US military has detained hundreds of Afghan teens during war, report says

More than 200 teenagers were captured for a year at a time, characterised as 'enemy combatants' in US report to UN
Parwan detention facility Afghanistan
US military personnel stands on a guard tower at the Parwan detention facility near Bagram north of Kabul, Afghanistan. Photograph: David Guttenfelder/AP


The State Department characterized the detainees held since 2008 as "enemy combatants" in a report sent every four years to the United Nations in Geneva updating US compliance with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The US military had held them "to prevent a combatant from returning to the battlefield", the report said.

A few are still confined at the detention facility in Parwan, which will be turned over to the Afghan government, it said. "Many of them have been released or transferred to the Afghan government," said the report, distributed this week.

Most of the juvenile Afghan detainees were about 16 years old, but their age was not usually determined until after capture, the US report said.

If the average age is 16, "This means it is highly likely that some children were as young as 14 or 13 years old when they were detained by US forces," Jamil Dakwar, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's human rights program, said Friday.

"I've represented children as young as 11 or 12 who have been at Bagram," said Tina M Foster, executive director of the International Justice Network, which represents adult and juvenile Bagram detainees.

"I question the number of 200, because there are thousands of detainees at Parwan," Foster said Friday. "There are other children whose parents have said these children are under 18 at the time of their capture, and the US doesn't allow the detainees or their families to contest their age."

Dakwar also criticized the length of detention, a year on average, according to the US report.



The previous American report four years ago provided a snapshot of the focus of the US military's effort in the endgame of the Bush presidency after years of warfare and anti-terrorism campaigns. In 2008, the US said it held about 500 juveniles in Iraqi detention centers and then had only about 10 at the Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan. A total of some 2,500 youths had been detained, almost all in Iraq, from 2002 through 2008 under the Bush administration.

Barack Obama campaigned for the presidency in 2008 in part on winding down active US involvement in the Iraq war, and shifting the military focus to Afghanistan. The latest figures on under-18 detainees reflect the redeployment of US efforts to Afghanistan.

Because the teen detainees were not charged with any crime, "a detainee would generally not be provided legal assistance". They were allowed to attend open hearings and defend themselves, and a personal advocate was assigned to each detainee, the report said.



It cited a 2004 US supreme court case, Hamdi v Rumsfeld, as establishing that "the law of armed conflict permits the United States to detain belligerents until the end of hostilities without charging such individuals with crimes, because they are not being held as criminals facing future criminal trial".




In January, the State Department will send a delegation to Geneva to present the report to the UN's Committee on the Rights of the Child, and to answer any further questions the UN committee members may have.