Back To Iraq

I have heard stories about Iraq’s child prisoners and we all know that there is a story out there of some horrible video footage of child rapes, but this story in the Sunday Herald is the first I’ve seen that puts all the details of what is publicly known together, from UNICEF, the ICRC, Amnesty International and others. It’s very disturbing.

I had not, for instance, heard about this:

The [UNICEF]report also states: “A detention centre for children was established in Baghdad, where according to ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) a significant number of children were detained. Unicef was informed that the coalition forces were planning to transfer all children in adult facilities to this ‘specialised’ child detention centre. In July 2003, Unicef requested a visit to the centre but access was denied. Poor security in the area of the detention centre has prevented visits by independent observers like the ICRC since last December.

Another jail — for kids? The article goes on to note an obvious problem with this strategy. Young muslim males are not exactly the smartest group to send to a prison to be radicalized:

“The perceived unjust detention of Iraqi males, including youths, for suspected activities against the occupying forces has become one of the leading causes for the mounting frustration among Iraqi youths and the potential for radicalisation of this population group.”

The article points out that we have no jurisdiction anymore to be holding anyone, really, but it seems that we are and juveniles are among them. The credibility of the military on these matters being what it is, the following must be taken with a grain of salt. And surely, by now, we should have learned that these processes must be transparent. Apparently not.

High-placed officials in the Pentagon and Centcom told the Sunday Herald that children as young as 14 were being held by US forces. “We do have juveniles detained,” a source said. “They have been detained as they are deemed to be a threat or because they have acted against the coalition or Iraqis.”

Officially, the Pentagon says it is holding “around 60 juvenile detainees primarily aged 16 and 17”, although when it was pointed out that the Red Cross estimate is substantially higher, a source admitted “numbers may have gone up, we might have detained more kids”.

Officials would not comment about children under the age of 16 being held prisoner. Sources said: ‘‘It’s a real challenge ascertaining their ages. Unlike the UK or the US, they don’t have IDs or birth certificates.” The Sunday Herald has been told, however, that at least five children aged under 16 are being kept at Abu Ghraib and Camp Bucca.

A highly placed source in the Pentagon said: “We have done investigations into accusations of juveniles being abused and raped and can’t find anything that resembles that.”

The Pentagon’s official policy is to segregate juvenile prisoners from the rest of the prison population, and allow young inmates to join family members also being detained. “Our main concern is that they are not abused or harassed by older detainees. We know they need special treatment,” an official said.

With the political season upon us, it’s easy for me to forget the horror of what we did in these Iraqi prisons and how utterly stupid it was in terms of the threat of islamic fundamentalism. But, as Yglesias pointed out today, this story is so over just as Karl and Dick knew it would be once we passed the magic meaningless date they set forth as the crucible. The media are pulling their people out. It is now like Afghanistan — one of those foreign hotspots that boring ugly people on PBS are always yammering about.

But, GI’s are still getting picked off daily, ever bigger car bombs are exploding and kids are mouldering in jails and nobody knows or cares about it. It’s as if the Iraq war was one of those summer shark stories.