mobilization into the military. Currently the children are put to work, learning how to operate and repair drones. Then comes actually building drones in school or at home. The young students get official recognition from their schools for their drone related activities. So far Russia has brought over 600,000 children into these programs. In addition to military training the children are encouraged to participate in programs where they learn how to operate drones.

The Russian experience is the latest chapter of the many times children have been used in combat zones. For example, the majority of the Islamic terrorist gunmen, suicide bombers, and helpers of all sorts come from Islamic schools called madrassas. Such schools are found all over the Islamic world, but the ones that produce the most terrorists are those that teach a conservative form of Islam, usually one that justifies militant Islam, hatred of non-Moslems and a favorable attitude towards Islamic radicalism. There are probably fewer than five million children attending these conservative madrassas. But these schools turn out thousands of potential terrorists each year.

An extensive study of the madrassas in Pakistan found that only about 1-2 percent of the nation's children were attending the religious schools. Most of the Islamic schools were concentrated in the Pushtun tribal areas, where they attracted as much as ten percent of the children in some districts. Earlier nationwide estimates ranged from 10-33 percent. The madrassas tend to teach a conservative version of Islam and stress the need to fight non-Moslem infidels, but they also teach basic literacy and some math. Since most Islamic states have terrible education systems, parents see madrassas as a viable option.

Even with the 20,000 or so madrassas in a place like Pakistan, you still have over a third of the children not in school. The national literacy rate is between 50 and 60 percent. It's lower in Afghanistan. The Gulf States only got high literacy rates in the last few generations, courtesy of all that oil money. Saudi Arabia and Iraq have achieved literacy rates close to 80 percent. But Pakistan and Afghanistan haven't got that wealth. Then again, neither does China, which has a literacy rate of over 90 percent, as do most of the East Asian nations. It's a cultural thing, which is not politically correct to even mention.

Even children going to state schools in Islamic nations, will get a lot of religious instruction. Parents who can afford it, send their children to Western schools that teach subjects that will help the children get ahead in life. For Moslem nations, students are encouraged to study religion, even in college. While many Moslem children realize that studying technical subjects will do them more good, at least economically, the Islamic nations turn out fewer technically trained graduates, per capita, than in the West.

This attitude towards secular education has left most Islamic nations illiterate, poor and incubators of terrorism. Trying to change that, brings out the wrath of the Islamic clergy, who insist that the best education is a religious one, and no education at all is best for girls. Thus many Islamic nations are turning out more terrorists than engineers.

Other parts of the world have different atrocities to inflict on children. For decades there has been a growing problem in Africa from the millions of AK-47s smuggled in during the 1990s and ending up in the hands of children and lawless young men. Even the local police have a hard time dealing with this. For example, Kenyan policemen have to deal with tribal outlaws, including children armed with AK-47s. The primary crime is stealing cattle and raiding villages occupied by farmers.

This new source of mayhem is largely the result of tribesmen getting access to cheap AK-47s. As a result the cattle raids, which are an ancient tradition, have gotten a lot bloodier. The AK-47 has become as much of a curse for Africa as many major diseases. Not just in the places you hear about, like Somalia, Kenya, Uganda, Angola, Congo, and Sudan but in many others as well. Easy availability of firearms has produced a murder rate in South Africa that is, per capita, ten times what it is in the United States. In western Kenya alone there were over a thousand deaths from tribal clashes in a few years. The violence caused thousands of people to flee their homes and wrecked local governments in many areas. Sending in additional police and soldiers quieted things down somewhat. But the local men with the guns know where to hide and the government reinforcements don't. So, eventually, the police will leave and the AK-47s will still be there.

Foreign aid organizations have adapted by hiring some of the local gunmen to protect the relief operations from all the other gunmen. That just takes money away from more socially acceptable work. But the guns cannot be ignored. Local gangsters can steal a lot more armed with an AK-47 than in the old days, when all they had were spears or axes.

The disruptive effect of all these guns has halted, or reversed, decades of progress in treating endemic diseases. Death rates from disease and malnutrition are going up. All because of several million Cold War surplus AK-47s getting dumped in Africa. This happened because the tens of millions of assault rifles amassed by communist governments for decades were suddenly for sale when these dictatorships fell apart between 1989 and 1991. Before long the world market for such weapons was saturated. By the late 1990s the only market left was Africa but only if you were willing to sell cheap. That happened. At one point you could buy AK-47s in the bush for as little as $20.

The inexpensive AK-47 also made it possible to use 10-14 year old children as soldiers. This was a new development because the old weapons like spears, swords, and bows required muscle. But now, if you could lift a 4.5 kg AK-47 and pull the trigger, you were a killer. Child soldiers changed everything because warlords could just kidnap children and quickly brainwash them. These armies of young killers made insurrection and anarchy more common. Tens of millions of Africans fled their homes to avoid these tiny terrors, and many of those refugees died of starvation or disease. These victims were just as dead, even if the bullets didn't get them. In fact, few AK-47 victims died from bullets. It was the massive fear, and breakdown of society and the economy, that killed most people confronted by all these cheap AK-47s. The children weren't very good shots but if they got close enough to you, they were capable of unimaginable horrors.

The Taliban suicide bomber operations have long been fueled largely by brainwashed students from Pakistani Madrassa religious schools and Afghans convinced, deceived, or coerced into carrying out an attack. Eventually, getting these children from Pakistan became more difficult. Finding adult Afghans to fill in, at least competent ones, was very difficult. Suicide attacks are seen as a decadent Arab custom, not something an Afghan would do. Even kidnapping, taking one or more members of a family to coerce another to carry out a suicide bomb attack worked less frequently. The Iraqi Islamic terrorists went through the same pattern and eventually ran out of suicide bombers. Actually, the quality of available bombers declined to the point where few effective attacks could be carried out. The same pattern repeated itself in Afghanistan.