NEW YORK: The US military is facing fresh questions over its targeting policy in Afghanistan after a senior army officer suggested that troops were on the lookout for “children with potentially hostile intent”.

In comments that legal experts and campaigners described as “deeply troubling”, Lieutenant Colonel Marion Carrington told the Marine Corp Times that children, as well as “military-age males”, had been identified as a potential threat because some were being used by the Taliban to assist in attacks against Afghan and coalition forces.

Carrington, whose unit, 1st Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, was assisting the Afghan police, said: “In addition to looking for military-age males, it’s looking for children with potentially hostile intent.”

In the article, headlined “Some Afghan kids aren’t bystanders”, Carrington referred to a case this year in which the Afghan national police in Kandahar province found children helping insurgents by carrying soda bottles full of potassium chlorate.

The piece also quoted an unnamed marine corps official who questioned the “innocence” of Afghan children, particularly three who were killed in a US rocket strike in October. Last month the New York Times quoted local officials who said Borjan, 12, Sardar Wali, 10, and Khan Bibi, eight, from Helmand’s Nawa district, had been killed gathering dung for fuel.

However, the US official claimed that, before they called for the strike on suspected insurgents planting improvised explosive devices, marines had seen the children digging a hole in a dirt road and that “the Taliban may have recruited the children to carry out the mission”.

Last year Human Rights Watch reported an alarming increase in the Taliban’s deployment of children in suicide bombings, some as young as seven. But the apparent widening of the US military’s controversial targeting policy has alarmed human rights lawyers and campaigners.

Amos Guiora, a law professor at the University of Utah specialising in counter-terrorism, said Carrington’s remarks reflected the shifting definitions of legitimate military targets within the Obama administration. Guiora, who spent years in the Israel Defence Forces, including time as a legal adviser in the Gaza Strip, said: “I have great respect for people who put themselves in harm’s way. Carrington is probably a great guy but (what) he is articulating is a deeply troubling policy adopted by the Obama administration.

“The decision about who you consider a legitimate target is less defined by your conduct than the conduct of the people or category of people which you are assigned to belong to ... that is beyond troubling. It is also illegal and immoral.”Guiora added: “If you are looking to create a paradigm where you increase the ‘aperture’ — that scares the shit out of me. It doesn’t work, operationally, morally or practically.” Guiora cited comments made by John Brennan, the White House counter-terrorism chief, in April, in which he “talked about flexible definitions of imminent threat”.

Pardiss Kebriaei, senior attorney for the Centre for Constitutional Rights and a specialist in targeted killings, said she was concerned over what seemed to be an attempt to justify the killing of children. Kebriaei said: “This is one official quoted. I don’t know if that standard is what they are using but the standard itself is troubling.”

The US is already facing criticism for using the term “military-aged male” to justify targeted killings where the identities of individuals are not known. Under the US definition all fighting-age males killed in drone strikes are regarded as combatants and not civilians, unless there is explicit evidence to the contrary. This has the effect of significantly reducing the official tally of civilian deaths.

 By arrangement with the Guardian