Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Child fighters on the rise in Iraq
Security
(Los Angeles Times) - Child fighters, once a rare presence on Iraq's battlefields, are playing a significant and growing role in kidnappings, killings and roadside bombings in the country, U.S. military officials say. Boys, some as young as 11, now outnumber foreign fighters at U.S. detention camps in Iraq. Since March, their numbers have risen to 800 from 100, said Maj. Gen. Douglas Stone, the commander of detainee operations. The Times reported last month that only 130 non-Iraqi fighters were in U.S. custody in Iraq.
Stone attributes the rise in child fighters in the country, in part, to the pressure that the U.S. buildup of troops has placed on the flow of foreign fighters. Fewer of them are making it into the country, he said, and the militant group Al Qaeda in Iraq is having a difficult time recruiting adults locally. Thus, it has turned to children." As our operations have increased, Al Qaeda [in Iraq] and others have used more minors in the fight against us, and in the process we have detained more and more juveniles," Stone said.
Stone attributes the rise in child fighters in the country, in part, to the pressure that the U.S. buildup of troops has placed on the flow of foreign fighters. Fewer of them are making it into the country, he said, and the militant group Al Qaeda in Iraq is having a difficult time recruiting adults locally. Thus, it has turned to children." As our operations have increased, Al Qaeda [in Iraq] and others have used more minors in the fight against us, and in the process we have detained more and more juveniles," Stone said.
He said the children make effective fighters because they are easily influenced, don't experience fear in the same way as adults and don't draw as much scrutiny from U.S. forces. Other causes for the increase in detentions may be that U.S. forces are simply coming into contact with more children because of the troop buildup, and that financial pressures may have pushed some Iraqi families toward the militants. Stone said some children have told interrogators that their parents encouraged them to do the militants' dirty work because the extremists have deep pockets.
Insurgents typically pay the boys $200 to $300 to plant a bomb, enough to support a family for two or three months, say their Iraqi instructors at a U.S. rehabilitation center. About 85% of the child detainees are Sunni and the majority live in Sunni Arab-dominated regions in the country's west and north. In these deeply impoverished, violence-torn communities, the men with money and influence are the ones with the most powerful arsenals. These are the children's role models.
The rise of child fighters will eventually make the Iraq conflict more gruesome, said Peter W. Singer, a Brookings Institution expert on child fighters. He said militant leaders often treat children as a cheap commodity, and peace will be less attainable because "conflict entrepreneurs" now have an established and pliable fighting force in their communities.
Websites feature stories of child martyrs as an inspiration, and on the other side of the sectarian divide, radical Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr's Mahdi Army also boasts of youngsters' involvement. "This shows that the Mahdi are a popular resistance movement against the occupiers. The old men and the young men are on the same field of battle," Sadr spokesman Sheik Ahmad Shebani told the London Daily Telegraph. The boys are arrested under a wide range of circumstances, and their commitment to insurgents is believed to vary greatly. Although some of their alleged offenses include kidnappings and killings, the vast majority are held for allegedly planting bombs in the road in exchange for money, authorities said.
The rise in young fighters compounds the savagery that has already shuttered many schools, left children wounded and hungry, and killed parents before children's eyes. For their American captors, the apparent surge of child fighters confuses enemy and friend on the battlefield even further, and it causes renewed scrutiny of the military's detention policies and lack of judicial access for juvenile detainees in custody. To accommodate the influx of boys, and to break the hold of the militants, a new education facility opened here Aug. 13. It sits a bus ride away from Camp Cropper, the U.S. detention area where the boys, between the ages of 11 and 17, live segregated from many others of the estimated 24,000 suspected insurgents in American custody in Iraq.
Labels: Al Qaeda in Iraq, boys, Camp Cropper, child fighters, children, detention centres, insurgents, Iraq, Mahdi Army, Maj. Gen. Douglas Stone
Friday, August 10, 2007
Nearly 3,000 foreigners held in Iraqi detention centres
Regional
(KUNA) - As many as 2,760 foreigners are currently being held in Iraqi detention centers, the Iraqi delegation to the Damascus meeting announced on August 8, KUNA reported. Eight hundred of those detained are Iranians. The rest are Afghans, Arabs from outside Iraq, and other foreigners. According to the news agency, the numbers were released during a closed session focusing on enhancing security collaboration among Iraq's neighbors.
"Among the detainees are Arabs and others from Afghanistan and Iran. The latter's citizens entered Iraq claiming they would visit religious shrines," an unidentified source who attended the session told KUNA. The source suggested that the number does not include foreigners currently held in U.S.-run detention centers. Representatives from neighboring states have been pressing the Iraqi government to release the names of those in custody.
Labels: detention centres, foreigners in Iraq
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
Human Rights Watch publishes report on torture in Kurdistan
Humanitarian
(AP) - Security forces in northern Iraq's Kurdistan, the heartland of the Kurdish minority long tormented by Saddam Hussein, routinely torture detainees with beatings and electric shocks and hold hundreds of prisoners for long periods without charge, a human rights group said Tuesday.
The Human Rights Watch report , based on interviews conducted from April to October 2006 with more than 150 detainees, demanded a comprehensive overhaul of detention practices in the Kurdish region and urged an independent body to investigate torture claims.
"We are surprised that the Kurds are practicing such violations after they were victims of torture during the Saddam era," Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director for Human Rights Watch, said, referring to the ousted Iraqi leader's oppression of the Kurds.
"We appreciate the efforts by Kurdistan government to combat terrorism and secure Kurdistan, but we see that such violations against prisoners are not a good thing," she told a press conference in the northern city of Irbil.
Brig. Gen. Seif-Eddine Ali, head of security for one of the two major Kurdish parties, said the report was "inaccurate" and the findings out-of-date. "I call on the group to come and see the prisons and speak with the prisoners," Ali said. "The Human Rights Watch report is old and there have been improvements on all sides."
But Mohammed Faraj, a lawmaker who heads the human rights committee in the Kurdistan region's parliament, said a parliament commission visited Kurdish prisons in April and found that "indeed there were violation. The Kurdistan government has a real and strong intention to work hard to solve this issue," he said, adding that the government released some 400 detainees held in security forces' prisons in June and that more were expected to be freed.
The Human Rights Watch report , based on interviews conducted from April to October 2006 with more than 150 detainees, demanded a comprehensive overhaul of detention practices in the Kurdish region and urged an independent body to investigate torture claims.
"We are surprised that the Kurds are practicing such violations after they were victims of torture during the Saddam era," Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director for Human Rights Watch, said, referring to the ousted Iraqi leader's oppression of the Kurds.
"We appreciate the efforts by Kurdistan government to combat terrorism and secure Kurdistan, but we see that such violations against prisoners are not a good thing," she told a press conference in the northern city of Irbil.
Brig. Gen. Seif-Eddine Ali, head of security for one of the two major Kurdish parties, said the report was "inaccurate" and the findings out-of-date. "I call on the group to come and see the prisons and speak with the prisoners," Ali said. "The Human Rights Watch report is old and there have been improvements on all sides."
But Mohammed Faraj, a lawmaker who heads the human rights committee in the Kurdistan region's parliament, said a parliament commission visited Kurdish prisons in April and found that "indeed there were violation. The Kurdistan government has a real and strong intention to work hard to solve this issue," he said, adding that the government released some 400 detainees held in security forces' prisons in June and that more were expected to be freed.
Labels: Brig. Gen. Seif-Eddine Ali, detention centres, human rights violation, Human Rights Watch, Kurdistan, torture
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Four detention centres handed over to Justice Ministry
Security
(Voices of Iraq) A Human Rights Ministry senior official said on Monday the responsibility for running four detention centers were handed over to the Iraqi Justice Ministry. "The Justice Ministry started to run four Iraqi detention centers that were previously run by the ministries of Defense and Interior," a senior official, who asked not to be named, told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).
The official who did not say when the transfer of responsibility occurred expressed "the preparedness of the Justice Ministry to run all the prisons and detention centers now under Interior and Defense ministries responsibility." He said "the transfer that occurred was intended to avoid any human rights abuses against the inmates and to accelerate referring the detainees to courts of law to look into the charges directed against them."
Last week, the Iraqi Human Rights minister Wijdan Michael called upon the Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to place the responsibility of running all detention centers under the Justice Ministry to prevent human rights abuses. In Iraq, there are still detention centers and prisons that run by U.S. forces apart from those run by the Iraqi authorities.
The official who did not say when the transfer of responsibility occurred expressed "the preparedness of the Justice Ministry to run all the prisons and detention centers now under Interior and Defense ministries responsibility." He said "the transfer that occurred was intended to avoid any human rights abuses against the inmates and to accelerate referring the detainees to courts of law to look into the charges directed against them."
Last week, the Iraqi Human Rights minister Wijdan Michael called upon the Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to place the responsibility of running all detention centers under the Justice Ministry to prevent human rights abuses. In Iraq, there are still detention centers and prisons that run by U.S. forces apart from those run by the Iraqi authorities.
Labels: detention centres, Justice Ministry
