Do children make for good targets to be radicalised and recruited as a suicide bomber?
The recent attack on a wedding in Turkey that killed over 50 had supposedly been carried out by a child bomber between the age of 12 and 14, affiliated to Islamic State, according to President Erdogan, although his suspicions remain unconfirmed.
Whether the attacker was a child or not, the issue of recruiting children as soldiers is a serious problem.
ISIS had boastfully announced its child recruits for its “Cubs of the Caliphate” brigades, by publishing images and videos on social media of children receiving training and indoctrination, and carrying out bombings or executions.
Previously, as an intelligence report stated, a hierarchy was followed within the militant group. Arab fighters, it said, were usually paid well and provided with better arms ammunition, equipment, accommodation and even women.
The fighters from South Asian countries are considered to be inferior fighters and are often brainwashed into becoming suicide bombers.
Rising Trend Among Militant Groups
But perhaps ridden with monetary losses, and a lot of dead soldiers, after continued airstrikes carried on by a US coalition, the Islamic State has been increasingly been resorting to using children as suicide bombers.
Less than a day before the attack on the wedding, a boy of around 12 years of age was found nervously loitering around in the Iraqi city of Kirkuk when he was apprehended by the police. He immediately burst into tears.
Watch the video of the boy being stripped searched for explosives by the police.
When the police tore open his Barcelona football t-shirt, they found a two kilogram bomb strapped to his slight frame.
Before the ISIS, the Afghan Taliban has for a long time used children as their go-to suicide bombers.
In West Africa, Boko Haram also gained notoriety for their methodical recruitment of child soldiers, which typically involved raiding villages, and kidnapping young boys. Witnesses reported that the boys were forced to shoot their own parents as a way of initiating them into violent activities. Young girls were usually turned into sex slaves.
Why Recruit Children?
But tech-savy ISIS goes a step ahead to advertise their recruiting process, which is mostly a way to lure more people into joining the group.
Child recruitment across the region is increasing. Children are taking a much more active role ..., receiving training on the use of heavy weapons, manning checkpoints on the front lines, being used as snipers and in extreme cases being used as suicide bombers.Juliette Touma, Regional Spokesperson, UNICEF
Turkish authorities are also investigating whether militants may have placed the explosives on the suspect, without his or her knowledge before detonating them.
That tactic has been used before in Iraq, where children or even mentally disadvantaged adults have been dispatched as unwitting bomb couriers into markets and checkpoints before they are blown up from afar.
Hisham al-Hashimi, an analyst and author who advises the Iraqi government on Islamic State, says militants this year had reactivated their Heaven’s Youth Brigade, in reaction to the group’s battlefield losses in Iraq and Syria.
Teenagers are easier to recruit for suicide missions, especially in moments of suffering or despair having lost loved ones. They also attract less attention and less suspicion than male adults.Hisham al-Hashimi, Analyst and Author
According to the UNICEF report, nearly two thirds of all the child attackers they tracked were girls. In the first six months of this year alone, UNICEF says it has also noted 38 child suicide bombers in West Africa.
“This is one of the defining features of this conflict,” said Thierry Delvigne-Jean of the agency’s west and central Africa office.
(With inputs from Reuters)
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