International laws and the Geneva Conventions exist for a reason. One of them is to ensure that child soldiers cannot be treated as regular prisoners of war given their age. It is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, impossible for a twelve-year-old to seriously grasp the reality of what they’re doing when involved in military action. Were that not the case then armies the world over would be replete with conscripts and volunteers younger that 15 years of age. One need only study the defense of Berlin by both young girls and boys of the Hitler-Jugend indoctrinated by an entirely corrupted ideology to understand the reality of such usury. Children are malleable, eager to please, and rarely understand the gravity of such situations. On top that, they are a tool that is easily corrupted to carry out unspeakable horrors, as has been demonstrated in Africa and elsewhere. In fact, throughout history, children have been used in times of conflict even in cases in which the moral codes of societies deem it unacceptable.
That, of course, covers those that can technically be deemed child soldiers having been used as such by adults. When it comes to singular cases that are far more ambiguous, reality becomes even more warped.
How the United States was ever allowed to circumvent the Geneva Conventions with regards to the classification of child soldiers is beyond me. But the truth of the matter is that they did, and in the chaos that consumed Afghanistan after its invasion in 2001, the United States classified mere children as enemy combatants, claiming them terrorists and therefore beyond the protections of the Geneva Conventions. The most telling case is that of Mohammed Jawad, considered the youngest detainee to be sent to Guantanamo, who was taken into custody in December of 2002.
The day that Jawad was, for all intents and purposes, abducted, he spent it helping his uncle dig a well. After that he went to buy some tea. It would be the last time that his family would see him for seven years. He was, at the time, twelve, though according to a bone scan conducted when he arrived at Guantanamo the US military claimed that he was roughly seventeen. On top of that, during questioning, Jawad claimed that his father had died fighting the Soviets in the 80’s, which would make it impossible for him to have been twelve when he was detained. Lastly, birth certificates in Afghanistan are extremely rare, so determining Jawal’s age was next to impossible.
Of course, in the post 9/11 world that’s enough to warrant his detention as far as most are concerned. He was accused of throwing a grenade at a US army vehicle on the day of his arrest, injuring two US soldiers and an interpreter. He would later be charged with attempted murder after confessing to the crime at Bagram Air Base, a facility that has since been determined to be the location at which the introduction of systematic prisoner abuse began.
Jawal was initially arrested by local authorities who spoke Persian, meaning that he could barely understand them. Thus, after it was made clear to him that his family would be killed if he didn’t agree to place his thumbprint on a document, he was transported to Bagram and questioned further, which most likely means that he was interrogated and endured the employment of various techniques, even given his age. After his release, at the age of 19, Jawal confirmed that he had been tortured while in US custody. Records provided by the US military show that after a year at the facility he attempted to kill himself by repeatedly bashing his head against the wall of his cell.
In the end, after seven years of imprisonment, U.S. District Judge Ellen Huvelle found Jawal innocent of the charges, claiming the government’s case “riddled with holes”. Thus, Jawal was released this August and flown back to Afghanistan by the US military in shackles, despite the court’s ruling. Once he arrived, he was taken to meet with Hamid Karzai, who promised him money and a house. Even his own mother refused to believe that it was him until she was able to identify him by a mark on his head.
To this day, The Pentagon contends that Jawal is guilty, no matter the court’s ruling.
How we conduct ourselves is a reflection of who we are. If we are not that which we claim to be, then we are nothing. And if we are nothing, then the illegal detention of a child is excusable given that, in the end, it means that we are defending nothing. And if we are defending nothing, then all that we claim sacred is nothing more than the province of those become monsters.
