Daesh recruits children in Africa to destroy continent

Asmaa Al-Batakuchi

The latest appearance of Daesh leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has shed the light on the potential courses that the organization might go through, including the recruitment of children in African countries.

Daesh is currently relying on the recruitment of young children in Africa to develop a new strategy ]after being defeated in Syria and Iraq.

The acute drop in militants numbers pushed the terrorist organization to recruit children and spread its extremist thoughts among them to create generations that are completely loyal to Daesh.

Extremist groups also rely all every mean available to recruit children, either by offering money, influence or entertainment. They are being lured through electronic methods, internet applications and games.

Daesh’s Library of Zeal” has released an application for teaching the Arabic alphabet to children on Android devices. The vocabulary taught within the application includes jihadist themes.

The app has games for memorizing and how to write the Arabic letters in addition to including jihadist songs with lyrics that are littered with jihadist terminology, while other games within the app also include militaristic vocabulary with more basic words like gun, tank, rocket, and ammo.

The jihadist group has also produced several videos from many of its proclaimed provinces showing children being trained for jihad or being indoctrinated at Daesh-ran schools.

The terrorist organization also developed several war games that give children high scores and game bonuses for destroying international landmarks like the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower.

These kids are being presented with toy weapons to play with and get accustomed to, while knowing from an early age that carrying guns represent heroism, not to mention that many of these children were being abducted from their parents to enroll them within its rows.

Many of the young women held in captivity by Boko Haram were forced to marry fighters and bore them children.

In this regard, the Azhar Observatory for Combating Extremism has published a study in which it warned that the recruitment of children under 16 years of age is prohibited by all international laws and is being identified as a war crime.

The study further added that Africa holds around 75 percent of the total children who live in countries suffering a war on terrorism, which means that the most affected children are the ones in Africa, which was affirmed by the UNICEF in Dec. 2016 that Africa has the biggest number of children recruits in the world, reaching 250 thousand children.

A UNICEF release further highlighted the plight of children during the year, as 5,000 children were killed or maimed in Afghanistan and more than 1,800 children were recruited in Somalia in the first nine months of 2018.