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Geopolitics

Child Soldiers In Syria: Assad Army Forces Minors To Fight, And Die

Syrian Army soldiers at a chekpoint in Damascus in June
Syrian Army soldiers at a chekpoint in Damascus in June
Celine Ahmad

AL-HALBOUNI — Adel, a teenager, worked with his father at their small shop near al-Halbouni, not far from Damascus. By age 17, he had dropped out of school to support his family, as their financial situation grew desperate after years of war.

Adel wasn't a supporter of Syria's government, but that didn't prevent him from being forced to fight on its behalf. He was arrested at one of the army checkpoints in the town of Qudsaiya in the Damascus countryside, then sent off to battle.

"We were on our way to work," Adel's father recounts. "We got stopped at a checkpoint, and there was the usual ID check. One of the men manning the checkpoint took a closer look at Adel's ID before heading off to talk to the rest of the soldiers. He returned and told me that Adel would be serving in the army. I asked him to check Adel's ID again. He wasn't of age to serve. He screamed at me and said I'd get arrested if I didn't comply with their orders."

His attempts to rescue his son were futile. He went home, terrified of being arrested. Four days later, he received word that his son had been killed in battle.

"One of the soldiers knocked on our door and asked me to sign a document, showing I received word about a family death," Adel's father recalls. "In the beginning, I thought there was a mistake, but it was true. The soldier informed me that I needed to go pick up the body from one of the military hospitals. I couldn't believe my eyes. I cried like a baby."

The next day, he headed to the hospital to pick up his son's body. One of the hospital caregivers told him Adel was killed during a battle between the regime forces and opposition fighters in the Damascus countryside.

"I still don't believe it," Adel's father says. "He was only away for four days. He was supposed to be in a training camp for at least six months. The caregiver told me Adel was brought in with other wounded soldiers and that his injuries were fatal. He died immediately. It was a real nightmare."

A commonplace occurrence

Adel isn't the only young victim of conscription. Abdul was two months shy of his 18th birthday and also a high school dropout who left his studies behind as the situation in Syria deteriorated. He had been serving in the Syrian army for only 20 days when he was arrested in a security raid meant to stop new recruits from leaving.

"I was planning to flee to Turkey this month to get out of compulsory army service, but I got caught," he says while on sick leave at home. "I was assigned to one of the barracks in the al-Sabboura area where training camps are held. Many of the guys there were my age or a little older. We practiced for only a week how to shoot a gun."

Abdul said that he was sent with a few others to fight at the Joubar front in Damascus after a week of training. Officers told the new recruits that they would train on the battlefield, adding that there was no need to be scared.

"I found myself on the front lines the next day," he says. "I was terrified. I was scared of the other soldiers. The clashes were heavy, and we were ordered to open fire. I was shot in the foot and fainted. I was then transferred to the Tishreen military hospital."

When Abdul woke up, he was lying on the hospital floor, because all the beds were taken by Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon. He risked losing his foot to infection, as the injury went untreated. But he was later given care, then granted sick leave.

"I have no choice now," he says. "I can't desert the army, and they will definitely put me back on the field as soon as I get better. All I want is to survive the battlefield. There's nothing else I can do."

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Green

Forest Networks? Revisiting The Science Of Trees And Funghi "Reaching Out"

A compelling story about how forest fungal networks communicate has garnered much public interest. Is any of it true?

Thomas Brail films the roots of a cut tree with his smartphone.

Arborist and conservationist Thomas Brail at a clearcutting near his hometown of Mazamet in the Tarn, France.

Melanie Jones, Jason Hoeksema, & Justine Karst

Over the past few years, a fascinating narrative about forests and fungi has captured the public imagination. It holds that the roots of neighboring trees can be connected by fungal filaments, forming massive underground networks that can span entire forests — a so-called wood-wide web. Through this web, the story goes, trees share carbon, water, and other nutrients, and even send chemical warnings of dangers such as insect attacks. The narrative — recounted in books, podcasts, TV series, documentaries, and news articles — has prompted some experts to rethink not only forest management but the relationships between self-interest and altruism in human society.

But is any of it true?

The three of us have studied forest fungi for our whole careers, and even we were surprised by some of the more extraordinary claims surfacing in the media about the wood-wide web. Thinking we had missed something, we thoroughly reviewed 26 field studies, including several of our own, that looked at the role fungal networks play in resource transfer in forests. What we found shows how easily confirmation bias, unchecked claims, and credulous news reporting can, over time, distort research findings beyond recognition. It should serve as a cautionary tale for scientists and journalists alike.

First, let’s be clear: Fungi do grow inside and on tree roots, forming a symbiosis called a mycorrhiza, or fungus-root. Mycorrhizae are essential for the normal growth of trees. Among other things, the fungi can take up from the soil, and transfer to the tree, nutrients that roots could not otherwise access. In return, fungi receive from the roots sugars they need to grow.

As fungal filaments spread out through forest soil, they will often, at least temporarily, physically connect the roots of two neighboring trees. The resulting system of interconnected tree roots is called a common mycorrhizal network, or CMN.

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