For the fifth year running, thousands of Iraqi schoolboys, dubbed the "lion cubs of Saddam", gathered Saturday to spend three weeks of their summer holidays at military training camp.
The boys, aged 12-17, were dropped off by their parents at collection points in Baghdad run by the ruling Baath party and taken by bus to the camps to receive three weeks of "military and cultural training", according to AFP.
This year's program has been named the "Al-Aqsa intifada" in solidarity with the Palestinian uprising against Israel that erupted in September 2000.
Saddam's Cubs were launched in 1998 to prepare young volunteers for "Saddam's Fedayeen," a 60,000-strong paramilitary force formed back in 1994 as US troops strengthened their presence in the Gulf to ward off any new threat to Kuwait. (Albawaba.com)
© 2002 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
