BAGHDAD — On June 27, the US Department of State’s Human Trafficking Report for 2017 took Iraq off its list, after the country had been listed in 2016 for recruiting children into combat.

The move raises questions about what Iraq could have done to get Washington to take this positive position for Baghdad, despite Human Rights Watch's having said in a report issued Aug. 30, 2016, that tribal militias backed by the Iraqi government recruit children to fight the Islamic State (IS).

On June 5, press reports accused “some militias of opening centers in the Sunni provinces to train children and adolescents on how to use weapons.”

These charges also included the Kurdistan Region in the country's north. The executive director of the children's rights division at Human Rights Watch, Zama Neff, said Jan. 6, “Human Rights Watch documented 29 cases of child recruitment in which armed groups linked to the PKK [Kurdistan Workers Party] had recruited children in Sinjar and in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq — even though the group's commanders had pledged to end the practice.”