Child militants are being utilized more than ever in the Islamic State’s (IS) regime to broaden its scope of control in the Middle East.
Mia Bloom, John Horgan and Charlie Winter, faculty of Georgia State, recently published a study called “Depictions of Children and Youth in the Islamic States Martyrdom Propaganda,” which found that the number of IS’ child warriors is much higher than previously estimated.
“Children are no longer used as just props in the Islamic State’s outreach efforts,” Horgan, a professor of global studies in Georgia State’s psychology department, told The Signal. “They are now fully fledged militants, occupying the same roles as adults.”
Through analysis of the child militants’ role in the Islamic State’s terrorist conquest, results will be used to better understand how to de-operationalize and rehabilitate these adolescents sooner than later.
Children amidst violence
IS propaganda is proliferated through numerous methods and platforms, often targeted at children in vulnerable regions afflicted by wartime conflict in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Algeria, Egypt, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Northern Nigeria, and parts of Turkey, according to Brittanica. Georgia State’s research suggests that indoctrination into jihadi regime is far more pervasive than once speculated.
While child militants are not new in the scope of war, the methodology IS utilizes to indoctrinate children is systematic.
According to Georgia State’s research, people in IS-controlled areas are exposed to propaganda on an “almost daily basis, [where] children are featured in multiple contexts, from highly publicized executions and training camps to Qur’an memorization fairs and [invitation to worship].”
Bloom, a communications and Middle East studies professor, said “most of these children [in propaganda] are dead because these are children that have been martyred and then IS promotes them on their channel.”
Children in these areas often struggle to find adequate food, shelter, and security. By offering these amenities to such a vulnerable demographic, terrorist organizations can manipulate and coerce children into servitude, luring oblivious kids into a hellish lifestyle.
In addition to poverty, the use of adolescents to hold and advance ISIL regime is driven by orphanage, intimidation discrimination. From these symptoms arise the malleability of these children, according to the United Nations Council for Children and Armed Conflict. The UN Council also reports that children in these circumstances often have no other choice but to join; there is no ‘volunteer’ basis.
“[People should] realize that children do not willingly participate in terrorist acts. They are socialized, seduced and subjugated,” Horgan said. “It is a form of systematic child abuse. The propaganda that Islamic State spreads via social media represents the photographic evidence of that abuse.”
Stunted data and demographics
The war-torn region is often unable to provide sufficient data to follow these children. Missing figures have subsequently caused underestimates of child militants, a key reason that Georgia State researchers turned to alternate forms of IS social media in their study, such as Twitter and Telegram, a multi-use platform that the Islamic State turned to when jihadist profiles on Twitter were banned.
“For the most part, the way we know the numbers, which is the horrible part, when the kids are dead we can count them,” Bloom said. “When the kids are alive we don’t have reliable estimates about how pervasive the problem is of child soldiering in Syria.”
This study found that use of young martyrs are on the rise. From Jan. 1, 2015 to Jan. 1, 2016, 89 adolescents were “eulogized in Islamic State propaganda” and reporting three times as many child suicide deaths in January 2016 than January 2015.
Winter, a senior research associate in Georgia State’s Transcultural Conflict and Violence Initiative, said the political implications of solving the child militant crisis arise from the conflicts in Syria and other regions of the Middle East.
“It’s an immensely difficult problem, especially because the Islamic State is predicated in its success in civil war in Syria [and the surrounding areas],” Winter said. “It’s going to be a long time before this issue is mitigated. The stability necessary to meaningfully push the Islamic State back is immense. It requires a change in the Syrian War and real change in Iraqi politics.”
Demobilization and Rehabilitation
Reintegrating and rehabilitating these child militants is an extensive issue that requires time, attention, and resources.
“De-radicalizing these children is the most important thing to create a safe space to be and to learn ideology away from jihadism, to be safe from mobilization, retribution, and being brought back into the conflict,” Winter said.
International organizations such as UNICEF and the World Health Organization advocate for child involvement in conflict zones, as well as fund operations to aid rehabilitation and recuperation.
In rehabilitation programs, such as Pakistan’s SABAOON, children are offered the opportunity to de-radicalize and learn beyond jihadist ideology. However, this is an acutely difficult process that requires time, monitoring and a comprehensive understanding of individual traumas faced by each child.
Addressing the psychological injury inflicted on indoctrinated children by terrorist organizations is elemental to subdue further trauma later in life, according to Horgan.
“We now need to make sure we don’t lose the battle to rehabilitate and reintegrate those children who have been robbed of their identity and childhood,” Horgan said. “Once these children reach adulthood, nobody will care what happens to them, but we have to urgently find solutions to reduce the scope of this problem.”
Western perspective
National Geographic reported that six in 10 Americans between 18 and 24 cannot locate Iran on a map, nor could many locate Pakistan.
Asmaa Malik, a sophomore at Georgia State, said that this is partially due to news media’s inadequate coverage.
“American media doesn’t portray the livelihood of the individuals in the Middle East,” Malik said. “Instead they just acknowledge that there are a few bombings and then transition back to Donald Trump.”
Malik also said that the age of social media and spreading global internet access may elicit change in the way we view the world.
“The use of child militants by the Islamic State is tragic and completely wrong by all moral codes, contradicting UN doctrines,” Malik said. “With rapid transformations in technology, it’s easy to raise awareness in these issues, and take the time and educate themselves about the situation in order to do so.”
