Child Soldiers Global Report 2001 - Afghanistan

Mainly covers the period June 1998 to April 2001 as well as including some earlier information.

Because of the specific situation of Afghanistan, where the internationally-recognised government has actual control of only 10 per cent of the territory, the layout of this country entry is significantly different to that used for others. This has been done only for reasons of clarity and does not in any way reflect on the legal status of the different parties to the conflict.

• Population
  – total population: 21,923,000
  – under-18s: 10,740,000
• Compulsory recruitment age: not known
• Voluntary recruitment age: not known
• Voting Age for Government Elections: not applicable
• Child soldiers: indicated in all armed groups but numbers unknown
• CRC-OP-CAC: not signed
• Other treaties ratified: Afghanistan ratified the Geneva Conventions in September 1956, but has not acceded to the Additional Protocols and has been through successive changes of regime since that time. An Interim Afghan Government ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) in 1994, but the Taleban authorities claimed to have annulled this in a general revocation of all international agreements.

• Children have been used as soldiers by all warring parties in Afghanistan's two decade-old civil war. Forced and compulsory recruitment by the Taleban and Northern Alliance continues to be reported, despite international commitments to the contrary. Young recruits are drawn from within Afghanistan, the Afghan refugee diaspora and religious schools in Pakistan.

CONTEXT

Afghanistan has been shattered by two decades of war. The 1979 invasion of the country by the Soviet Union was met by armed resistance by a variety of factions, many sponsored by neighbouring countries and the West. Following the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, the Afghan Government was overthrown and replaced by an interim coalition government. This arrangement quickly broke down into civil war between different warring factions. All told, these conflicts have killed an estimated 1.7 million people, permanently disabled another 2 million, and driven more than 5 million from their homes. The Taleban, a conservative Sunni Pushtun group, first emerged in 1994 in the south of the country and from madrasas or religious schools in Pakistan. After a series of military successes, the Taleban seized Kabul in late September 1996 and is now in control of about 90 per cent of Afghanistan. The Taleban have imposed a strict regime based on Sharia law in areas under their control. The Taleban government, however, has only been recognised internationally by three countries: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Fighting against the Taleban is a coalition of former parties and commanders known as the 'Northern Alliance' or 'United Front' which today controls only the north-eastern provinces. The Northern Alliance comprises forces of former Defence Minister Ahmad Shah Massoud, the Junbish-i Milli-yi Islami of General Dostum, the Shia party Hezb-i-Wahdat and other minor groups. It supports the claims of the 'government' led by former President Rabbani which continues to hold Afghanistan's UN seat. According to the United Nations Special Mission in Afghanistan (UNSMA), the Taleban and Northern Alliance have a typical strength of 30-40,000 fighters on each side. Both sides can mobilise approximately 80-100,000 soldiers during crisis periods, but these forces levels are difficult to sustain.¹

National Recruitment Legislation

Afghanistan's 1990 Constitution did not specifically provide for compulsory or voluntary military service, but the status of this document is unclear given the contested nature of the Afghan state. (According to one source, the Constitutions of 1924, 1931, 1964 and 1976 set the age for conscription at 22 with military service lasting two years. In the 1980s, however, the former government lowered the conscription age from 22 to 18 under a state of emergency law.)²

Taleban representatives told a visiting Danish delegation in November 1997 that "all men aged over 18 can become soldiers" and that there is no conscription.³ In 1998, the Supreme Leader of the Taleban, Mullah Mohammad Omar, decreed that any followers who are too young and who are not yet growing a beard must leave his fighting militia. He warned that anyone violating this order would face severe punishment.⁴ While this directive relates recruitment to puberty and physical appearance in Islamic terms, it still allows the possibility of under-18 recruitment.

It is not known whether the Northern Alliance has any specific rules governing the minimum age of recruitment into these armed forces. During the 1999 UN Security Council debate on children in armed conflict, the Afghan representative (who represents the 'government'/Northern Alliance which still holds Afghanistan's UN seat) declared that his country "shared the idea of a new peace and security agenda for children and women, ending the use of children as soldiers, and the provision of better protection for children and women in situations of armed conflict."⁵

Recruitment practice

Children have been heavily involved in the 20-year-old war in Afghanistan. Two generations of children have grown up under arms – first as members of the resistance to Soviet forces, later as members of Afghanistan's many warring factions. Research conducted in 1995 on the situation in Afghanistan for the UN Study on the Impact of Armed Conflict on Children (the 'Machel Study') found that the youngest child soldier was 13 years old (though did not mention for whom he was fighting). Other sources have claimed that children as young as 11 were members of the various armed groups.⁶

Even those children who have not served as armed fighters have been subjected to other forms of militarisation. In schools both inside the country and refugee camps, textbooks and teaching methods have used images of tanks, guns and bullets in mathematics and reading classes. In their communities the widespread availability of small arms has promoted a "kalashnikov culture" that has shaped the worldview of children.

A 1999 survey conducted by the ICRC found that 89 per cent of Afghan respondents believed that no one should take up arms for combat before the age of 18. Moreover, 76 per cent were in favour of a 20-year minimum age, and 19 per cent were in favour of 21 years as the minimum age for participation in armed conflict.⁷

Northern Alliance

While there is little information on recruitment practice within the Northern Alliance, children have been reported in their ranks, particularly during recent years as their military situation has become more pressed. During a visit to Pakistan in November 2000, Coalition representatives were told by reliable sources with access to the northern areas of major new recruitment drives (forced and voluntary) in the Panjshir Valley and Badakshan as forces led by Massoud defended positions against a major Taleban offensive. (Observers note that Massoud has traditionally relied on his popular support base in Panjshir and that increased levels of recruitment in Badakshan reflect increased difficulties in maintaining force levels.)

The Taleban

There have been many reports of child and adolescent recruitment by the Taleban although no estimates of total numbers are available.⁸ When they first became party to the civil war in 1994, the Taleban recruited mainly among young Afghan refugees attending religious schools in Pakistan. (The term Taleban signifies 'students'.) Progressively, as the conflict has receded in Taleban-held areas, recruitment takes place within Afghanistan, but the Taleban continue to draw recruits from networks of madrasas in Pakistan sponsored by various Islamist parties and groups. Where once these institutions were confined largely to the border regions, today they are spread throughout the country (even in urban centres of Punjab and Sindh) and not only draw from the Afghan refugee diaspora. The Taleban (like other Afghan factions before it) has also been joined by (usually older) fighters from Middle East countries and elsewhere.

According to some NGO staff in Pakistan, no girls have been recruited by the Taleban, but there have been reports of forced marriage of girls from Shamali and Mazar.⁹ Taleban representatives told a Danish Government fact-finding mission in November 1997 that there was no conscription and recruitment was on a voluntary basis only. Recruitment campaigns were carried out in which local mullahs of shura heads would deliver rousing speeches to attract recruits. The Taleban denied that village heads were required to supply quotas of "volunteers" or buy an exemptions from conscription. It was claimed that Taleban soldiers were not paid beyond their keep and that there was no set length of service; soldiers were reportedly free to leave their units although anyone that deserts in combat could face detention or flogging. The Deputy Governor of Jalalabad stated that there was no actual enrolment of soldiers; commanders knew who was in their units but there was no centralised roll.

NGOs and other governments have continued to report compulsory recruitment by the Taleban within Afghanistan, however. An Afghan aid worker based in Pakistan stated that "each land-owning family was required to provide one young man and 2.4 million Afghanis (about USD 500) in expenses. Each draftee can expect to spend two months fighting every 6 to 12 months."¹⁰ The Danish fact-finding mission in 1997 was also told that local communities were told to supply a given number of able-bodied men, whom they would be responsible for selecting themselves or buy an exemption for the equivalent of USD 200-300 per person. UN sources have indicated that recruitment to the Taleban is usually voluntary, with occasional conscription when additional forces are needed.¹¹

Taleban recruitment is often cyclical, with large scale recruitment drives associated with significant defeats or major offensives. For instance, Samiul Haq, who runs two large madrasas in Pakistan boasted that most of his Pakistani and Afghan students had joined the Taleban after defeats in the north in May 1997. The same madrasas allegedly provided the Taleban with thousands of new Afghan and Pakistani recruits after the final capture of Mazar-i-Sharif in August 1998.¹² Madrasas sponsored by networks which support the Taleban will periodically close (eg for holidays) and send students for military service (presented as a form of jihad and, therefore, part of their religious obligation and education). Many of these students return after one or two months 'experience' and are not used on the frontline but rather to police urban centres and checkpoints, thus freeing more experienced manpower for the front. (It has been suggested that this is one reason journalists and other visitors observe an apparently higher incidence of child involvement in Taleban forces.)¹³

Amnesty International reported one such case of a man who filed a petition in the Sindh High Court in Karachi, Pakistan, after his 13-year-old son was reported missing while he was studying in the local Jamia Islamia school. The father accused the principal of the school of having sent his son to fight in Afghanistan without consulting the parents. The school finally admitted that the young boy left to fight in Afghanistan, supposedly of his own volition. The boy returned one month later saying that he has been persuaded by the nazim of the school to go to Afghanistan. Some 600 other juveniles were reportedly taken in buses to Afghanistan on the same day. The father withdrew his petition after the Pakistan police registered a criminal case, although no investigation was made and no one was arrested.¹⁴

In July 1999, it was reported that between 3,000 and 5,000 Pakistani recruits belonging to several Islamist parties and networks had arrived in Kabul; some were reportedly veterans of the conflict in Jammu and Kashmir while others had left madrasas for the summer holidays. In addition, a brigade of some 400 Arab fighters from several countries in the Middle East arrived under the control of Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden.¹⁵ In August 1999, a Taleban delegation visited all the main madrasas in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province appealing for students to join the Taleban's holy war. It is estimated that up to 5,000 students left their schools. According to the UN, the students who joined the Taleban at that time were aged between 15 and 35. This new recruitment drive was organised following a major Taleban defeat and in anticipation of a new offensive in the north.¹⁶

In 1999, after UNICEF warned that there were increasing numbers of child soldiers in the Taleban's ranks¹⁷ , the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, made a report to the Security Council in which he noted that the "Taleban offensive was reinforced by 2,000 to 5,000 recruits, mostly emanating from religious schools within Pakistan, many of them non-Afghans and some below the age of 14".¹⁸ The Taleban reacted strongly to the report and insisted on taking UN officials to the frontline to see for themselves that the claim was untrue. On 1 December 1999 Erick de Mull, the head of the UN's humanitarian mission in Afghanistan, visited the front-line and reported no evidence of children being used to fight; the only child he saw was a cook.¹⁹

In February 2000, the Pakistan's Interior Minister claimed that "only one per cent" of the madrasas in Pakistan sent their students for training in Afghanistan.²⁰ In April 2000, he warned that sectarian parties were "spreading poison" and "polluting the minds" of children: "All their madrasas, inappropriate literature, weapons and their activities will be stopped." The Pakistan Government was reportedly working on a draft law to regulate and monitor these schools, but progress was unclear and stiff opposition was anticipated. See also Pakistan country entry for information on recruitment to the Afghanistan conflict.

See also Pakistan country report.

1 Danish Immigration Service, Fact-Finding Mission to Afghanistan, July 1998; www.udlst.dk.

2 Blaustein, A.P. & Flanz, G.H., Constitutions of the countries of the world, Oceana Publications, New York.

3 UNSMA cited in Danish Immigration Service report, op. cit.

4 "Row over Taleban child soldier claim", BBC News, 01/12/99.

5 "Security Council strongly condemns targeting of children in situations of armed conflict, including their recruitment and use as soldiers", Press Release SC/6716, 25/08/99.

6 RB database quoting The Scotsman, 17/12/97, see http://www.rb.se.

7 Greenberg Research Inc., People on War, Country Report Afghanistan: ICRC worldwide consultation on the rules of war, ICRC, Geneva, November 1999. See also the global report of 10/99.

8 See for instance, Rashid, A; Taleban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia, UK, 2000; Newsline, "Inside Jihad", 2/01; Dawn, "Religious Schools Battle for Image", 7/12/99; Dawn, "Religious Students Rush to Afghanistan". 10/8/98; Newsline, "Young Guns", 9/97; The News, "Edge of the Extreme", 24/1/97. See also RB database (http://www.rb.se) for European press stories.

9 Information provided to CSUCS by reliable sources in Pakistan who request confidentiality.

10 "Young flee to avoid Taleban conscription", The South China Morning Post, 4/05/99.

11 Danish Immigration Service, op cit.

12 The Dar ul-Uloom Haqqania in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province and the Jamia Uloom-ul-Islamiya in Karachi; Rubin, B. R. "Who are the Taleban?", Current History, 02/99.

13 Information gathered by CSUCS during visit to Pakistan, 11/2000.

14 Amnesty International, Children in South Asia securing their rights, ASA 04/01/98, April 1998.

15 Rashid, A., "Taleban ready for decisive push", The Daily Telegraph, 22/07/99.

16 Galpin, R., "Teenage recruits swell Taleban ranks", The Guardian, 21/08/99. See also "Security Council strongly condemns targeting of children in situations of armed conflict, including their recruitment and use as soldiers", Press Release SC/6716, 25/08/99; Lobjois, P., "Pakistanais fiers de mourir en Afghanistan: recrutes par les Taleban, ils pensaient combattre les Russes., Liberation, 13/08/99.

17 Galpin, R. "UN fears for Afghan child soldiers", BBC News, 20/08/99.

18 Report of the Secretary General to the UN Security Council on the situation in Afghanistan and its implications for international peace and security, UN Doc. S/1999/994, 21/09/99, paras. 7 and 40.

19 Cannon, K. "Taleban leader attacks UN report", Associated Press, 30/11/99. "Row over Taleban child soldier claim", BBC News, 1/12/99; Shah, A. "UN sees no Afghan child soldiers", Associated Press, 1/12/99.

20 Baruah, A., "Pakistan bans display of arms", The Hindu, 17/2/00.