Omar Khadr: Warrior or Criminal?

NPR reported this week on Canada's response to the release on YouTube of this excerpt from an interrogation at Guantanamo Bay.



The prisoner is Omar Khadr, then a 16-year-old child soldier; the interrogators are Canadian intelligence officers. Whether this constitutes fair treatment of a child detainee or not, the bigger question in the Khadr case is put forth by Corey Flintoff during the NPR segment. This question has nothing to do with his treatment, nor with his age, but rather with his status:

"The story of Omar Khadr's capture is the story of a firefight in Afghanistan, an exchange of gun fire and after the exchange he allegedly throws a hand grenade... that sounds to me as close to the capture of a POW and as different from capturing somebody who's hatching a plot to bomb airplanes as I can imagine."

Indeed.

High Crimes

A great leap forward in international criminal law: Omar Bashir, President of Sudan, has become the first sitting head of state to be indicted by the International Criminal Court.

At the Jurist, law professor Michael Kelly explains why this step constitutes one more helpful chink in the armor of sovereign immunity... but he also explains why Bashir is unlikely to be apprehended anytime soon.

In other words, a great leap forward for international law (as a set of rules) does not necessarily translate into a political or legal victory in practical terms. Quite the contrary, in some cases.

For this reason, the Wall Street Journal joins China in opposing the action - but for different reasons. China seeks to protect the sovereign right of governments to do as they damn well please. The WSJ bloggers recall how international judicial mechanisms served as a substitute, during the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, for military action which could have stopped the bloodshed.

But a non-state actor (this time not a corporation but rather the human rights organization Avaaz) has an idea:

"Al Bashir knows that he will be caught only if other governments, especially Arab and African governments, agree to help the International Criminal Court. To make sure this happens, Avaaz is launching a large regional ad campaign, urging the leaders of these nations to save Darfur by helping the ICC."

Click here to donate.

Unsurprisingly, so far African nations are looking askance at the move. Will an ad campaign change their minds? Stay tuned.

Nuggets From the Slop Bucket

Let's see, what happened in the blogosphere while I was away?

Kenneth Anderson reported on robot spiders, soon to be gathering intelligence on the battlefield. Though, his post seems to take for granted BAE Systems' line that they will "save thousands of lives." Gather countless bits of intel, perhaps, but whether lives are saved or lost as a result is in the hands of weapons-bearers and state-makers.

Nicholas Gevosdev at the Washington Realist suggested that R2P doctrine might be applied only to nondemocracies, as a way of gaining support from Southern democracies like South Africa and India. Commenters seem skeptical the idea would sell, but give little consideration to whether it's ethically preferable.

According to Daniel Graeber, the USG has rejected Omar Khadr's defense that he was a child soldier when he tossed a grenade at a US soldier in a firefight. A shame and an outrage, but I wonder if his defense hasn't missed the boat by focusing on Khadr's age. The USG wants to try him for murder, but he was in a firefight. Hello.

And Dan Drezner writes admiringly, and erringly, of Hillary's stick-to-it-ness:

"her performance over the past few months has managed to shift perceptions about her in ways that salvage her reputation as a politician of national standing."

This is nonsense on stilts. Her refusal to drop out of the race has been widely interpreted (falsely in my view) as hurting her party. Her seemingly self-serving intransigence against all reason has recalled the worst of bull-headedness in recent Presidents. That voters now value reason over cowboy antics as a result of the failures of the Bush presidency is the evident in this week's primary results and will become blindingly obvious in November.

Al-Qaeda, America, and Child Soldiers

An ostensible al-Qaeda recruiting video was released by the US military last week depicting the training of young boys as kidnappers and gunmen.



Is this an authentic video or a propaganda film by the US military? It doesn't strain the imagination to think of al-Qaeda training youngsters, but the timing of the video's release is certainly interesting. Could it be aimed at drawing Americans' anti-child-soldiers sentiment toward our enemy, and away from the fact that the US military is preparing to prosecute Omar Khadr, a Guantanamo detainee who was only 15 when he was captured on the battlefield. Under US treaty obligations (the US signed the Optional Protocol to the CRC in 2002), Omar Khadr should not be tried as an adult, but this is unlikely to save him.

For what it's worth I'm not sure I agree with either position. The 18-years cut-off point below which it is supposedly unethical to recruit persons is a arbitrary Western construct. In many societies, including areas of Central Asia, young men reach fighting age much sooner, just as young women are married off in their teen years. We may object to this, but the mere evidence of such training doesn't by itself signify a lack of "civilization" on the part of al-Qaeda. I think it's much more important what these young lads are being trained to do.

As for Khadr. His lawyers argue he should not be tried at all. But is that appropriate? If the alternative is to rot in Gitmo without a trial like the other several hundred inmates, I'm not sure Khadr wouldn't prefer to have his day in court.