Terrorist Groups Increase Child Recruitment Efforts

Islamic terrorist organizations are increasingly “targeting” children for recruitment, according to the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT), a non-profit research group that focuses on radical Islamic groups.

IPT reports that children have become a “key target group” for Islamist-oriented terrorists that frequently use social media to advertise their new recruits. The use of children under the age of 15 as combatants violates the United Nations 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Citing a report by West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center (CTC), IPT notes that in the last year, “at least 89 male child soldiers were eulogized as martyrs on Twitter as well as the Islamic State’s [the U.S.-designated terrorist group also known as ISIS] official Telegram channel [a messaging app]. The child soldiers hailed from countries as varied as Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, and Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, the United Kingdom, France and Australia.

The CTC report used a database of children eulogized by the ISIS between January 2015 and January 2016. The report concludes that “the number of child and youth militants far exceeds current estimates” and that Islamic terror groups are “mobilizing children at an ever-accelerating rate.” The report is careful to note that it doesn’t claim to be exhaustive and is rather a “snapshot in time of how the Islamic State” uses children in its propaganda.

CTC concludes that in contrast to other conflicts in which child soldiers are used as a “strategy of last resort,” children used by ISIS “are fighting alongside, rather than in lieu of, adult males.” The extent to which the terror group employ children suggests that “organizational concerns” are the primary driver instead of propaganda benefits. The center’s report says:

“The presence and participation of children in the comprehensive corpus of Islamic State propaganda extends beyond ultra-violence. Indeed, on an almost daily basis, children are featured in multiple contexts, from highly publicized executions and training camps to Qur’an memorization fairs and dawa [proselytizing] caravans.”

IPT notes that other jihadi groups are increasingly recruiting and using children: “The Pakistani Taliban run several so-called schools dedicated to graduating prepubescent bombers, Houthi rebels in Yemen have routinized the inclusion of children in their ranks, while the Lebanese Hezbollah has begun accepting adolescents into its ranks to boost its presence” in the Syrian civil war.

CAMERA has noted the use of children by Palestinian Arab terrorist groups, Hamas and Fatah’s al-Aqsa martyr’s brigade, both of which are U.S.-designated terrorist groups.

As recently as January 2016, Fatah, the dominant movement in the Palestinian Authority, held celebrations that featured masked children carrying models of “suicide belts,” “RPG’s [rocket propelled grenade launchers” and guns (“Palestinian Children Wear Suicide Belts to Celebrate Fatah’s Anniversary,” CAMERA, January 12).

Hamas also regularly uses children in its terrorist activities. CAMERA has reported how the group holds “summer camps” to train and indoctrinate children to murder Jews (“#HamasSummerCamp,” July 9, 2015). Both Hamas and Fatah, similar to ISIS, also have used children as human shields; hiding behind them while launching indiscriminate attacks on civilian populations in Israel.

Despite these similarities, one PA official has claimed that a key difference exists. Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), a non-profit organization that monitors Arab media in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria), the Gaza Strip and eastern Jerusalem, has noted comments made on official PA TV by the authority’s Minister of Women’s Affairs, Haifa al-Agha. Speaking on Nov. 7, 2015, al-Agha claimed that Palestinian women are “unique” for receiving news of their “son’s martyrdom” with “cries of joy.”