HRW reports surge in Taliban child soldier recruitment

Taliban forces in Afghanistan have added scores of children to their ranks since mid-2015 in violation of the international prohibition on the use of child soldiers, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said.

New Human Rights Watch research shows that the Taliban have been training and deploying children for various military operations including the production and planting of improvised explosive devices (IED).

In Kunduz province, the Taliban have increasingly used madrasas, or Islamic religious schools, to provide military training to children between the ages of 13 and 17, many of whom have been deployed in combat.

Although the Taliban have recruited child soldiers since the 1990s, local residents and analysts said they believe an increase in child soldiers over the last 12 months was largely due to the insurgents’ major offensive in northern Afghanistan, which began in April 2015.

Under international humanitarian law, the deployment of people under the age of 15 is considered a war crime.

Human Rights Watch interviewed relatives of 13 children recruited as Taliban soldiers over the past year, and verified these claims through interviews with civil society activists, political analysts, and the United Nations.

Despite Taliban claims that they only enlist fighters who have achieved “mental and physical maturity,” and do not use “boys with no beards” in military operations, some of the children recruited from madrasas in Kunduz, Takhar, and Badakhshan provinces are 13 or younger.

The Taliban have previously denied“the use of children and adolescents in Jihadic Operations,” but its deployment of individuals under the age of 18 violates international law applicable in Afghanistan and in cases involving children under 15 is a war crime.

The report suggests that the government and military forces (US and NATO) ban madrasas and teaching of religious education by evoking ‘The Optional Protocol’ in the ‘Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict’ found in International Humanitarian Law.

The Taliban madrasas attract many poor families because the Taliban cover their expenses and provide food and clothing for the children.

In some cases they offer cash to families for sending their boys to the madrasas. An expert on Kunduz told Human Rights Watch that traditionally, even before the Taliban established madrasas in these areas, rural and village families sent at least one son to the local madrasa because of the prestige associated with the status of becoming a mullah (someone educated in the basics of Islamic law).

In the cases of child soldiers Human Rights Watch investigated, some boys attended the madrasas in the early morning hours and then attended government schools later in the day.

Other boys who had been recruited attended the madrasas full time. For example, “Razeq,” (a pseudonym) 16, a resident of Chahardara district in Kunduz province, is a student in Class 6 at a government-run school, which he attends between 8 a.m. and noon every day. Between 5 a.m. and 8 a.m. he attends a madrasa controlled by Malawi Abdul Haq, a Taliban commander in the district.

As of late 2015, the madrasa had about 80 students, most of them children between the ages of 13 and 17. All of them are vulnerable to recruitment.

Moreover this move by HRW is a clear indication that the war on Madrasas is not over especially after the women right organizations voiced their concerns recently, followed by an Al Jazeera documentary of Madrasas in Kunduz which towed the same line as HRW and this theme was again picked up by Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah urging Taliban to stop using child soldiers recruited from Madrasas in their latest speeches, which essentially consisted of extending an olive branch or rather the branch of surrender and shame to the Taliban.