Exclusive: U.S.-funded Somali intelligence agency has been using kids as spies
A 15-year-old al-Shabab defector stands in early April in the Elman Center, a facility in Mogadishu that rehabilitates former child combatants. The boy and several others said they were forced to work as informants for the Somali intelligence agency. (Kevin Sieff/The Washington Post)

A group of boys sits in a class at the Elman Center on April 6. The majority of the boys were forced to work as informants for the Somali intelligence agency, some for as long as four years. (Kevin Sieff/The Washington Post)

A 15-year-old al-Shabab defector stands in early April in the Elman Center, a facility in Mogadishu that rehabilitates former child combatants. The boy and several others said they were forced to work as informants for the Somali intelligence agency. (Kevin Sieff/The Washington Post)

 By Kevin Sieff May 7

MOGADISHU, Somalia — For years they were children at war, boys given rifles and training by al-Qaeda-backed militants and sent to the front lines of this country’s bloody conflict. Many had been kidnapped from schools and soccer fields and forced to fight.

The United Nations pleaded for them to be removed from the battlefield. The United States denounced the Islamist militants for using children to plant bombs and carry out assassinations.

But when the boys were finally disarmed — some defecting and others apprehended — what awaited them was yet another dangerous role in the war. This time, the children say, they were forced to work for the Somali government.

The boys were used for years as informants by the country’s National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA), according to interviews with the children and Somali and U.N. officials. They were marched through neighborhoods where al-Shabab insurgents were hiding and told to point out their former comrades. The faces of intelligence agents were covered, but the boys — some as young as 10 — were rarely concealed, according to the children. Several of them were killed. One tried to hang himself while in custody.

The Somali agency’s widespread use of child informants, which has not been previously documented, appears to be a flagrant violation of international law. It raises difficult questions for the U.S. government, which for years has provided substantial funding and training to the Somali agency through the CIA, according to current and former U.S. officials.

A CIA spokesman declined to comment on the issue. But in the past the U.S. government has supported Somali security institutions — despite well-known human-rights violations — citing the urgent need to combat terrorist groups such as al-Shabab.

[Somalia’s president says al-Qaeda-backed rebels are ‘resurgent’]

The child informants were used to collect intelligence or identify suspects in some of the world’s most dangerous neighborhoods, according to their accounts.

“They took me sometimes in a car and sometimes on foot and said, ‘Tell us who is al-Shabab,” said one 15-year-old who said he was held by the intelligence agency. “It’s scary because you know everyone can see you working with them.”

Read More