A Pentagon Report released in August 2019 announced that ISIS is resurging in Syria less than five months after Trump announced the caliphate had been defeated for good. While ISIS continues to expand their army, one common method of growth has been the utilization of children to complete dangerous tasks for the group, such as assembling weapons, going on raids with live ammunition, and sacrificing their lives as suicide bombers.
It is imperative to limit the pool of children available to terrorist organizations like ISIS through reforming the education system and creating more stability at the local level to ensure these groups do not obtain more power to recruit in the first place. Because of the psychological and physical damage children face when working with a group like this, there needs to be a strong emphasis on the child’s rights through rehabilitation back into society.
Who are the “child soldiers?”
According to the UN, a child soldier is any person under the age of 18 belonging to or being utilized by an armed group. However, children don’t have to be fighters to be considered as a child soldier. Groups utilize children as cooks, sex workers, spies, and other administrative roles in the organization.
How are children recruited?
There isn’t only one method that ISIS employs to recruit children. However, there are similar patterns in the way they interact with those they want to join their organization. Members start off by finding and attempting to isolate children from their loved ones. They choose kids with less parental supervision, such as those in single-family households or others who have experienced domestic abuse.
The group also heavily indoctrinates children in orphanages and schools with mosque-based teaching sessions where they can gain the trust of the children they are interacting with. There, they’re able to provide basic supplies to help the children’s needs and change their perspective to view the terrorists as positive role models in their lives. Once the recruiters have gained the trust of these children, they bring them to Sharia lectures and attempt to desensitize them towards the violence they would witness as a soldier. This includes public executions and other videos demonstrating the harm they cause.
Next, recruiters test the children to see which ones retained the most amount of information. This allows them to see which ones would be the best choices for training. It also motivates other children and creates a competitive atmosphere as the other children vie for the attention of the soldiers.
Lastly, recruiters start offering different paths that children could take in ISIS, making them feel as if they have control over their own lives. They are trained to do more than just kill by learning administrative skills, IED manufacturing, and how to act as an enforcement role. Adolescents start viewing the organization as a way to grow and better themselves compared to being impoverished and jobless at home.
Current struggles with saving child soldiers
There are essentially no figures online that discuss the exact number of children serving in non-state groups. The lack of data available makes it incredibly difficult to find children who have been recruited, especially when ISIS is geographically scattered.
Source: Institute for the Study of War
Even when children are saved from their duties, some governments capture and treat them as prisoners. For example, the Iraqi government detains former child soldiers of ISIS because of their association with the terrorist organization. However, according to international standards, children who have been recruited to participate in terrorist activities are supposed to be considered victims. Instead, they are tortured by governments in order to obtain confessions and then send them to prison.
Lastly, these children face an incredible amount of psychological and emotional trauma after coming out of ISIS. They are expected to remove body parts of those against ISIS’ mission, spy on their loved ones, and participate in bombings and fights where their lives are risked everyday. When they disobey their leader’s orders, they’re starved for days at a time, subjected to extreme forms of torture, and girls are frequently sexually abused. Once they’re recruited, it’s very hard to escape.
Solutions
Although it is difficult to track down child soldiers, countries can work together to create an international database where parents report missing children. This way, if child soldiers are found in an area far from home, it will be easier to track down where they originally came from.
However, there are clear issues with this system that are tough to address. Countries like Iraq which continue to capture and torture kids will most likely be unwilling to participate in this system, so there will still be a large amount of kids unaccounted for. INGOs and local NGOs must pressure these countries into not capturing or torturing child soldiers and instead send them to rehabilitation centers.
Because of the psychological abuse these children face, there must be a strong focus on rehabilitation. Some programs have been shown to be effective at reintegrating the child hack into society. In Sierra Leone, a rehabilitation program was a central part of the Lome Peace Accord signed in 1999. Children were transferred to care centers for six months where they received health care and psychological counseling. They participated in educational and recreational activities, while those in charge of the program attempted to track down the families of these children. When they left the facilities and were accepted in their new communities, their depression and anxiety rates dropped.
However, for these programs to be effective, they need to be adjusted for each individual child. Each child will have had different experiences while working with ISIS, so there needs to be an emphasis on individual treatment to ensure that the child is being rehabilitated in an appropriate way.
Although it is difficult to address the root causes of using child soldiers in terrorist organizations, there are ways to improve the stability of local communities to minimize the efficacy of the recruitment process. One way this could be accomplished is through the creation of more schools. ISIS uses state-sponsored religious schools to brainwash and manipulate children. If there are other educational options available so kids are not forced to immerse themselves in this extreme religious education, ISIS’ pool of recruitment would shrink greatly.
There also needs to be an emphasis on NGOs providing more food and water to local communities. The instability of the communities is what leads children to join terrorist groups in the first place. In Syria, a program called Operation Good Neighbor was implemented in the Quneitra province during the Syrian Civil War. They delivered over $94 million of food, medicine, clothing, and other essentials to help around 1.5 million people, and it is believed that this program increased stability in the region.
International NGOs should be encouraged to build more partnerships with local NGOs to improve their image in these regions. Local NGOs have a better connection with the people of that community because more of their resources are dedicated towards learning and improving the issues there. These local NGOs should create more projects that will improve community stability such as restoring sewage systems, distributing hygiene kits, advancing the water filtration infrastructure, and increasing the number of mobile clinics. By providing access to a better life to those living in these areas, children in these areas will be less inclined to join terrorist groups like ISIS.
Conclusion
Just because ISIS’ strength declined in recent years does not mean the organization is gone for good. By recruiting children, they have been able to build their army at a quicker pace, especially when those who they are recruiting can help do the more dangerous tasks for the organization. The international community is aware of the moral issues with using child soldiers in state armies, and they shouldn’t give up on working towards an issue when it involves non-state actors as well.
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