From Child Terrorism to Peace Activism (Springer Series in Social Work and Social Change) 3031165810, 9783031165818

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Springer Series in Social Work and Social Change

Jonathan Matusitz

From Child Terrorism to Peace Activism

Springer Series in Social Work and Social Change Series Editors Rajendra Baikady, Dept of Soc Work & Community Development University of Johannesburg Johannesburg, South Africa Jaroslaw Przeperski, Centre for Family Research Nicolaus Copernicus University Torun, Poland S. M. Sajid, Department of Social Work Jamia Millia Islamia New Delhi, India

S​pringer Series in Social Work and Social Change is a series of full-length monographs and contributed volumes on the state-of-the-art literature on social work and social change as well as globalization and social change, neoliberalism and social change, and societal response to social change, with special reference to social work education, research and practice. The principal aim of the Series is to examine social change in a constantly changing world with new economic, political and social orders and how social work as a human service profession responds to these changes. Contributions in this Series go beyond accepting change as an inevitable force and reflect on our power in influencing, redirecting and contemplating social change. It is with this principal aim that we call upon academia, policy-makers, researchers and educators in social work, at all levels of their career stage, to explore the positive part of social change, i.e., what can we learn from social change while revisiting its negativity and impact. Volumes published in this Series approach social change at different levels of society (whether local, regional, national, transnational, or at the macro, meso and micro levels). The Series identifies and defines the concept of social change within the social work context and its impact on human development at various national and international scopes. Springer Series in Social Work and Social Change is a comprehensive collection of high-quality literature on social change, with a primary focus on social work, contributed by educators, researchers, and practitioners across the globe. Both solicited and unsolicited manuscripts are considered for publication in this Series. More information about this series at https://link.springer.com/bookseries/16747

Jonathan Matusitz

From Child Terrorism to Peace Activism

Jonathan Matusitz Nicholson School of Communication & Media University of Central Florida Orlando, FL, USA

This book includes quotes using offensive language, presented in graphic context. Although academically justified, neither the author nor the publisher in any way endorses or condones the use of this language or these actions. Quotes with this content do not represent the author’s opinions or the opinions of the publisher. ISSN 2731-0728     ISSN 2731-0736 (electronic) Springer Series in Social Work and Social Change ISBN 978-3-031-16581-8    ISBN 978-3-031-16582-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16582-5 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Foreword

At this time in history, we live in a society characterized by socio-economic, political, and diplomatic insecurity resulted by internal conflict, border issues, failure in government machinery, political instability, political terror, lack of effective humanitarian service organizations, and toxic leadership. Despite the tremendous efforts by international peace keeping organizations and the United Nations, the situation in recent decades is alarming, especially in few less developed or developing countries located in the Global South. Recent political unrest in Afghanistan and Sri Lanka, the war in Ukraine, and school and other mass shootings in places around the world are an indication of our failure in building a more peaceful, just, and equal society. According to the 16th edition of the Global Peace Index released in 2022, the cost to the global economy of violence taking place in different parts of the world is about $16.5 trillion or 10.9% of the global GDP. Based on a comprehensive data-­ driven analysis of peace and violence in 163 countries across the globe, the Global Peace Index report shows that in recent decades the status of peacefulness in several countries tends to deteriorate much faster than they improve. The report further states that “Peacefulness declined to lowest level in 15 years fuelled by post-COVID economic uncertainty and Ukraine conflict” (Global Peace Index 2022). However, there was a decrease in terrorist attacks with 70 countries recording no attacks in 2021, which is said to be the best result since 2008. Although the declining global peace can be attributed to several factors, the most common and harmful of them tend to be political conflict, political terror, toxic leadership, terrorism, and war. Internal conflicts and unrests to varying degrees are an integral part of contemporary society. However, while countries in the Global North tend to perform better in terms of peace and sustainable development, countries in the Middle East and North African (MENA) region continue to be the world’s least peaceful region. No country in the region ranked higher than 23rd in the Global Peace Index, and the region accommodates two of the five least peaceful countries in the world. In the 9 extensively researched chapters, Jonathan Matusitz brings together the experiences of 24 former child terrorists with a broad focus on the historical and current background, case studies, theoretical applications, and an in-depth thematic v

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analysis. This book is an account of the transition from terrorism to peace activism and incorporates the perspectives of researchers working with people previously involved in terroristic activities. The book covers a global context by including cases from all continents. One unique aspect of this book is that it goes beyond just describing the problem but also discusses some solutions which is our focus in the Springer Series in Social Work and Social Change—“beyond accepting change as an inevitable force and reflect on collective power in influencing, redirecting and contemplating social change in the direction that we need them”. The last part of this book extensively focuses on peace activism and redirecting social change in ways we prefer. Social work as a practice profession and an academic discipline has shown its commitment to establishing and maintaining peace and stability in society through social reform, social change, and human development. The birth of social work in the latter part of the twentieth century was an organized response to the social dislocation, poverty, and other social problems resulting from the rapid industrialization and change in Western societies. From its inception, the profession has worked to achieve social justice, equality, and human dignity and especially so in less and underdeveloped countries with huge marginalized and vulnerable populations. Human rights and dignity, human connections, and climate justice are more recent responses of social work to a constantly changing global society. In order to strengthen its professional standard, social work associations at both national and international levels have developed and implemented several policy and practice documents. Organizations such as the International Association of Schools of Social Work (IASSW) and International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW) along with other partnering institutions have developed these policy documents among others: Global Standards, Global Definition of Social Work, and Global Agenda for Social Work Practice and Education. In today’s interdependent world with high-speed technological advancement, innovation, and the acquisition of nuclear weapons, advocacy for peace should be a concern within every profession and for each individual. Scholars, political analysts, and experts in international and diplomatic studies continue to debate and educate the general public on military and diplomatic developments among different countries in the world. Social work programmes in many universities and higher education institutions offer courses focusing on peace and peace building. Several graduate and postgraduate curricula incorporate content related to behavioural change and ways to help people develop socially accepted behaviour in order to create a peaceful and harmonious society. However, there is an overlap of content related to peace and social justice in course curricula and a poor understanding of the concept of social justice and peace by social work students (Pulla et al. 2017). Throughout the book, Jonathan Matusitz unfolds the hard realities in contemporary society and constantly reminds us of how essential it is to develop a safe and friendly environment for children and the youth in today’s society. On the one hand, technological advancement, social media, and networking facilities help the youth connect socially to the rest of the world. However, these same tools can open up the youth to unethical and unanticipated behaviour within several contexts. Cultural

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practices, religious obligations, and social conditions in many societies tend to be the medium of human rights violation and mediators of large-scale violence. In this book, the author explores and analyses how children and the youth get into the trap of terrorism and become active members of terrorist organizations. The need to educate children on terrorism, war, and nuclear threat together with basic school curriculum constantly comes to mind. The aim of contemporary educational programmes should be behavioural change through the following: education and life skills training; enhancing self-esteem and self-confidence; preparing students to face challenges of the outside world after graduation; and sensitization towards poverty, marginalization, vulnerability, and inequality with a central focus on peace building. To some extent, Matusitz’s analysis and case studies in this book instill in the reader a sense of fear of whether we are raising a new generation of people who may have no stake in the social issues of the present or future global society. Matusitz should be lauded for his efforts in understanding how to establish a peaceful and just society through primary research. Although there are lots of literature outlining violence, terrorism, and peace in general, Jonathan Matusitz analyses and explores factors that contribute to positive social change. This well-researched volume also addresses the research question effectively and fills a particular gap, i.e., how to influence positive change. Furthermore, the author is well-researched and published in social work-related domains despite his primary discipline not being social work. In the last chapter, he connects the concept of terrorism and peace activism with how social work can work in these areas, which is part of the focus of our series. This book will be a valuable addition to our efforts to create an interdisciplinary set of literature through the collaboration of social work with other disciplines. By publishing this book in the Springer Series in Social Work and Social Change, we hope to show new areas for social work, especially those related to addressing social issues such as social change, social justice, and the judicial system. Social work needs to understand the social conditions that prompt children and the youth to join terrorist or violent organizations. The psychological aspects of terrorism and recruitments to terrorist organizations as described by Jonathan Matusitz in this book need to be explored more and debated while outcome-based social work interventions are developed. Educational programmes and leadership training for social work graduates may be a way of preparing them to work with displaced and refugee populations especially in war zones and countries with high risk of armed conflict. At some point in this book, the author explicitly highlights how unmet needs and basic facilities, extreme poverty, lack of resources, inequality, and deprivation lead the youth to terrorism. Volunteering to join either the government or a terrorist movement has been the case for some children. For other children, access to food and the possession of power have been a joint compelling reason to become terrorists. (Chap. 4, p. 67)

This book enters production at a time when societies across the globe are facing uncertainties and violence. Several people have lost their lives in the Russian-­ Ukrainian conflict while the world tries to adjust to changes brought by the

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COVID-19 pandemic. Citizens of Afghanistan and other countries afflicted with armed conflict have been displaced from their homes as refugees to other places. The mixture of these problems has culminated in hostility towards unwelcomed refugees, the drastic rise in homeless population, and the erosion of trust and cooperation. Irrespective of advancement in economic, technological, and healthcare resources, both developed and developing countries are facing challenges that threaten the happiness, health, and safety of their societies. Economic slowdown, job market crash, and shortage of capital have resulted in job cuts and pay cuts. Countries with poverty and extreme inequality of wealth continue to experience increasing crime, violence, and social unrest. The number of homeless population and refugees have drastically increased and displaced millions of individuals moving to neighbouring countries in search of food and safety. Jonathan Matusitz reminds us in the concluding part of the book our responsibility in bringing about positive social change and peace. Most of the findings and analysis in the book are directly connected to the core objectives of social work practice and education which include: developing a harmonious society by creating cordial relations and human connections; working towards a just and equal society; advocating for marginalized and vulnerable populations; and safeguarding children, vulnerable women, and other at-risk persons in society. While this inaugural volume in the Springer Series in Social Work and Social Change focuses on terrorism and peace activism, we remind the readers that violence and uncertainties persist in all societies irrespective of their economic or technological advancement. Terrorism and military or armed conflict bring about enormous loss of human capital not only to the countries experiencing them but also to those who witness or are adjacent to it. It is worth acknowledging the other types of violence and social problems that are not categorized as terrorism or war but nevertheless serve as obstacles to growth and social advancement. Lastly, the accounts of the 24 subjects for this book remind us of the need to train and redirect children and the youth to a promising and more peaceful future while ensuring the same for the present. Johannesburg, South Africa Warsaw, Poland 17 July 2022

Rajendra Baikady Jarosław Przeperski

References Global peace index. (2022). Institute for Economics and Peace. Retrieved 10 July 2022, from https://reliefweb.int/report/world/global-­peace-­index-­2022 Pulla, V., Baikady R., & Channaveer, R. M. (2017). Social work students' perceptions of peace and social justice. International Journal of Innovation, Creativity and Change, 3(1), 87–104.

Contents

1

Introduction����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    1 1.1 Objectives of This Book��������������������������������������������������������������������    3 1.2 What Is Terrorism?����������������������������������������������������������������������������    6 1.3 What Does “Child” Mean? ��������������������������������������������������������������    6 1.3.1 Childhood as a Social Construct ������������������������������������������    7 1.3.2 “Child” in Sociocultural Contexts Around the World����������    7 1.4 Child Terrorism ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������    8 1.4.1 Child Terrorists vs. Child Soldiers?��������������������������������������    9 1.4.2 Always Aware of Being a Child Terrorist? ��������������������������   10 1.5 Competitive Works����������������������������������������������������������������������������   11 1.6 Summary of Chapters ����������������������������������������������������������������������   12 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   14

2

Reasons for Child Terrorism������������������������������������������������������������������   17 2.1 State Failure��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   17 2.1.1 Effects of Precarious Circumstances������������������������������������   18 2.1.2 Poverty Always Causing Terrorism?������������������������������������   18 2.2 Cultural Arena����������������������������������������������������������������������������������   19 2.2.1 Case Study: Pakistan������������������������������������������������������������   19 2.2.2 Social Learning Theory��������������������������������������������������������   21 2.2.3 Cultural Evolution (CE) Theory ������������������������������������������   22 2.3 Social Media Influences��������������������������������������������������������������������   23 2.3.1 Terrorist Communication������������������������������������������������������   23 2.3.2 Blurring the Virtual and Real Worlds������������������������������������   24 2.3.3 Frustration with Modernity ��������������������������������������������������   25 2.4 Total Institution ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������   25 2.4.1 Radicalization ����������������������������������������������������������������������   26 2.4.2 Case Study: The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)��������   27 2.4.3 Performance Theory��������������������������������������������������������������   28 2.4.4 Rituals ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������   29

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2.5 Kinship Factors ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������   30 2.5.1 Case Study: ISIS ������������������������������������������������������������������   31 2.5.2 Case Study: White Supremacists������������������������������������������   31 2.5.3 Child Terrorists and Group Identity��������������������������������������   32 2.5.4 Case Studies on Jihadist Terrorism ��������������������������������������   32 2.5.5 Social Identity Theory (SIT)������������������������������������������������   33 2.6 Identity Crises and Psychological Factors����������������������������������������   35 2.6.1 Risk-Taking Behavior ����������������������������������������������������������   35 2.6.2 Case Study: The Baader-Meinhof Gang ������������������������������   36 2.7 Susceptibility and Naïveté����������������������������������������������������������������   36 2.8 Kidnapping or Forced Recruitment��������������������������������������������������   37 2.9 Easy Prey for Suicide Missions��������������������������������������������������������   38 2.9.1 Made, Not Born��������������������������������������������������������������������   39 2.9.2 Case Study: Palestinian Children������������������������������������������   39 2.10 Gender-Related and Sexual Reasons������������������������������������������������   40 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   41 3

Child Jihadism ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   49 3.1 Introducing Children to Jihad ����������������������������������������������������������   50 3.1.1 Hemingway Factor����������������������������������������������������������������   51 3.1.2 Case Study: Pakistan������������������������������������������������������������   52 3.2 Al-Qaeda ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   53 3.2.1 The Bin Ladens: Father and Son������������������������������������������   54 3.2.2 Children at US Detention Centers����������������������������������������   54 3.2.3 Case Study: Omar Khadr������������������������������������������������������   55 3.2.4 Birds of Paradise ������������������������������������������������������������������   56 3.3 The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)����������������������������������������   56 3.3.1 Recruitment Methods������������������������������������������������������������   58 3.3.2 “Cubs of the Caliphate”��������������������������������������������������������   58 3.3.3 Sister’s Role in Jihad������������������������������������������������������������   59 3.3.4 Material Benefits������������������������������������������������������������������   60 3.3.5 Indoctrination������������������������������������������������������������������������   61 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   62

4

 Child Terrorism in Africa and Latin America��������������������������������������   67 4.1 Human Security Concerns����������������������������������������������������������������   67 4.2 Africa’s Weapons Problem����������������������������������������������������������������   68 4.3 Child Suicide Bombers in Africa������������������������������������������������������   69 4.3.1 Girl Suicide Bombers������������������������������������������������������������   69 4.3.2 Case Study: Boko Haram in Nigeria������������������������������������   70 4.4 RENAMO in Mozambique ��������������������������������������������������������������   71 4.4.1 RENAMO Child Terrorists ��������������������������������������������������   72 4.4.2 Processes of Indoctrination ��������������������������������������������������   73 4.5 The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) ������������������������������������������������   74 4.5.1 The LRA’s Children��������������������������������������������������������������   74 4.5.2 Case Studies: Unknown Girl and Lucy Aol��������������������������   75

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4.6 The Revolutionary United Front (RUF)��������������������������������������������   76 4.6.1 The RUF Children����������������������������������������������������������������   77 4.6.2 The RUF’s Modus Operandi ������������������������������������������������   77 4.7 Child Terrorists in Latin America ����������������������������������������������������   78 4.8 Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso)����������������������������������������������������   78 4.8.1 Recruitment of Children ������������������������������������������������������   79 4.8.2 Total Institution��������������������������������������������������������������������   79 4.8.3 Popular Schools��������������������������������������������������������������������   80 4.9 Child Terrorists in Colombia������������������������������������������������������������   81 4.9.1 Child Recruitment����������������������������������������������������������������   82 4.9.2 The FARC’s Children ����������������������������������������������������������   82 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   83 5

 Child Separatist Terrorism and White Child Supremacism����������������   89 5.1 The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)��������������������������������   89 5.1.1 Sri Lankan State Repression ������������������������������������������������   90 5.1.2 Child Tamil Tigers����������������������������������������������������������������   91 5.1.3 Total Institution��������������������������������������������������������������������   92 5.1.4 Child Suicide Bombers ��������������������������������������������������������   93 5.2 The Irish Republican Army (IRA)����������������������������������������������������   93 5.2.1 Children in the Provisional IRA ������������������������������������������   94 5.2.2 Case Study: Two IRA Children��������������������������������������������   95 5.2.3 The Fianna����������������������������������������������������������������������������   95 5.3 White Supremacism��������������������������������������������������������������������������   96 5.3.1 White Child Supremacism����������������������������������������������������   97 5.3.2 Online Recruitment��������������������������������������������������������������   98 5.3.3 Differences Between Racial Groups ������������������������������������   99 5.3.4 Stormfront ����������������������������������������������������������������������������   99 5.3.5 The Ku Klux Klan (KKK)����������������������������������������������������  100 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  101

6

 From Child Terrorism to Peace Activism: An Overview����������������������  107 6.1 Peace Activism����������������������������������������������������������������������������������  108 6.1.1 What Is Peace Activism?������������������������������������������������������  108 6.1.2 Peace Spaces ������������������������������������������������������������������������  109 6.1.3 Accidental vs. Lifelong Activists������������������������������������������  110 6.1.4 Grassroots Activism��������������������������������������������������������������  110 6.2 The World as One������������������������������������������������������������������������������  111 6.2.1 Dialogic Communication������������������������������������������������������  112 6.2.2 Cultural Wisdom and Empowerment Communication ��������  113 6.3 Social Movement Theory (SMT)������������������������������������������������������  113 6.3.1 Social Media ������������������������������������������������������������������������  114 6.3.2 Mediation������������������������������������������������������������������������������  115 6.4 Framing Theory��������������������������������������������������������������������������������  115 6.4.1 Mobilizing the Public������������������������������������������������������������  116 6.4.2 Collective Action Frames������������������������������������������������������  116

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Contents

6.4.3 Frame Alignment and Narrative Fidelity������������������������������  117 6.5 Social Representations Theory (SRT)����������������������������������������������  118 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  119 7

 From Child Terrorism to Peace Activism: Case Studies����������������������  125 7.1 Identification of the 24 Subjects ������������������������������������������������������  125 7.2 Mean Age, Median Age, and Gender������������������������������������������������  126 7.3 Former Child Jihadists����������������������������������������������������������������������  126 7.3.1 Aimen Dean��������������������������������������������������������������������������  127 7.3.2 Khairul Ghazali��������������������������������������������������������������������  127 7.3.3 Mosab Hassan Yousef ����������������������������������������������������������  128 7.3.4 Maajid Nawaz ����������������������������������������������������������������������  129 7.3.5 Yasmin Mulbocus ����������������������������������������������������������������  130 7.3.6 Mohammed Khalid ��������������������������������������������������������������  131 7.4 Former African Child Terrorists��������������������������������������������������������  132 7.4.1 Grace Akallo ������������������������������������������������������������������������  132 7.4.2 Junior Nzita Nsuami ������������������������������������������������������������  133 7.4.3 Mohamed Sidibay ����������������������������������������������������������������  133 7.4.4 Ishmael Beah������������������������������������������������������������������������  134 7.4.5 China Keitetsi������������������������������������������������������������������������  134 7.5 Former Child Separatist Terrorists����������������������������������������������������  135 7.5.1 Shane Paul O’Doherty����������������������������������������������������������  135 7.5.2 Henry Robinson��������������������������������������������������������������������  136 7.5.3 Antonythasan Jesuthasan������������������������������������������������������  137 7.5.4 Nazir Ahmad Wani����������������������������������������������������������������  137 7.5.5 Yussef Bazzi��������������������������������������������������������������������������  138 7.6 Former Child Terrorists in Latin America����������������������������������������  138 7.6.1 Lurgio Gavilán Sánchez��������������������������������������������������������  139 7.6.2 Sara Morales ������������������������������������������������������������������������  139 7.6.3 Yineth Trujillo����������������������������������������������������������������������  140 7.6.4 Mario Escobar����������������������������������������������������������������������  140 7.7 Former White Child Supremacists����������������������������������������������������  141 7.7.1 Angela King��������������������������������������������������������������������������  141 7.7.2 Christian Picciolini ��������������������������������������������������������������  142 7.7.3 Arno Michaelis���������������������������������������������������������������������  143 7.7.4 Tony McAleer ����������������������������������������������������������������������  144 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  145

8

 rom Child Terrorism to Peace Activism: A Thematic Analysis ��������  153 F 8.1 Making Sense of One’s Life Experience������������������������������������������  153 8.2 Research Questions��������������������������������������������������������������������������  154 8.3 Thematic Analysis����������������������������������������������������������������������������  155 8.4 Step 1: Familiarization with the Data ����������������������������������������������  155 8.5 Step 2: Creation of Codes ����������������������������������������������������������������  156 8.6 Step 3: Theme Search ����������������������������������������������������������������������  157 8.7 Step 4: Theme Definition������������������������������������������������������������������  157

Contents

xiii

8.7.1 Theme 1: Metamorphosis ����������������������������������������������������  158 8.7.2 Theme 2: Terrorist Behavior ������������������������������������������������  158 8.7.3 Theme 3: Disillusionment����������������������������������������������������  159 8.7.4 Theme 4: Anti-Terrorist Behavior����������������������������������������  159 8.8 Step 5: Data Analysis������������������������������������������������������������������������  160 8.8.1 Analysis of Theme 1: Metamorphosis����������������������������������  160 8.8.2 Analysis of Theme 2: Terrorist Behavior������������������������������  164 8.8.3 Analysis of Theme 3: Disillusionment ��������������������������������  167 8.8.4 Analysis of Theme 4: Anti-Terrorist Behavior ��������������������  174 8.9 Step 6: Conclusions��������������������������������������������������������������������������  184 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  186 9

 Discussion, Theoretical Implications, and Solutions����������������������������  193 9.1 On Being Child Terrorists ����������������������������������������������������������������  194 9.2 On Being Peace Activists������������������������������������������������������������������  196 9.3 Theoretical Implications ������������������������������������������������������������������  197 9.3.1 Social Learning Theory��������������������������������������������������������  197 9.3.2 Cultural Evolution (CE) Theory ������������������������������������������  198 9.3.3 Performance Theory��������������������������������������������������������������  199 9.3.4 Social Identity Theory (SIT)������������������������������������������������  199 9.3.5 Social Movement Theory (SMT)������������������������������������������  200 9.3.6 Framing Theory��������������������������������������������������������������������  201 9.3.7 Social Representations Theory (SRT)����������������������������������  202 9.4 Solutions: General Perspectives��������������������������������������������������������  203 9.4.1 Naming and Shaming?����������������������������������������������������������  203 9.4.2 Financial Assistance?������������������������������������������������������������  204 9.5 Solutions: Reintegration Perspectives����������������������������������������������  205 9.5.1 Child Terrorists vs. Other Offenders������������������������������������  205 9.5.2 Age and Attitude ������������������������������������������������������������������  206 9.5.3 Education and Deradicalization��������������������������������������������  206 9.5.4 Two Case Studies������������������������������������������������������������������  207 9.5.5 Helping Them Though Community Resilience��������������������  208 9.5.6 Preventing Recidivism����������������������������������������������������������  208 9.6 Solutions: Legal Perspectives ����������������������������������������������������������  209 9.6.1 Considering International Humanitarian Laws��������������������  209 9.6.2 Prosecuting Adult Trainers Too��������������������������������������������  210 9.7 Final Thoughts����������������������������������������������������������������������������������  211 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  211

Index������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  215

List of Tables

Table 8.1 Former child jihadists������������������������������������������������������������������������ 161 Table 8.2 Former African child terrorists���������������������������������������������������������� 163 Table 8.3 Former child separatist terrorists������������������������������������������������������� 164 Table 8.4 Former child terrorists in Latin America������������������������������������������� 165 Table 8.5 Former White child supremacists������������������������������������������������������ 166 Table 8.6 Former child jihadists������������������������������������������������������������������������ 167 Table 8.7 Former African child terrorists���������������������������������������������������������� 168 Table 8.8 Former child separatist terrorists������������������������������������������������������� 169 Table 8.9 Former child terrorists in Latin America������������������������������������������� 170 Table 8.10 Former White child supremacists������������������������������������������������������ 171 Table 8.11 Former child jihadists������������������������������������������������������������������������ 173 Table 8.12 Former African child terrorists���������������������������������������������������������� 175 Table 8.13 Former child separatist terrorists������������������������������������������������������� 176 Table 8.14 Former child terrorists in Latin America������������������������������������������� 177 Table 8.15 Former White child supremacists������������������������������������������������������ 178 Table 8.16 Former child jihadists������������������������������������������������������������������������ 179 Table 8.17 Former African child terrorists���������������������������������������������������������� 180 Table 8.18 Former child separatist terrorists������������������������������������������������������� 181 Table 8.19 Former child terrorists in Latin America������������������������������������������� 182 Table 8.20 Former White child supremacists������������������������������������������������������ 183

xv

About the Author

Jonathan  Matusitz, PhD  is currently an associate professor in the Nicholson School of Communication and Media at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. Jonathan Matusitz’s research focuses on the role of communication in terrorism, symbolism in terrorism, and the globalization of culture and new media. His research methodologies include thematic analysis, qualitative interviewing, semiotics, and theoretical analysis. On top of having about 160 academic publications and over 170 conference presentations, he taught at a NATO-affiliated military base in Belgium in 2010. Dr. Matusitz has already published seven books on terrorism: Terrorism & Communication: A Critical Introduction (Sage, 2013); Symbolism in Terrorism: Motivation, Communication, and Behavior (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015); Online Jihadist Magazines to Promote the Caliphate: Communicative Perspectives (Peter Lang, 2019); Global Jihad in Muslim and non-Muslim Contexts (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020); Female Terrorism in America: Past and Current Perspectives (Routledge, 2020); Communication in Global Jihad (Routledge, 2021); and Fundamentals of Public Communication Campaigns (Wiley, 2022).

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Chapter 1

Introduction

Divided into nine chapters, this book examines the reasons for which children join terrorist movements and how they eventually become peace activists fighting the very crimes that they once committed. The transformation of child terrorists into peace activists has received scant attention from academics and practitioners alike. To help readers understand this phenomenon, this book provides current and historical backgrounds, case studies, theoretical applications, and an in-depth thematic analysis of the experiences of 24 former child terrorists. The latter have taken the limelight today to share their hopes for a better world. They became famous—internationally or locally—through their community involvement and interviews/ speeches within both regional and global media. Many across the global community have a general idea why children join terrorist organizations and armed movements. After all, terrorism never was the sole domain of adults and state forces. However, misconceptions remain as to how children become immersed in such extreme violence and how they are recruited by front-line propagandists. What is also lacking in the literature is an examination of the other side of the issue: child terrorists’ transition to peace activism. To prevent future youths from joining terrorist movements, these activists help us understand the disillusionment that eventually caused them to abandon terrorism and openly fight their past wrongdoings. This scholarly angle is important because it adds fresh insights to the already existing strategies and policies that are set in place to confront this clear and present danger. Since the September 11, 2001, attacks, the issue of terrorism has appeared in major media outlets on a daily basis. It remains a tragic phenomenon around the world and has gained considerable attention, thanks to the internet and social media. Although terrorism has been exploited as a method for time immemorial, there is particular significance in considering youth in such troubled positions. The symbol of a child holding an AK-47 or brandishing a sword in battle unsettles the sensitivity of modern society. This casts light on their premature experiences with radicalism, sometimes even before their formative years. These images completely reverse commonly held assumptions of children as protected and inoffensive souls. They © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 J. Matusitz, From Child Terrorism to Peace Activism, Springer Series in Social Work and Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16582-5_1

1

2

1 Introduction

simultaneously arouse collective shock, fear, and horror, but also captivation, pride, and approval. Such imagery captures our attention and incites us to think more deeply on the subject (Denov 2010). As many as 300,000 children are believed to be used as fighters in illicit armed conflicts around the world—robbing them of their childhood and education (UNICEF 2009). In a world increasingly connected by technology, we are able to witness instantly the atrocities that occur when children are recruited, conscripted, or abducted by terrorist groups. Still to this day, it is difficult to assess the percentage of children who “voluntarily” join terrorist movements. Some of them, as young as 5, already serve in dangerous missions; thousands of abducted girls are used as sexual slaves. Some terrorist leaders even strap explosive-rigged vests onto toddlers to dispatch them as suicide bombers (Felton 2008). The magnitude of the problem is unprecedented—in the numbers of youths involved, in their degree of participation, and in the nature of their daily tasks. Child terrorism is not a uniquely Muslim or Middle Eastern occurrence. As this book will show, there are many child terrorists in Africa and Latin America. There have also been a considerably high number of cases in separatist terrorist conflicts (like those of the Irish Republican Army and the Tamil Tigers) and within White supremacist circles in North America. Violent extremist organizations are recruiting youngsters at a rapid rate. For example, the Taliban organize “schools” devoted to graduating prepubescent bombers in Pakistan, Houthi rebels in Yemen are periodically embracing children within their ranks, and Hezbollah in Lebanon has mobilized teenagers to increase its presence in Syria (Bloom et al. 2016). This book also addresses questions about the discrepancies of “childhood” across cultures and periods, asking whether the dominant Western perspective, rooted in European history and social institutions, resonates with the ways non-Western societies define or perceive children. The major issue with investigations into child terrorism is that they are obfuscated by the fact that cultures have wide-ranging interpretations of what constitutes adulthood. What we do know, however, is that as of today, most of the world’s least peaceful nations have high proportions of youths. On the other hand, most peaceful states have smaller numbers (Warshel 2019). In 2018, the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) revealed that 81% of children in the world (aged below 18) lived in war-torn areas. That would be the equivalent of 1.8 billion people. One-sixth live less than 50 kilometers away from physical violence. That would be about 420 million people. This also represents an increase of over 50% since the 1990s (Østby et al. 2018). Unlike terrorism in the past, when heavy and cumbersome weapons reduced children’s usefulness in battle, contemporary weapons technology has improved so much that small boys and girls can effortlessly wield weapons like M16 and AK-47 rifles. They are weightless and easy to use; they can be stripped and reassembled very fast. Hand grenades, landmines, and multiple types of improvised explosive devices (IEDs), though precarious to handle, are not too difficult for children to carry, throw, or plant. Lastly, such contemporary weapons technology has become much less expensive and more available (Honwana 2008).

1.1 Objectives of This Book

3

1.1 Objectives of This Book The first objective of this book is to examine both the micro- and macro-level processes of child terrorism, particularly the reasons for joining terrorist movements, the recruitment mechanisms, and the socialization processes―either at the micro level (e.g., influence or coercion from family and friends) or the macro level (e.g., influence or coercion from society). Scholarly research on the increased conscription of children into terrorist organizations is lacking in some areas. For example, to date, an insufficient number of studies have been conducted on cross-regional or cross-cultural differences among child terrorist groups in the world. As such, do differences exist between jihadist and White supremacist recruitment of such youngsters? Or, more broadly, is there a common denominator among all terrorist organizations that recruit children, irrespective of the culture or region? Is there a common denominator in the way children are used―when training them, when preparing them for combat, or in regard to certain tasks? Likewise, research is lagging behind in other domains. Are children, more often than not, forced into terrorism through institutional apparatuses―e.g., child units, training camps in the summer, and other indoctrination mechanisms―in order to facilitate their entry? And is the manner by which children are encouraged to join a terrorist movement dissimilar from the manner by which adults are pushed to do so? For terrorist groups in some of the most impoverished areas of the world, no operation would be effective without children. Deep in their formative years, they are more active, energetic, and alert, but also more vulnerable and expendable, than adult fighters. They can keep sentinel at dangerous checkpoints, look out for mines, and break into enemy lines. Their natural empathy is a strength for those terrorist groups (Boothby and Knudsen 2000). It is also plausible that these groups prefer to mobilize children because they are more affordable and more available in numbers. Now, a question looms large: Do children possess skillsets that adults do not? Put differently, can they bring something new to the table for terrorist organizations, especially if it were something that adults would fail to achieve? In a country like Colombia, approximately 80% of child terrorists are said to be enrolled on a voluntary basis. However, the concept of “volunteering” is subject to multiple interpretations. There are varying degrees to which each one of them agreed to volunteer. There can be external factors that contribute to a boy’s or girl’s willingness to be part of a terrorist group (cited in Carmona et al. 2012, p. 757). To this point, why did so many European Muslim youths leave their European families to go train and fight in Syria and Iraq? How is it conceivable that comparatively wealthier children will choose holy war and learn lethal methods such as suicide bombings and beheadings over benefiting from education, healthcare, and freedom? A great many arguments on the failure of integration in Western societies today may become passé because they fail to recognize other reasons. The experiences and processes of transformation of child terrorists are too diverse and cannot be supported by reductionist or generalized conclusions (Franz 2015). This is why Chap. 2 lists and describes ten important reasons that explain why children become terrorists.

4

1 Introduction

The presence of boys and girls in theaters of war bears additional unintentional effects for civilians and the organization of power relations in society. Exploiting children for terrorist activities defies long-established structural hierarchies and heralds the breakdown of the family unit (Bloom 2019). Hence, part of the first objective of this book is to examine the social milieus of children’s lives (i.e., families, peer groups, religious settings, and other collectives) and how the cultural arena inspires children to participate in extreme hostilities. After some time, the combination of the combat training that these children have acquired, the atrocities that they may have perpetrated, the amount of propaganda and indoctrination to which they were exposed, and the traumas that they might have endured mean that the danger that these child terrorists pose on those social milieus cannot be overlooked, let alone misunderstood. They have proved to be just as dangerous as adults, which merits an academic approach that balances the view of child terrorists as victimized beings (van der Heide and Geenen 2017). The second objective of this book is to understand the transition toward life after hate. People participate in terrorist activities and violent extremism for a wide array of reasons, including political, ideological, religious, and group-related motivations (Matusitz 2020). However, the inability to achieve what they anticipated, disagreement with the new direction of the terrorist group, disgust with the group’s new modus operandi, or even boredom with day-to-day terrorist tasks (see Horgan 2009; Jacobson 2008) can be a source of their disillusionment with terrorism and, therefore, a massive motivator to turn their back on it. By and large, child terrorists come from a variety of social and ethnic backgrounds and go through different processes of metamorphosis into extreme violence. Profiles of child terrorists are difficult to establish because they cannot be used as a blueprint to identify actual or potential terrorists. Such “profiles” are unable to capture the diversity and the manner by which individuals transform upon joining―e.g., through forced conscription or out of their own volition―terrorist movements (Bjørgo 2011). An important objective, then, is to examine the process that enables former child terrorists to rebuild their lives in the wake of years of violent extremism. A certain number of these individuals attempt to redirect their passionate hatred toward anti-­ terrorist and peaceful undertakings. A recurring example in the literature is the creation or sponsoring of a non-governmental organization (NGO) to fight the very violence that once defined them. As such, they want to hold terrorist movements accountable through humanitarian law; to tap human rights as a rhetorical foundation for claims-making; to deliver lectures on human rights so as to generate a process of political osmosis; and to urge alternate forms of interventions to prevent child terrorism (instead of the usual interventions guided predominantly by criminological concerns) (McEvoy 2003). To examine that process, a thematic analysis of 24 case studies of child-­terrorists-­ turned-peace-activists is conducted toward the end of this book. These 24 subjects were identified on the internet, thanks to open sources such as The New York Times, The Telegraph, and Yahoo News, among many others. They came from 5 different continents (all but Australia and Antarctica), spanning 16 different countries, from Peru to England to Sri Lanka. The mean age (upon joining the terrorist movement)

1.1 Objectives of This Book

5

was 13.5 years old, and the median age was 15. The youngest subject was merely 5 years old. The thematic analysis focused on 260 verbal and written statements made by the 24 subjects in various open sources over the years. Also available were some interviews on television and/or with newspaper or magazine editors. Four themes emerged from the analysis of the dataset: “metamorphosis,” “terrorist behavior,” “disillusionment,” and “anti-terrorist behavior.” These themes outlined a progressive transition―oftentimes taking many years―from joining a terrorist movement to fighting the very crimes that initially made them a grave threat to humankind. More importantly, the results of this study revealed the underlying commonalties and differences of experiences of child terrorism and peace activism among the subjects. The third objective of this book is to examine the theoretical implications of this analysis and propose solutions to better come to grips with former child terrorists returning from their mortal campaigns. Seven theories are described in this book. Four are in Chap. 2―social learning theory, cultural evolution (CE) theory, performance theory, and social identity theory (SIT)―and three in Chap. 6: social movement theory (SMT), framing theory, and social representations theory (SRT). An important purpose is to relate each theory to fundamental arguments and conclusions about child terrorism and peace activism, particularly in Chap. 9. Once boys and girls participate in a terrorist movement, they are trained to persecute the Other. In turn, they suffer from trauma as they experience―through their actions or the observation of others’―some of the most horrid acts that humankind has ever known (see Bloom 2019, p. 6). This is why practical solutions include, but are not limited to, the focus on community resilience, the prevention of recidivism, and the prosecution of adult trainers (because, many times, they are the ones who instigate those boys and girls to commit terrorist atrocities). The solutions recommended at the end of this work may be enticing to readers because it is human nature to acquire the skillset that aid in pursuing ideological struggles for the hearts and minds of certain groups of people or even for humanity in general. Ultimately, the point is to collectively take more successful approaches that will result in improved lives for all. However, it is important to note that, under many international and domestic jurisdictions, child terrorists are considered plain terrorists. Whatever solution is proposed, it should be predicated upon the fact that these former terrorists posed―and may continue to pose―a threat to governmental and counter-terrorist efforts in the global war on terror. All too frequently, their dangerous actions are weakening the progress of armies in their attempt to keep terrorism at bay (Gray and Matchin III 2008). A great number of governments and counter-terrorist agencies the world over resent the prospect that former child terrorists may be reintegrated into society one day. For this reason, prevention is better than cure. In the domain of international laws, a principal challenge is to make international humanitarian laws known and enforced at all times, so that children will no longer be conscripted into illicit armed conflicts (Breen and Matusitz 2008). In addition to consolidating international laws and giving them more prominence, it is crucial to improve local understandings and norms about “childhood” and “child protection” from terrorist recruitment.

6

1 Introduction

1.2 What Is Terrorism? Numerous definitions of terrorism are available in the literature, with no universal agreement about it. At most, a comprehensive, most agreed-upon definition of terrorism can be offered. As such, it refers to the use of intentional violence for political or religious reasons (Fortna 2015). The method of struggle espoused by terrorists can be dictated by both event sequences and choice. In fact, it is not unusual for terrorists to use a wide assortment of combat strategies concomitantly. A major obstacle to the attempt of reaching a widely adopted definition of terrorism is the negative emotional implication of the concept. Terrorism is more than a descriptor of a category of wrongdoing; it is also a highly derogatory word in many parts of the globe. Laypeople have employed the term as a condemning label for a whole range of phenomena which they abhor, without attempting to understand exactly what constitutes terrorism (Merari 1993). The definition of terrorism is grounded in three factors: “The method (violence), the target (civilian or government) and the purpose (to instill fear and force political or social change)” (Kushner 2013, p. 359). Terrorist attacks pose a global danger to the rule of law. They jeopardize national, regional, and international stability as they chip away at the nation-states’ abilities to shield their citizens and properties from potential attacks within and outside their territories. Terrorism is also highly communicative and psychological. Acts of terrorism function as communication conduits on several levels, ranging from the direct physical target to indirect, remote audiences responding to the attacks (Hoffman 2006). Terrorism is often paired with the concept of “propaganda of the deed”; it is designed as a particular political action in order to gain attention and visibility (Warria 2016). The purpose of terrorism, then, spreads far beyond physical harm to people and demolition of property. Terrorist offenders arouse fear to coerce or intimidate a much wider group of individuals beyond the immediate victims. The ultimate objective is to create social change so as to fulfill political, ideological, religious, and/or financial agendas (Comer et al. 2016). The concepts of “terrorism” and “militancy” have become a news segment of every major media channel’s daily bulletin across the world. Nevertheless, terrorists and militants are generally regarded as submerged in a gulf of mystery―at times, to the level of mythical fantasy (Peracha et al. 2012). The objectives of terrorism and guerrilla warfare bear much resemblance; they are also distinct from each other by the very targets they pursue. The guerrilla fighters’ targets are more military, whereas the terrorists tend to target unarmed citizens. Under these circumstances, a terrorist organization should no longer proclaim to be “freedom fighters,” even if they fight for national liberation. No matter how legitimate their ultimate agenda is, an organization that intentionally harms unarmed citizens is a terrorist organization (Ganor 2002).

1.3 What Does “Child” Mean? The word “child” is a contested term too. Under most jurisdictions worldwide, a child is a fellow human whose age is under the legal age of majority. The notion of childhood is not only a biological marker but also a socially constructed and

1.3 What Does “Child” Mean?

7

culturally influenced one. The social construction of childhood justifies specific actions and behaviors of boys and girls which are considered to be acceptable within a given culture (Higonnet 1998). Although childhood has a biological foundation, evolving through identifiable stages of physical and psychological development, it should also be acknowledged as a social construct (Adams 2014). As explained next, the nature of social construction is undoubtedly multifaceted, and the interpretations of what “child” means fluctuate across different contexts (Waller 2013).

1.3.1 Childhood as a Social Construct James and James (2008) define social construction as “a theoretical perspective that explores the ways in which ‘reality’ is negotiated in everyday life through people’s interactions and through sets of discourses” (p. 322). Within the context of this book, social constructionism seeks to explain how childhood is construed and interpreted by society, how it differs from adulthood, and what purpose it serves in daily existence. Social constructionism can present more than one way to understand the roles that boys and girls ought to play in society. Fluctuating across cultures and epochs, social constructs of childhood underline the uniqueness of situations and circumstances in which boyhood or girlhood is lived. Childhood as a social construct also means that it is not only a natural process but also a sociocultural determination― i.e., particularly when a child should be deemed an adult (Norozi and Moen 2016). Insofar as children’s roles in terrorist movements have gradually changed over time, conceptualizations about these transformations have to be contemplated across diverse sociocultural settings as well. As a social construct, the concept of youth corresponds to a social position temporarily assumed by every passing generation, which generates its own distinctive relationships, identity, and culture. Examining the various meaning-making processes that children experience during their formative years illuminates the paths that they take toward terrorism. Before proceeding, it is important to note that, for the purpose of this book, we will adopt the definition of “child” as any human being who is a minor (i.e., less than 18 years of age).

1.3.2 “Child” in Sociocultural Contexts Around the World In many areas around the world, the outlook on childhood diverges dramatically from that of Western, industrialized societies. Contrary to middle-class children whose parents and families want to support them until they can sustain themselves (in many cases, well beyond the age of 18), many children start working and assume social responsibilities very early on. They take part in productive activities, in household tasks, and in tending to younger siblings. As Freeman (1998) contends, what embodies childhood is culturally relative; one culture might consider working as an exemplary part of childhood, whereas another might regard it as unbecoming

8

1 Introduction

and antithetical to it. Thus, it is necessary to understand how the immediate society of these children construes its own vision of childhood. For instance, in Angola and Mozambique, children are depicted in strong and resilient terms, as survivors of difficult situations. Being a child in those precarious nations has little to do with age, but is related to social roles, traditions, and responsibilities (see Honwana 2008, p. 144). The age of majority is automatically a legal decree; it can also be a social, religious, or cultural passage by which society recognizes a child’s transition to adulthood. No correlation exists between the traditional age of adulthood―which can be signaled by coming-of-age ceremonies and religious traditions (which can occur as young as 13)―and Western perceptions of what constitutes maturity and adulthood (Bloom 2019, p. 7). In the West, children are people under the age of 18. They are considered psychologically and physically weaker than adults. Children are those who go through the developmental stages of secondary sexual features so that, one day, they can be called adults. Children have different cognitive skills, intellectual abilities, degrees of knowledge, and aptitudes for logical reasoning. Though children are not necessarily less socially skilled, they are still contemplated as individuals with less emotional maturity and competence in regard to life skills. Taken as a whole, children are in less powerful positions than adults (see Norozi and Moen 2016, p. 76). In a certain number of non-Western cultures, “child” and “teenager” are not uniform entities. Their life conditions are far from similar to those in the West. In many terrorist zones, a child becomes a potential combatant and easy prey for a terrorist organization. In 2002, the Chechen hostage takers in the Moscow theater, where over 800 innocent people were held, refused to release children over age 14 because, in Chechnya, no one is considered a child at that age (Speckhard et al. 2004). On the other hand, in many East Asian cultures, childhood, prepubescence, and adolescence each have a different age referent. These categories are more distinct and absolute than in the West. In some Islamic contexts, childhood is looked at as a period of time typified by the absence of reason (‘aql). The word “childhood” cannot be considered in isolation. It is profoundly interlaced with other factors in culture. The notion of “childhood is socially constructed and understood contextually” (Jenks 2004, p. 78). In another example, Nilsen (2008) mentions that childhood in Norway will vary based on the place and culture within the country. As such, being out in nature (outdoor life), notwithstanding extreme weather and freezing conditions, should be part of “constructing a national childhood” (Nilsen 2008, p. 54).

1.4 Child Terrorism In 1924, the League of Nations ratified the Declaration of the Rights of the Child (Marshall 1999). The corpus of international human rights laws that has emerged since World War II safeguards the rights of highly vulnerable humans. This includes children, women, and those who are sexually exploited, underprivileged, and

1.4 Child Terrorism

9

tortured (Olivier 2018). Now, what is a child terrorist? In the words of the International Coalition to Stop the Use of Children as Soldiers (CSC), it is: any person under 18 years of age who is a member of, or attached to, government armed forces or any other regular or irregular armed force or group, whether or not an armed conflict exists. They may perform a range of tasks, including participation in combat, logistical and support functions, and domestic and sexual services. (cited in Peters 2005, p. 12)

Because it has been ascertained that children are more readily available, affordable, and expendable—at least from the viewpoint of terrorist leaders and recruiters— exploiting them as terrorists is a motivation to perpetuate conflicts, even if success seems elusive. Now, another question looms large: Are child terrorists always distinguishable from child soldiers?

1.4.1 Child Terrorists vs. Child Soldiers? Though Mackey (2016) maintains that child terrorists should not be equated with child soldiers because the “civilizational” aspects of the parties involved are what determines the label that should be used, distinguishing between child terrorists and child soldiers remains a complex issue. There is much debate as to whether children recruited and used by terrorist organizations should theoretically qualify as child soldiers, the reason being that most of them are active in self-determination struggles. Although the combination of apocalyptic agendas with political movements is usually integral to most illicit armed struggles, the fact remains that terrorism itself is a highly contested topic; hence, the terms child soldier, child terrorist, and child militant often intersect and pose a challenge to any clear-cut definition (Podder 2008). Who is a soldier exactly? As stipulated in several United Nations accords since World War II, a child is anyone under 18. Until 2000, it was not illegal under international law to use children as young as 15 in combat (Bloom 2019, p. 7). A legal definition is included in the 2000 Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict—known as the “Optional Protocol.” It allows states to recruit 16- and 17-year-olds, but prevents them from fighting as combatants. The United States and 25 other nations recruit individuals under 18 into their armed services, as stated by the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers. However, under the Optional Protocol of that Coalition, “non-state actors” like illicit armed groups are not allowed to recruit anyone under 18 (Felton 2008, p. 4). This definition includes all children or adolescents irrespective of roles, including cooks, carriers, messengers, and females hired as “wives” or in other passive roles (Bloom 2019, p. 7). As one can see, today United Nations treaties forbid the use of child combatants, and the Security Council “names and shames” recurring violators. Yet, only a handful of former terrorist commanders have been found guilty by international tribunals. Though human rights activists urge more serious prosecution of perpetrators, peace negotiators stress the fact that threats of prosecution can impede ceasefire

10

1 Introduction

negotiations and protract the conflicts (Felton 2008, p. 1). Many terrorist leaders around the world clearly disregard the prohibition from international legal bodies or claim not to be aware of the ages of their combatants (United Nations 2008). Among Western nations, there is no clear consensus as to how child terrorists should be treated. It seems like tacking the problem of convicting children for terrorism has frequently been determined by the political whims of individual nation-states. Children as terrorists are still considered dangerous to Western societies, particularly when repatriated from terrorist zones. Recently, the widely covered case of British teenager Shamima Begum in the news media shed light on how children formerly associated with jihadist groups like ISIS should be treated (Nyamutata 2020).

1.4.2 Always Aware of Being a Child Terrorist? It is a well-known fact that children are subjected to unique social and cognitive psychological developments in comparison with adults (see Matusitz 2016; Simi and Matusitz 2019). Children are at a stage where their decision-making experience is relatively limited and may not be fully aware of the impact of their joining a terrorist movement (Holmer and Shtuni 2017). Criminal culpability, in the writings of Hart (2008), is based on both cognitive and volitional factors. A child terrorist ought to understand his or her actions and have a real opportunity to act otherwise. With this said, can age alone determine such abilities? (Grover 2012). This prompts another question: What is the agency of these children under these circumstances? Should we look at them as passive actors, empty cans into which the ability to commit violence has been poured? As this book will demonstrate, some boys and girls are forced to join terrorist groups and are then secluded from the rest of society. All the same, other children practice their own agency and knowingly decide to carry out brutalities that may surpass their initial militant assignments. They may do it out of revenge, voracity, immaturity, envy, and the like. They may also anticipate having some type of reward or gaining social status in their communities. And some may simply find that killing the Other needlessly is thrilling (Honwana 2002). When ascribed to children, the notion of “agency” can have two distinct characteristics: their freedom and their efficacy. Freedom means that a boy or girl benefits from a high degree of physical autonomy. Efficacy means that an older individual attends to the child’s needs and wants and that, from an early age, his or her social status and power are acknowledged as high in their communities. In Western middle-­class society, children enjoy much of second type of agency, much more so than the first. Conversely, cultural studies of children in non-Western societies report the opposite phenomenon; children have a high degree of freedom, but have to earn it through hard work to enjoy high status in their society (Lancy 2012). Consequently, the question of a child’s level of participation in terrorism comes down to agency. What this means is that children impacted by conflict do not consist of a homogenous group of powerless objects of law, but they have agency of their own (Honwana 2006). Agency is the scope of discretion that a person has in a

1.5 Competitive Works

11

subordinated situation. The agency of a child in a terrorist environment is also referred to as the agency of the weak. Nevertheless, today, experts on children’s rights continue to vacillate between defending the competing arguments of protection and the autonomy of children (Drumbl 2012). In the event that children join terrorist groups “voluntarily,” we must keep in mind that they are simply too young to fully evaluate the risks involved. Raising the argument of a child’s “right” to become a terrorist can be no more than an excuse by adults who seek to exploit children for their own purposes. In many conflict zones, the difference between voluntary and forced recruitment of children is meaningless (see Boothby and Knudsen 2000, p. 61). Many commentators will also put forward the idea that using the term “child terrorist” is challenging because it is doubtful that a child can sensibly understand the political agendas of a group or genuinely accept in any violent doctrine as true. Though this is a valid argument, it does not change the fact that large cohorts of children are brainwashed in violent ideologies and ready to kill innocent people. Children implicated in a terrorist movement are, by definition, child terrorists under the vast majority of international laws. However, the ideological aspect must be discussed as well, no matter how superficial or one-­ dimensional we may think a child’s approval of it actually is. If truth be told, the lines between terrorism and warfare are frequently blurry, exacerbating the problem of being able to designate roles that children assume in certain conflicts. It is not the intention of this book to equate children in armed groups with adult combatants or to equate children associated with terrorist groups with adult terrorists. However, children should not be regarded simply as pawns used by terrorist commanders, for this ignores their active roles in their own lives and as decision-makers that gradually shape their own identities―i.e., those aligned with a terrorist movement (Drumbl 2012). There exist many push and pull factors that lead to children’s participation in terrorist attacks.

1.5 Competitive Works In Small Arms: Children and Terrorism, Mia Bloom (2019) examines child terrorism across eight chapters. Just like this book, the first chapter defines “child,” “child terrorists,” and “child soldiers” in detail, with a particular focus on legal and cultural differences. Although the five following chapters provide a solid analysis of recruitment, socialization, and preparation of children for terrorism, too much emphasis is placed on Islamic terrorists, to the detriment of other groups like African and Latin American terrorists. More importantly, no applied research study was conducted. Nevertheless, Chapter 8 offers psychological solutions and perspectives that academics and practitioners alike would find useful. In Creating Young Martyrs: Conditions That Make Dying in a Terrorist Attack Seem Like a Good Idea, LoCicero and Sinclair (2008) gathered their own memories of, experiences with, and ideas about terrorism as a whole and child terrorists in particular. The first chapter details first-hand accounts of children’s conflict

12

1 Introduction

experiences in Sri Lanka. The purpose is to explain how children may join terrorist organizations in a war-torn country. The authors promote the notion that the relentless danger and stress of civil war transform children into fighters. The problem is that the children interviewed in this study were never terrorists or soldiers themselves. On the contrary, they led much better lives than most Sri Lankan children, benefiting from the best educational opportunities at very safe campuses. Other chapters give readers, at the beginning, hope for original studies, but some of them turn out to be mere psychological or theoretical models. In Child Soldiers in the Age of Fractured States, Gates and Reich (2010) edited a volume of 14 chapters that look at the factors leading to the use of children in conflicts, the effects on children, and the enduring cycle of warfare that immerses many of the world’s poorest countries. Examples of factors are economic factors, population factors, societal factors, and gender factors. The end of the volume offers viable solutions emanating from international laws and treaties (e.g., criminal prosecution by international tribunals). Other solutions include policies to decrease the recruitment of child soldiers such as the betterment of refugee camps by external forces. The main issue with the book lies in the fact that warfare—rather than terrorism―is the main focal point. Hence, this would be somewhat outside the scope of this book.

1.6 Summary of Chapters Chapter 2 describes ten major reasons as to why children become terrorists: (1) state failure, (2) cultural arena, (3) social media influences, (4) total institution, (5) kinship factors, (6) identity crises and psychological factors, (7) susceptibility and naïveté, (8) kidnapping or forced recruitment, (9) easy prey for suicide missions, and (10) gender-related and sexual reasons. This chapter is important because it validates the complexity of the problem; terrorist actors do not operate in a vacuum. Some reasons are more prevalent or influential than others, depending on the region or circumstances. Children can also join terrorist movements for more than one reason; they can be exposed to the same hazard in various ways and, therefore, encounter different problems and opportunities during their journeys. Chapter 3 focuses on children of the global jihadist movement (GJM). The GJM is framed as the antidote to the contemporary problems in the world. Jihadist groups promise their young audience total domination of the world through the Caliphate (an Islamic system of world government) and the iron fist of sharia (a body of Islamic law). Several small case studies are offered, including child jihadism in Syria and Pakistan, before readers come to learn about the main centerpieces of this chapter: Al-Qaeda and ISIS. Among the many key points addressed, (1) social media has facilitated the recruitment and indoctrination of young Muslim minds, and (2) both Al-Qaeda and ISIS have groomed children into child jihadist units, called Birds of Paradise and Cubs of the Caliphate, respectively.

1.6 Summary of Chapters

13

Chapter 4 describes child terrorism in Africa and Latin America. Examined are child suicide bombers, particularly girls, in Africa. Girls should no longer be viewed as just the weaker sex that supports male fighters on the battlefield. Also examined as case studies or full descriptions are Boko Haram in Nigeria, RENAMO in Mozambique, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda, and the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in Sierra Leone. The second half of the chapter covers child terrorism in Latin America, with a special focus on Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) in Peru and underage militants in Colombia. These two countries were selected because they represented a large chunk of the problem in that region of the world in the 1980s and 1990s. Chapter 5 provides an account on child separatist terrorism. Also called nationalist terrorists, separatist terrorists resort to political violence to coerce the dominant government into giving them sovereignty. The two main examples of such organizations in this chapter, notorious for using children, are the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Irish Republican Army (IRA). The second half of Chap. 5 discusses White child supremacism, with particular attention paid to online recruitment, Stormfront, and the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). Most of the recruitment of White children occurs through SNSs and web pages designed for kids. Chapter 6 analyzes the fundamentals of peace activism. Differences between negative and positive peace and accidental and lifelong activists are offered. Also described are peace concepts such as grassroots activism, peace spaces, the “world as one” phenomenon, and communication concepts such as dialogic communication, cultural wisdom, and empowerment communication. The second half of the chapter describes three major theories―social movement theory (SMT), framing theory, and social representations theory (SRT)―in relation to peace activism. Chapter 7 tells the lives and experiences of 24 former child terrorists-turned-­ peace activists. Describing the terrorist backgrounds and life-changing moments of these people is important because it sets the tone and context of the statements and excerpts examined in the following chapter. The 24 former child terrorists come from 5 different continents (all but Australia and Antarctica), spanning 16 different countries, from Peru to England to Sri Lanka. For the purpose of this manuscript, rather than classifying them geographically, a structure of classification was followed based on the types of child terrorism described in previous chapters. Chapter 8 is a detailed thematic analysis of 260 verbal and written statements made by the 24 subjects in this study to interpret their child terrorist and peace activist experiences (through their narratives available in the public domain). Thematic analysis identifies, examines, and interprets patterns of meaning (“themes”) within data. It is well suited to study time and change in a person’s life. Three research questions were formulated to understand the commonalties and differences in the way the five groups infused their experiences of child terrorism with meanings and how they communicated them to the world. Overall, this thematic analysis followed six steps: (1) familiarization with the data, (2) creation of codes, (3) theme search, (4) theme definition, (5) data analysis, and (6) conclusions. Chapter 9 is a general discussion of the entire manuscript and what can be deduced about children’s experiences as child terrorists and, later, as peace activists.

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1 Introduction

Overall, the 24 subjects in this study have become social justice activists, with the objective of championing human rights for all and the end to violence. The seven theories described in Chaps. 2 and 6 are applied to fundamental arguments and conclusions about child terrorism and peace activism. They also give readers an indication as to where the four themes of “metamorphosis,” “terrorist behavior,” “disillusionment,” and “anti-terrorist behavior” belong within the entire framework of this analysis. The last section of Chap. 9 offers solutions to the problems of child terrorism. The solutions are separated into three categories: general perspectives, reintegration perspectives, and legal perspectives.

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Gates, Scott, and Simon Reich, Child Soldiers in the Age of Fractured States. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010. Gray, David H., and Tom Owen Matchin III, “Children: The New Face of Terrorism,” International NGO Journal 3, no. 6 (2008): 108–14. Grover, Sonja C., Child Soldier Victims of Genocidal Forcible Transfer: Exonerating Child Soldiers Charged with Grave Conflict–Related International Crimes. New York: Springer, 2012. Hart, Herbert Lionel Adolphus, Punishment and Responsibility: Essays in the Philosophy of Law. New York: Oxford University Press 2008. Higonnet, Anne, Pictures of Innocence: The History and Crisis of Ideal Childhood. London: Thames & Hudson, 1998. Hoffman, Bruce, Inside Terrorism (2nd Ed.). New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. Holmer, Georgia, and Adrian Shtuni, Returning Foreign Fighters and the Reintegration Imperative. Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace, 2017. Honwana, Alcinda, “Negotiating Postwar Identities: Child Soldiers in Mozambique and Angola,” Contested Terrains and Constructed Categories: Contemporary Africa in Focus, edited by George Bond and Nigel Gibson, 277–98. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2002. __________ Child Soldiers in Africa. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006. __________ “Children’s Involvement in War: Historical and Social Contexts,” The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 1, no. 1 (2008): 139–49. https://doi.org/10.1353/hcy.2008.0004 Horgan, John G., Walking Away from Terrorism: Accounts of Disengagement from Radical and Extremist Movements. New York: Routledge, 2009. Jacobson, Michael, “Why Terrorists Quit: Gaining from Al–Qa’ida’s Losses,” CTC Sentinel 1, no. 8 (2008): 1–3. James, Allison, and Adrian L. James, Key Concepts in Childhood Studies. London: Sage, 2008. Jenks, Chris, “Constructing Childhood Sociologically,” in An Introduction to Childhood Studies, edited by Mary Jane Kehily, 77–95. London: Open University Press, 2004. Kushner, Harvey W., Encyclopedia of Terrorism. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2013. Lancy, David F., “Unmasking Children’s Agency,” AnthropoChildren 2, no. 1 (2012): 1–20. LoCicero, Alice, and Samuel J. Sinclair, Creating Young Martyrs: Conditions That Make Dying in a Terrorist Attack Seem Like a Good Idea. Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2008. Mackey, Allison, “Troublesome Indigestion: The ‘Return’ of Omar Khadr and Post–Racial Politics of Citizenship in Canada,” TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies 35 (2016): 10–21. https://doi.org/10.3138/topia.35.107 Marshall, Dominique, “The Construction of Children as an Object of International Relations: The Declaration of Children’s Rights and the Child Welfare Committee of League of Nations, 1900–1924,” The International Journal of Children’s Rights 7, no. 2 (1999): 103–48. https:// doi.org/10.1163/15718189920494309 Matusitz, Jonathan, “Martyrdom as a Result of Psychosocial Resilience: The Case of Palestinian Suicide Terrorists,” in The Routledge International Handbook of Psychosocial Resilience, edited by Updesh Kumar, 285–95. New York: Routledge, 2016. __________ Global Jihad in Muslim and non–Muslim Contexts. New  York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. McEvoy, Kieran, “Beyond the Metaphor: Political Violence, Human Rights and ‘New’ Peacemaking Criminology,” Theoretical Criminology 7, no. 3 (2003): 319–46. https://doi. org/10.1177/13624806030073004 Merari, Ariel, “Terrorism as a Strategy of Insurgency,” Terrorism and Political Violence 5, no. 4 (1993): 213–51. https://doi.org/10.1080/09546559308427227 Nilsen, R.  Dyblie, “Children in Nature: Cultural Ideas and Social Practices in Norway,” in European Childhood: Cultures, Policies and Childhoods in Europe, edited by Allison James and Adrian L. James, 38–60. London: Palgrave, 2008. Norozi, Sultana Ali, and Torill Moen, “Childhood as a Social Construction,” Journal of Educational and Social Research 6, no. 2 (2016): 75–80.

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Nyamutata, Conrad, “Young Terrorists or Child Soldiers? ISIS Children, International Law and Victimhood,” Journal of Conflict and Security Law (2020): 237–61. https://doi.org/10.1093/ jcsl/krz034 Olivier, Michèle, “Africa’s Child Soldiers/Suicide Children: A Regulatory Framework,” International Journal of Law and Society 1, no. 3 (2018): 115–24. https://doi.org/10.11648/j. ijls.20180103.13 Østby, Gudrun, Siri Aas Rustad, and Andreas Forø Tollefsen, Children Affected by Armed Conflict, 1990–2017. Oslo: Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), 2018. Peracha, Feriha N., Raafia R.  Khan, Arooj Ahmad, Sadia J.  Khan, Sahar Hussein, and Haroon Rashid Choudry, “Socio Demographic Variables in the Vulnerable Youth Predisposed Towards Militancy (Swat, Pakistan),” Psychiatry, Psychology and Law 19, no. 3 (2012): 439–47. https:// doi.org/10.1080/13218719.2011.598635 Peters, Lilian, War Is No Child’s Play: Child Soldiers from Battlefield to Playground. Geneva: Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces, 2005. Podder, Sukanya, “Doctrinal Challenges, Nation Building, Terror Tactics and the Power of the Child: A Tale of Three ‘Sites’,” Strategic Analysis 32, no. 1 (2008): 147–59. https://doi. org/10.1080/09700160801886546 Simi, Demi, and Jonathan Matusitz, “Pathways to Sports Leadership for Latinas in U.S. Higher Education,” Journal of Latinos and Education 18, no. 2 (2019): 151–63. https://doi.org/10.108 0/15348431.2017.1386103 Speckhard, Anne, Nadejda Tarabrina, Valery Krasnov, and Khapta Akhmedova, “Research Note: Observations of Suicidal Terrorists in Action,” Terrorism and Political Violence 16, no. 2 (2004): 305–27. https://doi.org/10.1080/09546550490490721 UNICEF, UNICEF Urges Demobilization, Integration of Child Soldiers. New  York: UNICEF, 66, 2009 United Nations, Some 250,000 Children Worldwide Recruited to Fight in Wars—UN Official. New York: United Nations, 2008. van der Heide, Liesbeth, and Jip Geenen, Children of the Caliphate: Young IS Returnees and the Reintegration Challenge. The Hague: International Centre for Counter–Terrorism, 2017. Waller, Tim, An Introduction to Early Childhood: A Multidisciplinary Approach (3rd Ed.) London: Paul Chapman, 2013. Warria, Ajwang, “Mothers Reflect on How They Have Assisted Their Children to Cope with the Terrorist Attacks in Kenya,” Children & Society 30, no. 5 (2016): 410–22. https://doi. org/10.1111/chso.12178 Warshel, Yael, “Problematizing the Variable of Conflict to Address Children, Media, and Conflict,” Journal of Global Ethics 15, no. 3 (2019): 361–81. https://doi.org/10.1080/1744962 6.2019.1696384

Chapter 2

Reasons for Child Terrorism

Whenever a child is involved in violence, especially as an active perpetrator, there is guaranteed controversy because of the sensitivity of the matter. A greater problem is that many of these children opt to continue their terrorist activities well beyond their childhood (Bloom 2019). It is important to observe that terrorist actors do not operate in a vacuum. Agency is the ability to create impact and is often intertwined with power. Some actors are more powerful and influential than others in the sequence of events (Giddens 1979). In a threat-filled domain, children can be exposed to the same hazard in various ways and, therefore, encounter different problems and opportunities during their terrorist journeys. Children become terrorists for ten major reasons: (1) state failure, (2) cultural arena, (3) social media influences, (4) total institution, (5) kinship factors, (6) identity crises and psychological factors, (7) susceptibility and naïveté, (8) kidnapping or forced recruitment, (9) easy prey for suicide missions, and (10) gender-related and sexual reasons.

2.1 State Failure State failure is increasingly considered a critical factor in modern-day child terrorism. By definition, state failure alludes to the massive structural disintegration of a state that causes loss of control of its land or region, loss of its sociocultural supremacy, loss of its legitimate use of force, and rampant poverty and inequality within its citizens (Rotberg 2003). By extension, states fail when they are afflicted by internal conflicts, cannot provide positive political outcomes to their populations, and are unable to exert power and authority within their own territories. Put simply, in the eyes of its citizens, a state fails when it loses its overall legitimacy and control (Denov 2010). In the context of child terrorism, state failure often goes hand in hand with degradation—sometimes a sharp one—of regular educational opportunities, the use of terror against one’s family and friends, and moral bankruptcy (Rotberg 2002). © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 J. Matusitz, From Child Terrorism to Peace Activism, Springer Series in Social Work and Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16582-5_2

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Socioeconomic conditions in numerous states render children vulnerable and unconsciously open to the call of terrorism. Impressionable children regard militant life as enthralling. When a recruiter from an illicit armed group arrives and offers a disaffected child the opportunity to wear a uniform and use a machine gun, the temptation is not easy to resist (Felton 2008). As O’Neil and Van Broeckhoven (2018) argue, “it would be hard for children to engage in political violence without some larger political conflict—real or perceived—around which to orient their actions” (p. 43). When major structural factors are in disarray or a nation is on the verge of civil war, the environment becomes conducive to a blossoming of terrorist organizations, which eventually puts children at risk for recruitment within these organizations. Negative structural conditions also lead to a sense of grievance. Grievances are among the most recurrent reasons for understanding why humans rebel or resort to extreme political violence (Maskaliūnaitė 2015).

2.1.1 Effects of Precarious Circumstances Although some of the differences between well-functioning communities and ill-­ functioning ones can explain the behavior of children and parents themselves or even the physical condition of these communities, actions by the state influence the availability and accessibility of vital resources which, in turn, largely determine a child’s future (Ungar 2011). In times of distressing economic crises or environmental hazards, youths face an uncertain future, feeling helpless vis-à-vis their communities or what to do next. They feel bewildered because they may have no career paths. Under such precarious circumstances, these youths are now forced to contend with those limitations that upset them at multiple levels, contributing to additional social and psychological complexities (Tsekeris and Stylianoudi 2014). In a nation like Nepal, the difficulty of getting access to food has motivated children to join terrorist groups of their own volition. In a statement published by Quilliam, a counter-extremism think tank in London, it was reported that ISIS children are motivated by the desire to escape their predicament and insecurity by looking for change. ISIS approaches them and offers them such promises for change―the power and joy to kill the enemy for a meaningful cause; it is framed like a new adventure (Benotman and Malik 2016). In due course, state failure serves “as the backdrop in which child recruitment and use by armed groups occurs, creating additional pressures on civilians, exacerbating needs, and highlighting and amplifying existing societal cleavages and tensions” (Benotman and Malik 2016, p. 100).

2.1.2 Poverty Always Causing Terrorism? It is worth noting that poverty, in and of itself, does not always cause terrorism. Though poverty has been considered a factor facilitating one’s willingness to commit terrorism, Krueger (2003) and Krueger and Malečková (2003) found that

2.2 Cultural Arena

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suicide bombers disproportionately originate from well-off families and are more educated than the average person. A study by Benmelech and Berrebi (2007) revealed that only 13% of their examined suicide bombers came from poor families, below the national average of 33%. Additionally, 57% of suicide terrorists had post-­ high school education experience, in contrast to only 15% for the same age group within the general population. Most studies find correlation―not causation― between poverty and terrorism (Betts 2002), with Fréchette (2003) putting her finger on it: “Frankly, it is an injustice to the poor to suggest that they, simply because they are poor, will necessarily resort to violence” (p. 40). Although poverty is infrequently the real cause of terrorism, it still correlates with social marginalization and discrimination among children. This leads to feelings of dissatisfaction, shame, anger, frustration, and a yearning for fighting back (Urdal 2006).

2.2 Cultural Arena An individual’s cultural arena is the environment in which he or she lives, like the larger culture of a region. The surroundings, the environment, and the inhabitants contribute to the way one feels about the culture that has permeated them. Cultural arena is a setting within which cultural reality is situated. It is a psychological space that can represent an entire nation, region, faith, ideology, language, community, institution, organization, or discourse (Holliday 2010). Social ecologies and environment are of importance, as do the daily interactions between people and conditions of learning. For instance, the culture of martyrdom is formed for the purpose of making jihadism a desirable lifestyle (see Bloom 2019, p. 6). Theorists who believe that self-direction is not a massive motivator for engaging in terrorism confine their research to cultural arena as an external source of influence. Behavior, then, is influenced by extrinsic outcomes (Bandura 1985). Cultural arena is the immediate physical and social setting which guides people and in which events happen or develop. It consists of both the culture that molds individuals and the people and institutions that shape them as well (Escosteguy 2001; Turner 2001). Brett (2003) contends that the presence of armed groups in children’s social setting is a highly influential factor in his or her “volunteering” as a terrorist.

2.2.1 Case Study: Pakistan In the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Pakistan experienced an acute escalation in the percentage of children recruited by terrorist groups. Extreme political factions and militant organizations recruit children to fulfill specific politico-­religious agendas inside the country. Wide discrimination against women and brainwashing of children are part of the cultural arena that occurs more often in rural Pakistan than in large cities of the country. Child terrorists admit that they have learned from the cradle that all Infidels and Apostates must be killed and any Muslim

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who criticizes their radical interpretation of the religion should also be a target of jihad (Fayyaz 2017). Along the same lines, socioeconomic status in Pakistan tends to determine the child’s cultural arena, which plays a pivotal role in determining their future (Peracha et al. 2012). In a study conducted by Peracha et al. (2012), 135 Pakistani boys (aged 12–18) were examined to identify their motivations for becoming child terrorists. There were generally three reasons. First, children are considered non-threatening and able to avoid detection. Second, it is easier to influence and manipulate young malleable minds. Third, the cultural arena in many regions of Pakistan lends itself to “easy terrorism” diffused by radical clerics like Maulana Fazlullah, an Islamist militant leader who rose to the rank of the emir for the Tehrik-i-Taliban (also known as the Pakistani Taliban) (Zaidi 2009). Most of the children included in the study perceived Maulana Fazlullah as a role model and a future savior of the nation and Islam. The study took place in Sabaoon, a site for psychological rehabilitation of Pakistani children who were forcibly recruited by the Pakistani Taliban. The 135 subjects said that, prior to their indoctrination by the group, they had been personally moved by the radio communiqués disseminated by Fazlullah. In his messages, he attacked the Pakistani armed forces as Apostates who should be exterminated. It is clear that Fazlullah was spearheading a terrorist movement. The boys were inclined to believe that any person without the Pakistani national dress (shalwar kameez) or sporting trousers was an Apostate as well (Fitzgerald 2011). Because children’s mind are malleable, they do not possess an advanced ability to properly assess complex issues and ideas. Hence, they were easily manipulated. Ample access to weapons technology also made it easy for children to handle them like adults (see Peracha et al. 2012, p. 442). When recruited by the Pakistani Taliban, the child trainees are ascribed new names (aliases) so they can create new selves that will detach them from their previous lives and connections, including their own relatives―thereby getting them engulfed within a higher cause (Bloom 2019, p. 17). The Pakistani Taliban confine themselves to isolated milieus. If new members agree to do so, it becomes natural for them to relinquish membership and associations with the Other, even their own parents and siblings (i.e., a replacement of relationships). This obsession with producing a “milieu control” is predicated on the notion that previous group memberships and identities would obviate absolute devotion to the terrorist organization. The latter cannot effectively indoctrinate new recruits unless it becomes their sole group affiliation (Singer and Lalich 1995). Once previous group memberships, associations, and identities are eradicated, recruits become more vulnerable. Self-deindividuation removes one’s individual identity, both externally and internally. For example, many recruits in terrorist organizations burn their civilian clothes and replace them with uniforms or military fatigues. Internally, recruits forsake any values, principles, attitudes, or actions that digress from the organization’s values and expectations (Akhtar 1999), a process known as doctrine over existence (Martin and Zacharias 2003). Psychologists at Sabaoon call this a “metaphoric murder,” as the child’s old self was destroyed or gravely diminished. It was a type of deindividualization for the creation of a new identity. Ultimately, this damage to self-identity in a group paves the way for strict conformity, lethargy, and obedience to authority (Bloom 2019, p. 17).

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2.2.2 Social Learning Theory Social learning theory is a theory of learning development and social behavior which postulates that new behaviors can be assimilated by observing and imitating people. Learning is a cognitive process that occurs through observation or direct instruction within a sociocultural context, even if there is no presence of motor reproduction or direct reinforcement (Bandura 1963). Behavior and complex learning must be “explained in terms of a continuous reciprocal interaction of personal environmental determinants… virtually all learning phenomena resulting from direct experience occurs on a vicarious basis by observing other people’s behavior and its consequences for them” (Bandura 1977, p. 11). As a result, human behavior is influenced by observation of other people or by immediate experience within a sociocultural setting. Social learning theory stresses that individual and environmental conditions influence each other in a bi-directional way. As the theory further explains, human behavior is impacted by constant reciprocal interactions between cognitive, behavioral, and environmental factors. Interaction, then, is a system of reciprocal determinism; behavior, individual factors, and environmental factors are all integrated within interconnecting determinants of each other. In a nutshell, social interaction between novices and influencers is what allows social learning to occur (Fiske 2018). The origin of social learning theory can be traced back to Sutherland’s (1924) differential association theory and foundational principles of behavioral psychology. The underlying hypothesis of social learning theory is that the same learning process can create both conforming and deviant or lawbreaking behavior (Rahaim and Matusitz 2020). The central pillar of social learning theory is differential association, or the influence of people that one imitates through association. People nurture favorable or unfavorable views of deviance through interactions with others. These views are also buttressed, positively or negatively, by the rewards or punishments ascribed to their behavior (Chappell and Piquero 2004). In regard to terrorism, social learning provides a pathway to passionate and dangerous individual learning. Merely imitating others can be risky: to be successful, social learning has to be selective (Laland 2004). From this standpoint, social learning is enhanced through domain-general heuristics—generally called “transmission biases” or “social learning strategies.” They assist us in selecting what, when, and from whom we can learn (Rendell et al. 2011). Enter ISIS. In addition to public executions, ISIS intentionally exposed children to violent videos. In Raqqa, a city in northern Syria, children were assembled to watch videos of mass executions of Syrian soldiers (Stern and Berger 2015). The impact of exposure to violence can be highly significant when children are compelled to repeat these violent acts in real life. They are already taught the practice of decapitation on dolls. Though dolls are not actual human beings, they help children become desensitized, so they can perform the actual act more easily. It should come as no surprise that children recruited by ISIS may perform the role of executioner. Over time, such exposure to extreme violence creates children who are thirsty for killing the Other (Stern and Berger 2015, p. A1). Reports exist of young

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children (only 8 years old) carrying out public executions. As such, when he was 7 years old, the son of Khaled Sharrouf, an Australian citizen, was photographed holding the decapitated head of an ISIS victim aloft (Mazza 2014). Hirsch–Hoefler, Canetti et al. (2016) find that exposure to terrorism and political aggression in the Middle East makes peace efforts much more difficult. Discussing the same issue, Grossman et  al. (2015) argue that exposure to intense violence builds up negative attitudes against the rival and decreases opportunities for negotiation and compromise among former Middle Eastern terrorists. Obsession with terrorist violence amplifies threat perception and psychological suffering and weakens support for political compromise (Canetti et  al. 2017). A significant minority of children witness punishment on a regular basis: “We saw a young man who did not fast for Ramadan, so they crucified him for three days, and a woman being stoned because she committed adultery” (cited in Birke, p. A1). One boy admitted that he could not eat for 2  days after being exposed to a beheading for the first time. The socialization of children to methodical violence is also apparent on social media. Routine exposure to decapitations ensures that young audiences “get accustomed to it” (cited in Birke, p. A1). In virtually all photos or videos that illustrate the implementation of hudud punishments—amputations, stonings, or decapitations—we can see the presence of large swaths of children in surrounding crowds (cited in Kavanaugh 2015, p. A1). The most gruesome execution videos were showed to youths of all ages at media kiosks throughout ISIS-­ controlled territories in Iraq and Syria (cited in Horgan et al. 2017, p. 654).

2.2.3 Cultural Evolution (CE) Theory Cultural evolution (CE) theory studies the social transmission of behaviors and the subsequent increase, preservation, or decrease of these behaviors (Boyd and Richerson 1985). Social transmission is the method by which information spreads from person to person, thanks to social learning processes like imitation and language. This can be differentiated from the gaining of information through genetic transmission from biological parents, and from individual learning, where there is no direct inspiration from others (Mesoudi and Whiten 2008). Social transmission can be in any shape, size, or form, such as teaching or copying. This is not a matter of an individual changing behavior on his or her own. Rather, introduced behaviors propagate into a population over time from person to person. CE theory is not based on the traditional micro-economic analysis that considers people as rational, well-­ informed players who make personal choices from a multitude of options or from well-ordered preferences. Instead, the theory lay emphasis on the flow of information and attitudes within a sociocultural context and on how social information and the observation of others’ behaviors impact individual decisions and actions (Frost 2018). In this sense, CE theory studies cultural behavior. Cultural behavior frequently refers to behavior diffused through social learning, in contrast to individual learning

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or genetic inheritance (Henrich and McElreath 2003). Cultural behavior allows the differential transmission and embracing of cultural characteristics that triggers the diffusion of particular beliefs, traditions, and institutions at the expense of others. This phenomenon gives rise to adaptive culture (e.g., igloos and spears), magical interventions, and ostensibly maladaptive practices (Singh 2018). The transmission and embracing of cultural traits through exposure to extreme violence and terrorism may be not only physically detrimental but also mentally destructive because it sets children up for real-life situations. For example, in 2015, male Egyptian children adopted the practice of murder after being inspired by the atrocities committed by ISIS. They resorted to using mobile phone apps such as WhatsApp to upload ghastly videos of the jihadist group’s slaughters, notwithstanding living in a remote village (where electricity was fallacious). Likewise, in Yemen, upon re-enacting the recorded slaying of 21 Coptic Christians, a gang of seven boys confined their 10-year-old friend in a wooden cage in the village of Al Dahthath (northern part of the country). They poured gasoline on him and set him on fire. Fortunately, the villagers saved him in the nick of time when he screamed for help. The boy’s legs were nonetheless burned (Hall 2015).

2.3 Social Media Influences Social media has enormous potential for influencing the behavior of the majority of humankind. According to internet usage statistics (https://www.internetworldstats. com/stats.htm), by July 2022, out of a global population of about 8 billion people, about 5 billion of them had access to the internet. That is equivalent to about 62% of the whole world. Nowadays, social media is the most accessed source of information about events around the world. Its importance is largely determined by the volume of people creating and updating content on social networking sites (SNSs). This is often accomplished on an hourly basis. Twitter, for example, is one of several SNSs that have been used as a major platform for terrorist groups to diffuse their real-time agendas around the world. Devoid of austere regulations, the ability to maintain anonymity, easy communication with various publics, and the rapid movement of information have made SNSs popular tools for broadcasting dangerous beliefs and values to susceptible audiences like children (Ghajar-Khosravi et al. 2016).

2.3.1 Terrorist Communication Terrorism regards communication as a viable conduit to win hearts and minds. Hatred on the internet has been granted a great deal of attention because of the type of content and messages on terrorist websites and platforms. The role of terrorist communication in enhancing opportunities of self-indoctrination and radicalization

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is something to behold. In many cases today, devotion to a religious terrorist movement is facilitated by the falsely religious veneer infused by propagandists who are craving for radicalism and violence (Conti 2017). After acquiring the tools and developing the willingness to learn new information outside the traditional participatory structures and mechanisms, even well-educated youths can be influenced by social media propagandists who seek to engulf them into terrorist groups (Tsekeris and Stylianoudi 2014). Exposure to terrorist acts on social media can put a damper on feelings of guilt, regret, shock, or disgust associated with watching uttermost brutality and violence. Once these feelings are deadened, children become more prone to committing such brutality and violence. This phenomenon strengthens violence as a way of life and turns children into killing machines that are so coveted by terror propagandists. Exposure to terrorist images is also likely to aggravate attitudes toward out-group members (Das et al. 2009), particularly since an important purpose of terrorism is the “intentional generation of massive fear” (Cooper 2001, p. 883) Fields (1979) reported that exposure to terrorism as a child increases his or her chances of being a terrorist as an adult. Consequently, a child raised in war-torn West Belfast certainly developed higher propensity toward terrorism as an adult than a child raised in Oslo. Today, chatrooms on SNSs are appealing to media-savvy generations. Watching videos or images of the persecuted ummah (i.e., the global community of Muslims) will arouse feelings of compassion for victims of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They will be more active in the support of Muslims’ opposition to Western or Israeli annexation. In fact, SNSs even promote hip-hop and rap artists who are pro-jihadists (Nasir 2018).

2.3.2 Blurring the Virtual and Real Worlds Described as a style of behavior linked to the internet and the online domain, virtual culture can work effortlessly in tandem with youth culture. While we can see a duality between the virtual (online relations) and the real (face-to-face relations), for children, this distinction is blurred because it has implicit and permeable barriers. In many cases, the virtual and the real can be superimposed, meaning that youths are still in the real world without ceasing to be connected to their technological devices (Haenfler 2019; Lin et al. 2018). The role of the internet in the recruitment of children is priceless to terrorist groups. This is done through promotion video clips, online discussion rooms (in which most topics can be discussed or created by like-­ minded thinkers), and SNSs (which allow the formation of virtual communities that are not easy to remove from the virtual world). The role of the internet represents a new interactive process of radicalization and indoctrination that can be just as productive as the one we know in the three-dimensional world. Online, however, radicalization simplifies self-radicalization of those interested to follow any ideology or ideas. Self-radicalization can be an easy preliminary step of the recruitment by

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terrorists or self-recruitment for lone-wolf or suicide bombing missions. This trend is particularly troubling for children involved in such processes (Perešin 2014).

2.3.3 Frustration with Modernity From making suggestions on dress codes, food customs, and worship traditions to recorded decapitations and public executions, social media allows both well- and ill-intentioned influencers to reconcile life on the screen with existing social realities and practices in the real world. The ill-intentioned influencers are keenly aware that, regardless of religion, many marginalized youths today wrestle with modernity’s ethical, economic, and social anxieties vis-à-vis their own cultures (Jad and Jabado 2016). Giddens (1991) calls this negative trend “personal meaninglessness” or the notion that “life has nothing worthwhile to offer” (p.  9). As he continues, disenfranchised youth’s perception of modernity as a deep-seated plague can be explained by the “repression of moral questions which day–to–day life poses, but which are denied answers” (p.  9). Social media not only fuels such deep-seated hatred for modernity, but it also offers a great number of political alternatives. Emancipatory politics generally arises as a reaction to such existential problems. It also opens the door for propagandists to diffuse new radical movements in order to take advantage of such tensions and outline alternative worldviews on SNSs (Jad and Jabado 2016).

2.4 Total Institution The concept of “total institution” was developed by sociologist Erving Goffman (1961) to denote manufactured situations in which people—constrained by a clearly defined structure or hierarchy—live together over a long period and coordinate their thoughts and energy, not always of their own volition, toward a common cause. Members of a total institution are often physically, symbolically, spiritually, and emotionally separated from the larger society. This is a fundamental characteristic; the presence of physical barriers is created deliberately to prevent communication with the outside world (Davies 1989). Examples of barriers include objects such as walls or fences around the premises. Members also synergize “an enclosed, formally administered round of life” (Goffman 1961, p. xiii) that is typified by firm authority, habitual sequence, and panopticon-like surveillance. Collective ends are maintained (or enforced) by multiple clusters of “atomistic unity” (Wade 2017, p. 111). Recruits by a total institution join the organization from a home world that gives them a hypothetical or presumed sense of life and their place in it. It is this dialectic between the home world and the total institution that is used to control those recruits (Goffman 1961, p. 12).

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Total institutions regulate, unconditionally, the time and space of organizational constituents. The constituents’ emotions are also regulated in a totalitarian manner (Tracy 2000). In a total institution, all facets of life are shepherded in the same place and under the same leadership. It is an ideal situation to guarantee obedience. This is not merely because weak individuals are more easily governed; it is also because the planning and coordination of activities leave few opportunities for deviants to go unnoticed (Shenkar 1996). In an attempt to assuage the negative implications of terrorist life, total institutions frequently resort to what Goffman (1961) calls “institutional display” (p. 102). This term refers to the joint effort of organizational leaders to impress new recruits by conveying an image of terrorist positivity―i.e., the good life of a terrorist. In a total institution, all needs—from sleeping lodges and canteens to cybercafés and swimming pools—are available within the premises of the organization. It is not necessary—or even permitted—to leave the premises (Lucas and Kang 2013). To this point, Goffman evokes the concept of “batch living” (cited in Davies 1989, p.  78). When members follow a batch life, their days are carefully prepared and arranged, and their basic needs are satisfied, thanks to the bureaucracy and governance of the powers-that-be within the organization. Punctual meal services and collective sleeping measures are not only batch living; they also limit freedom of movement. A person’s institutional degree of membership progresses in  lockstep with others’. Overall, it should not be astounding to readers that total institutions are perfect settings for molding children into terrorists. Counter to civil society, where they are free to roam, work, eat, and sleep in different places or at different times, in total institutions, children take part in all these activities within the same premises and under a single authority (Lucas and Kang 2013).

2.4.1 Radicalization Radicalization is a hallmark of total institutions. It refers to “the social and psychological process of incrementally experienced commitment to extremist political or religious ideology. Radicalization may not necessarily lead to violence but is one of several risk factors required for this” (Horgan 2009, p. 152). Radicalization begins when people are exposed to ideological doctrines that push them to alter their views in favor of extremism (Smith 2009). The process is gradual and is assisted by repeated exposure to extremist content that, over time, can regularize and establish radical ideas. In many cases, individuals do not fully realize they are being indoctrinated. One former terrorist described his radicalization as a “step-by-step evolution,” one that had no “choice made such as I will become a terrorist” (McCauley and Moskalenko 2008, p. 419). Salah Shehade, an ex-leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, talked about the use of children in terrorist attacks when interviewed by Islam Online on May 26, 2002. He admitted that radicalization had to be absolute, even if it would take a long time. Children had to be well trained physically and psychologically before embarking on terrorist missions. They had to be drafted into a

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special unit within Hamas’s military apparatus. The purpose was to inculcate jihadist culture and program them as to what “right” and “wrong” meant (Weimann 2007). Goffman (1961) emphasized the manner by which members were radicalized into institutional life through a procedure of “degradations, humiliations, and profanations of self” (p. 14). He gave a laundry list of examples: physical humiliations, shaming through speech and action, and ignominies of treatment by others in order to catapult changes within one’s sense of self-worth. The latter includes radical self-­ deindividuation―e.g., by having one’s name replaced by an alias (if one were lucky) or a number (as was the case for Holocaust prisoners). Examples of radicalization also include initiation rituals based on “obedience tests,” elimination of previous identity markers (e.g., no more personal clothing), the requirement of depreciating postures of deference (e.g., standing at the presence or bowing down to seniors), having to ask permission for everything (e.g., bathroom breaks), verbal insults, and learning to give demeaning verbal responses in social interaction. These various disgraces not only abolish the self; they also radicalize recruits into killers who just came out of an assembly line (Goffman 1961).

2.4.2 Case Study: The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) generates its future fighters by detaching children from non-Islamic objects, symbols, and lifestyles. Just like a total organization, ISIS exerts a great level of hegemony over its members. This keeps “things” that the group deems incongruent with ultra-Salafist Islam out of children’s reach. Children are radicalized into a specific way of life, namely, sharia―especially the type of Islamic law practiced during the Golden Age of Islam in the Middle Ages (Matusitz 2020). Young children are easy to manipulate into adopting terrorist violence and the ultra-fundamentalist ideology because their minds are still impressionable. Once children are raised into such total institution, they gradually identify with every element of that system (Stern and Berger 2015). Isolation is a useful instrument to govern all aspects of an ISIS child’s existence. One boy said that, when learning in ISIS schools, he was not allowed to see or talk to his parents and siblings. Anything from his previous life was cut off from his new one (Damon 2014). Another former child recruit recounted how he and 100 comrades were “kept isolated” for a whole month. They were “not allowed even to see or speak to their families.” When a boy’s father objected to his son’s forceful conscription into a training camp, ISIS soldiers threatened to decapitate him (Horgan et al. 2017, p. 654). In Sister’s Role in Jihad, a document that indoctrinates children into jihad (which will be described in more detail in Chap. 3), ISIS recommends that mothers keep their sons and daughters away from television and peers whose behaviors run contrary to the group’s ideology. Again, this facilitates ISIS’s control of children’s lives and their sociocultural environment. The younger the child recruits are, the less they can appreciate other perspectives or points of reference. This is

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classic brainwashing; they will only perceive the universe through jihadist ideology (Vinograd et al. 2014). The hierarchical and regimented structure of ISIS’s total institution can be observed at all levels of the organization. Absolute orthodoxy, compliance, and obedience exemplify the child’s evolution from conventional schooling to full-fledged training. At one training camp, when ISIS leaders asked children to put their names on a “volunteer list” for suicide operations, one boy “eventually signed the list because he felt social pressure to do so” (Birke 2015, p. A1). In a manner highly similar to child recruitment in Africa, the post-recruitment procedure involves subjugation and corporeal punishments (in addition to the aforesaid physical and psychological distancing from the family). This attests to the exceptionally brutal training of the children (Birke 2015, p. A1).

2.4.3 Performance Theory Performance theory examines the manner by which social processes can be interpreted in everyday life. Performance determines which rules are included in the process and which description of reality is applied, based on an ideal temporal-­ spatial frame and a suitable legitimate action (Hajer 2006). In practical terms, performance consists of applying (1) particular frames of actions (and swapping one with another as we see fit) and (2) a fundamental level of competence to give an indication of what is happening during a performance and (3) the section of different possible roles, settings, sequences of action, and so forth (Cossu 2010). Performances allow people to construct social realities within a normative and moral framework, one with broad or clear-cut definitions of what is right and wrong (Durrheim et al. 2016). First and foremost, performance determines rules of conduct, with which the actors have to comply and which are acknowledged as their constitutive and regulative structure by both the “performers” and the audience. These rules do not emerge overnight and are not necessarily easy to comprehend. They are coded and entrenched within wider sociocultural settings (i.e., cultural arenas) which rise above daily performance or routine. They function to restrict performance by setting parameters and instructions for what is right or wrong. They provide all the substance and practical content which is apparent through one’s performances (Cossu 2010). Just like CE theory, for total institutions to subsist, meaning systems must be communicated and upheld by actors who apply and/or follow the rules. These rules are not always enforced; they can be transmitted in plausible and authentic ways so that new recruits readily accept them and put them in application. This method serves to standardize behavior and sustain coherence in an institutional order like a terrorist group and, in so doing, can help avert institutional erosion and drift (Dacin et al. 2010).

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2.4.4 Rituals With performance theory, life is a type of social routine characterized by dramatic action or what sociologist Kenneth Burke (1945) described as “situated modes of action” (p. 3). Burke asked a crucial question: “What is involved when we say what people are doing and why they are doing it?”. No matter how radical and dangerous, such social routine is imbued by daily rituals—predictable, everyday interactions between people and the consequences of these interactions as they live together as a collective. Rituals are particular modes of doing, simultaneously linked and opposed to modes of thought. Rituals are useful for coherence and solidity in a collective’s life. Ritual also denotes a place―a place where values, norms, and acquired knowledge are reaffirmed or prescribed in a group (Turner 1968). Ritual is also understood as a technical concept for repetitive behavior methodically used by an individual. Repetition is based on a strictly organized set of actions called a “restricted code” (in contrast to a more open “elaborated code”). Rituals are beneficial when they help support traditional forms of social structure and leadership. Taken as a whole, rituals give rise to formality or formalism. Rules impose norms on general human behavior, by defining limits of what is acceptable and not acceptable (Bell 1997). The power of ritual is formidable; it does not simply make group members feel stronger; it causes them to be stronger. Likened to performances, rituals are “episodes of repeated and simplified cultural communication” (Alexander 2004, p. 527) in which performers cultivate common understandings about the credibility, validity, and authenticity of what is expected of them. When group members consider a performance effective (i.e., credible, valid, and authentic), the ritual solidifies them through intense emotional and/or physical connection. The outcome may be a “liminoid” or transitory space for the performers, where they enter a state of altered consciousness (besides their “normal” selves) (Turner 1986). It is clear that such liminoid spaces for group members allow total institutions to achieve their intended objectives (Dacin et al. 2010). Van Maanen and Kunda (1989) believe that rituals represent “mechanisms through which certain organizational members influence how other members are to think and feel” (p. 49). Goffman (1961) remarks that total institutions work efficiently when they are based on a “conditioning, behavioristic model.” In that model, when deprivation and punishment are not present, it is a privilege in and of itself. This is especially true when members comply or do not break the “house rules” (p.  53). Terrorists exploit rituals to conditionally connect emotions to sanctified symbols and to increase group commitment. Whether physical (like the jihadist black standard) or nonphysical (like a militant concept), these sanctified symbols are emotionally and motivationally commanding and imposing. They promote in-­ group solidarity, trust, and collaboration. They also encourage soldiers to comply even more. The distinction between the sacred and the profane, in concert with the power of sanctified symbols, is essential to understand how terrorists take advantage of rituals to turn recruits into subservient fighters (Berman 2003).

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Another distinction needs to be drawn: the one between the terrorists’ negative cult and positive cult. As an extreme form of groupthink, negative cult is the suppression of individual thought to make the individual mind conform to collective beliefs. The purpose is to prevent unwarranted contact between the profane and the sacred by forbidding certain actions. Negative cult imposes a system of restrictions, particularly noticeable in ascetic rituals. On the other hand, positive cult is a vigorously effervescent social environment produced by transition from profane to sacred space. In the case of positive cult, collective emotion is manifested through gestures of rhythm and regularity, leading to a form of hyperexcitement of physical and mental life for group members. The outcome is social cohesion through the adoption of collective symbols of identity and nationalism (Polzer 2014). Durkheim (1991/1912) considers positive cult a sacrifice, connected with rituals. At the core of positive cult is the performance of sacrifice within which the spiritual or the sacred is enacted. This can be as simple as sharing a meal or drinking (Baker 2013). Unfortunately, it can also be a ritual of random killing or maiming for young terrorist recruits (Westermann 2018).

2.5 Kinship Factors The concept of kinship factors has much to do with group dynamics. Kinship factors include familial bonds, friendship networks, or peer-to-peer groups that can influence a child’s decision to join a terrorist movement. They constitute one of the most prominent reasons that explain why children become terrorists. Youths interviewed by reporters indicate that recruitment occurred, thanks to their friends (Horgan et al. 2017). There are also a multitude of children who were raised by terrorism-inclined family members or grew up inside similar circles outside their families. In 35% of the examined cases, the direct inspiration by peers, the development of solid connections with like-minded children, and the influence of family and kin are ascertained factors that rationalize radicalization into terrorism. The bonds that children develop with their peers smooth the progress in making the initial steps toward radicalization. It certainly makes radicalization less difficult. This occurrence bears resemblance with what has been validated in the literature about juvenile gang membership. A variety of contacts during childhood and early adolescence influence individuals to join gangs, including felonious peers and aggression-prone friends (Vergani et al. 2020). A child raised in a family of terrorist operatives or terrorist sympathizers is more likely to become one. What is more, a child attempting to break away from negative relationships within his or her own family is more likely to become a member of a terrorist group (Nnam et al. 2018). Bloom (2019) found that, on some occasions, parents push their sons and daughters to get involved in terrorism. Rona Fields’s psychometric examination of Northern Irish children revealed that exposure to terrorism as a child increases his or her inclination toward terrorism as an adult (cited in Hudson 2018).

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2.5.1 Case Study: ISIS For a significant minority of Muslims who are very young, their actions and thoughts are usually a reflection of what their fathers and mothers have instructed them to do, as confirmed by a Vice News interview with Abdullah al-Baljiki, an ISIS fighter whose alias was “Abdullah the Belgian.” Said Abdullah about his young son: “Abdullah asks his son, ‘Why do we kill infidels? What have the infidels done? ‘They kill Muslims.’ The boy says, looking to his father, as if to say, ‘Did I say the right answer?’ (cited in Horgan et al. 2017, p. 652).” Infants can be dragged into holy war if they are related to senior fighters for ISIS, mainly parents. They will be recruited if they are the sons of soldiers or if their parents migrate to ISIS strongholds (Al Shamary and Nabeel 2015), where both they and their children swear allegiance to the terrorist group. ISIS has allegedly urged parents to send their children to training camps (Stern and Berger 2015). In November 2014, ISIS published one of its first propaganda videos. It was one featuring Kazakh child terrorists going through training in an ISIS institution. ISIS described Kazakh fighters as having been transformed into aggressive agents in the war. Adult Kazakh soldiers probably brought children with them for jihadist training (Maley and Bearup 2014). As stated by human rights activist Jalal al-Shami, children’s involvement can be based on their ability to generate funds for the family. Due to a “grievance trap” that may be in question (the one about financial incentive that explains the exploitation of children), this becomes a motivator for family members to endorse child participation in holy war (cited in Horgan et al. 2017, p. 652).

2.5.2 Case Study: White Supremacists The encouragement of White children to participate in supremacist or neo-Nazi activities has been widely documented in the literature. In the Western world, juvenescence is a period during which kinship networks tend to wax and wane. Commitment to gangs and extremist groups is usually transitory. White supremacist groups offer youths who struggle to find acceptance new direction in their lives. It is like a total institution to turn to. The tragedy of Charlottesville, VA, in August 2017 illustrates how youths could evolve into new generations of far-right terrorists like Anders Behring Breivik (Peters and Besley 2017). With the perpetual advent of new media technologies, youths are increasingly at the centerfold of networks that offer them opportunities to interact with propagandists under the guise of a coordinated attack by non-Whites (Howell and Egley Jr 2007). White supremacism fashions an identity for youths to fully embrace; this can be done by acquiring new clothes, symbols, or tattoos. This new identify confers a sense of connectivity between individuals who may never meet in person. Nevertheless, they can act under the banner of a White collective. It is important to

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note that becoming a White supremacist member is more likely if he or she participated in peer groups that engage in delinquent behavior. Examples include underage drinking, use of illegal drugs, absenteeism from school, burglary, and sexual activity (Howell and Egley Jr 2005).

2.5.3 Child Terrorists and Group Identity Group identity is a driving factor for human actions and relations (Balibar 2005). The identity or sense of belonging to a collective is part of an individual’s self-­ conception and self-perception. It can be associated with nationality, ethnicity, faith, social status, generation, locality, or any type of collective that has its own discrete culture. From this vantage point, group identity is representative of both the person and the in-group members who have the same cultural identity or background (Ennaji 2005). As children long for attaining a group identity, they are more likely to surrender to the pressure exerted within close-knit groups of peers. When children join a cause together, and if that cause resembles the ideology of a terrorist organization, they run a higher risk of joining or radicalizing into such type of organization. It is not unusual to assign battlefield names to new recruits. Because they receive aliases, they are precluded from using their birth names or nicknames related to their past experiences with family, friends, or neighbors. The new aliases are meant to enhance their fighting morale and performance, such as the “the strong,” “Rambo,” “the invisible,” “Russian,” or “the powerful.” They can also be ordinary names, but they have to differ from their birth names (Honwana 2002). The emphasis here is on the child’s new identity, which can be fashioned by the group’s leaders or peers. The novel identity is a massive motivator in a child’s commitment to terrorist activities. Put another way, “spontaneous group interaction with one’s peers rather than planned systematic brainwashing and indoctrination” is a crucial element in becoming a terrorist (Mullins 2009). The phrase used by Marc Sageman (2004), “a bunch of guys,” denotes the decision to join a terrorist group “based on pre-existing friendship ties” (p.  567). As he continues, “the evolving group of future perpetrators seemed more akin to” (p. 567) such connections “than a formal terrorist cell, with well-defined hierarchy and division of labour” (p. 567).

2.5.4 Case Studies on Jihadist Terrorism Let us begin by discussing the situation of child jihadists in the Palestinian territories. In the Palestinian territories, group identity is focused on the idea that there is “no child left behind.” Boys and girls benefit from group protection through such prosocial outlook; they are nurtured and provided for until reaching sufficient maturity (Burgoon 2006). The danger is that outwardly inoffensive social programs are

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occasionally designed to turn disadvantaged children into suicide bombers. Istishhad, the idea of dying as a martyr or hero for Allah, is a great hallmark of group identity in the Gaza Strip that attracts many of those disadvantaged children. Istishhad is the supreme act of sacrifice: by eliminating the Infidels from the earth, shahids (suicide terrorists) can raise their status within their in-groups when they accomplish their mission successfully. Through such sacrificial deeds, the Palestinian community looks up to them by putting their names on a public plaque (Matusitz 2015). In the initial stages, when they are younger, Palestinian children throw stones at the Israelis, an action that is widely applauded by their kinship networks. Actions designated by outsiders as terrorism are often interpreted as acts of love, heroism, or sacrifice within the perpetrators’ own groups and communities (Boyden 2003). ISIS works hard to offer child recruits a new identity, sentiments of belonging, and different values and beliefs, all of which are rooted in an ultra-Salafist interpretation of Islam (Ganor 2015). When interviewed by CNN, Yasir, a former child warrior for ISIS, explained how fighting for the terrorist group made him feel honored, brave, and satiated with a sense of purpose. Especially when they are prepubescents, children long for an identity, purpose, and a self-esteem uplift, making them highly open to committing the most outrageous acts of violence (Damon 2014). By extension, in the Eastern part of India, in 2011 alone, close to 400 children of Bal Sangam―i.e., child units of a Maoist terrorist movement in that area― were attributed a new identity during their terrorist training. They also learned about intelligence work and the handling of explosives in the Saranda forests along the Jharkhand-Orissa border (near Bangladesh). A little look into details revealed that boys and girls of all ages are given different tasks: anyone from 6 to 12 can be used as a spy and courier and be handed 0.303 rifles (Roul 2014).

2.5.5 Social Identity Theory (SIT) Developed by Tajfel (1974), social identity theory (SIT) postulates that people define themselves in regard of their group memberships and strive to uphold a positive identity by associating with positively valued groups (i.e., in-groups) and comparing themselves with other groups (i.e., out-groups) (Tajfel 1982). In intergroup situations, people implement comparison strategies that increase differences between groups in order to favor the in-group. The reason is that keeping a positive social identity will strengthen the approval of the in-group. When the in-group’s image is bolstered, so is the member’s self-concept. The predisposition to consider one’s in-group more positively vis-à-vis out-groups is called in-group bias (Hogg and Abrams 1990). Identity formation is based on comparison with other groups. When individuals compare their in-group with out-groups, they make an effort to ensure that their own collective remains positively distinctive and evaluated more favorably than out-­ groups (Brewer and Campbell 2016). Identity formation is a serious issue

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concerning the motivations of children who join terrorist groups. Whereas trauma, patriotism, vengeance, fighting occupation, and anguish over fugitive status play a strong role in convincing youths to become fighters, there are also serious issues related to social identity. Examples are issues of social exclusion, alienation, thirst for stimulation, soul-searching, longing for positive identity, and a desire to belong to a group (Speckhard 2007). These social identity crises can be easily solved by joining a “fictive kin,” a type of collective promoted or advertised by terror propagandists. The latter, for example, will claim that their group is under attack by evil forces and is in need of additional protection. This is why fresh, young recruits should join. Solidarity and comradeship among child recruits in a total institution are a major influence in developing in-group mentality. In a detailed Human Rights Watch report, many former Maoist cadres and child militants answered interview questions. In the Maoist-controlled areas of India, young children are trained in a village to learn the essentials of terrorism. These children come from the same communities, sometimes from the same play group. There is less need, then, to spend time and energy to build up loyalty or companionship among them. This is a key indicator of the successful set-up and organizational dynamics of terrorist movements (cited in Roul, pp. 39–40). In the Palestinian territories, Hamas’s suicide terrorist campaign of 2003–2004 consisted of teammates from the same soccer team called Masjid al-Jihad (Bloom 2019). The majority of the boys came from the same districts and lived within a few hundred yards of each other, and all of them were members of the same al-Qawasmeh clan. It was actually one of the most important families in Hebron. From 2003 to 2004, the clan’s chief, Abdullah al-Qawasmeh, sent eight boys of the same soccer team to participate in suicide, shooting, and bombing missions (Atran 2011). Threat is an essential element in the interpretation of relationships between in-­ groups and out-groups. This is not necessarily a threat related to the physical safety of one’s collective. On the contrary, moral, cultural, political, ideological, religious, or ethnic/racial threats can just be as salient—if not more than—physical threats. The issue concerns the nature of the threat and how terrorist campaigns are carried out accordingly. Thus, it is important to understand the potential (or actual) terrorist’s worldview and to investigate the meanings that he or she ascribes to a particular situation (Schwartz et al. 2009). Based on the tenets of SIT, news about enemies’ actions presents a threat to the in-group because it endangers the collective’s self-­ esteem. This, in turn, triggers reactions against out-group members (Riek et  al. 2006). In situations like this, high self-esteem encourages prejudice―rather than reducing it. The types of conflicts mentioned above―based on moral and cultural threats and so forth―that pitch in-groups against out-groups are heightened in times of terror, bringing social identity and the need to protect the in-group into light. For a certain number of children who have been victimized by failed states, when defense of one’s in-group is a socially acknowledged responsibility, resorting to terrorism seems like the only logical choice (Aberson et al. 2000).

2.6 Identity Crises and Psychological Factors

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2.6 Identity Crises and Psychological Factors Identity crises in prepubescent and adolescent children are also a huge factor to consider when determining how youths become motivated to take part in terrorist activities. Many children who are caught in the middle of protracted conflicts grow up knowing nothing but these conflicts. Their identities are developed through these crises. More importantly, images and memories of conflicts can remain anchored onto the consciousness of children for a lifetime. Research by Erikson (1968), a developmental psychologist, underlines that one of the most significant social developments in children is the hunger for identity and new friendships. Erikson also remarks that this psychological hunger may lead them to assume negative or undesirable personal traits. No matter how much the outside world believes that a terrorist identity is negative or undesirable, children, during their profound search for personal values, goals, and beliefs, may eventually rationalize or consider joining a terrorist group worthwhile. There are valid reasons to believe that emotions that underlie moral behavior like compassion exist very early in life and may stick with the person for a long time. However, these positive experiences might be quickly mitigated and even replaced by subsequent negative ones (Horgan et al. 2017).

2.6.1 Risk-Taking Behavior It is a well-known fact that risk-taking behavior can be natural for children. Yet, it can also be problematic when they participate in delinquent acts with detrimental consequences or when they join terrorist groups. At such a tender age, children possess certain negative personality traits (e.g., a penchant for risky behavior) and psychological traits (e.g., emotional instability, the need to acquire a deviant identity behind their parents’ back, etc.). This undoubtedly increases their risk of wanting to join terrorist organizations. The latter are often appealing to children because they not only give a sense of in-group membership; they also offer children the opportunity to do something greater than they would individually (Kruglanski et al. 2014). Psychological susceptibilities do not necessarily depend on structural and social factors; they include “mental health conditions, depression, trauma, personality traits such as narcissism and impulsivity, and individually-specific demographic characteristics” (like sex, age, education level, and income) that “constitute subjective states that make the individual more vulnerable to extremism” (Vergani et al. 2020). One assumption is that certain terrorist organizations strive to recruit low-­ income middle children (not infants or late adolescents) with a record of behavioral troubles. This reality about children’s recruitment may shed light on choke points in the process where intervening to stop child mobilization is necessary (Bloom 2019).

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2.6.2 Case Study: The Baader-Meinhof Gang Initial work in the area of early emotional development, such as works by Kohlberg (1984) and Piaget (1932), puts forward the notion that early moral beliefs are influenced by authority and power and, consequently, possess absolute qualities. The absence of a fatherly or motherly figure during childhood can severely affect early moral beliefs. As children grow fatherless or motherless, they can develop other types of “absolute” qualities (Horgan et al. 2017, p. 650). Enter the Baader-Meinhof Gang, a West German far-left terrorist organization active from 1970 to 1998. Becker (1977) refers to these German terrorists as children without fathers. They were sons and daughters of men who were murdered by Nazis or who survived the Third Reich itself. These German children despised and rebelled against these régimes because of the dishonor of Nazism and a defeated nation after World War II. Similarly, Wagenlehner (1978) suggests that the motives of Baader-Meinhof terrorists were not political but were more related to “the area of psychopathological disturbances” (p. 201). German terrorists accused Germany of being unable to solve their personal problems. Not only was the idea of being a terrorist “an individual form of liberation” for radical adolescents with psychological troubles, but they “became terrorists because they suffered from acute fear and from aggression and the masochistic desire to be pursued” (p. 201). Put briefly, the West German extremists represent a huge exception to the commonly nonpathological traits of most terrorists. Kellen (1998) reached a similar conclusion, arguing that most members of the Baader-Meinhof Gang suffered “from a deep psychological trauma” that made “them see the world, including their own actions and the expected effects of those actions, in a grossly unrealistic light” (p.  43), which motivated them to murder unarmed civilians.

2.7 Susceptibility and Naïveté The consciousness and sensibility of children are uniquely different and represent a major influence in their determination to join a terrorist group. Steinberg (2007), a psychologist who has studied child psychological development for many years, contends that children participate in risky behavior because “they have not yet fully acquired the mental ability to curb impulsive behavior or to make entirely rational judgments” (p. 55). Wessells (2009) describes militancy as being “attractive to children because it provides meaning, identity, and options [that] civilian life does not afford” (p.  4). Yet, even when children maintain that they have joined a violent extremist movement of their own volition, their psychological abilities to make such decisions are spurious. As Wessells (2009) continues, “the realities of children’s lives in war zones blur the boundaries between choice and coercion; their decisions reflect a complex interplay of perceived or real necessity, obligation, hardship, and agency” (p. 33).

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In the eyes of terrorist leaders, conscripting children into their groups is more desirable because they are more vulnerable and receptive to propaganda and, thereby, more ready to obey unreservedly. Their perceptions of right and wrong are still in development, so they are more likely to suspend moral judgments. If there is one psychological trait that sets child terrorists apart from their adult counterparts is the trait of absolute obedience: leaders have stated that child terrorists “are more obedient, do not question orders and are easier to manipulate” than adults (Thompson 1999). Insurgents who reject the label of “terrorists” because they claim to fight for noble causes (like “social justice”) still admit that filling their ranks is easy when they recruit children. As explained by a militant in Chad: the advantage of child terrorists is that they “are ideal because they don’t complain, they don’t expect to be paid and if you tell them to kill, they kill” (United Nations 2007, p. 7). Children’s susceptibility and naïveté increase when raised in backgrounds that provided them with little to no support. In a study conducted by Peracha et  al. (2012), Pakistani children were considered more susceptible and naïve and manipulated by strangers when their families did not give them adequate supervision. In the same study, it was mostly fatherless children who suffered from those psychological symptoms. Though some of the fathers died when their children were young (i.e., as a result of illnesses or a lack of proper healthcare), in most cases, the fathers were living abroad and only visited their homelands every few years because they were poor. In some instances, the fathers were spending their time in other major cities of Pakistan and only returned home on special holidays―again, because of limited monetary resources. When the family is a large one, which is not atypical in a country like Pakistan, mothers have a great deal of responsibilities. Facing inadequate housing and healthcare, it is very challenging for mothers or other caregivers to raise their children in an optimal way. This gives the latter liberty to roam and fall prey to others outside the family.

2.8 Kidnapping or Forced Recruitment Unlike adults, children are also more likely to be pushed toward terrorism through kidnapping or forced recruitment because of their susceptibility and naïveté. Research has confirmed that a great many of them have joined terrorist groups out of fear or through abduction. Examples include thousands of boys and girls in northeastern Nigeria who have been kidnapped by Boko Haram during raids on schools and thousands of other children who were forcefully conscripted into northern Ugandan militant groups (e.g., see Nnam et al. 2018; Vindevogel et al. 2011). Outside Nigeria and Uganda, in many other civil war zones, children are not only recruited and trained by illicit armed groups in large pockets of society; they are also kidnapped into them. Very young civilians are compelled to complete lethal obligations. On some occasions, children with no prior political affiliations are handed weapons and sent into battlefields with only a modicum of military training. At different stages of a civil war, they find themselves being exploited by one side

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or the other, as militant control of their cities gets shuffled back and forth from one location to the next (Honwana 2008). It is believed that approximately two-thirds of child terrorists volunteer or are “induced” into joining a terrorist movement. In the event of abduction, it is frequently accompanied by rape, torture, and/or rituals. The “inductee” survives or dies. In the event of voluntary recruitment, it is affected by relative deprivation, hunger, displacement, the desire to belong to a group, or vengeance. Indoctrination follows. This includes diverse forms of coercion like brainwashing, psychological conditioning, participation in ritualized killing and other atrocities, and even branding―as it was done to slaves to deter them for escaping. In general, this creates some type of dissociation. For instance, during the training of child militants in Sierra Leone, they learned to refer to themselves as “cyborgs” to symbolize their status as killing machines without mercy (Sullivan 2005). In the case of ultra-Salafist ideology, kidnapping or forced recruitment is useful when preparing children for suicide operations. ISIS set up camps in Syria and Iraq to train them for such missions. Some families were even forced to send their sons to these camps. At first, they could avoid it by paying a fine, but conscription became compulsory. Under ISIS’s totalitarian control, families had to endure the fear that their children be ensnared into suicide operations (Cockburn 2015). More disturbingly so, children have been forcibly abducted by their own parents for terrorist purposes. As one can see, children may be forced or hoodwinked in varying degrees that explain how and why they participate in terrorist activities. Each case might entail a combination of inducement, temptation, deception, and coercion (Bloom 2019).

2.9 Easy Prey for Suicide Missions In the twenty-first century, children have been the most common age demographic targeted by terrorist organizations to engage in suicide attacks. They evoke a lower level of suspicion, certainly not to the level of adult men and women. Exploiting children in suicide attacks increases the probability of those attacks to succeed, particularly those in which safety and counter-terror measures are the main obstructions. When children are recruited for suicide operations, commitment to an ideological agenda―along with training and indoctrination―is essential. The would-be suicide bomber’s steadfast devotion is necessary to the extent that he or she is prepared to sacrifice him- or herself for a cause (Olivier 2018). Already before 9/11, from 1980 until the turn of the twenty-first century, boys and girls perpetrated 13% of suicide bombings (Emilsen 2008). According to a study conducted by Bloom (2019), the median age of suicide terrorists has been decreasing constantly, especially with the advent of suicide bombers in the name of ISIS and affiliated groups (e.g., Boko Haram). More and more children are participating in the most reprehensible martyrdom operations (see p. 3).

2.9 Easy Prey for Suicide Missions

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2.9.1 Made, Not Born The use of boys and girls as suicide bombers indicates a clear departure from their roles in past conflict situations. Gates and Reich (2009) have noticed the evolving roles of child militants and their heightened participation in suicide operations: “Suicide bombing which child soldiers have carried out in the Palestinian territories, Iraq, Sri Lanka, and Chechnya... there is little that trained soldiers can do other than guess that a nearby child is in fact a suicide bomber” (p. 3). Kidnapped, purchased, and even turned in by their own families, child combatants have served as suicide bombers in Afghanistan, Colombia, the Palestinian territories, and Sri Lanka (Sullivan 2005). This echoes intelligence briefings from central Asian nations that “children are usually outfitted with IEDs, which are remotely detonated. Sometimes the children don’t even know what they are actually doing” (Olivier 2018, p. 119). A boy or a girl might even “be persuaded to become a member of an elite suicide squad” (LoCicero and Sinclair 2008, p. 70). In 2015, at the height of US-led airstrikes, and ISIS terror campaigns developed in response, the propensity of children to participate in suicide bombing plots or act as human shields was increasing too (Drury 2015). Bloom (2017) asserts that child terrorists are not born; rather, they are molded into actors of violent extremist groups, sometimes unbeknownst to their parents and families. This culture of martyrdom implants in youths a profound appreciation for jannah (the Heavenly Garden for pious Muslims) and encourages them to treasure death over life. In the jihadist realm, guarantees of worldly and heavenly recompenses are also a massive motivator for young recruits to pursue the idea of suicide bombing. A martyr-to-be receives a lot of praise―sometimes even money for the family―on the eve of his or her departure. The youngster is convinced that such ultimate deed will be sanctified by Allah and a promise to sit next to him in jannah. The outcome of such chain of reasoning is a highly dangerous worldview predicated upon the elimination of other ideological, political, or religious ideas (Fayyaz 2017). Successful suicide bombings must require a special set of psychological conditioning. A lot of emphasis is laid on the cultivation of martyrdom for the benefit of the cause. The community to which the child belongs agrees with the radical jihadist agenda overall. The fact that jihadist suicide attacks have occurred at the highest frequency for the past decade has much to do with the aggressive promotion of the ultra-Salafist doctrine (Schwartz et al. 2009).

2.9.2 Case Study: Palestinian Children The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have insisted that Palestinians between the ages of 11 and 18 have committed manifold suicide terrorist attacks. The perpetrators often come from the same communities, districts, or shilla (kinship network) groups. Already in 1996, Palestinian soccer players joined militant factions through their

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coaches. Their educators and religious leaders also serve as change agents within their locales and teach them that violence is esteemed. The children acquire social status and validation from their involvement in these extreme acts. The Palestinian Authority’s Ministries of Sports and Education names sports competitions after Palestinian suicide heroes, including terrorists from rival organizations such as Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (Bloom 2019). A Palestinian boy or girl can spend the entire day at an institution named after Ahmad Yassin (the Hamas founder), compete in a tournament that honors Abd Al-Basset Odeh (a suicide bomber who murdered 30 people), and finish the day at a recreation center that pays tribute to Abu Iyad (born Salah Khalaf), the leader of Black September, the terrorist organization that slaughtered 11 Israelis at the Munich Olympic Games in 1972 and 2 American diplomats (Marcus et al. 2010). When training Palestinian children for suicide missions, collective routines and rituals are prearranged for them. Standard routines like communal meals, storytelling, and games can help terrorist groups attain a sense of order and structure (Gilligan 2000). They can help maintain or re-establish predictability in an individual’s life. Predictability is very important during martyrdom training; the young recruit must be focused to accomplish his or her suicide mission successfully. This is why the recruit is constantly nurtured to reach a steady mental condition, which enables jihadist leaders to know beforehand what to expect from the young recruit (Berko 2009).

2.10 Gender-Related and Sexual Reasons Child female terrorists have generated a large amount of attention among researchers (Gustavsson et al. 2017). In certain regions, girls are used as much as boys to perform acts of terror, although some of their tasks may be distinct. About one-third of child militants are girls, who are regularly captured and forced into unbecoming situations. Due to traditional expectations about the female gender across the world, girls are often more sought after by terrorist recruiters because they can perform a higher selection of “jobs” without raising much suspicion. While some are assigned to the same positions as their male counterparts, others are relegated to more “passive” gender roles. A notorious example includes serving as a maid or servant for sexual services (for both boys and men). The purpose of that “job” is to procreate more fighters and become “wives” of soldiers and senior officers (Dallaire 2011). As Singer (2006) continues, a major function of using female recruits is the following: “While [girls] may be expected to perform the same dangerous functions as boy soldiers, many are also forced to provide sexual services” (p. 33). ISIS keeps young girls to make them concubines of warriors. Gawry Rasho, a Yazidi woman released by ISIS in April 2015, confirmed that ISIS had thousands of Yazidi slaves. She was freed after 8 months of captivity, but they did not free her 7-year-old daughter. Even though ISIS has freed a certain number of young and elderly Yazidis, Gawry admits that children are still being abducted for forced

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marriage and sex. As she says, “They treated girls and young women very badly. I saw them choose them and take them, and if they refused they would beat them.” Young minority females are more likely to be targets of such horrific type of ISIS recruitment, unlike boys who are assigned a variety of roles. Also kidnapped by ISIS, boys go through training. Upon completion, they are either released as independent fighters or given a role within the terrorist organization (Otten 2015). Within the RENAMO terrorist group in Mozambique, the girls did not advance in rank, remaining subordinate to the men to whom they were assigned. Wilson (1992) describes RENAMO’s exploitation of girls as a reward for soldiers: Rape and the use of slave–wives were rather seen by RENAMO soldiers as simply their right of access to women, and a key ‘perk’ of the job, not a direct tactic of war. RENAMO commanders repeatedly stress their special rights to women and girls, along with the status and prowess that this confers upon them as men of power relative to the RENAMO rank and file. The almost ritualized allocation of women to RENAMO soldiers after their initiation has also been reported. (p. 536)

Hence, for Wessells (2009), “by fighting oppression, girl soldiers may find meaning in terrorist activities, regarding them as the highest expression of their social identity and commitment to the group struggle” (p. 105). In an attempt to return to normalcy, some of the terrorist girls who were constrained to have sex with boys or senior officers are considered “unclean” by the community at large (Felton 2008, p. 31). On the other hand, in the eyes of male terrorists, fighting for equality can help decrease the degree of sexual assault that the girls receive. When males notice a legitimate form of female superiority (see Pafford and Matusitz 2017), as in the event in which girls fend for themselves, the latter may not be assaulted sexually. Nevertheless, the boys and men will still turn their attention to unrelated girls in the settlements or villages that they raid (Coulter 2009). Lastly, rapists are not targeting girls only. A significant minority of young boys have been sexually assaulted too, although there is more stigma associated with raping a young boy. Jal (2010), a former child terrorist in Africa, recalls the many boys who protected themselves against sexual predators. The young boys crammed their pants with newspapers and paper bags at night for noisy purposes. When senior officers try to assault them, the noise would awaken the nearby soldiers. The disgrace associated with same-sex intercourse is also a deterrent, especially when people are awake and watching.

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Maskaliūnaitė, Asta, “Exploring the Theories of Radicalization,” Interdisciplinary Political and Cultural Journal 17, no. 1 (2015): 9–26. https://doi.org/10.1515/ipcj-­2015-­0002 Matusitz, Jonathan, Symbolism in Terrorism: Motivation, Communication, and Behavior. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015. __________ “Islamic Terrorist Radicalization through Online Jihadist Magazines,” Journal of Communication & Religion 43, no. 1 (2020): 26–39. Mazza, Ed, “Australian Boy, 7, Poses for Photo with Severed Head in Syria,” Huffington Post (2014, August 12): A1. Retrieved on July 2, 2022 from https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ australian-­boy-­severed-­head_n_5670673 McCauley, Clark, and Sophia Moskalenko, “Mechanisms of Political Radicalization: Pathways toward Terrorism,” Terrorism and Political Violence 20, no. 3 (2008): 415–33, 419. https://doi. org/10.1080/09546550802073367 Melki Jad, and May Jabado, “Mediated Public Diplomacy of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria: The Synergistic Use of Terrorism, Social Media and Branding,” Media and Communication 4, no. 2 (2016): 92–103. https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.v4i2.432 Mesoudi, Alex, and Andrew Whiten, “The Multiple Roles of Cultural Transmission Experiments in Understanding Human Cultural Evolution,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 363 (2008): 3489–501. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2008.0129 Mullins, Sam, “Terrorist Networks and Small Group Psychology,” in The Faces of Terrorism: Multidisciplinary Perspectives, edited by David Canter, 137–50. New  York: John Wiley & Sons, 2009. Nasir, Kamaludeen Mohamed, “Hip–hop Islam: Commodification, Cooptation and Confrontation in Southeast Asia,” Journal of Religious and Political Practice 4, no. 3 (2018): 374–89. https:// doi.org/10.1080/20566093.2018.1525902 Nnam, Macpherson U., Mercy Chioma Arua, and Mary Sorochi Out, “The Use of Women and Children in Suicide Bombing by the Boko Haram Terrorist Group in Nigeria,” Aggression and Violent Behavior 42 (2018): 35–42. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2018.07.004 Olivier, Michèle, “Africa’s Child Soldiers/Suicide Children: A Regulatory Framework,” International Journal of Law and Society 1, no. 3 (2018): 115–24. https://doi.org/10.11648/j. ijls.20180103.13 O’Neil, Siobhan, and Kato Van Broeckhoven, Cradled by Conflict: Child Involvement with Armed Groups in Contemporary Conflict. New York: United Nations University, 2018. Otten, Cathy, “Yazidis Tell How Fearful ISIS Kept Them on Move,” The Independent (2015, April 10): A1. Retrieved on July 2, 2022 from https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-­ east/yazidis-­tell-­how-­fearful-­isis-­kept-­them-­on-­move-­10169024.html Pafford, Audrey, and Jonathan Matusitz, “ABC’s Quantico: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Female Superiority and Racial Stereotypes,” Critical Studies in Television 12, no. 3 (2017): 273–88. https://doi.org/10.1177/1749602017717167 Peracha, Feriha N., Raafia R.  Khan, Arooj Ahmad, Sadia J.  Khan, Sahar Hussein, and Haroon Rashid Choudry, “Socio Demographic Variables in the Vulnerable Youth Predisposed Towards Militancy (Swat, Pakistan),” Psychiatry, Psychology and Law 19, no. 3 (2012): 439–47. https:// doi.org/10.1080/13218719.2011.598635 Perešin, Anita, “Al–Qaeda Online Radicalization and the Creation of Children Terrorists,” Medijska Istraživanja 20, no. 1 (2014): 85–100. Peters, Michael A., and Tina Besley, “White Supremacism: The Tragedy of Charlottesville,” Educational Philosophy and Theory 49, no. 14 (2017): 1309–12. https://doi.org/10.108 0/00131857.2017.1370896 Piaget, Jean, The Moral Judgment of the Child. New York: Free Press, 1932. Polzer, Natalie C., “Durkheim’s Sign Made Flesh: The ‘Authentic Symbol’ in Contemporary Holocaust Pilgrimage,” The Canadian Journal of Sociology 39, no. 4 (2014): 697–718. https:// doi.org/10.29173/cjs19003

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Rahaim, Alaina, and Jonathan Matusitz, “Patty Hearst and the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA): An Examination through Differential Association Theory,” Journal of Applied Security Research 15, no. 3 (2020): 408–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/19361610.2019.1710094 Rendell, Luke, Laurel Fogarty, William J. E. Hoppitt, Thomas J. H. Morgan, Mike M. Webster, and Kevin N. Laland, “Cognitive Culture: Theoretical and Empirical Insights into Social Learning Strategies,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 15, no. 2 (2011): 68–76. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. tics.2010.12.002 Riek, Blake M., Eric W.  Mania, and Samuel L.  Gaertner, “Intergroup Threat and Outgroup Attitudes: A Meta–Analytic Review,” Personality and Social Psychology Review 10, no. 4 (2006): 336–53. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327957pspr1004_4 Rotberg, Robert I., “Failed States in a World of Terror,” Foreign Affairs 81, no. 4 (2002): 127–40. __________ State Failure and State Weakness in a Time of Terror. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2003. Roul, Animesh, “Child Soldiers of India’s Myriad Mutinies,” Defence and Security Alert 5 (2014): 39–41. Sageman, Marc, Understanding Terror Networks. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004. Schwartz, Seth J., Curtis S.  Dunkel, and Alan S.  Waterman, “Terrorism: An Identity Theory Perspective,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 32, no. 6 (2009): 537–59. https://doi. org/10.1080/10576100902888453 Shenkar, Oded, “The Firm as a Total Institution: Reflections on the Chinese State Enterprise,” Organization Studies 17, no. 6 (1996): 885–907. https://doi.org/10.1177/017084069601700601 Singer, Margaret Thaler, and Janja Lalich, Cults in Our Midst: The Hidden Menace in Our Everyday Lives. San Francisco: Jossey–Bass, 1995. Singer, Peter Warren, Children at War. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2006. Singh, Manvir, “The Cultural Evolution of Shamanism,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 40 (2018): 1–62. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X17001893 Smith, Angus, Radicalization: A Guide for the Perplexed. Ottawa, ON: Royal Canadian Mounted Police, 2009. Speckhard, Anne, De–Legitimizing Terrorism: Creative Engagement and Understanding of the Psychosocial and Political Processes Involved in Ideological Support for Terrorism. Rome: NATO Defense College, 2007. Steinberg, Laurence, “Risk Taking in Adolescence: New Perspectives from Brain and Behavioral Science,” Current Directions in Psychological Science 16, no. 2 (2007): 55–9. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1467-­8721.2007.00475.x Stern, Jessica, and J. M. Berger, “‘Raising Tomorrow’s Mujahideen’: The Horrific World of ISIS’s Child Soldiers,” The Guardian (2015, March 10): A1. Retrieved on July 2, 2022 from https:// www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/10/horror-­of-­isis-­child-­soldiers-­state-­of-­terror Sullivan, John P., “Child Soldiers: Warriors of Despair,” Small Wars Journal 1 (2005): 36–42. Sutherland, Edwin H., Principles of Criminology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1924. Tajfel, Henri, “Social Identity and Intergroup Behaviour,” Social Science Information 13, no. 2 (1974): 65–93. https://doi.org/10.1177/053901847401300204 __________ “Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations,” Annual Review of Psychology 33 (1982): 1–39. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.ps.33.020182.000245 Thompson, Carol B., “Beyond Civil Society: Child Soldiers as Citizens in Mozambique,” Review of African Political Economy 26, no. 80 (1999): 191–206. https://doi. org/10.1080/03056249908704378 Tracy, Sarah J., “Becoming a Character for Commerce: Emotion Labor, Self–Subordination, and Discursive Construction of Identity in a Total Institution,” Management Communication Quarterly 14, no. 1 (2000): 90–128. https://doi.org/10.1177/0893318900141004 Tsekeris, Charalambos, and Lily Stylianoudi, “Youngsters and Adolescents in Troubled Contexts: Worldwide Perspectives,” Contemporary Social Science 12, no. 3 (2014): 165–74. https://doi. org/10.1080/21582041.2017.1386261

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Turner, Bryan S., “Outline of a General Theory of Cultural Citizenship,” in Culture and Citizenship, edited by Nick Stevenson, 11–32. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2001. Turner, Victor, The Drums of Affliction. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968. __________ The Anthropology of Performance. New York: PAJ Publications, 1986. Ungar, Michael, “Community Resilience for Youth and Families: Facilitative Physical and Social Capital in Contexts of Adversity,” Children & Youth Services Review 33, no. 9 (2011): 1742–8. United Nations, Report of the Secretary General on Children and Armed Conflict in Chad. New York: United Nations, 2007. Urdal, Henrik, “A Clash of Generations? Youth Bulges and Political Violence,” International Studies Quarterly 50, no. 3 (2006): 607–29. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-­2478.2006.00416.x Van Maanen, John, and Gideon Kunda, “Real Feelings: Emotional Expression and Organizational Culture,” Research in Organizational Behavior, edited by Larry L.  Cummings and Barry M. Staw, 43–104. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1989. Vergani, Mateo, Muhammad Iqbal, Ekin Ilbahar, and Greg Barton, “The Three Ps of Radicalization: Push, Pull and Personal. A Systematic Scoping Review of the Scientific Evidence about Radicalization into Violent Extremism,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 43, no. 10 (2020): https://doi.org/10.1080/1057610X.2018.1505686 Vindevogel, Sofie, Kathleen Coppens, Ilse Derluyn, Maarten De Schryver, Gerrit Loots, and Eric Broekaert, “Forced Conscription of Children During Armed Conflict: Experiences of Former Child Soldiers in Northern Uganda,” Child Abuse & Neglect 35, no. 7 (2011): 551–62. https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2011.03.011 Vinograd, Cassandra, Ghazi Balkiz, and Ammar Cheikh Omar, “ISIS Trains Child Soldiers at Camps for ‘Cubs of the Islamic State’,” NBC News (2014, November 7). Retrieved on April 16, 2020 from https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/isis–uncovered/ isis–trains–child–soldiers–camps–cubs–islamic–state–n241821 Wade, Matthew, “A Sociology of the Total Organization: Atomistic Unity in the French Foreign Legion,” Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews 46, no. 1 (2017): 111–4. https://doi. org/10.1177/0094306116681813vv Wagenlehner, Gunther, “Motivation for Political Terrorism in West Germany,” in International Terrorism in the Contemporary World, edited by Marius H.  Livingston, 195–203. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1978. Weimann, Gabriel, “Using the Internet for Terrorist recruitment and Mobilization,” in Hypermedia Seduction for Terrorist Recruiting, edited by Boaz Ganor, Katharina von Knop, and Carlos A. M. Duarte, 47–58. Amsterdam: IOS Press, 2007. Wessells, Michael G., Child Soldiers: From Violence to Protection. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009. Westermann, Edward B., “Drinking Rituals, Masculinity, and Mass Murder in Nazi Germany,” Central European History 51, no. 3 (2018): 367–89. https://doi.org/10.1017/ S0008938918000663 Wilson, Kenneth, “Cults of Violence and Counter Violence in Mozambique,” Journal of Southern African Studies 18, no. 3 (1992): 527–82. Zaidi, Syed Manzar Abbas, “The Taliban Organisation in Pakistan,” The RUSI Journal 154, no. 5 (2009): 40–7. https://doi.org/10.1080/03071840903411954

Chapter 3

Child Jihadism

The recruitment and indoctrination of children into jihadist ranks have been documented in Afghanistan, Indonesia, Iraq, Lebanon, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Palestinian territories, the Philippines, Somalia, Sudan, and Syria―among others―for many years. For example, in a United Nations report published in June 2015, it was revealed that 271 boys and 7 girls were enrolled into groups affiliated with jihadist groups in Syria, including the Free Syrian Army (FSA), Kurdish People’s Protection Units, ISIS, and al-Nusra Front. More than three quarters of these children were armed or used in combat. Almost 20% of them were younger than 15 (Bloom 2015). It was easier to recruit them when they had experienced harassment in their milieus or witnessed the maiming or killing of friends and relatives (Gray and Matchin 2008). Because they are so young, these children are not only adventurous and curious; they are also more susceptible to “Pied Piper” enticement through a host of psychological techniques. They are often incapable of understanding the bigger picture and the overarching jihadist ideology that they are taught during recruitment and training (Somasundaram 2005). The serious efforts of jihadist organizations to fuse their propaganda with that of the global jihadist movement (GJM) make their narratives appealing and compelling; they bestow legitimacy upon jihadists and even audiences within the ummah (i.e., the global community of Muslims) (Matusitz 2020). Indeed, their narratives can act as a countercultural movement for disaffected children of various walks of life, as supported by the percentage of converts joining their ranks. Furthermore, although jihadist organizations’ interpretations of Islam offer the ideological benchmark of their claims, aspirations, and actions, Islam, in and of itself, is not necessarily the principal driver for such recruits. In fact, most of the new recruits of the GJM only have a modicum of knowledge about Islam (Melki and Jabado 2016). As Barrett and Myers (2014) explain: The religion really is a gloss over a much deeper desire for a sense of identity and purpose and belonging, and they want to participate in something. They want some sort of definite

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 J. Matusitz, From Child Terrorism to Peace Activism, Springer Series in Social Work and Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16582-5_3

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The centerpiece of most jihadist groups’ message is total domination of the world through the iron fist of radical Islam. It is a direct challenge to the incoherence and tensions that many Western youths are facing every day within their own societies. The GJM is framed as the antidote to the contemporary problems in the world. Jihadist groups promise their audiences closure, coherence, and a resolution to humans’ existential crises. When alternative solutions are portrayed as deficient, joining the GJM seems like an ideal fit to satisfy such cravings (Melki and Jabado 2016).

3.1 Introducing Children to Jihad When it comes to involvement of children in jihad, there are various theories that attempt to explain how they get introduced to such extremist and dangerous lifestyle. For example, one theory hypothesizes that neurological aspects, such as identity development, in children make them ideal candidates for jihad: a great social context with peers, the possibility of killing enemies en masse, enjoying eternal sex in jannah, and so forth. Another approach has to do with the presence or absence of strong family ties. As such, the impact of jihad-prone families or the absence of fathers and mothers in the children’s lives will also have a major influence. Thirdly, social milieu―remember social identity theory (SIT) in the previous chapter―can be highly relevant to the situation of children who are leaving their lands behind to receive intense training in radical territories like Syria and Iraq, where jihadism soon becomes second nature for them (Hamid 2018; van der Heide and Geenen 2017). To these very points, jihadist organizations exploit kinship networks to recruit children. For example, the Ajang Ajang Group, a cell consisting of the sons of deceased Abu Sayyaf members in the Philippines, is currently led by Hatib Hajan Sawadjaan. Sawadjaan is responsible for abductions, piracy, and smuggling activities for an ISIS faction in Sulu, an island in the southern part of the country (Yaoren 2019). Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has motivated children into joining the GJM. On March 5, 2017, his Facebook page uploaded a photo of him hugging 14-year-old Osama Zeidat who was wounded after trying to stab Israelis at a bus station (see https://palwatch.org/page/11823). One and a half years prior, Abbas organized an event in honor of Muhammad al-Tamimi, a 12-year-old Palestinian rock-thrower. During the event, Abbas lauded the boy and his family for their “peaceful resistance” (see https://palwatch.org/page/8624). Child jihadists are turned into intrepid risk-takers with no mercy; in this sense, they have lower consciousness of mortality and do not contemplate the consequences of their actions. All too often, these factors are supplemented by the consumption of alcohol and drugs. Such child killers can become the fiercest ones, thereby becoming

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hyperactive terrorist agents. They operate through small cells under the leadership of a small number of adults. Regrettably, the high number of child jihadists makes them easily replaceable and expendable (Sullivan 2005). When looking for potential child bombers by jihadist organizations, recruitment can be innovative and forceful―generally through child abduction and trafficking. These “transactions” are sometimes made to advance extremist beliefs, not just for profit. In Pakistan, the federal police have purportedly located 200 training camps with up to 200 children and teenagers each (Hunter 2016). Worries about child abduction for jihadist training purposes―along with sexual exploitation and slavery―have already been addressed in an Optional Protocol to the CRC on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution, and Child Pornography. This pushed many nation-­ states to penalize these acts under domestic law. The sale of children also includes situations where children are transferred to another place for terrorist training purposes. CRC stands for the Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted in 1989 (Olivier 2018). As of December 2019, 176 countries were party to the CRC protocol (https://treaties.un.org/Pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=TREATY&mtdsg_no=IV–11– c&chapter=4&lang=en#8). Since the dawn of jihadist campaigns, children have always served in passive or active roles (sometimes dangerous roles), or they have filled roles that require little skill. For instance, during the Syrian Civil War, the FSA exploited children as cooks, couriers, spies, cleaners, and handlers of weapons. Kurdish forces have used them in a similar fashion, particularly at checkpoints and when needed to transfer information and military equipment (United Nations Security Council 2014). In addition to the FSA, the al-Nusra Front in Syria has recruited most of its children for combat. This is according to Leila Zerrougui, the United Nations Secretary-General’s special envoy in matters of children in armed conflicts (Karam and Salama 2014).

3.1.1 Hemingway Factor Let us take the Hemingway factor into consideration as it would apply to the topic of jihadism very well. As was the case with many other Americans, Ernest Hemingway provided his services in the Spanish Civil War against General Franco. The famed novelist was protesting injustice and could conceivably excel in some adventures. Scores of European Muslim youths have a similar attitude today. They are gravely concerned by the acts of violence in Syria, which caused millions of people to be displaced and several hundred thousand deaths, particularly against Sunni populations. Just as Ernest Hemingway fought for a democratic Spain, Muslim youths want to be the heroic saviors of the afflicted Syrian population. Arguably with stronger convictions than in the past—when many youths were attracted to diverse forms of radicalism, such as the Marxist terrorism of Baader-­ Meinhof in Germany or the Red Brigades in Italy—today’s children and teenagers want to display behavior that is taboo and verboten (Franz 2015).

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In 2014, Germany confirmed that would-be jihadists as young as 13 emigrated to Syria (Varghese 2014). Al Arabiya News (2014) claimed that schoolchildren left Western states, among them Germany, to join ISIS. In March 2015, 70 young women, including 9 schoolgirls, left the country to fight for ISIS. German authorities believe that 400 people overall left for Iraq and Syria. Some of the young recruits were even under 13 years old. Likewise, in March 2015, a French 13-year-­ old was said to have lost his life fighting for ISIS in Syria, and, in January 2016, another child, Badruddeen, was lionized as a martyr by an official ISIS media arm, the AlFurat Media Center (cited in Horgan et al. 2017, p. 652). The United Kingdom said that almost 1,000 Britons migrated to the Middle East to fight for ISIS. Most of them were children and teenagers (Hall 2015). In November 2014, two young boys, fluent in French, were featured in a video holding automatic weapons and claiming to be in Raqqa, Syria. They were from Strasbourg and Toulouse and appeared to be merely 10 years old. In August 2014, a boy from Belgium said on camera that he aspired to be a jihadist in order to “kill the Infidels of Europe, all the Infidels.” His father is an Islamist himself who asked the child to accompany him into ISIS territory (Maley and Bearup 2014).

3.1.2 Case Study: Pakistan In Pakistan, a certain number of children are driven by the fundamental pillars of jihad and martyrdom which, since the early 1980s, have been edified in the curricula of manifold establishments and religious schools. They are instructed to kill or subjugate non-Muslims from states that attacked Muslims or invaded their territories. Muslims who are pro-American or Westernized are considered murtadd (Infidels) (Urooj and Tariq 2015). Leaders also stress that no governmental authorization is required for the domination of Islam or to combat the murtadd. Instead, it is the duty of every capable Muslim to wage jihad so that, one day, their lives become amar (eternal). Jihadist leaders have tried to convince their constituents that Pakistan’s security forces are in bed with the United States and they intentionally thwart jihadist missions. It is believed that Pakistani child jihadists are conditioned with drugs to impede their rational thinking. They are exposed to videos of previous fighters who completed attacks successfully and became “heroes.” Jihadist groups in Pakistan seek to project an image of Islam based on violent verses of the Quran, like those that urge pious Muslims to slaughter Infidels and Apostates (Fayyaz 2017). In the study conducted by Peracha et al. (2012), the results indicated that over 65% of the children had been schooled at madrassas (Islamic religious schools). Most of these children were in attendance as day-scholars to learn the Quran and recite it in Arabic. It is not uncommon for such pupils to have never read the translation in Urdu or Pashto. Consequently, they only had a minute grasp of the teachings of the holy scriptures. The jihadist leadership was exploiting this shortcoming to inculcate their own interpretations of the Quran in the recruits for their own agenda. Many learners were not even aware of what the first “Kalma Toheed” meant. The

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first “Kalma Toheed” is the first pillar of Islam. Some of them were told that the Swat District, an area in northern Pakistan, represented the whole country in itself. The rest of the country, they now believed, had been invaded by the Infidels. Not surprisingly, they were ignorant about the other provinces, major cities, ethnic groups, and other languages spoken in Pakistan. The leaders convinced these children that it was justifiable to kill both Infidels and unarmed civilians. Such mental programs are capitalized on the advantage of jihadist traditions to methodically isolate children from their kinship networks (Yaoren 2019). It should also be noted that, for Pakistani child terrorists, the existence of social, political, and economic problems implants feelings of relative deprivation among very young people, causing their identity crises to worsen. Upon joining jihadist organizations, they find opportunities to acquire individual and collective identities by being active members of some of the famous militant groups in Central Asia. The effort that it takes to be a respected die-hard militant is simple: unconditional obedience and conformity to the rules of the jihadist networks (Fayyaz 2017).

3.2 Al-Qaeda Many Muslims are brought into the dominion of Al-Qaeda jihadism at a young age. On the one hand, it is done through coercion. The group’s soldiers began to strap children with explosives during the Iraq War in 2003. During the same year, two Moroccan twin sisters for the group, 13 years old, were captured before committing such act (Singer 2006). In March 2015, Human Rights Watch noted the escalating recruitment and deployment of youngsters in Yemen by groups like Al-Qaeda. Approximately 140 of them, mostly between 14 and 16, were conscripted in just 1 month (March–April 2015) (Yemen Post 2015). On the other hand, joining the group can be voluntary. To this point, Jacob (2015) conducted a study examining over 2,000 Al-Qaeda children; most of them supposedly joined the organization of their own volition. This obfuscates the manner by which security forces, legislators, and scholars see child citizens in conflict zones and humanitarian spaces. Since the early 2000s, extensive use of social media tools for jihadist aims has bettered the development of Al-Qaeda’s overall strategy. Part of the strategy is the transformation of the recruitment process through the internet: to make jihad look like an infomercial so as to entice children of all ages. The newer target audiences became ones with more important roles than before. Now, children could be assigned what used to be reserved for capable adults only. Youngsters could now be recruited for both short- and long-term goals. For example, short-term goals have the functional advantage of enabling innocent-looking operatives―who are not to be found in any law enforcement database―pass through security checkpoints. Additionally, younger operatives are prone to being more computer-savvy than their predecessors. It will be easier to send them messages through the internet and have them use social media tools and software to be in communication with other peers or senior officers within Al-Qaeda (Perešin 2014).

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3.2.1 The Bin Ladens: Father and Son For a long time, Al-Qaeda’s founder, Osama bin Laden, was revered by a significant number of children in the Middle East and Central Asia. He was celebrated as a hero, his image was adorned on T-shirts (Alexander 2004), and a common name for baby boys became Osama (Abrahms 2005). The search for identity is a major argument in a longitudinal study of foreign fighters affiliated with Al-Qaeda youths. The jihadist organization is still doing what Osama bin Laden did in the 1990s and early 2000s: roping in socially marginalized youngsters who are looking for a place to belong. Al-Qaeda is that place―away from negative circumstances caused by the modern dominant society. In the process, Al-Qaeda also gives them a new identity, a function to which they can relate and experience as a group (Haggerty and Bucerius 2020). Rabasa and Benard (2014) tell us that the ultra-Salafist ideology is a form of indoctrination in and of itself. As the ummah is portrayed as a global community victimized by both the Infidels and Apostates, a group like Al-Qaeda can “offer a new identity that allows the individual to identify with an imagined worldwide Muslim community” (Rabasa and Benard 2014, p. 192). And consider Osama bin Laden’s son, Hamza bin Laden. Until his death in 2019, and after years of being shielded from Al-Qaeda, he became the epitome for the new Al-Qaeda brand that inspired many children. Hamza was the husband of the daughter of Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al-Qaeda’s current leader. She bore two children, Khairiah and Saad. Al-Zawahiri was not only able to maintain the bin Laden legacy; he also remained firmly associated with the group’s ultra-Salafist doctrine through a calculated marriage alliance (Gohel 2017). In a 2015 speech, Ayman al-Zawahiri framed Hamza bin Laden as “son of the lion of jihad,” before urging Al-Qaeda’s followers to combat the “Americans, Jews, and the rest of the West.” Hamza bin Laden’s discourses were reminiscent of his father’s image and words when he said “We [Al-Qaeda] will continue striking you and targeting you in your country and abroad.” He seemed unnervingly honest when he threatened to destroy the United States and the West by avenging his father’s death. Hamza bin Laden was subsequently designated as a “global terrorist” by the United States (Gohel 2017, p. 60).

3.2.2 Children at US Detention Centers Astonishing was the number of Al-Qaeda children at US detention centers in the Middle East―not necessarily the well-known Abu Ghraib prison (west of Baghdad) (Breen and Matusitz 2009). In 2007, out of 4,000 prisoners in Camp Cropper (in Iraq), 950 were minors. Some were only 10 years old. Most were between 15 and 17. They were imprisoned for acts such as planting IEDs and engaging in firefights (cited in Sullivan 2008). Camp Cropper was a detention center for security detainees run by the US Army near Baghdad International Airport (Gourevitch and Morris 2009). Many convicts were affiliated with Al-Qaeda. The facility was first

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considered a high-value detention site, but its capacity was later expanded from 163 to 2,000 detainees (Allen et al. 2006). Likewise, multiple juvenile Al-Qaeda terrorists were incarcerated at the US military facility at Guantánamo Bay in the “Camp Iguana” section. Three Afghan boys, on the basis of physical examinations and appearances, were believed to be between 11 and 14 years old. This is how the process unfolded: after an in-depth medical examination, psychological assessment, and other forms of screenings, the boys were moved from the main section of Guantánamo Bay to Camp Iguana. There, they were put separately and out of sight of the adult inmates, for safety and healthcare reasons. Their cells were located in a small duplex cottage (Grady and Jones 2013). Overall, juveniles detained at Guantánamo Bay numbered 15, based on a study conducted by the Center for the Study of Human Rights in the Americas at the University of California Davis in 2011 (Corpus 2016).

3.2.3 Case Study: Omar Khadr Born on September 19, 1986, Omar Khadr is a Canadian citizen who, at age 15, was imprisoned by US forces at Guantánamo Bay for 10 years. At some point, he pleaded guilty to the killing of US Army Sergeant 1st Class Christopher Speer and other accusations. He later appealed his sentence on the grounds that he pretended to plead guilty in order to return to Canada for only serving three additional years in prison (Shephard 2008). As stated by the charges from the military commission (in April 2007), Khadr completed “one-on-one” weapons instruction courses in June 2002 (Shephard 2008). By the time he was captured, Omar was implicated in a protracted military encounter with casualties on both sides. US forces caught him in an Al-Qaeda-run camp in Khost, southeast of Kabul. Though some referred to him as a combatant (not a child), the US government considered him neither a child nor a combatant (Wilson 2012). Omar Khadr aspired to die as martyr or hero for his faith. This is the kind of ultimate sacrifice that jihadists dream of. As stated by US Sgt. 1st Class Layne Morris, “that wasn’t a panicky teenager we encountered that day.” Morris lost his right eye during the intense 4-hour confrontation with Khadr and his companions. As Morris continues, “that was a trained Al–Qaeda agent who wanted to make his last act on Earth the killing of an American” (cited in Levant 2011, pp. 10–1). On July 27, 2002, when Americans encountered Omar Khadr for the first time, he had a straightforward message for the Special Forces who captured him. He was seriously wounded and bleeding, among the debris of the bombed-out Al-Qaeda camp in Khost. “Fuck you, Americans,” he said, “Shoot me” (pp. 10–1). Khadr’s immediate family—depicted as an “Al-Qaeda family”—soon became the subject of vilification in the Canadian media. As a Canadian himself, Khadr was the only Western citizen whose government refused to intervene to get him repatriated from Guantánamo Bay. In fact, the Canadian government was resolute in its denial to demand his return, based on the defense of non-interference in the US justice system (Park 2014).

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3.2.4 Birds of Paradise Enter Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), the offshoot created and led by Abu Musab al-­ Zarqawi in 2004. Children who took part in AQI terrorist activities were called the “Birds of Paradise” or “Youth of Heaven.” These children were not even 16 years old yet. They were used to “spy, transport military supplies and equipment, videotape attacks and plant explosive devices” (United Nations Secretary General 2011, p. 54), in addition to shooting at security forces and non-combatants and participating in suicide bombing missions. Also known as “Paradise Boys,” the “Birds of Paradise” were particularly active in 2008 and 2009. At that time, Iraqi and US forces discovered several hideaways used by AQI to indoctrinate and train boys against Coalition Forces (Perešin 2014). The term “Birds of Paradise” alludes to the Islamic principle that, upon dying before reaching the age of puberty, a child will not die in vain. Rather, he or she will enter jannah as a martyr and evolve into a bird of heaven singing for the adults up there. This terrorist unit remained one of the most popular child jihadist groups in the Muslim world for a while. It was literally a sponsor of jihadist material for children. Their jihadist children’s online and offline design is highly professional, cleverly edited, and presented in a kid-friendly style. In video programs, children are turned into murderers of the Infidels and fighters for the jihadist cause (Perešin 2014). During a military campaign against AQI in the mid-2000s, girls were found to be employed as arms smugglers and suicide terrorists (Sjoberg et al. 2011). An idea originating from AQI’s leader, al-Zarqawi, this strategy was aimed at making the most of girls’ higher likelihood to evade security checks, hide weapons in clothing, and raise less suspicion as suicide terrorists. al-Zarqawi’s objective was also to shame men into action (Bloom 2011). Children are like sponges; they absorb what they see and hear without processing it, and it can become part of their character for a long time. This programmed information remains into their psyche and belief system. It is now something that leaders can expect from them because it is what Allah wills of them. In essence, this is how the culture of martyrdom is effortlessly created for children. Children are considered robots unable to express true emotions or display any form of vulnerability. AQI managed to motivate children to “use weapons, kill, use explosive devices, as well as to conduct other activities symbolizing terrorism.” The “Birds of Paradise” online and offline publications were disseminated outside the Muslim world, especially to Western nations like Canada and Great Britain (Perešin 2014).

3.3 The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) On July 4, 2015, ISIS’s media outlets broadcasted their most disturbing video up to that point. It began with messages that extolled the virtues of ISIS’s successes in its holy war against the government of Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president.

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In the video, mature ISIS soldiers got bloodied and shoeless Syrian Arab Army inmates to walk in and out of their prison cells. A motorcade of Toyota trucks brandishing ISIS flags arrives and pulls up together, as a nasheed (an Arabicchanting hymn) can be heard in the background. The walkways and columns of the ancient ruins of Palmyra, a 2,000-year-old UNESCO World Heritage Site that was featured in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, are covered with the ISIS black-and-white standard. The 25 Syrian Arab Army soldiers walk onto the stage and kneel, waiting to be executed. The camera moves over the crowded coliseum, whose audience consists of adults and very young kids. As opposed to typical circumstances of child terrorism in the Middle East, in Palmyra, the military prisoners were not foreign invaders, and the children were not about to execute US troops. These children had been primed, trained, and programmed to perform the most egregious acts of ritualistic terrorism against people from their own country (Bloom 2019). It should come to no surprise that ISIS exploits children to fulfill its dreams of the Caliphate. The Caliphate is an Islamic system of global dominance that would be led by a Caliph, according to the principles of sharia (Islamic law). Militant jihad is regarded as the ideal way by jihadist groups to establish the Caliphate (Matusitz 2020). To that end, child recruits as young as 9 have been used in a host of roles within ISIS, either passive roles or more important roles like combat positions (Karam and Salama 2014). The dream of the Caliphate cannot be fulfilled without the assistance of every pious Muslim warrior, including children. In June 2015, ISIS decapitated Abdulnabi al-Shargawi, who was part of the Libyan National Army. It was a public beheading before a young audience, some of whom were aged 6 to 8 who were instructed to gather around the corpse. This was done for “educational purposes.” The executioner held the head of the soldier aloft as children looked on (Libya Herald 2015). Though a passive role for children, being exposed to a public beheading imbues them with hatred and a willingness to do the same. Children are provided with adult ISIS attire, occasionally wearing masks or keffiyehs (male headscarves) over their faces to bolster their military appearance. They carry machine guns with them, which can be overly big and heavy for them (Marcus 2014). Assuming the role of executioner for ISIS has set the jihadist group apart from others. In addition to executing prisoners, children have also engaged in torturing or beating them. In late August 2014, a 16-year-old boy allegedly gashed the throats of two soldiers within the confines of the Tabqa airbase (United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner 2014). In March 2015, ISIS charged Muhammad Said Ismail Musallam with being a spy for Mossad, the national intelligence agency in Israel. Musallam was a 19-yearold Israeli-Arab citizen. The video of his capital punishment featured a camouflaged boy and terrorist standing behind Musallam on his knees. The boy quickly shot him in the head (Saul 2015). Southeast Asia witnessed increasing ISIS influence too, particularly in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Numerous children have been forced to accompany their families from Malaysia to ISIS-run sites (Rodzi 2016).

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3.3.1 Recruitment Methods The psychological dimension of ISIS’s recruitment is essential to understanding the terrorist organization overall and its ability in acquiring new recruits from all over the world (Ponder and Matusitz 2017)―until the organization’s aura started to wane when it lost its territorial control in Syria and Iraq in early 2019. The psychological dimension of child jihadist recruitment is not new and was standardized under Osama bin Laden for Al-Qaeda, which promoted the production of videos, websites, and manuals for recruitment purposes (Hoffman 2003). ISIS did the same, but in a more elaborate, sophisticated, and aggressive way. For example, ISIS capitalized tremendously on SNSs like Twitter. The group also recruited in prisons, where children were tasked with deciding who should live or die, at the same time empowering them (because they were given absolute power over life and death) and further humiliating and enfeebling the concept of adulthood. The fate of adults was determined by 11- and 12-year-olds (Bloom 2019). Many Kurdish children became members of ISIS via kidnapping, a common tool utilized by ISIS. On May 30, 2014, approximately 600 Kurdish children aged 14–16 were kidnapped as they rode on buses from Aleppo to Kobani after having traveled to Aleppo to take exams. They were returning home when their buses were stopped. Out of the 600, 186 boys were kept and sent to schools, where they were trained and indoctrinated (Harkin 2014; Stern and Berger 2015). If not forced to join ISIS, the terrorist group kills minorities indiscriminately, including children. The Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary General for Children and Armed Conflict, Leila Zerrougui, said that from January 2014 until September 2014, 693 child casualties were reported. As of June 2015, more than 400 children have been kidnapped in the Anbar province of Iraq and taken to ISIS bases in Iraq and Syria (Hall 2015). Although conventional literature has emphasized that financial advantages or physical punishment are necessary to recruit and mold children into terrorists, in the Philippines, they seem to be recruited through kinship networks or ideological propaganda within Islamic settings. Upon examining their activities on social media platforms, ISIS-affiliated factions in the Philippines have exploited pengajian (Islamic study sessions) to prepare future jihadists. In Indonesia, this method has become systematized by Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) to radicalize children from remote villages. It is a useful indoctrination technique for small study groups that can last for up to 5 years (Yaoren 2019).

3.3.2 “Cubs of the Caliphate” ISIS dubs the children it recruits “cubs of the Caliphate.” ISIS differentiates itself from other terrorist groups in how it has changed child involvement in terrorism. In particular, ISIS emphasizes long-term goals to guarantee future stability. The group

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considers children as building its future, an angle that few terrorist groups have taken. In addition to preserving long-term stability, children have to play an active role in the ISIS scheme of the Caliphate, which means that few children can be considered expendables (except for suicide bombing attacks). ISIS uses children in a methodical fashion and exhibits a high degree of unambiguousness regarding this practice. After the training is complete, graduates go on parades through the streets with their weapons and uniforms. They are depicted as exemplars of accomplishment and discipline, seeking to inspire others to join the group (Benotman and Malik 2016). They exude signs of authority, prestige, and success. It is shown both in public events and on social media. This also gives insights into how ISIS makes the most of children’s development of agency, self-perception, and self-esteem so they can align with its Caliphate dream (Morris and Dunning 2018). This is why this process has earned child trainees the ISIS moniker of “cubs of the Caliphate.” The eighth issue of ISIS’s magazine Dabiq honors children’s accomplishments, referring to them as “lion cubs” with the religious obligation to “face the crusaders and their allies in defense of Islam” and exterminate their enemies (Islamic State 2015). The United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner (2016) noted that 85 boys under 16 years of age had “graduated” as ISIS “cubs” in Sirte, a city in Libya. The same United Nations investigation reported that two boys (10 and 14) were interviewed. They claimed to have been forcibly recruited and compelled to “undergo religious and military training and to watch videos of beheadings. They were also sexually abused” (p. 13). ISIS insisted that the cubs practice target shooting using safe toys, playing military games, and devoting their time and energy to “jihad-friendly” activities. Mothers should introduce their sons and daughters to jihadist books, CDs, videos, and other materials online. Children should have the right to receive military training from their fathers and mothers. If her husband dies, the woman must carry out this training on her own, raising her sons to be mujahideen, and daughters, spouses of mujahideen (Prendergast 2017). This supreme duty is especially important when fighting is imminent, so that women are ready to send their sons to holy war. Occasionally, their 15-year-old sons are heard saying, “Allah is the greatest! Go to jannah whose width is that of the Heavens and the Earth!” By meeting these responsibilities, women become “the mothers of lion cubs.” This situation is considered honorable: By raising the future mujahideen, women are espousing ISIS’s lovely blessing (Islamic State 2015).

3.3.3 Sister’s Role in Jihad To be able to rear cubs―and devout little princesses―becomes a part of a woman’s jihad. For women wanting to be more pro-active, ISIS promises them additional rewards. If boys are raised in the “humble” jihad way, based on authentic Muslim teachings, and if girls are raised as moral, modest, and righteous, these qualities will

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be seen as a good example for other boys and girls. Thus, ISIS offers extensive guidance as to how mothers can prepare their children for the battlefield. In a detailed document, ISIS recommends that mothers train their children at an early age, before age 7. To ignite their passion for jihad, mothers are told to share bedtime stories of Islamic martyrs, teach children to reserve their anger mostly for Allah’s enemies, and stimulate physical activity (Prendergast 2017). This document is titled Sister’s Role in Jihad, a particularly enlightening treatise on the role of mothers in the brainwashing processes of future child jihadists. As adults can act as role models for children, and historical religious heroes and renowned ISIS fighters are presented as martyrs, children come to be seen as the demographic that will eventually deliver ISIS its future victory. By raising children in this manner, ISIS attempts to align boys’ and girls’ self-perceptions of agency with its Caliphate agenda even prior to any formal education or training. This is accompanied by the perception that mothers are well positioned to influence their offspring’s self-understandings by exerting interpersonal pressure and setting up the parameters that ISIS expects from its cubs (Morris and Dunning 2018). This Sister’s Role in Jihad booklet is interesting when contrasted to Women in the Islamic State: A Manifesto and Case Study by the Al-Khansaa Brigade, a pamphlet on female role models and duties released in Arabic―and translated in English by the Quilliam Foundation, the London-based counter-terrorism organization―in January 2015. While the former emphasizes jihad-focused motherhood and child-­ rearing duties, the latter highlights women actually fighting for ISIS on the battlefield. Combined, these two brochures provide a near-comprehensive representation of societal roles for foreign women within the Caliphate. Mushrikin (polytheists or heretics), Apostates, and kuffar (Infidels) are never described positively (Prendergast 2017). The Sister’s guidebook instructs mothers to lay the foundations for a “total organization” setting. One simply needs to look at the following excerpt: “Eliminate your television completely if you can (it mostly teaches shamelessness, anarchy, and random violence) and keep a check on the company your child is in” (Prendergast 2017, pp. 5–7). Mothers raise warriors. The preservation of the male warrior syndrome is reflected in the grooming of sons from an early age inside the house. For ISIS mothers, their actions are regarded as pure motherhood: The eminence of her position and the purpose of her life fall under Allah’s vision of motherhood. Women are commanded to fulfill this divine obligation, and raising children becomes her existential concern. In March 2016, the Quilliam Foundation believed that approximately 31,000 ISIS women were pregnant (Houry 2016).

3.3.4 Material Benefits Children are easily drawn to the material benefits that ISIS affords. The jihadist group offers children many sorts of gifts. As Abu Hassan, a citizen from Mosul, explained, ISIS is giving them “everything: gasoline, salaries, supplies and women

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to marry, gifts” (cited in Al Shamary and Nabeel 2015, p. A1). Payment is another enticement for families to send their sons and daughters to join ISIS. Although the children only receive half of what adult fighters earn, which is $200 each month, child terrorists have hardly been remunerated for terrorist activities. In apocalyptic areas of Iraq and Syria, ISIS still provides a higher standard of living for children. Even poor neighborhoods of Ankara, Turkey, such as Hacibayram, are key locations to find child recruits (Stern and Berger 2015). It is uncertain whether they were recruited there because they were migrating back and forth or for other reasons (Motaparthy 2014). ISIS also offers a higher standard of living by giving children access to institutions and healthcare. Abu Mohammad, an activist from Raqqa, Syria, confirmed that some private healthcare facilities had been seized by ISIS. Public hospitals were also under their control, but treatment was costly. ISIS was not only providing healthcare; the groups was also giving children a chance to attend school, which was deemed a privilege in crisis-ridden Syria (Bacchi and Limam 2015). The possibilities for a better standard of living represented a foremost incentive for joining ISIS, which unquestionably took advantage of it. In addition to payment, ISIS magnetized children through simple gestures like handing candy and toys (like Spiderman and Teletubbies). The group would do that at mosques and Muslim festivals, where children were more likely to be in attendance (Al-Tamimi 2014).

3.3.5 Indoctrination Psychological conditioning was predicated on the idea of becoming an impeccable soldier for ISIS. This is a quintessential aspect in shaping the future Caliphate, certainly more so than basic jihadist training. A child can only be cleverly used if he or she complies with ISIS’s doctrine on a daily basis. ISIS children must live by the principles of ultra-fundamentalist Salafism. In a report published by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic, ISIS is said to favor the psychological programming of children to secure their long-term loyalty and devotion to their ideology, in hopes of generating a cadre of zealous fighters who will see extreme violence as second nature (United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner 2016). ISIS’s indoctrination is predominantly learned at school or, occasionally, through family members. In its controlled areas in Syria and Iraq, ISIS initially shut down schools to modify the curriculum in favor of the Caliphate ideology. For example, children are strictly taught about sharia and the Islamist creed. They learn how to pray five times every day, as required by sharia (Prothero 2014). Academic disciplines such as art, history, science, and sports are considered incompatible with Salafism and cannot be taught (Stern and Berger 2015). A certain number of children are not able to grasp what they are being taught, but nonetheless experience the indoctrination. A boy named Mohammed said that, although he understood the

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importance of fasting and praying, he did not understand the concept of Infidels and why they should be killed (Damon 2020). Thus, ISIS has weaponized the schooling system, turning institutions into radical madrassas and hoping to do the same internationally. Muslim nations are particularly vulnerable to ISIS’s weaponization of education. Education is not only used as a conduit to indoctrinate children domestically and internationally; it can also reform them for a lifetime. ISIS’s teaching focuses on a fundamentalist interpretation of sharia, and many children will likely accept sharia without reservations. Children do not need their parents’ authorization to join ISIS. Families that oppose this run the risk of being threatened or killed by ISIS―more so than families who are far away from the jihadist organization (Damon 2020). ISIS promoted both physical and mental preparation in schools throughout Syria and Iraq. The children’s education itself was divided into two parts: sharia and military training. ISIS’s schools bore much resemblance with the infamous Hitler Youth program—churning out absolute, obedient, and dependable soldiers for the future (Vinograd et al. 2014). According to a United Nations report, ISIS’s objective to use schools for indoctrination was also to foster a new generation of Caliphate sympathizers (not necessarily fighters in all cases). ISIS “prioritizes children as a vehicle for ensuring long-term loyalty, adherence to their ideology and a cadre of devoted fighters that will see violence as a way of life,” as it was written in the report. The board of specialists, called the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, conducted over 300 interviews with individuals who escaped or were living in ISIS-controlled areas, on top of analyzing video and photographic evidence (Karam and Salama 2014). Lastly, ISIS’s schools are free and gender-segregated. Women are tasked with serving as teachers in the jihadist-run schools for girls. Girls as young as 7 attend basic courses on religion and sharia, reciting the Quran and writing in Arabic, in addition to innocuous subjects like accounting. Upon reaching the age of 10, they learn more about sharia. At age 13, they continue learning about sharia, with a special focus on Muslim history, the life of the Prophet Muhammad, and child-rearing skills for future jihadists. Ideally, girls get married at about 16 years of age. Like girls, boys memorize the Quran and write in Arabic. Over and above their Islamic studies, they attend jihadist training camps, where they learn to handle firearms, martial arts, and armed combat skills. The youngest boys are not ready for the front lines yet. However, as they get older, they spend time with soldiers at the safehouses for adult fighters (Prendergast 2017).

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Perešin, Anita, “Al–Qaeda Online Radicalization and the Creation of Children Terrorists,” Medijska Istraživanja 20, no. 1 (2014): 85–100. Ponder, Sarah, and Jonathan Matusitz, “Examining ISIS Online Recruitment through Relational Development Theory,” Connections 16, no. 4 (2017): 35–50. Prendergast, Molly Ann, Madonnas and Whores or Blood and Gore? Roles for Women in the So– Called Islamic State. Oslo: University of Oslo, 2017. Prothero, Mitchell, “Kidnapped Kurdish Students May Be Getting Jihad Lessons from ISIS,” Republican American (2014, June 22): A1. Rabasa, Angel, and Cheryl Benard, Eurojihad. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Rodzi, Nadirah H., “Malaysian Police: Malaysian Children Being Trained in ISIS Camps,” Asia One Group (2016, January 12). Retrieved on August 16, 2020 from https://www.asiaone.com/ malaysia/malaysian–police–malaysian–children–being–trained–isis–camps Saul, Heather, “ISIS Video Shows Child Militant Shooting Dead ‘Israeli Spy’ Muhammad Said Ismail Musallam,” The Independent (2015, March 11): A1. Retrieved on July 2, 2022 from https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-­east/isis-­posts-­video-­of-­child-­militant-­ shooting-­dead-­israeli-­spy-­muhammad-­said-­ismail-­musallam-­10099503.html Shephard, Michelle, Guantanamo’s Child: The Untold Story of Omar Khadr. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2008. Singer, Peter Warren, Children at War. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2006. Sjoberg, Laura, Grace D. Cooke, and Stacy Reiter Neal, “Introduction,” in Women, Gender and Terrorism, edited by Laura Sjoberg and Caron E. Gentry, 1–28. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2011. Somasundaram, Daya, “Child Soldiers: Understanding the Context,” British Medical Journal 324, no. 7348 (2005): 1268–71. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.324.7348.1268 Stern, Jessica, and J. M. Berger, “‘Raising Tomorrow’s Mujahideen’: The Horrific World of ISIS’s Child Soldiers,” The Guardian (2015, March 10): A1. Retrieved on July 2, 2022 from https:// www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/10/horror-­of-­isis-­child-­soldiers-­state-­of-­terror Sullivan, John P., “Child Soldiers: Warriors of Despair,” Small Wars Journal 1 (2005): 36–42. __________ “Child Soldiers: Despair, Barbarization, and Conflict,” Air and Space Power Journal 5 (2008): 10–21. United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, UN Commission of Inquiry: Syrian Victims Reveal ISIS’s Calculated Use of Brutality and Indoctrination. New York: United Nations, 2014. __________ Investigation by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on Libya. New York: United Nations, 2016. United Nations Secretary General, Annual Report on Children and Armed Conflict. New  York: United Nations, 2011. United Nations Security Council, Report of the Secretary–General on Children and Armed Conflict in the Syrian Arab Republic. New York: United Nations, 2014. Urooj, Anum, and Sadaf Tariq, “Causes of Suicide Terrorism in Pakistan as Perceived by Media Personnel,” Journal of Behavioural Sciences 25, no. 1 (2015): 91–107. van der Heide, Liesbeth, and Jip Geenen, Children of the Caliphate: Young IS Returnees and the Reintegration Challenge. The Hague: International Centre for Counter–Terrorism, 2017. Varghese, Johniee, “Children as Young as 13 Have Fled Germany to Join ISIS—Report,” International Business Times (2014, September 23): A1. Retrieved on July 2, 2022 from https:// www.ibtimes.co.in/children-­young-­13-­have-­fled-­germany-­join-­isis-­report-­609782 Vinograd, Cassandra, Ghazi Balkiz, and Ammar Cheikh Omar, “ISIS Trains Child Soldiers at Camps for ‘Cubs of the Islamic State’,” NBC News (2014, November 7). Retrieved on August 16, 2020 from https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/isis–uncovered/ isis–trains–child–soldiers–camps–cubs–islamic–state–n241821 Wilson, Richard J., “Omar Khadr: Domestic and International Litigation Strategies for a Child in Armed Conflict Held at Guantanamo,” Santa Clara Journal of International Law 11, no. 1 (2012): 29–79.

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Yemen Post, “HRW: Houthis Recruit, Deploy Yemen Children,” Yemen Post (2015, May 13): A1. Retrieved on July 2, 2022 from http://yemenpost.net/Detail123456789.aspx?ID=3&Sub ID=7992&MainCat=3 Yaoren, Kenneth Yeo, “Philippines’ Foreign Fighter Phenomenon,” Counter Terrorist Trends and Analyses 11, no. 7 (2019): 16–21. __________ “The Changing Dynamics of Islamist Terrorism in Philippines,” The Diplomat (2019, February 28). Retrieved on July 2, 2022 from https://thediplomat.com/2019/02/ the-­changing-­dynamics-­of-­islamist-­terrorism-­in-­philippines/

Chapter 4

Child Terrorism in Africa and Latin America

The issue of child terrorists in Africa cannot be traced back to the continent’s pre-­ colonial military history. Nor does it have roots in African traditional culture. Rather, the problem is due, in large part, to the crises of post-colonial nations in Africa. As such, these crises are fueled by power sharing, ethnic identity, lack of resources, the inability of authorities to care for and protect their citizens, the downfall of social and economic systems in rural areas, and the consequent massive exodus to urban areas. The emergence of armed conflicts in which African children are involved is an immediate corollary of such crises. Volunteering to join either the government or a terrorist movement has been the case for some children. For other children, access to food and the possession of power have been a joint compelling reason to become terrorists. In South Sudan alone, there are about 20,000 child militants, one of the highest rates on Earth, according to the United Nations. As the nation is still reeling from a 5-year civil war that killed close to 400,000 people and displaced millions, there is a possibility that the fighting could resume if former child terrorists are not reintegrated into society to some degree (Mednick 2020). In the aftermath of civil wars, many of these militant youngsters remain vulnerable; they have no skills, no employment, and no proper schooling. Many have to go back to elementary school with boys and girls who are half their age (Honwana 2002).

4.1 Human Security Concerns From a human security standpoint, the African child is more likely to suffer from malnutrition, poverty, disease, illiteracy, gender-related violence, sexual exploitation, cultural or ethnic discrimination, child labor, and displacement (Olivier 2018). African children have already suffered enormously from the proliferation and abuse of illegal weapons, including death, physical harm, displacement, separation from relatives, poor access to healthcare, substandard humanitarian services, inadequate education, and © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 J. Matusitz, From Child Terrorism to Peace Activism, Springer Series in Social Work and Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16582-5_4

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lack of employment opportunities (Stohl 2002). In such precarious conditions, youths are much more susceptible to being recruited by terrorist groups. It is not unusual for them to be separated from family members when they are forced to escape their villages. Fathers and mothers may be murdered or conscripted, leaving their sons and daughters to fend for themselves. Under many circumstances, joining a terrorist group or accompanying an adult to the front lines may be the only option. Already in 2000, one young boy in the Democratic Republic of the Congo explained: “I joined… when I was 13 because my home had been looted and my parents were gone. As I was then on my own, I decided to become a soldier” (cited in Boothby and Knudsen 2000, p. 60). Ratified by the Organization of African Unity in 1990, the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child defines a child as an individual younger than 18 years old. Article 22(2) of the African Charter does not mention a different age for not partaking in armed conflicts, declaring that state parties shall take “all necessary measures to ensure that no child shall take a direct part in hostilities and refrain in particular from recruiting any child.” In this case, the language is clearer than in the 1989 United Nations Convention, which stipulates that states take “all necessary measures” instead of just “feasible” ones (cited in Honwana 2008, p. 142). Studies in Central Africa estimate that the average age of child militants is just under 13. If not volunteering, they tend to be forcibly recruited or abducted. In most cases, they get swayed into participating in brutal violence against their own relatives and fellow villagers. Both boys and girls are forced to engage in acts that they often are unable to fully understand (cited in Sullivan 2005, p. 36).

4.2 Africa’s Weapons Problem The voluminous accessibility to machine guns has also contributed to the increase in child militancy. After the Cold War, hundreds of thousands of weapons smuggled to Africa have been a timely benefit to insurgent groups. Besides the excess of small arms circulating around the world, rapid manufacturing and technological improvements have generated accessible, lightweight, low-cost weaponry that can be effortlessly handled by young beings. This perilous phenomenon has enabled many types of rebel factions to emerge as powerful forces, capable of terrorizing, displacing, and slaughtering hundreds of thousands of unarmed civilians (Phythian 2000). Every child recruit arriving at a camp is instructed on how to use a weapon. Whether male, female, a child, or a teenager, every potential warrior is being taught how to defend their in-group with a fire weapon. Younger girls and “wives” generally stay in the camps instead of the front lines (even though they learn how to handle weapons). Girls can be greatly treasured in militant groups as combatants (Honwana 2006). Singer (2006) tells of an interview with a West African child, paving the way for his inquiry: “I was attending primary school. The rebels came and attacked us. They killed my mother and father in front of my eyes. I was ten years old. They took me with them.” As he continues, “they trained us to fight. The first time I killed someone, I got so sick I thought I was going to die. But I got better. My fighting name was Blood Never Dry” (cited in Singer 2006, p. 70).

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4.3 Child Suicide Bombers in Africa Many scholars (e.g., Brunner 2005; Rajan 2011) have investigated a wide range of aspects regarding child suicide bombers in Africa and from diverse angles, including security studies, counter-terrorism, and extremist religious movements. Von Knop (2007), for example, looked at what drives children and the effects that child suicide bombings bear on society. In recent years, African civil wars have experienced a perpetuation of the child suicide terrorist phenomenon, which has become ever more specialized. Of particular significance is the use of young suicide children in armed conflicts, especially girls exploited by two notorious jihadist organizations: Boko Haram and Al-Shabaab. In effect, child suicide bombings in Africa represent a new form of improvised explosive device (IED) (Olivier 2018). According to UNICEF statistics from April 12, 2017, the number of children involved in suicide bombings in Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria has increased dramatically. This trend reflects the dangerous maneuver capitalized by the insurgents. Between 2014 and early 2017, 117 children were made to look innocent, walking while carrying bombs inside their clothes, to perpetrate attacks in public places in the four aforementioned African countries: 4 in 2014, 56 in 2015, 30 in 2016, and 27 in the first quarter of 2017. In most of these attacks, innocuous-looking girls were the ones to be selected. In the Lake Chad conflict alone, the number of children used in suicide bombings rose to 27 in the 3 months of 2017, in comparison with 9 over the same period the year before. UNICEF is pleading NGOs and governments to take more actions that can assist children who could be the next suicide terrorists (UNICEF 2017).

4.3.1 Girl Suicide Bombers The use of girls as suicide bombers became an innovative method at the end of the twentieth century. The manifold reasons for using them depend on the type of conflict. There are different opinions as to whether it mirrors societal changes or gender expectations. Either females are considered equals and as capable as their male counterparts to assume important roles or, when it comes to using girls as suicide bombers, it might point to the exact opposite―namely, that girls are expendable, like cannon fodder to be dispensed for strategic purposes (Zenn and Pearson 2014). It might also be a tactical move to increase “manpower.” No matter what, girls should no longer be viewed as just the weaker sex that supports male fighters on the battlefield. Both girls and boys have been suicide terrorists and perpetrators of violence, yet they remain targets of child abuse or even war crimes (Olivier 2018). Bloom (2007) argues that female suicide bombers are now a growing movement globally. Suicide bombings have deep ideological and religious militant implications. They are not only rooted in extremist interpretations of Islam―e.g., the use of children by ISIS or in African Islamist conflicts (as is the case with Boko Haram and Al-Shabaab). In Sri Lanka, from the 1980s until the early 2000s, the Liberation

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Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) also exploited girl suicide bombers for the purpose of eroding the political élite. In Africa, unfortunately, such girls are not few and far between. On July 22, 2015, 2 girls killed no fewer than 20 individuals in separate suicide attacks in Maroua, the capital of Cameroon’s Far Northern Region. Three days later, on July 25, 2015, a 12-year-old girl murdered the same number of innocent people in a suicide bombing on a crowded café in Cameroon (Roggio and Weiss 2015). In the past, in keeping with tradition and African patriarchal culture, girls generally fulfilled a variety of subordinate roles during conflicts, confined to supporting active combatants through a wide assortment of means. Their positions were interesting from a regulatory standpoint as they simultaneously overlapped routines directed at adult women and children (Abass 2010). The reactions from both international and African Union legal bodies were, and still are, weak. Today, in spite of widely disseminated news reports about girl suicide bombers and the far-reaching engagement of international regulations with children in militant struggles, such legal bodies remain silent on the systematic use of children for the exact purpose of suicide bombings (Olivier 2018).

4.3.2 Case Study: Boko Haram in Nigeria Boko Haram is an Islamic terrorist organization that is mostly active in northeastern Nigeria. Founded in 2002, it has increasingly resorted to sophisticated attacks, initially against soft targets, but progressing in 2011 to include suicide bombings on the military, police buildings, and the United Nations (Markovic 2019; Onuoha and George 2016). Boko Haram’s tactics have been heavily inspired by the Islamic kamikaze tactics in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to the Children in Armed Conflict Report to the United Nations Security Council, Boko Haram perpetrated 64 suicide attacks between 2011 and 2014―in fact, half of them occurred in 2014 alone. Boys are exposed to the Islamist values and, thereby, potential jihadization within almajiri schools (cited in Onuoha 2014, pp. 165–8). Originally established as purely educational institutions, almajiri schools were open to special cohorts of children who had been neglected by their families and communities. Today, however, almajiri schools are mostly administered by radical Islamic sects (Omeni 2015). As explained previously, many child suicide bombers in Africa have been girls. For example, within 1 week in August 2014, grave concerns arouse when four teenage girls perpetrated suicide attacks in Kano, a northern Nigerian city (Weeraratne 2017). At the same time, the news reported that children as young as 10 were arrested in the adjacent Katsina State with explosive belts attached to them (Brantly 2014). On June 24, 2015, a girl, who may have been only 12 years old, murdered ten people after exploding her suicide vest at a market in Yobe State (100 miles east of Katsina). One day prior, another suicide bombing girl killed 20 civilians at a bus station in Borno State (an additional 100 miles east). On July 3, 2015, a teenage girl suicide killed 12 worshippers when she detonated herself in a mosque in Malari (in

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northeastern Nigeria). Two weeks later, a 10-year-old girl and an older lady butchered 50 people in 2 suicide attacks in Damaturu (near Borno State). The day before, a teenage suicide bomber killed at least nine civilians as they congregated to celebrate Eid al-Fitr (the Muslim “Festival of Breaking the Fast” holiday) in the same city. On August 25, 2015, a 14-year-old girl suicide-killed five individuals in an attack on a bus station in, again, Damaturu (Roggio and Weiss 2015). By the end of July 2015, with the assistance of Hezbollah, Boko Haram had already recruited and trained 177 girls who were not even 15 yet. Over 40% of them were ready for action in the states of Katsina, Kano, and Abuja (Besenyő 2015). In October 2015, 4 girls and 1 boy were believed to be responsible for a sequence of blasts in Maiduguri (northeastern part of the country), killing 15 and wounding 35. The five child perpetrators were described by eye witnesses as being between 9 and 15 (BBC News 2015). On December 27, 2015, 14 girl suicide bombers between 12 and 18 attempted to suicide-bomb the same city. Though 11 of the attackers were apprehended by law enforcement, 26 people nonetheless perished in the suicide attempt. The next day, two suspected girl suicide terrorists detonated themselves at Madagali Market in Adamawa State (100  miles south of Maiduguri). Seventeen people died and another 44 were injured (Maina Maina 2015). The many examples listed in these last two paragraphs signal Boko Haram’s tendency to use increasingly younger children in suicide bombing missions, which inexorably draws greater media attention. According to Laurent Duvillier, regional representative for UNICEF, “the use of children, especially girls, has become a defining and alarming feature of this (Boko Haram) conflict” (cited in Olivier 2018, p. 118). Though 15-, 16-, and 17-year-olds were already securing headlines in the past, media attention has now turned on pre-­ teens, such as the multiple prepubescent girls in the summer 2015 attacks in Nigeria. Some of the conjectures put forward by observers and specialists alike are grounded on the belief that Boko Haram’s ability to recruit child suicide bombers does not always depend on forceful recruitment or indoctrination; in some cases, it is easier to involve homeless children, the poor, and the downtrodden, who will do it in exchange for financial rewards for their families and closed ones (Olivier 2018, p. 119). It has even been estimated by a Nigeria-based security expert that a good number of suicide bombers are actually Boko Haram members’ children. Their terrorist-parents vehemently believe that they are fighting a holy war (Hoechner 2014).

4.4 RENAMO in Mozambique From Portuguese, Resistência Nacional Moçambicana, the Mozambican National Resistance (RENAMO) is a terrorist organization and political movement in Mozambique. It was founded in 1975 during the anti-Communist backlash against the country’s FRELIMO government (Tendi 2010). Seven years later, RENAMO joined forces with another insurgent group, the Revolutionary Party of Mozambique (PRM). Thanks to this merger, the terrorist organization could now develop its

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operations in northern Mozambique, particularly in the Zambezia province. A peace treaty in 1992 led to the demilitarization of RENAMO (Weigert 1996). Toward the end of the war against Zimbabwean guerillas, the Rhodesian secret agency recruited and trained Mozambicans, opposed to the FRELIMO party in Mozambique. The purpose was to identify and kill the Zimbabwean revolutionaries finding refuge in Mozambique (Thompson 1999). Lasting from 1977 to 1992, the Mozambican Civil War was catastrophic. It burdened the Mozambican economy with more than US$15 billion. The destruction of social and economic infrastructures created immeasurable human suffering. Human suffering was attributable to not only destruction of personal property and society but also homicide, rape, and mutilation on a mass scale. Houses were ransacked, land and crops were scorched, and livestock was slaughtered. The wholesale terror that was inflicted on ordinary citizens tore down the fabric of entire families and communities (Sideris 2003). People were being killed every day in all of Mozambique’s ten provinces (Finnegan 1993). With more than one million deaths, several million refugees in neighboring countries, and an economy wrecked by civil war and maladministration, FRELIMO and RENAMO pursued peace in 1992 (Alden 1995).

4.4.1 RENAMO Child Terrorists The Mozambican Civil War had a shattering impact on children. Statistical evaluations during that conflict revealed that one-third of Mozambique’s children perished before reaching the age of 5, owing to famine and preventable diseases. Of equal relevance is the fact that a significant minority of children were abducted by RENAMO for combat (cited in Boothby et al. 2006). Children 6–16 years of age were abducted, forced into weapons training, and compelled to participate in terrorist activities against their own families and neighbors, as well as government forces. Some of those children spent up to 4 years with the terrorist organization (Shaw and Harris 2003). They were “programmed” to experience no fear or repulsion for the killings and genocides (Bloom 2019). The proportion of children who were recruited as terrorist combatants in Mozambique was colossal. It is believed that between 8000 and 10,000 children took part in the RENAMO terrorist campaigns (Honwana 2003). In a civil war where many villages and shanty towns were the primary sites of conflict, women and children became an important focus of the battlefield. The RENAMO soldiers forced them to perpetrate the most egregious acts of barbarism against their own kin. Sons murdered fathers. Children raped mothers (Sideris 2003). These tragic episodes are reminiscent of those that occurred during the Second Congo War (Matusitz 2017; Simi and Matusitz 2014). During a raid, RENAMO would force boys to, sometimes, execute their parents or relatives after torturing them―starting by chopping off fingers and then the limbs until the parents pled that their children finished them off. Some had to contain or suppress their

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mothers or sisters, while the RENAMO guys raped them. In many cases, it was either kill or be killed. These terrorist tactics earned the group a “well-deserved reputation for savagery” (cited in Thompson 1999, p. 193) RENAMO was dreaded for its policy of “mutilating civilians, including children, by cutting off ears, noses, lips and sexual organs” (p. 193). Children were dispatched as porters to carry the loot and ill-gotten gains; those who lagged behind on the trail were executed on the spot (loads that could weigh 60 kilograms). Physical torture and near-starvation became rituals (Machel 1996). Documentation over a period of 10–15 years shows that RENAMO methodically recruited boys to train as soldiers; girls were used as personal servants or sex slaves―with some having to stay with one man or boy for years (later to be named “wife”). Documentation also reveals that Mozambican government soldiers, besides RENAMO, forcefully drafted unemployed urban teenagers (14–16 years). However, NGOs concluded that the use of children as porters to carry goods and for combating purposes was mostly done by RENAMO (Thompson 1999). Upon examining the situation in Mozambique, Thompson (1999) raised the question of why children face this systematic practice of abuse. The soldierly answer seems quite simple: in the last two decades of the twentieth century, modern technology has improved weapons, most of which weigh up to 7 pounds at the most, cost around US$6, and can be disassembled, reassembled, loaded, and fired by an uneducated boy or girl. The social, political, and financial answers are more complicated.

4.4.2 Processes of Indoctrination To indoctrinate children, RENAMO propagandists fell back on physical abuse and humiliation. During the first stage of indoctrination, the trainers would stiffen the children emotionally by penalizing anyone who volunteered help or expressed feelings for others, thereby programming them not to question RENAMO’s authority. Most children evolved into abusers themselves. As children unquestionably became killing machines―e.g., by disassembling guns and putting them back together, shooting rifles within earshot to get used to the sound, and killing domesticated animals like cows―they longed for higher-target killings, which climaxed into requests to exterminate unarmed civilians. Children were required to assist adult combatants without reservation. Those who refused were generally killed, unlike those who complied. The latter would become junior “chiefs” and were granted extra food or better living accommodation. During the final stages of training, usually after their first assassination, RENAMO celebrated the occasion with rituals or rites of passage. The objective seemed to be aimed at totally cutting off children’s connections to their families, communities, and traditional values (e.g., their perceptions of right and wrong) (Boothby et al. 2006). It is plain to see that intense psychological pressure was placed on Mozambican children. Mental programming consisted of a process of ritualization into violence, marked by erasing their links with society and conditioning them to think of war

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only. There was a deliberate―and successful―attempt at dehumanizing children and transform them into senseless killers. During training, cold-blooded discipline was unparalleled, and the penalty could be execution. On some occasions, their first military obligation was to kill a random individual or a peer who had faltered or tried to escape. To save his own life, the boy had to carry out the order (Honwana 2002). It was also the case that child recruits had to suck and drink the blood of the victim they had just executed. The goal was to make them audacious and remorseless for the cruelty committed. Former RENAMO terrorists said that the commanders had consultations with kimbandas (witch doctors) to better protect themselves against death (Honwana 2002). In due course, the trained boys were incorporated into the RENAMO forces and ready for combat. The recruitment and use of children were more prevalent in the south (because of the lower number of adult men in rural areas as a result of migrant labor). In the early 1990s, at the end of the conflict, RENAMO drafted many students and youngsters who came from the north and abandoned school. They were guaranteed scholarships and good employment if they joined the terrorist movement (Boothby and Thomson 2013).

4.5 The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) Listed as a terrorist group by multiple countries, including the United States, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) is a Christian extremist group which operates mostly in Uganda, but also in South Sudan, the Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Obama 2011). Joseph Kony, the current LRA leader who claims to be God’s direct ambassador on Earth, has not signed a ceasefire with the Ugandan government. Since 2005, Kony and his senior-level commanders have been charged by the International Criminal Court with war crimes and crimes against humanity (Gustavsson et al. 2017). With a few hundred adult followers today, the terrorist cult managed to gather a force that consisted of 14,000 fighters (some of them children) during its apex. The LRA abuses all the methods of child exploitation: kidnapping, enslavement, torture, rape, and sexual assault to render escape and rehabilitation into society extremely difficult (Cheney 2005).

4.5.1 The LRA’s Children The number of children fighting for the LRA remains difficult to determine. The terrorist group functions through small mobile units that ransack villages, burn properties, and kidnap children, thereby causing fear and chaos similar to civil war scenarios in Mozambique and Sierra Leone (Gberie 2005). LRA’s attacking style is different from the old wars, where the enemies wore uniforms and the sympathy from civilians was a key value (Kaldor 2007). Support from the people is not happening with the LRA predominantly because child abduction is the main channel of

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recruitment and marriage to abducted girls is common practice (Behrend 1999). The children are trained as soldiers and ordered to execute not only the enemy but also any child who attempts to escape. As was the case with RENAMO’s children, the LRA’s child militants have been sent to kill their own families and neighbors, aggravating the problem of possibly returning home 1 day and, therefore, reinforcing their bond with the LRA (Finnström 2008). The LRA’s decision to train a great number of children was due to organizational pressure to refill military ranks and safeguard long-term survival. Regarding the situation in northern Uganda, Blattman (2007) argued that teenage recruits yielded “the largest expected net gain” to the leaders and were recruited because of their impressionable nature and ability to maintain the organization’s momentum. Considering that Operation North (1991–1992) had greatly diminished the LRA’s capacity to wage war, subsequent to this counter-insurgency crusade, the terrorist group suffered from a significant manpower shortage. Jackson Achama, Kony’s former Personal Secretary, insisted that, by 2007, only 10–15% of kidnapped child soldiers were still active with the LRA (Borzello 2007). The condition of the LRA’s underage girls is worth noting. Their difficult life has continued after leaving the organization. Trying to go back to normalcy into their home communities is a challenging process. Girls complain about being neglected, dreaded, discriminated, and mistrusted by their own folks, especially if they are expecting a child or have had one already (Stott 2009). These former LRA girls no longer meet traditional gender roles and are to blame for having joined the terrorist group (Coulter et al. 2008). Social exclusion and single parenthood present obstacles to those who want to make a living for themselves and their children. Approximately 20,000 former child militants have passed through the reception points in the Northern Region, while the number of children who have directly returned home cannot be determined (Pham et al. 2007). Much is yet to be known about the long-term impact of LRA’s terrorist activities on these youngsters, who are now free from abduction (Liebling-Kalifani et al. 2011).

4.5.2 Case Studies: Unknown Girl and Lucy Aol The massacres committed by the LRA are in lower numbers in comparison with other terrorist groups mentioned in this book, affecting tens of thousands rather than hundreds of thousands or millions of civilians. Nevertheless, this is trifling consolation to a child who was forced to murder another child. Consider this girl’s story. Though the girl’s name is still unknown to this day, she said the following: “One boy tried to escape, but he was caught. They made him eat a mouthful of red pepper, and five people were beating him. His hands were tied, and then they made us, the other new captives, kill him” (cited in Human Rights Watch, 1997, p. 1). As she continues, “I felt sick. I knew this boy from before. We were from the same village. I refused to kill him and they told me they would shoot me. They pointed a gun at me, so I had to do it” (p. 1). As she admitted, the boy asked her:

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4  Child Terrorism in Africa and Latin America ‘Why are you doing this?’ I said I had no choice. After we killed him, they made us smear his blood on our arms... I still dream about the boy from my village who I killed. I see him in my dreams, and he is talking to me and saying I killed him for nothing, and I am crying. (p. 1)

Or consider Lucy Aol. At the tender age of 12 years old, Lucy was abducted by the LRA. They forced her to walk several hundred miles to a compound in the southern part of Sudan. “We were used like slaves,” she recounted. “We used to work in the fields or collect firewood from 7 in the morning until 5 in the evening, and we were given no food. If you made a mistake or refused, they would beat us,” she said. “The three girls who were taken from my village with me were beaten to death.” One year after being abducted, Aol was made the “wife” of a senior-level LRA commander. She and her “husband” later escaped the terrorist organization, but he was soon killed. Upon realizing that she was pregnant at age 15, she gave birth to a daughter at age 16 (cited in Felton 2008, p. 28). She would loot houses for food and clothing at the behest of the LRA. She would beat children within her age group. Only a few days after her abduction, she recognized that death was a minute consequence if she were caught as a fugitive (Bricker 2020).

4.6 The Revolutionary United Front (RUF) The Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in Sierra Leone is an infamous example of a terrorist group exploiting the services of a great deal of children after the Cold War. The RUF was an insurgent army that fought an unsuccessful 11-year civil war in Sierra Leone, from 1991 to 2002. Their “primary strategy” was “perpetrating terrorist acts against civilians” (McKay 2005, p. 385). The RUF protested the Sierra Leonean government and received the endorsement of adjacent Liberia’s principal warlord (and future president) Charles Taylor (Day 2015). Sierra Leone was already rankled by instability and a tumbling economy for about 30 years before the civil war even began. In the years preceding the war, the country “faced rising debt, unemployment, and cost of living, as well as decreasing exports of its main staple, rice” (Hazen 2013, p. 73). The nation’s name may sound like a democratic republic with plenty of natural resources, including diamonds, but corruption was widespread. Federal policies were highly unfavorable to surrounding provinces because they were devised to support the élite in Freetown, the capital city. These policies were also harmful to any type of sturdy economic management. In the end, the policies sparked the revolution led by the RUF (Brett and Specht 2004). Charles Taylor instigated the development of the RUF with revolutionaries inspired and trained by Colonel Qaddafi’s forces in Benghazi. Taylor was determined to “do a RENAMO” in Sierra Leone. He aimed at replicating the Mozambican Civil War in Sierra Leone. The RUF attracted many people who were dissatisfied with the country’s post-colonial autocracy and corruption. They particularly wanted a coalition of marginalized individuals, including “workers, intellectuals, members of the armed forces, students, traders, farmers, chiefs and elders” and any person

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who might oppose the corrupt Sierra Leonean régime. In 1991, after obtaining sufficient support, the RUF annexed Sierra Leone (Zack-Williams 1999).

4.6.1 The RUF Children The Sierra Leone Civil War is frequently used as a paramount example of African child terrorism because children comprised up to 80% of all fighters. Consistent with the other examples of African child terrorism in this chapter, many boys and girls were abducted, some of whom were as young as 7 years old (Singer 2006). They would soon receive military training and take part in “Small Boys Units” or “Small Girls Units,” better known as SBUs and SGUs. However, not all child recruits went through such military training; some were used in passive roles like domestic servants (Waschefort 2010). On the other hand, scores of children sought revenge against the RUF and voluntarily joined the Sierra Leonean Army or state-­ sponsored militias (Zack-Williams 1999). Brett and Specht (2004) argue that the revenge may be a “construct of society or of adults using the young person’s anger, despair, frustration, and abandonment to fuel a commitment to ‘revenge’ or ‘avenge’ in the name of the group or cause” (p. 73). The RUF took a high proportion of girls into its ranks. They were used principally for sexual services; were subject to “rape, sexual abuse, and attack”; and were expected to trade sexual favors for protection from the Sierra Leonean Army (Brett and Specht 2004, p. 111). Female captives were also responsible for cooking, carrying equipment, and performing other types of tasks in the camps. Some reports estimate that “a majority” of RUF contingents in certain regions of the country were girls. In the Disarmament, Demobilization, and Resettlement Unit created before the 1997 revolution, 1000 soldiers were screened. About 60% of them were females, but it is uncertain how many were active fighters (Zack-Williams 1999).

4.6.2 The RUF’s Modus Operandi The RUF’s modus operandi was to create a state of total chaos in Sierra Leone by recruiting as many anti-government haters as possible, irrespective of gender or age. To achieve this objective, the terrorist group imparted mass hysterical messages within the minds of people. Children formed a key instrument through which they attempted to accomplish this goal. Children younger than 15 were allegedly “hired” for “civilian relations.” Their main task was to intimidate the Sierra Leonean public at large. Boys and girls as young as 8 were conscripted so they could learn how to kill relatives or members of their own village in due time. The purpose was to alienate the child from his or her original milieu, and vice versa. Psychotropic drugs like cocaine and cannabis were broadly distributed among, and forced upon, children (Waschefort 2010, p. 190).

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Children were also forced to consume heroin blended with gunpowder, a mélange that stultified pain and revved children up for killing. In post-civil war reintegration programs, it was discovered that “more than 80% of the RUF fighters had used either heroin or cocaine” (Dallaire 2011, p. 178). The RUF regarded children as free of charge, easy to mold, plentiful, and, when drugged, aggressively inhumane. It was a supremely pugnacious force that could wage battles and give the RUF more power. The RUF’s modus operandi to fulfill its politico-ideological agenda sunk to new levels when its children took the next step of performing limb amputations, beatings, rape, and executions of their enemies (Zarifis 2002).

4.7 Child Terrorists in Latin America This second half of this chapter focuses on child terrorists in Latin America, with a particular focus on Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) in Peru and underage militants in Colombia. These two countries were selected because they represented a large chunk of the problem in that region of the world in the 1980s and 1990s. It should be acknowledged that other regions of Latin America were also impacted by militancy, such as El Salvador (in the 1980s too). At that time, because Latin American terrorist movements needed more members or new generations to live up to their future agendas, they became increasingly dependent on impressionable, acquiescent young fighting forces. The latter took part in most aspects of civil war, from fighting on the front lines to acting as scouts, spies, or messengers. Girls and young women were also greatly implicated in organized terrorist violence―though more often in passive roles. Today, the use of child terrorists remains a clear and present danger in rural or remote areas in Latin America.

4.8 Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) is a terrorist organization that follows a Maoist and, to a lesser extent, Marxist-Leninist ideology. In Maoism, the peasantry is the revolutionary vanguard; for Marxism-Leninism, the proletariat is (Meisner 1971). Shining Path became a non-state terrorist actor in 1982 with the agenda of destroying the capitalist and bureaucratic systems in Peru. Its leader was Abimael Guzmán. The terrorist group established its headquarters in Ayacucho, a poor province in the southern part of the country. From there, they launched a “popular war” against the Peruvian State, and they believed that the peasantry was a very important source of power for its insurgency. It enforced its Maoist ideology in rural areas in an attempt to persuade communities to support it (Rocha 2007). Shining Path mingled Maoist and Mariátegui-based doctrines to personify a distinctively Peruvian Marxism. José Carlos Mariátegui was a Peruvian political philosopher and Marxist who stressed that socialist revolutions must advance gradually in Latin America. He was highly

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critical of the condition of the Peruvian peasantry that suffered from the capitalist appropriation of land by a small cohort of gamonales (landowners) (Starn 1995; Watters 1994).

4.8.1 Recruitment of Children Shining Path regarded children as predisposed to learning the group’s Maoist philosophy because they possessed little to no political experience. As one document explains, youths were urged to contribute to the armed struggle against the privileged powers-that-be and champion the dogma of the proletariat. The objective was to make Peruvian youths participate in the popular war and, consequently, prepare future generations for an even bigger revolution (Strong 1992). Because short-term advantages of fighting in the internal conflict in Peru were improbable, large flocks of poor children in the Andean peasant regions were recruited through intense propaganda (Weinstein 2006). Additionally, Shining Path ideologues went to schools to take the tallest, sturdiest, and most scholarly children with them. The oldest were between the ages of 10 and 12. Teachers who resisted these abductions were executed. To this point, when local communities refused to hand over their children so as to fulfill Shining Path’s quota, the children were nevertheless drafted against their will, and these indigenous communities risked being assassinated. Family members who opposed such practice were given an ultimatum: give up the child or have the whole family killed (Mealy and Austad 2012). At some point, more than a 10% of the active militant wing of Shining Path, or about 1000 soldiers, had not reached the age of 18 (Comas-Diaz et al. 1998). The youngest of these soldiers, as young as 5, formed the “Red Pioneers.” Although the abducted indigenous children did not trust their subjugators at first, the latter cared for and cultivated them with far-left teachings. Thus, Shining Path militants were now the reference group and the only reality for these children. The Red Pioneers fulfilled a variety of roles including surveillance, espionage, message delivery, food delivery, cleaning, and other provisions. Others served as porters, carrying flags or ammunition. Upon turning 12, the children were taught how to handle weapons, spears, and slingshots and how to make bombs. They were also commanded to fight as soldiers (cited in Mealy and Austad 2012, p. 560).

4.8.2 Total Institution Crenshaw (1986) contends that would-be radicals tend to be drawn to total institutions because they do not have a strong sense of identity and find reassurance in an organization’s authoritarian setting. In his treatise on the State, Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci (1971) remarks that the State uses totalitarian institutions to produce hegemony. For Gramsci, hegemony is:

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4  Child Terrorism in Africa and Latin America The “spontaneous” consent given by the great masses of the population to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant fundamental group; this consent is “historically” caused by the prestige (and consequent confidence) which the dominant group enjoys because of its position and function in the world of production. (p. 12)

In a total institution, ruling parties enforce a certain type of social life; subordinates are calculatingly persuaded to jump on the “dominant fundamental” bandwagon. Ruling factions do not retain their hegemony by simply giving their domination an air of moral authority. They do so through the production and preservation of legitimating symbols. They also do so by earning the acquiescence of subordinate groups to the existing hierarchy (Lears and Jackson 1985). Both social indoctrination and role-taking were fundamental characteristics of identity for Shining Path. The organization’s social indoctrination campaign began during Abimael Guzmán’s professorship at San Cristóbal of Huamanga University, as founder and leader of the group. The charismatic faculty magnetized a committed clique of student-followers. They feverishly espoused his style of Marxist ideology through his many lectures, political gatherings, seminars, and study groups (McClintock 1984). Guzmán eventually created and ran the university’s School for Practical Studies, after which inculcated students went back to their own indigenous communities and disseminated Shining Path’s revolutionary message to the illiterate peasantry. This was done under the pretext of a healthy teaching practice (Kent 1993; Palmer 1992). Cultural hegemony is instituted predominantly through public schools and institutions. From 1969 to 1979, the Shining Path was the hegemonic force at San Cristóbal of Huamanga University, located in Ayacucho, the capital city of Ayacucho Region. At that time, it was only a radical political group, not a terrorist one. The group had a strong presence in the Frente de Defensa del Pueblo (in Ayacucho Region). The one department of the university over which Shining Path had total hegemony was the Education Programme. The one popular organization (organización de masas) over which they exerted control was the regional wing of the national teachers’ union (Sindicato Unico de Trabajadores de la Educación, SUTEHuamanga). After their influence over the Frente deteriorated, the Third Plenary Session of the Central Committee of Shining Path (in 1973) decided to create organismos generados. These were natural movements formed by the proletariat (i.e., the Communist Party of Peru―Sendero Luminoso) in the various organizing fronts (Poole and Renique 1991.

4.8.3 Popular Schools In the early 1980s, the Shining Path established “popular schools” (escuelas populares) across the entire Ayacucho Region. The terrorist group also founded many education camps for children designated as “orphans of the revolution” (Niksch and Sullivan 1993). These popular schools were set up as seminars to elevate class consciousness among peasants, the social class of workers, and students. Eventually,

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these schools proliferated Shining Path’s ideology “by emphasizing the failures and inadequacies of the present state, the unjust and corrupt nature of the existing socioeconomic order, and José Carlos Mariátegui’s Marxist interpretation of Peruvian reality” (Tarazona-Sevillano 1994, p. 197). A Maoist cohort of student-teachers at San Cristóbal of Huamanga University had received intense training so they could set up popular schools and churn out child peasants-turned-Maoist ideologues, ultimately creating a hierarchical structure ready to take over the Peruvian State. The Shining Path guerillas initially harvested support in Peru’s poorest areas by promising to replace the country’s system of power (i.e., through the abolition of inequality and corruption). In the process, this far-left political model would “moralize” (moralizar) the Peruvian State―a crucial peasant value (González 2011). The terminology and metaphors found in Shining Path brochures symbolize a discourse centered on teaching and education. The Shining Path’s activities were generally designed to educate. Terrorist attacks committed by the group served to “educate” Peruvians about the revolution and the State about its imminent demise (Shadle 2013). Many of those student-teachers “returned to the countryside to become primary and secondary school instructors for the express purpose of leaving the movement’s mark on the upcoming generation” (McCormick 1990, p. 13). The Shining Path’s collective élite considered children as naturally inclined to opening themselves to the wisdom of Mao Zedong because of their tender age and immaturity. As one document declared, children were emboldened to participate in the popular war to plant the seeds of the Maoist revolution across the entire world (Arena and Arrigo 2005).

4.9 Child Terrorists in Colombia It is assumed that most children recruited by terrorist organizations in Colombia do it voluntarily. Yet, forcible recruitment still happens in some areas of the country. Too, the voluntary move to join terrorist groups may stem from a miserable lack of opportunities available to children who come from the poorest Colombian districts (and not an exercise of free will). It is very clear by now that terror recruiters exploit children’s vulnerability. They launch recruitment campaigns that extoll the virtues of militancy and advance promises of money and a brighter future. A certain number of families send their sons and daughters to combat because of their inability to support them. They know that joining a terrorist group secures protection, a square meal every day, and nice outfits to boot. For many children, it is also a way to escape family violence and physical or sexual exploitation or to obtain the affection that their families were not giving. Others crave the prestige of exuding power and owning an automatic weapon. Camp life can be a site for adventure and camaraderie and an opportunity to prove oneself. The prospects for child terrorism in Colombia are immense and immensely frightening. However, once integrated in it, he or she cannot abandon voluntarily. Quite the opposite, they may not be aware that the cost of attempting to escape is their own life (Human Rights Watch 2003).

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4.9.1 Child Recruitment Vargas and Restrepo-Jaramillo (2016) explained how, in Colombia, child recruitment happens more frequently in poorer areas, with much less access to education and where coca crops are found. Colombia’s narco-terrorism is a particular domain for children. In as early as 2008, between 11,000 and 14,000 boys and girls were allegedly involved in narco-terrorist or related conflicts in the country. These children have served in combat, logistical and intelligence occupations, bomb-making, and the recruitment of other young peers. They “can be killed for trying to escape, disobeying orders or being unable to do what they are ordered to do. They are also exposed to other violations of their rights, such as torture, abuse and sexual slavery” (Sullivan 2005, p. 5). Most child terrorists in Colombia have been members of the two main Marxist terrorist organizations, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN). Conversely, several thousand underage fighters also have been identified as members of far-right paramilitary forces siding with the government, the military, and élite landowners. One of such large paramilitary organizations is the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), known for using illegal weapons (Felton 2008). Both the FARC’s and ELN’s recruitment of children into their ranks follow similar tactics as those of far-right paramilitary forces in Colombia. However, there are a few differences among groups in regard to recruitment. For example, far-right paramilitary forces remunerate children with periodic wages that range from US$300 to $400―either every month or every 3 months. They also offer additional pay for extra or special assignments. By extension, although both Marxist terrorist and far-right paramilitary groups treat girls as sexual servants or “wives,” the percentage of sexual assault committed by paramilitary forces against unarmed civilians is much higher (United Nations Secretary General 2009). Marxist terrorist organizations’ female constituency varies between 25% and almost 50% and may comprise girls as young as 8. On the other hand, far-right paramilitary forces have relatively few female soldiers and very few underage girls. Girls have joined to run away from sexual abuse within their families; in other instances, the reasons to join are akin to those of boys. In the Marxist guerrillas, since there are comparatively many more females, the latter face gender discrimination. Although rape and blatant sexual persecution are not allowed, many senior-­level male officers abuse their power to date or marry underage girls. Girls as young as 12 have to use contraception and must abort their unborn babies (Human Rights Watch 2003).

4.9.2 The FARC’s Children The FARC is a terrorist organization involved in the Colombian conflict between 1964 and 2017. In 2019, after a 3-year ceasefire and a peace treaty on the horizon, the FARC reneged their promises and re-armed themselves in remote regions (Casey

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2019). For more than 50 years, they gained notoriety for using barbaric military tactics, including terrorism. In the FARC alone, close to 4000 children were recruited, in accordance with government data published by Reuters. Twenty percent of them were not 15 years old yet. Many have abandoned the FARC in 2016 after the announcement of a peace agreement with the government (Braham 2018). To date, the FARC has not signed a peace treaty yet. Of these several thousand children, one in six came from an Afro-Colombian or indigenous background. There were parts of Colombia in which children overtly requested to join the terrorist group (Higgs 2020). “At 10 years old, who could be a revolutionary?” asked General Carlos Ospina, former commander of the Military Forces of Colombia from 2002 to 2006. The FARC had a different belief about child terrorism. A multitude of reports from governments, NGOs, and scholars confirm that the terrorist organization recruited children far younger than 14 (their official minimum age for conscription). In Latin American tradition, to be 15 years old tends to be the age of adulthood, especially in many rural areas. This is true with the FARC, a primarily rural insurgency. Of those former child terrorists interviewed, upon joining the group, the median age was 16. However, about 30% of those interviewed said they were 14 or younger. Some of the participants mentioned that FARC’s officers went to schools and villages to recruit young children (Kazman 2019). The FARC integrated girls into its political and terrorist wings in a manner that gave them a feeling of input, accomplishment, and satisfaction. The latter feeling was scarce. Without their contributions, including sex on a regular basis, the FARC very likely could have not survived. Unsurprisingly, many females eventually became disillusioned with the FARC’s macho culture and value system because it made little effort to accommodate their raison d’être as women (Herrera and Porch 2008). The intense pressure that girls received to have sexual relations with boys or men often began soon after joining the terrorist organization. As a matter of fact, commanders would intentionally recruit girls for the purpose of making them their sexual servants. The girls who went on to have relationships with them benefited from special advantages, including lower workloads in the camps and, at times, even the chance to visit their families and have children. When sexual relationships occur, the risk of being pregnant occurs as well. Although contraception was officially required, inadequate resources meant that it was difficult to acquire pregnancy prevention items. The FARC insisted that pregnancy be forbidden and forced all pregnant female members to undergo abortions (Kazman 2019).

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Machel, Graça, “Impact of Armed Conflict on Children,” Report of Expert to UN Secretary– General submitted to the UN General Assembly. New York: United Nations, 1996. Maina Maina, “Boko Haram: 26 Killed, 85 Injured as 14 Suicide Bombers Attack Maiduguri,” Daily Post (2015, December 29): A1. Retrieved on July 2, 2022 from https://dailypost. ng/2015/12/29/boko-­haram-­26-­killed-­85-­injured-­as-­14-­suicide-­bombers-­attack-­maiduguri/ Markovic, Vesna, “Suicide Squad: Boko Haram’s Use of the Female Suicide Bomber,” Women & Criminal Justice 29, no. 4 (2019): 283–302. https://doi.org/10.1080/08974454.2019.1629153 Matusitz, Jonathan, “Gender Communal Terrorism or War Rape: Ten Symbolic Reasons,” Sexuality & Culture 21 (2017): 830–44. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-­017-­9424-­z McClintock, Cynthia, “Why Peasants Rebel: The Case of Peru’s Sendero Luminoso,” World Politics 37, no. 1 (1984): 48–84. https://doi.org/10.2307/2010306 McKay, Susan, “Girls as ‘Weapons of Terror’ in Northern Uganda and Sierra Leonean Rebel Fighting Forces,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 28, no. 5 (2005): 385–97. https://doi. org/10.1080/10576100500180253 Mealy, Marisa, and Carol Shaw Austad, “Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) and the Conflict in Peru,” in Handbook of Ethnic Conflict. International and Cultural Psychology, edited by Dan Landis and Rosita D. Albert, 553–83. Boston, MA: Springer, 2012. Mednick, Sam, “South Sudan’s Former Child Soldiers Struggle to Move On,” retrieved on August 7, 2020 from https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/ south–sudans–child–soldiers–struggle–move–66480152 Meisner, Maurice, “Leninism and Maoism: Some Populist Perspectives on Marxism–Leninism in China,” The China Quarterly 45 (1971): 2–36. Niksch, Larry, and Mark Sullivan, Peru’s Shining Path: Background on the Movement, Counterinsurgency Strategy, and U.S. Policy. Washington, D.C.: The Library of Congress, 1993. Obama, Barack, “Text of a Letter from The President to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate,” speech delivered on October 14, 2011. Washington, D.C.: White House. Olivier, Michèle, “Africa’s Child Soldiers/Suicide Children: A Regulatory Framework,” International Journal of Law and Society 1, no. 3 (2018): 115–24. https://doi.org/10.11648/j. ijls.20180103.13 Omeni, Akali, “The Almajiri in Northern Nigeria: Militancy, Perceptions, Challenges, and State Policies,” African Conflict and Peacebuilding Review 5, no. 2 (2015): 128–42. https://doi. org/10.2979/africonfpeacrevi.5.2.128 Onuoha, Freedom C., “Boko Haram and the Evolving Salafi Jihadist Threat in Nigeria,” in Boko Haram: Islamism, Politics, Security and the State in Nigeria, edited by Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos, 163–73. Leiden: African Studies Centre, 2014. Onuoha, Freedom C. and Temilola A.  George, “The Abuja Bombings: Boko Haram’s Reaction to President Buhari’s Actions,” African Security Review 25, no. 2 (2016): 208–14. https://doi. org/10.1080/10246029.2016.1156878 Palmer, David Scott, “Peru, the Drug Business and Shining Path: Between Scylla and Charybdis?” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 34, no. 3 (1992): 65–88. https://doi. org/10.2307/165925 Pham, Yen Phuong, Patrick Vinck, and Eric Stover, Abducted: The Lord’s Resistance Army and Forced Conscription in Northern Uganda. Berkeley, CA: Human Rights Centre, 2007. Phythian, Mark, “The Illicit Arms Trade: Cold War and Post–Cold War,” Crime, Law and Social Change 33 (2000): 1–52. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008321001956 Poole, Deborah, and Gerardo Renique, “The New Chroniclers of Peru: US Scholars and Their ‘Shining Path’ of Peasant Rebellion,” Bulletin of Latin American Research 10, no. 2 (1991): 133–91. https://doi.org/10.2307/3338175 Rajan, Julie V. G., Women Suicide Bombers: Narratives of Violence. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Rocha, Luigi R, “Media against Terrorism in the Peruvian Andes,” Media Development 54, no. 3 (2007): 27–31.

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Roggio, Bill, and Caleb Weiss, “Female Suicide Bombers Continue to Strike in West Africa,” Long War Journal (2015): 10–7. Shadle, Matthew, “Theology and the Origins of Conflict: The Shining Path Insurgency in Peru, 1980–2000,” Political Theology 14, no. 3 (2013): 284–303. https://doi.org/10.1179/146231 7X13Z.0000000004 Shaw, Jon A., and Jesse A.  Harris, “Children of War and Children at War: Child Victims of Terrorism in Mozambique,” in Terrorism and Disaster: Individual and Community Mental Health Interventions, edited by Robert J. Ursano, Carol S. Fullerton, and Ann E. Norwood, 41–57. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Sideris, Tina, “War, Gender and Culture: Mozambican Women Refugees,” Social Science & Medicine 56, no. 4 (2003): 713–24. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0277-­9536(02)00067-­9 Simi, Demi, and Jonathan Matusitz, “War Rape Survivors of the Second Congo War: A Perspective from Symbolic Convergence Theory,” Africa Review 6, no. 2 (2014): 81–93. https://doi.org/1 0.1080/09744053.2014.914636 Singer, Peter Warren, Children at War. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2006. Starn, Orin, “Maoism in the Andes: The Communist Party of Peru–Shining Path and the Refusal of History,” Journal of Latin American Studies 27, no. 2 (1995): 399–421. https://doi.org/10.1017/ S0022216X00010804 Stohl, Rachel J., “Under the Gun: Children and Small Arms,” African Security Review 11, no. 3 (2002): 17–25. https://doi.org/10.1080/10246029.2002.9627965 Stott, Katharine, “Out of Sight, out of Mind? The Psychosocial Needs of Children Formerly Associated with Armed Forces: A Case Study of Save the Children UK’s Work in Beni and Lubero Territories, North Kivu Province, DRC,” International Journal of Health Planning and Management 24, Si (2009): S52–S72. Strong, Simon, Shining Path: The World’s Deadliest Revolutionary Force. London: HarperCollins, 1992. Sullivan, John P., “Child Soldiers: Warriors of Despair,” Small Wars Journal 1 (2005): 36–42. Tarazona-Sevillano, Gabriela, “The Organization of Shining Path,” in The Shining Path of Peru, edited by David Scott Palmer, 189–208. New York: St. Martin’s, 1994. Tendi, Blessing-Miles, Making History in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe: Politics, Intellectuals and the Media. New York: Peter Lang, 2010. Thompson, Carol B., “Beyond Civil Society: Child Soldiers as Citizens in Mozambique,” Review of African Political Economy 26, no. 80 (1999): 191–206. https://doi. org/10.1080/03056249908704378 UNICEF, Lake Chad Conflict: Alarming Surge in Number of Children Used in Boko Haram Bomb Attacks This Year. New  York: UNICEF, 2017. Retrieved on April 9, 2020 from https://www.unicef.org/press–releases/ lake–chad–conflict–alarming–surge–number–children–used–boko–haram–bomb–attacks–year United Nations Secretary General, Report on Children and Armed Conflict in Colombia. New York: United Nations, 2009. Vargas, Gonzalo A., and Nataly Restrepo-Jaramillo, “Child Soldiering in Colombia: Does Poverty Matter?” Civil Wars 18, no. 4 (2016): 467–87. https://doi.org/10.1080/13698249.2017.129705 1 Von Knop, Katharina, “The Female Jihad: Al Qaeda’s Women,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 30, no. 5 (2007): 397–414. https://doi.org/10.1080/10576100701258585 Waschefort, Gus, “Justice for Child Soldiers? The RUF Trial of the Special Court for Sierra Leone,” International Humanitarian Legal Studies 1 (2010): 189–204. https://doi.org/10.116 3/187815210X12766020140008 Watters, Raymond Frederick, Poverty and Peasantry in Peru’s Southern Andes, 1963–90. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1994. Weeraratne, Suranjan, “Theorizing the Expansion of the Boko Haram Insurgency in Nigeria,” Terrorism and Political Violence 29, no. 4 (2017): 610–34. https://doi.org/10.1080/0954655 3.2015.1005742

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Chapter 5

Child Separatist Terrorism and White Child Supremacism

Separatist terrorism is a category of terrorism with nationalist objectives, generally aimed at securing self-determination or home rule for a particular minority group. Also called nationalist terrorists, separatist terrorists resort to political violence to coerce the dominant government into giving them sovereignty (White 2016). Many separatist terrorist organizations reject the label of extremists or terrorists; rather, they see themselves as soldiers, rebels, or freedom fighters. Nevertheless, separatist actions rooted in violence against non-combatants or people not directly related to the conflict represent terrorism (Ganor 2002). In this chapter, we will learn that official “child units” are established to expose the next generation to the ideology and discourse of the movement and pave the way for the replacement of adults lost in battle. For example, as demonstrated in the first section of this chapter, for more than three decades, Sri Lanka was beleaguered by separatist terrorism, nationalism, and a persevering civil war between the Sinhalese majority government and the Tamil minority in the northeast. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) were the fiercest and most active separatist terrorists in the country. They sacrificed the lives of several thousand child recruits for an independent Tamil state (van de Voorde 2005). The other example of separatist terrorism is that of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), whose gruesome terrorist campaign also lasted for more than three decades. The end of this chapter discusses White child supremacism, with a special focus on online recruitment, Stormfront, and the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).

5.1 The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) Also known as the Tamil Tigers, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) was a terrorist organization headquartered in northeastern Sri Lanka. It was founded in 1976 and operated until 2009. Its purpose was to secure a sovereign nation for the © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 J. Matusitz, From Child Terrorism to Peace Activism, Springer Series in Social Work and Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16582-5_5

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Tamils in the northeast so they could avoid all repressive state policies of successive Sri Lankan governments. The Tamils considered these state policies discriminative against minority Sri Lankan Tamils. The majority Sinhalese state also perpetrated despotic actions, including the anti-Tamil pogroms in 1958 and the early 1980s (Pieris 2015). Efforts by the Sinhalese to ostracize the Tamils inflamed intense passions from the latter. More than 30 terrorist organizations, all with comparable ideologies, mushroomed in the 1970s as a reaction to such government repression in Sri Lanka. The LTTE became the most successful one (Abdukadirov 2010). Although the violence and revolutionary penchant of the Tamils were originally grounded in Marxism, it was soon substituted by an extreme formula of self-­ determination. This Sri Lankan situation presents a case in which a minority group had been controlled politically by a majority, contributing to national political violence (Callaway and Harrelson–Stephens 2006). Beginning in the early 1980s, the LTTE pioneered the modern version of suicide bombings. It also acquired international notoriety for using women and children in combat and implementing a number of high-profile political murders, including former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 (van de Voorde 2005). Between 1990 and 1995, there were close to 60 LTTE terrorist attacks in the capital of Colombo and its environs (Ramanathapillai 2006). In 2009, the Sri Lankan authorities were able to vanquish the LTTE after 26 years of civil war (Moorcraft 2013).

5.1.1 Sri Lankan State Repression The Sri Lankan government has been faulted with committing state terrorism against the Tamils (Callaway and Harrelson–Stephens 2006). Both the Sinhalese majority and the Sri Lankan Armed Forces have been accused of genocide, wholesale shelling and bombing, extrajudicial killings, sexual assault, beatings, disappearance, arbitrary incarceration, forced displacement, and economic embargo against the Tamil minority (Bloom 2003). According to Amnesty International, state terror was entrenched within Sri Lanka’s legal system, governance, and society (Bandarage 2008). Thousands of Tamils disappeared in Sri Lanka between the 1980s and early 2000s. A 1998 study by the United Nations revealed that Sri Lanka had the second highest percentage of disappearances globally, with at least 12,000 forced disappearances— usually after spending some time in detention—by the Sri Lankan security forces (cited in McConnell 2008). A few years prior, the Sri Lankan government reported that 17,000 people had shockingly vanished (Sriram 2013). During the “Operation Liberation” in 1987, children were either arbitrarily executed or shackled and shuffled off en masse to the Booza camp in the south (Hoole et al. 1988). In 2003, the Red Cross claimed to have received 20,000 complaints of disappearances during the Sri Lankan Civil War. Only 9000 of them had been resolved, but the remaining 11,000 did not have answers yet (Harrison 2003). In 1996, approximately 100 of the 600 disappearances in Jaffna, on the northern tip of the country, were of children. In the Duraiappa stadium excavation that took place in 1999, and

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in regard to the Mirusuvil massacre a year later, remains of children were located. It should come to no surprise that most of the male teenagers tried to escape the state policies of the Sri Lankan government that served to summarily crush the so-called Tamil militancy. Children were motivated to join the LTTE—out of revenge, protection, or survival—or flee the country (Somasundaram 2014). With about 200,000 Tamils, Canada houses the world’s largest Tamil diaspora. The vast majority of them migrated there during the Sri Lankan Civil War—about 50% of them as refugee applicants—and a large percentage of that number now live in the Greater Toronto Area (Thompson and Bucerius 2019).

5.1.2 Child Tamil Tigers Child recruitment by the LTTE became fully operational around 1990, after it experienced reduced fighting personnel and high casualties (Bloom 2019). This was at a time when their foremost enemy was the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF), not the Sri Lankan Armed Forces. The colossal shortage of combatants forced the LTTE to re-evaluate what alternative manpower was available to them. By this stage, women had already been trained as terrorists. The recruitment of children was regarded as a low-cost and effective way for the guerrilla movement to increase its use of force (Balasingham 2003; Ghosh 1999). After it experienced a manpower shortage in the 1980s, the LTTE began recruiting children between the ages of 9 and 12 in combat against the Indian peacekeeping force and could not attract a great number of adults because the terrorist group had lost local support. The LTTE set up the Bakuts, a corps known as the “Baby Brigade” consisting of fighters aged 16 and under. Estimates indicate that between 40% and 60% of LTTE soldiers were recruited below the age of 18 (Singer 2006). The creation of the Bakuts children’s corps happened in 1984 (Herath 2012). The LTTE denies having used children, but out of 7000–10,000 combatants, as much as 50% were allegedly women, and 20–40% were children (Somasundaram 2005). The presidency of Chandrika Kumaratunga, 1994–2001, was a period of immiseration for Tamils. Using her executive policymaking powers, she launched her “War for Peace,” in which Tamil healthcare centers, places of worship, schools, and marketplaces were bombarded from land, air, and sea. This took a grave toll on civilian life, and more than 800,000 Tamils were internally displaced in the northeast (McConnell 2008). Children joined the LTTE for several reasons: peer influence, revenge, survival, through coercion, or through abduction. All child recruits underwent some type of ritualized training devised to infuse hate for the enemy. In 2004, the devastating Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami that hit multiple countries, including Sri Lanka, could have at last unified the Tamil and Singhalese populations. Regrettably, no unification between these long-established enemy groups occurred. Fighting continued and recruitment of children even increased. The reality is that the LTTE was actively looking for orphaned children from this catastrophe (Honnavalli et al. 2019).

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5.1.3 Total Institution The LTTE was an organization that worked hard at separating children from their families, controlling sleep and daily intake of food, and accentuating the importance of discipline, indoctrination, and weapons training—at the same time glorifying the risks that one should take for the Tamil nation. This generated more capable and audacious child fighters than adults. When terrorist action was needed, the product of the LTTE’s total institution was a capable terrorist who could operate with fearlessness and impunity (Sullivan 2008). The harsh restrictions imposed by LTTE on its civilian population made it very difficult for anyone to leave the areas controlled by the group, particularly for children. It instilled a feeling of entrapment and was a guarantee that the number of “recruits” would continue to grow. In the early 2000s, the LTTE imposed military-type training in their controlled areas, creating a total institution of military thinking. Everyone who was at least 14 was forced to endure training in military drill, use of weapons, and mock combats, in addition to military obligations such as digging bunkers and crewing sentry posts. Government provisions, travel, and other benefits were granted to only those with such military-type training (Somasundaram 2005). Terrorist organizations know how to turn traumatized individuals into perpetrators of violence by way of telling trauma stories. The more radical sections of oppressed populations know how to exploit the pain and tribulations of the entire group, diffusing narratives that may be ostensibly used for healing. It was a repetition of the same scripts of suffering at the hands of the Sri Lankan State and Armed Forces: rape, murder, displacement, loss of employment, and destruction of homes during the past riots against Tamil minority groups. These served to forge a drastic transformation toward political violence among the Tamils. It was based on a collective memory of fear, resentment, hatred, and desolation. It pushed the Tamils to champion any means that could assuage their distress. Narratives about the group’s traumatic experiences became both a prevailing symbol and an effective tool to churn out new fighters who aspired to create a new Tamil consciousness (Ramanathapillai 2006). Child recruitment for combat often marks a new consciousness for a liberation movement. For the LTTE, it was unquestionably a symbol of conversion into an unstoppable terrorist movement (Sarvananthan 2018). The LTTE regularly showed videos and films of its military campaigns at schools. It was a means of roping children into its ranks. When this method was not working well, the group abducted children to fight for its cause. In late 2004, in a longitudinal study conducted in all the five districts of the Northern Province (one of the nine provinces of Sri Lanka), including the LTTE-controlled region in the Vanni, the interviewed children did not show any sign of joining the LTTE of their own volition, at least not fully (Sarvananthan 2006). Oral presentations and videos, especially in schools, as well as heroic and vibrant songs and posters of dead heroes all helped implant feelings of patriotism into children’s brains and construct a total institution—i.e., one that became a martyr cult (Matusitz 2014).

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5.1.4 Child Suicide Bombers With the LTTE, child terrorism crossed the gender gap when women and girls were massively recruited to evade the scrutiny and body searches of men and boys (Sullivan 2005). Pursuant to the Indo-Sri Lanka Peace Accord on July 29, 1987, the LTTE lost a high percentage of the male youth constituency and looked out for female teenagers and children for the first time. Although women and children who were over 16 were already joining the LTTE after 1983, they did not become active combatants until 1987 (Human Rights Watch 2004). Child female soldiers were largely used as a suicide bombing force and in units consisting entirely of orphans— they were known as the élite Sirasu Puli (Leopard Brigade or the Leopards). The LTTE used children effectively to complete manifold suicide missions. They thought it is a novel valuable strategy to fulfill the dream of the independent Tamil state (Gray and Matchin III 2008). In 1997 alone, Sirasu Puli slaughtered approximately 2000 Sri Lankan Army commandos, a death toll that demoralized the whole Sri Lankan Army because children were now the LTTE’s élite vanguard (cited in Bunker and Sullivan 2014, p. 155). The group’s casualties at that time indicate that most of them were between 14 and 18 (younger recruits were usually kept in reserve). However, in attacks on a larger scale, children were used in greater proportions. In élite units such as Sirasu Puli, children were a dreaded fighting force in complex battles (Somasundaram 2005).

5.2 The Irish Republican Army (IRA) The Irish Republican Army (IRA) has been one of the most widely studied terrorist organizations in the world, particularly on the period between 1969 and 2007, commonly known as the Troubles, when up to 3600 people may have lost their lives (Bean 2007). The IRA designates an umbrella paramilitary organization in Ireland during the course of the twentieth century. In 1969, the more terroristic version of the IRA became known as the Provisional IRA. The IRA spearheaded the Irish separatist movement that calls for Irish irredentism (i.e., the restoration of Old Ireland by expelling any British presence from the island). Also called Irish Republicanism, it was the belief that the entirety of Ireland (which includes Northern Ireland) should be independent from British rule (Cronin 1972). In 1969, the emergence of the Official IRA marked sharp divisions between politically motivated leaders and those looking for potential new terrorist recruits who would be willing to sacrifice their lives for the Irish Republic. The more peaceful side of the IRA was now called the Official IRA (OIRA), and its members “the stickies.” By 1974, the OIRA had lost many disgruntled members, who defected to the PIRA or formed the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) (Kenny 2010). The Troubles was the name for the ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland (McGarry and O’Leary 1995). Also branded internationally as the Northern Ireland

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conflict, the conflict began in the late 1960s and is considered to have stopped with the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 (Aughey 2005). The main participants in the Troubles included Republican paramilitaries such as the Provisional IRA and the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA); loyalist paramilitaries such as the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and Ulster Defence Association (UDA); Fianna; British state security forces—the British Army and RUC; and political activists and representatives (see White 1997).

5.2.1 Children in the Provisional IRA At the beginning of the Troubles, the Provisional IRA recruited large cohorts of children into the junior ranks. They were mainly trained in weapons handling procedures and soldiering in Republican camps (Cusack and Browne 2015). Later on, they were used as soldiers (O’Doherty 2018). Provisional IRA leaders have been accused of covering up child terrorist fatalities—some 19 of them were between the ages of 12 and 16—during the Troubles alone. Another 23 17-year-old members were also killed during the Troubles. The youngest recorded member of the Provisional IRA who lost her life is thought to be Cathleen McCartland. In August 1973, the 12-year-old died in a “roof-top” accident in West Belfast. Eileen Mackin, another Republican girl from West Belfast, was killed by the accidental discharge of a gun at age 14. It happened in May 1973, during a weapons training session in Ballymurphy (Cusack and Browne 2015). The Provisional IRA had many soldiers under the age of 18 who were taught how to use weapons and engage in active combat. One 14-year-old boy died during a raid on British soldiers in Londonderry, the second largest city in Northern Ireland. Quite a few children as young as 12 lost their lives due to explosions or accidental gun discharge during training (Cusack and Browne 2015). Occasionally, the recruits were as young as 10. The motivation for recruiting youths into paramilitary organizations was mostly political. It was driven by the need to defend one’s community from external threats and, hence, legitimate (Smyth and Campbell 2005). In a similar vein, educational spaces served as recruiting grounds, which attests to the ideological argument of the existence of propagandistic groups in society (Brett and Specht 2004). As Mahadevan (2018) explains, the IRA recruited children in state secondary schools, sprucing them to become sleeper agents posing as government security bureaucrats and who would destroy the system from within. Personal revenge seems to be another dominant reason for children to join the terrorist organization. For example, a Northern Irish child soldier explained how he self-radicalized after his father was shot on his front door (Peters and Richards 1998). Similar to revenge, restorative justice was a massive motivator to defend the Irish against the British. The IRA and Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) championed community-based systems of restorative justice (Among 2013). More recently, the Police Service of Northern Ireland has charged itself with investigating reports that SNSs are facilitators to recruit children—some as young

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as 13—into paramilitary Republican groups. Several different websites are allegedly linked to such radical Republicans and have hundreds of members. They inform their audience to “join the struggle.” In Ireland, a highly popular SNS, especially among children, is Bebo. It is not unusual for its members to be only 16. An offshoot of a Bebo site is Na Fianna Éireann, a youth movement seemingly associated with the IRA. Their stated goal is to provide “education of young boys and girls to assist all branches of the Republican movement” (Corrigan 2009, p. A1).

5.2.2 Case Study: Two IRA Children Based on evidence provided at the 2000 trial of John McDonaugh, who pleaded guilty to exercising with and using weapons at an IRA training camp, McDonaugh had picked up five teenagers outside a McDonald’s eatery in Dublin. He told law enforcement that, 2 days before his arrest, when he was only 14, he was invited to go to an IRA training camp and that he would learn about Irish history, be exposed to weapons, and be allowed to use them. According to two other boys from Dublin, aged 14 and 16, it was their first time being at a terrorist training camp. However, the road they took one day in October was soon to be followed by hundreds, if not thousands, of Irish boys from both sides of the political partisanship. It would last over the next 30 years as these Irish boys would take their first steps into the gloomy realm of separatist terrorism (Wilson 2000). Those 14- and 16-year-old teenagers arrested at the training camp did not initially fit the IRA profile. The 14-year-old’s family did not have Republican connections, although he became a member of the Fianna—described as the IRA version of the Boy Scouts (see next paragraph)—at the age of 12. The older child had a similarly untarnished background. For the IRA, the use of “cleanskins” (as they are called by British intelligence) is particularly significant because they make counter-­ terrorism issues more complex than traditional terrorist organization’s established figures. As affirmed by one security source, “there has been an emergence of a policy to use clean operatives which does make the work more difficult. These clean volunteers have to be identified before they can be watched” (Wilson 2000, p. A1).

5.2.3 The Fianna Portrayed as the IRA version of the Boy Scouts, Na Fianna Éireann (The Fianna of Ireland), known as the Fianna, is an Irish Republican youth group founded by Bulmer Hobson and Constance Markievicz in 1909. In the past, Fianna members assisted adult Irish militants in establishing the armed nationalist corps the Irish Volunteers (Hay 2008, 2009). It was designated as a Proscribed Organisation in the United Kingdom under the Terrorism Act 2000 (www.legislation.gov.uk/ ukpga/2000/11/schedule/2). During the early years of the Troubles, the IRA relied

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upon Fianna for intelligence-gathering tasks (Gill and Horgan 2013), as well as for recruitment and indoctrination: “The purpose of the youth organization... was to prepare young men to progress into the ranks of the IRA at a later stage, so there would have been a certain amount of education” (Alonso 2003, p. 11). After the separation between PIRA and OIRA that culminated in March 1971 (following an episode of intra-communal violence), a former PIRA soldier, Brendan Hughes, asserted the following: There was a major influx of youngsters coming in... you had the Fianna at this time, young kids, from twelve to sixteen, [but] they had to be over fifteen to be trained in weapons, both Fianna and the Cumann na gCailini [girl’s version]. They were potential recruits [to the adult IRA]; they did scouting work, for instance...on their way to school. (cited in Moloney 2010, p. 66)

Bulmer Hobson, an inexhaustible writer and editor of Irish nationalist propaganda and co-founder of the Fianna, personally experienced the great impact that revolutionary reading material could have on children (Hobson 1968). Children of the Fianna were the principal target audience of the Fianna handbook and the newspaper Fianna. The majority of those who read the youth columns in Irish Freedom apparently came from backgrounds that had Republican leanings. Readers of the Irish Volunteer were often members of the Fianna and/or sons and daughters of Volunteers. They read copies given by older relatives or were familiarized with these papers through friends. Consequently, the objective of these propagandist books and articles was to substantiate a long-standing Republican sentiment, instead of changing over to advanced nationalism (Hay 2015).

5.3 White Supremacism White supremacism is an ideology postulating that the White race is superior to other races and, as such, should dominate or exterminate them (Matusitz and Berisha 2020). White supremacism is grounded in the now-shunned theory of scientific racism and its pseudoscientific claims. In the vein of similar movements like neo-­ Nazism, White supremacists go up against members of other races and Jews (Flint 2004; Fredrickson 1981). White supremacist terrorism is a category of terrorism perpetrated by sub-national or non-state actors whose mission includes, but is not limited to, (1) racial or ethnic sovereignty; (2) antagonism toward government authority; and (3) vehement opposition to abortion (Jones et  al. 2020). Modern right-wing terrorism is a branch of White supremacist terrorism that emerged in the West in the 1970s (Moghadam and Eubank 2006). On July 23, 2019, Christopher A. Wray, the 8th Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), participated in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing and declared that the FBI arrested about 100 domestic terrorists between October 2018 and July 2019. Most of them were connected with White supremacism to some degree. Wray said that the agency was “aggressively pursuing [domestic terrorism]

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using both counter-terrorism resources and criminal investigative resources and partnering closely with our state and local partners,” but it was also concerned with the violence itself (not just its doctrine). During that time period, a similar number of detentions occurred at the international level. In the past, Wray was already warning that White supremacism was a growing threat to the United States (Chalfant 2019). According to statistics from the Center for Strategic and International Studies on terrorist incidents in June 2020, the gravest threat likely comes from White supremacism. Between 1994 and 2020, there were close to 900 terrorist attacks and attempts in the United States. Overall, White supremacist terrorists were responsible for the majority—57%—of all of those attacks and plots, in comparison with 25% carried out by left-wing terrorists, 15% by religious terrorists, 3% by separatist terrorists, and 0.7% by terrorists with other motivations. In the 1990s, most White supremacist attacks were against abortion clinics, whereas since 2014 most of such attacks have targeted individuals and institutions out of religious, racial, or ethnic motives. Facilities and people associated with the government and law enforcement have also been consistent White supremacist targets between 1994 and 2020, especially attacks by militia and national sovereignty groups (Jones et al. 2020).

5.3.1 White Child Supremacism The period of childhood and puberty is a time during which violence is more likely to be of heightened expression (Dahlberg and Potter 2001). It is a time when teenagers want to detach themselves from parental authority, which can be both a danger and protective motive for their involvement in violence. It is a time when they assume new identities, adjust to society’s requirements for behavioral maturity, and groom themselves for adult roles (Breen and Matusitz 2008). These are usual routines in their developmental trajectory, and it is common cross-culturally. However, the precarious and risky nature of these developmental processes makes children and teenagers more susceptible to being active in terrorist violence and suicide bombing attacks (Ingersoll 1982). The risk factors that terrorists experience in their childhood and teenage years are frequently noted and can lead to later involvement in violent extremist groups (Simi et al. 2016). Such psychological and mental issues are believed to be more prevalent among members of White supremacist groups because of lifestyle choices that directly precede involvement (or during involvement itself). Substance abuse may contribute to such psychological and mental issues and is widespread among White supremacists (Bjørgo 1997; Bubolz and Simi 2015). Windisch et al. (2020) conducted in-depth autobiographical interviews with 91 former White child supremacists from North America, using the Adverse Childhood Experiences questionnaire. On the whole, the sample results indicated high rates of childhood risk factors (with 63% of interviewees having lived through four or more adverse psychological and mental problems during their first 18 years since birth). This stands in contrast to 55% of a comparison “high-risk” sample and 16% of the

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US population in general. Additionally, interviewees described a wide range of maladaptive coping strategies linked to adversity. These maladaptive coping situations caused vulnerabilities to adolescent delinquency and extremism early in their lives. Windisch et al.’s study results also specify that White supremacist onset is not triggered by only one life event; rather, it is caused, and further aggravated by, the collective impact of several adverse experiences during childhood. Western-style White supremacism sometimes occurs outside the West. In September 2007, Israel law enforcement apprehended eight immigrant youths from the former Soviet Union who were thought to fight for a neo-Nazi organization (the name was “Patrol 36”). The Israeli police investigation revealed that the neo-Nazis held these views since childhood and had inhumanely attacked foreign workers, drug users, gays and lesbians, and observant Jews. During their in-group interpersonal interactions, members of Patrol 36 would perform the “Heil Hitler” salute and planned to exterminate all Jews. When raiding their homes, the police discovered photos of neo-Nazi members dressed in Nazi uniforms, doing the Nazi salute with their hands, and having posted links to websites of neo-Nazi organizations and neo-­ Nazi films (Sela–Shayovitz 2011). Likewise, and briefly speaking, in 1980s Czechoslovakia, the skinhead subculture began to enjoy a certain level of popularity. This far-right subculture was particularly appealing to boys and girls, even though political activists and representatives had warned them for several decades that it was a dangerous and violent movement. Youths of the Czechoslovakian skinhead movement committed egregious acts of racism, radicalism, and extremism (Smolík and Novák 2019).

5.3.2 Online Recruitment The harmful effects of social media on White children in the twenty-first-century Western world are also something to behold. The aforementioned CE theory in Chap. 2 provides a useful framework to examine the impact and development of social media (Acerbi 2016). White supremacists are recruiting boys online. As White supremacist organizations are becoming more and more visible in the three-­ dimensional world, their power over impressionable young minds in the digital world should be an urgent concern for parents. A stream of recent studies has revealed how SNS tools can be accommodated for child audiences. YouTube, iFunny, Instagram, Reddit, and multiplayer video games are examples of popular platforms for supremacist recruiters (Gibson 2019). An anonymous mother wrote an essay in The Washington Post to relate an upsetting, year-long battle to regain the consciousness of her underage son who fell prey to White supremacists that he met online. The mother’s chronicle opened the floodgates for fervid discussions and debates about parental control on social media. For White supremacist groups, the mission is no longer a secret. As the founding editor of The Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website, explains, White supremacists like him try to captivate children as young as 11. Online recruiters are keenly aware that, at such

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a young age, children may eventually respond positively to the White supremacist message and mission, even though he or she has yet to identify with the movement’s dogma. For parents who strive to prevent their sons and daughters from joining far-­ right extremist organizations, they had admitted that even “good” kids can be seduced and indoctrinated through online social media (Gibson 2019).

5.3.3 Differences Between Racial Groups Racial hate groups often make specific appeals to young audiences by socially transmitting radical White supremacist ideas, thanks to familiar marketing techniques (Lee and Leets 2002). For example, in their study, Costello et  al. (2018) found that the more time White children spend online (e.g., by surfing on SNSs, commenting on close friends’ posts, or adopting political views on the web), the more exposure they get to online White supremacist hatred. Entertaining political grievances has also been linked to acquiring hate material online beforehand. There is a high volume of hate material online, but the extent to which users are exposed to these materials can differ (Hawdon et al. 2017). Whites in the Western world have a higher tendency than members of other racial or ethnic groups (e.g., African Americans) to be frequently exposed to online hate (particularly online content related to the stereotyping of other groups). More disturbingly so, the more educated the online user, the higher his or her exposure to negative materials, and the higher his or her penchant for risk-taking (Costello et al. 2018).

5.3.4 Stormfront Stormfront is a White supremacist, anti-Semitic, and neo-Nazi website (actually, the first major US racial forum on the internet) (Atkins 2002; Cadwalladr 2016; Swain 2002). Stormfront extremists shape a rhetorical vision that appeals to those who feel excluded by modern-day political, social, and economic forces (Meddaugh and Kay 2009). Stormfront was up and running in April 1995, at a time when less than 20% of Americans had an internet connection. It was created by Don Black, an active member of the American National Socialist party as a child and David Duke’s chapter of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) in his 20s, where he eventually became Grand Wizard in his later years (Caren et al. 2012). Stormfront serves as an online hub for White supremacists around the world, including children. Its website outlines prospects for community building and educational outreach (Hara and Estrada 2005). On the Stormfront.org for Kids site, site administrators invite children to use the content to do their homework. The creator of Stormfront.org for Kids, then 15-year-­ old Derek Black (Don Black’s son), can be seen introducing himself: “Hello, welcome to my site, I can see by the fact that you have visited my page that you are interested in the subject of race.” The website also states “The Truth about Martin

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Luther King.” Those who surf on that site encounter a multitude of unfavorable articles and conspiracy theories about him and the Black community overall (Tynes 2006). No longer a White supremacist, Derek Black declared later as an adult: “When I was a little kid, I would get on chat rooms in the evening… and I had friends in Australia who I would talk to at a certain hour” (cited in Daniels 2017). By the early 2000s, the kids section of Stormfront expanded. It was designed to be for “White children of the globe,” which had already been visited half a million times (Saslow 2018). It should be noted that, before condemning his own White supremacism, Derek Black was the poster child of far-right extremism for children. He organized and participated in youth conferences, rallies, radio broadcasts, and fora on social media (cited in Costello et al. 2018, p. 1).

5.3.5 The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) Waltman (2003) examined the KKK’s use of the “hate them all” rhetorical maneuver to recruit children on their “Just for Kids” web page. Such rhetorical schemes are exceptionally useful for enticing children because they do not possess the knowledge and critical thinking toolset of adults. Therefore, they are less prone to reassessing the KKK’s persuasive appeal. The hatred stratagem is purportedly used to “educate” children about the KKK while also teaching them to regard other racial groups (like Blacks) as their enemy. On the “Just for Kids” web page, the KKK introduces itself as reliable and authoritative. The reliability stratagem operates on the principle that any concerned White child should put his or her trust in such authority figures or experts about the racial issue (Waltman and Haas 2007). It was clear that the KKK was pandering to the White children of the future when, in a “Bet You Didn’t Know” segment of their website, the group structured the content around a number of quotes attributed to famous American figures like Benjamin Franklin and Abraham Lincoln. This tactic suggests that the KKK is uninterested in the suffering of Black slaves and is endorsing the practice of slavery. By pairing their views with the authority of a Founding Father and a US President who abolished slavery, the KKK renders its message more fascinating to readers. The KKK members also seek to fashion themselves as amiable. The amiability factor operates on the assumption that readers will adhere to requests of those they find amiable (Waltman and Mattheis 2018). The KKK uses this approach to encourage children to have a more favorable opinion of the group (Waltman 2003). To further appeal to boys and girls, the KKK described itself as a peaceful group and as a “club.” As the organization stated below: One night when the club was meeting, they accidentally came across an outlaw band of negroes. But this time… the negroes ran away screaming. They thought the men in their costumes were the ghosts of dead soldiers… These deeply religious men felt that God had given them a great gift in disguise—a peaceful way to defend themselves. (cited in Waltman and Mattheis 2018, pp. 395–424)

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Not only is the KKK framed as a peaceful “club,” but also children may now come to believe that the club’s mission is noble because it is to protect the White race from the threatening newly freed slaves. The KKK also push children to engage in a consensus heuristic. The consensus heuristic rests on the premise that individuals are more inclined to agreeing to a persuasive request when they realize that others around them have embraced the persuasive message. Thus, it is a form of social learning. The “Just for Kids” web page tells its youth audience the following: “We want you to make known that we are the largest, oldest, and most powerful KKK organization.” Explained differently, boys and girls should have a favorable response to the message because a great many others have looked at the KKK and found the organization to be worth supporting (Waltman and Mattheis 2018).

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Chapter 6

From Child Terrorism to Peace Activism: An Overview

The experience of transforming oneself from child terrorist to peace activist is an archetype of a life where a sharp division has been established—often through gradual steps—between the old self and the new (Van Ness 1993). Life for such individuals will never be the same. They have embraced a radical restructuring of existence centered on new principles and ideas, that is, a drastically new understanding of who they are today (Lofland and Skonovd 1981). More importantly, not only do they aspire to a much better world, one that is free of terrorism, radicalism, and hatred; they also want entire communities or even countries to embrace their vision and take proactive measures to deliver the world from evil. They want their audiences to respond to the existential threat of terrorism by affirming the values of their worldviews and by striving to adhere to these worldviews. Hence, they communicate to audiences their experiences as child terrorists—sometimes with gruesome details about the egregious acts of violence perpetrated against fellow humans—and promote anti-terrorism and various pathways to peace. In everyday parlance, the most common expression for such a phenomenon is usually referred to as a “complete 180” or a “Damascus Road” conversion (Armstrong and Matusitz 2013). In the eyes of such compassionate individuals, in addition to the need to share their past lives as terrorists, they deem it important to address the root causes of terrorism. They often point the finger at the powers-that­be within their own countries of origin. It is a societal problem generally found at the macro level. A certain percentage of them also denounce their own families and communities for having persuaded or forced them to become child militants. In this case, the problem is at the micro level. Feelings of hopelessness or disagreement with the direction of the terrorist movement contribute a great deal to the manner by which they left or escaped their terrorist predicament. Today, they work hard to appear helpful in decreasing support for terrorist activities or reducing the willingness of potential recruits to become terrorists—particularly targeting youths (because of their formative or early developmental stage as one with a high degree of vulnerability). © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 J. Matusitz, From Child Terrorism to Peace Activism, Springer Series in Social Work and Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16582-5_6

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Providing this discussion in this chapter is important because it lays the groundwork for the next two chapters (Chaps. 7 and 8), both of which detail the gradual steps that have led to the fundamental personal changes within the lives of 24 former child terrorists. In this very chapter, the main focus is on peace activism. Specifically, the first half covers the fundamentals of that concept. The second half describes three major theories—social movement theory (SMT), framing theory, and social representations theory (SRT)—that will be useful to better understand, at the end of the book (Chap. 9), the successful applications of peace-promoting strategies that the aforementioned former child terrorists advocate in the media, through their own publications, and/or at public speaking venues.

6.1 Peace Activism The concept of peace has gained much traction in the rhetoric of former terrorists active in the public sphere. Their pleas to end terrorism and all forms of violence and to insist on peaceful existence for individuals and communities in the entire world, have been incontestably embraced as self-evident truths by most fellow humans. Reardon (1993) defines peace as “a social environment that favors the full development of the human person” (p. 6). Such ideal state of affairs is founded on equal rights but also equal responsibilities, total participation, and acknowledgment of all nations, ethnic groups, women, men, children, and sexual orientations (Jenkins and Reardon 2007). Put simply, peace is defined as the absence of violence. For some, this is the absence of interstate wars (negative peace). For others, who regard societal and interstate violence as correlated, and injustice and tyranny as a type of structural violence, the solution is positive peace, that is, a vision of peace where social justice exists at all levels of society. In both negative and positive peace, peace is inseparable from international solidarity (Barash and Webel 2017). Peace-building is the process toward achieving peace. It seeks to construct a more just, nonviolent society, ideally after a conflict ends. Sometimes, it can be done even earlier as a way to end the conflict itself. The previous distinction between negative peace (i.e., no direct violence between states) and positive peace (i.e., no structural violence or the presence of social justice) is something to reiterate (Galtung 1969). Both forms of peace expand the horizons for world peace. Such peace on Earth reflects the idea of a supreme state of happiness and freedom among all individuals and nations on planet Earth. This world of nonviolence would easily tackle the epidemic of terrorism (Bellamy 2019).

6.1.1 What Is Peace Activism? Peace activism is a social practice aimed at accomplishing ideals like the ending of war, the decrease of interhuman violence to a minimal level, and, in many cases, the achievement of world peace. Inevitably, peace activism is social change. When it

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comes to listing the possibilities for social change, the categories of work that individuals can do need to be identified. As such, peace activism includes, but is not limited to, (1) publishing one’s past experiences with violence, terrorism, or other wrongdoings (as a way to deter future generations), (2) championing pacifism and nonviolent resistance in the media or at various speech venues, (3) diplomacy, (4) boycotts, (5) peace camps, (6) advocating anti-terrorism and improved human security, (7) endorsing anti-war political candidates, (8) passing legislation to eliminate the profit from state contracts with the military–industrial complex, (9) supporting transparency within the government, (10) lobbying political groups to create additional legislation that favors peace, (11) direct democracy, (12) demonstrations, and/ or (13) prohibiting guns (or certain kinds of weapons) (see Andrews 2017; MacNair 2015; May 2015). Former terrorists engage in peace activism through public appearances. They do so by pursuing the transformation of cultural violence (i.e., which is entrenched within one’s own culture or society) into both cultural peace (within one’s in-group) and global peace. Regarding the latter, when social justice is present within all layers of society, it can eliminate a multitude of forms of direct and structural violence and injustice. In this manner, peace activists examine the social and cultural impact of communication by infusing justice and progress into a culture of peace. They look for a brand of transnational activism that can develop beyond nation-states, a type of circumstance that increases our understanding of how communication practices can build a better world (Bennett 2003).

6.1.2 Peace Spaces In their home countries, former child terrorists are not always welcome or even allowed to speak out publicly against the very evil that distinguished them from their nonviolent peers during their formative years. Many of them engage in peace activism in the West, where they feel safer and they can find peace spaces. Peace spaces are “spaces where the subaltern voice, in this case the marginalized voice of peace, can find or create a space in which to evolve and challenge hegemonic discourses of (ethno–)nationalism or violence prevalent in (post–)conflict societies” (Vogel 2018, p.  2). Peace spaces should be looked at as spaces where the voices of individuals of lower status find a “home” to defy or question hegemonic discourses. Peace spaces share commonalties with other socially constructed spaces; they also have differences that distinguish them from others—such as the ability to use social media to propose activities of peace activism, as well as ideologies or political objectives that would not be welcome in other spaces. Peace spaces are tantamount to spaces of civil resistance against the hegemony of conflict and violence overall. They can also serve as fora for discourses in peace advocacy (Vogel 2018, p. 5).

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6.1.3 Accidental vs. Lifelong Activists Accidental activists are circumstantial activists. They have turned to activism as a result of life circumstances. Contrary to lifelong activists, they have not participated in social or political activism before their current engagement in activism. Too, they have not experienced formal education in the disciplines or areas of education traditionally associated with the formal education of activists (McAdam 1986). Lifelong activists have concerned themselves with student politics and activism for a long time, usually since they were teenagers. At a tender age, many lifelong activists developed an intrinsic interest in social justice or thirst for restoring equality. This motivated them to take actions against injustice within their own state or elsewhere in the world. Their learning grows by (1) socializing with peer or senior activists, (2) observing them in their daily activities, (3) interjecting themselves in direct action campaigning, (4) taking part in strategy or campaign gatherings, and (5) immersing themselves in a variety of networks, community groups, NGOs, and social movements (Rettig 2006). Though devoid of any experience or formal training in such political or social activities, accidental activists can be rapid learners. Particularly when having lived through child terrorism themselves, they can be easily taken out of their comfort zones and gain new knowledge and skills to implement peaceful ideas effectively (Ollis 2011). Upon examining accidental activists, one can notice their rapid progression, including the stages in their learning process, their identity development during their metamorphosis into activists, and the role of formal and informal mentorship, as well as self-mentorship, during their growth (Ollis 2012). Of course, one can become an accidental activist and, after several to many years of practice, graduate to the level of lifelong activist. Both lifelong and accidental activists are driven by (1) the values they revere, (2) a sense of duty and responsibility to the audiences they want to influence, (3) conviction that their endeavors will make a positive difference, and (4) participation in groups of like-minded people. More importantly, both lifelong and accidental activists are capable of inspiring their communities through the direct or indirect efforts they provide and by acting as role models and mentors to others who jump on their peace activism bandwagon (Dutt and Grabe 2014).

6.1.4 Grassroots Activism Grassroots activism is a practice whereby individuals seek to cause social change from the ground up; it is the most fundamental level of activity that brings people together to make decisions that promote change. A grassroots activist is any person who feels passionate about an issue. The practice is not necessarily linked to public campaigns that advocate change; such activists can muster people to take actions to encourage sustainability through innovations. Grassroots activism does not necessarily follow a political party line. It is an autonomous collective of self-organized individuals who want to solve particular problems and are ready to change the state of affairs (Skaidrė 2019).

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Grassroots activism is grounded in bottom-up schemes, either with or without finances, with short-term or long-term objectives to create systemic change. When short-term goals are applied, movements are more easily motivated to pursue long-­ term goals, and the number of activists tend to expand (Skaidrė 2019). Grassroots activists are more likely to be volunteers and philanthropists than professionals working for NGOs. Rather than having paid personnel, many grassroots initiatives depend on volunteers and helpers who are employed elsewhere. They do it to contribute their ideas, time, and resources. For such individuals, grassroots activism is an existential civic duty, not a career. Many grassroots organizations lobby for fundraising support, employ crowdsourcing to petition for pro-bono services, collaborate with local businesses and the established order, or identify other means to produce revenues or pursue their agendas (Shapovalova 2019). Grassroots activists can issue formal communiqués through letters, announcements, and public speeches. They also convey their messages to wider audiences through catchphrases, mottos, caricatures, symbols, banners, placards, brochures, radio, television, newspapers, periodicals, SNSs, skywriting, and earth writing. They undertake symbolic public actions that have commonly been used by others to express their dissatisfaction with the status quo. Examples of such symbolic public actions include flags, symbolic colors, wearing emblems, displaying symbolic objects through light and sound, and use of portraits. Other types of actions, like honoring the dead (e.g., political mourning or reenactment of funerals), drama (e.g., performances), music (e.g., choir singing), diverse processions (e.g., pickets, parades, religious convoys, pilgrimages, motorcades), and public assemblies (e.g., via protests, teach-ins) (Skaidrė 2019).

6.2 The World as One A great number of peace activists preach a message predicated on the idea that all Earthlings are of the same human race and share a common destiny. When one individual from a community suffers, the global community suffers. This was exemplified by the George Floyd protests in June and July 2020. In the wake of the brutal killing of George Floyd, an unarmed African–American man, by police in Minneapolis in late May 2020, the global reaction was inspired by Black Lives Matter and suggested that all communities should unify in solidarity for systemic transformation (Weine et al. 2020). It generated feelings of the world being as one. This sentiment was previously echoed in Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s statement in his well-known “I Have A Dream Speech:” With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day (available at http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm).

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Such actions for solidarity arise, in part, from a co-construction of reality by all interested parties from all corners of the planet. The concept of the world as one cannot be effective without solid global communication. Efforts in human communication and social interaction are assumed to improve understanding and eradicate conflict. However, they can sometimes intensify disagreement and conflict among various groups (Bauman 2001; Žižek 2009). According to Meyrowitz (1986), the reason is that individuals tend to create better social interactions at a distance but “when people share the same environment, they often see more differences among themselves than when they are further apart” (p. 317). Many peace activists opt for global communication at a distance because they realize that such global synergy is an ideal conduit for achieving global peace. They hope to cause an echo-chamber effect (Dubois and Blank 2018), a reassuring promise that global communication will equalize message flows of peace and anti-­ terrorism for any interested individual, irrespective of his or her walk of life. With just a few mouse clicks away, any user can become a citizen activist through his or her own SNS and amplify “world as one” messages. Such template for global communication eliminates communication breakdowns between people, groups, and societies and the “communication breakdown in the global village” (Hale, 1999, p. 143) can become a passionate commitment of communication scholars. Fighting for the protection and emancipation of all children is a key step within the “world as one” framework and a central tenet of peace-building. Peace should not be subjugated to the will of armed or fighting powers to use child terrorists endlessly (Bunch 2003).

6.2.1 Dialogic Communication Dialogic communication lays emphasis on interpersonal interaction, with a particular focus on meaning making, mutual interpretation, co-construction of reality, and sympathetic–empathetic communication. Dialogue represents a communication prototype that attempts to reflect the lived reality of participants. The purpose is to foster, maintain, and negotiate relationships among interactants, competing interests, and even antagonistic others (Botan 1992). Dialogic communicators interact with multiple audiences and, at the same time, pursue particular goals. This is why communicators must be conscious of what language, words, and frames to use— each communication prototype should be formatted for its audience. After all, communication influences both reality and thinking (Kent and Lane 2017). Are peace activists propagandists? Although propaganda aims at achieving one specific objective, one that would fulfill the dream of the communicator him- or herself—at times, to the detriment of the truth or integrity of the message—dialogic communication, by its very nature, is in search of truth and mutual understanding. For the propagandist, people and audiences are only consulted (e.g., through focus groups or surveys) as a method to determine how he or she can be a more effective communicator in order to achieve his or her goal. The outcome of message

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acceptance is what matters. On the other hand, dialogic communicators have goals and essential messages too, but personal or organizational goals are not as important as achieving mutual understanding and being open to new ideas (Taylor and Kent 2014). As this study will demonstrate in the next chapters, former child terrorists who turned peace activists are dialogic communicators, not propagandists.

6.2.2 Cultural Wisdom and Empowerment Communication Cultural wisdom and empowerment communication are effective means or markers to evaluate the impact of communicative actions in specific sociocultural contexts. When interacting with publics, activists like to infuse some type of “cultural wisdom” as a cross-final goal. Cultural wisdom is a process founded on an “illusion to be informed,” a preliminary objective for empowerment communication. The purpose is to awaken the citizenry to the importance of acquiring information and take action about a specific issue. Citizenry varies from culture to culture, each with its own attributes, strengths, and weaknesses. This template for knowledge sharing can assist activists in better confronting, transforming, and eliminating inequality and injustice. They want each member of the audience to apply such template to alter certain policies, structures, or actions. For example, this can be done through responsible behavior, political involvement, and ethical professional commitment. Put another way, when people apply this new knowledge to better their lives (and others’), they develop that cultural wisdom based on nonviolent political engagement and it comes from collective concerns. Such cultural wisdom leads to conflict transformation and improved peaceful communication skills (Nos Aldás and Calatayud 2013).

6.3 Social Movement Theory (SMT) A social movement is a concerted effort by a large group of individuals to influence external forces, usually by changing the law or the policy process. It also hopes to modify systematic patterns of social behavior. Social movements rooted in the grassroots of society are more likely to shape history. As Diani (1992) explains, “a social movement is a network of informal interactions between a plurality of individuals, groups and/or organizations engaged in a political or cultural conflict” (p. 13). Social movement theory (SMT) rests on the premise that leaders or influencers in the community devote their time and energy to creating social mobilization or collective behavior so as to cause social change (Morris and Mueller 2012). The ability of a person to launch a social movement, whether through policy or by publicly challenging ideas and norms in society, depends on the degree to which the message he or she conveys, the meanings embedded, and his or her credibility to resonate with the audience or society at large. Tarrow (2005) asserts that global

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peace activists who are leading social movements have the ability to (1) galvanize potential participants in social movements, (2) introduce new tactics into their catalogs of protests, (3) affect the strategies of other global peace activists, (4) establish cosmopolitan and cross-border networks to boost opportunities for people to join forces inside and outside their communities, and (5) to get younger activists involved at both the national and international level. Peace activism, Tarrow says, is “more like a series of waves that lap on an international beach, retreating repeatedly into domestic seas but leaving incremental changes on the shore” (p. 219). Social movements focused on cross-border human rights may herald the advent of a global civic society (Lipschutz 1996; Rosenau 1990). Nevertheless, it should be acknowledged that social movements are confronted with two types of challenges. First, they have to face establishments or authorities that are unwilling to address requests for social justice and equity in various segments of society (D’Alisa et al. 2015), particularly in regard to issues that happen in regions notorious for their corrupt systems and governments. In this case, the main effect of social movements focused on eliminating the use of child terrorists would be no more than awareness—which, to some, is already a giant step in the right direction. Second, owing to the individualized nature of contemporary Western civilization, social movements may run the risk of facing difficulties forging bonds of solidarity and teamwork among people. This would be important because joining forces with other groups is an essential resource for collective action. Therefore, many protests, although very effective in imposing political change in the short run, are often short-lived and last only on a symbolic level (Forno and Graziano 2014).

6.3.1 Social Media Social media can be highly instrumental in allowing social movements to run smoothly (Forrester and Matusitz 2010). SNSs like Facebook and Twitter have been major platforms in peace activism. They empower the powerless; they give them a voice to air their grievances and democratize unequally divided people in the real world (Leong et  al. 2019). The role of the Internet is primordial in the world of peace activism, not only because it can reduce the costs of communication but also because it can transcend the geographical and temporal obstacles associated with more traditional media. The many tools and apps inherent to SNSs give rise to loosely structured networks, advantages of anonymity or weak identity ties, and a multitude of strategies that allow users to organize protests or venues for new global protest politics (Bennett 2003). The Internet’s equalizing potential has been extolled for its wide access to the community. It is Habermas’s (1991) public sphere—a site, a place that allows participants to bring up or share ideas. The online public sphere can connect unknown individuals in unparalleled ways, exchange content related to social issues, and allow one’s own idiosyncratic ways of communicating to be available for public consumption (Tatarchevskiy 2011).

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In the past, the works of some of the greatest peace activists—like Bertrand Russell (with his Russell Tribunal in the 1960s) and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (also in the 1960s)—were conducted through direct actions in the three-dimensional world, face-to-face meetings, and so forth. Today, the power of social media has made an astronomical difference in the ways that peace activists convey their messages. Any motivated user can enter the online public sphere by speaking as him- or herself. The reality decreases the likelihood of informal exclusion. Access to online communication networks has opened the floodgates for rapidly spreading information and rallying a large number of activists. Social media has unquestionably increased the number of participants in an exponential manner. At the same time, it attracts attention to the nation-states who could agree with the new ideas for social change (Skaidrė 2019).

6.3.2 Mediation Mediation refers to the tactics by which communication media use for meaning-­ making processes (Lievrouw 2009). These processes allow interactants to create and move symbolic content. As opposed to a simplistic interpretation of communication media as tools that have features that improve or clarify the exchange of meaning, Silverstone’s (2002) interpretation is that mediation is simultaneously technological and social. In modern media studies, mediation is framed as a “promising direction for… conceptualizing communicative practices, technologies, and social arrangements as inseparable, mutually determining aspects of the communication process” (Lievrouw 2009, p. 304). By extension, the symbolic content formed through long-standing forms of cultural production (e.g., broadcasting or the mass media) is, in turn, affected by audience consumption habits (Silverstone 2012). Mediation is thus “a process of cultural production and gatekeeping by powerful media institutions that intervenes in (and indeed, distorts) the relationship between people’s everyday experience and a ‘true’ view of reality” (Lievrouw 2009, p. 313). This process reflects dialogic communication because the representations that media create (based on their own logic of production) are also shaped by audiences.

6.4 Framing Theory Framing theory postulates that communicators (e.g., speakers, political leaders, reporters, etc.) use schemas, images, or mental representations to portray “what exists, what happens, and what matters” (Gitlin 1980, p. 6). The concept of framing was first popularized by Erving Goffman (1974) and further developed by Snow et al. (1986) who define frames as “schemata of interpretation that enable individuals to locate, perceive, identify, and label occurrences within their life space and the world at large” (p. 454). Whereas frames help communicators classify and structure

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incoming stimuli, they can also operate as political vehicles (Matusitz and Ochoa 2018). As such, they can be used to portray the social order as positive or grim, normal or deviant, and fair or prejudicial. Over time, recurring frames become institutionalized into society and function as mainstream narratives. Listeners, then, espouse the values, ideals, and self-definitions inherent to those narratives (Swank and Fahs 2011).

6.4.1 Mobilizing the Public To mobilize the public, communicators must frame their callings and missions in order to connect with and sway their target audience. Through framing, leaders of social movements ascribe meanings to key concepts and their preferred realities. When they have successfully framed an issue, they are in a better position to portray the dominant narrative about the issue at hand to the public (Olufowote and Matusitz 2016; Raneri and Matusitz 2015). In their efforts to maximize the impact of a social movement, communicators use frame extension as a vital mobilization strategy. Frame extension refers to the degree to which peace activists “have to extend the boundaries of its primary framework so as to encompass interests or points of view that are incidental to its primary objectives but of considerable salience to potential adherents” (Snow et al. 1986, p. 472). Benford and Snow (2000) listed and described a series of framing tasks that can assist in understanding peace activism. Diagnostic framing serves to identify the problems and causes of the issue of in question. Prognostic framing is useful when suggesting a solution to the area of contention or offers strategies for finding such a solution. Motivational framing helps present the ideas and messages that motivate individuals to act. Frame transformation is the method of replacing old frames regarding a certain issue with new ideas. And frame amplification is the process of exaggerating, clarifying, or reinforcing current interpretations and beliefs.

6.4.2 Collective Action Frames Collective action frames (CAFs) are the different communicative options from which people can choose to act as a collective for social change (Klandermans 1997). As structures of interpretation, they can present reality in a simplified way to garner support from and reject antagonistic parts of society. They provide a framework for organizing social movements through carefully selected frames to justify actions and promote wider participation (Snow 2004). In this context, CAFs can be used to galvanize interested populations for the purpose of creating positive changes in the world (Bhandar and Ziadah 2020). As such, to successfully participate in social condemnation of child terrorism, peace activists have constructed CAFs of injustice, fury, and shame but also equality and social change. These frames can

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prompt a conversation about particular principles, beliefs, emotions, and what should be accepted as proper behavior. At first, CAFs should be tapped to communicate the notion that, in the current state of affairs, certain policies and practices are wrong, intolerable, and unjust (Ashmore et al. 2004). By calling out the injustice, Snow and Benford (1992) put forward the idea that these frames serve as “accenting devices that either underscore or embellish the seriousness and injustice of a social condition or redefine it as unjust (or/and?) immoral” (p. 137). These injustice CAFs not only shed light on the manifold examples of nightmarish experiences of child terrorists; they also become more salient when they concentrate on infringements of fairness or equity norms. This is where diagnostic framing comes into play. By fulfilling a diagnostic purpose, CAFs can explain why issues exist and attribute blame or capability to multiple entities. By making these attributions, CAFs emphasize the types of practices that should be tweaked, changed, or eliminated (Swank and Fahs 2011). In a similar vein, CAFs can persuade audiences that they should be used to stop such violations of fairness or equity norms. This is where prognostic framing comes into play. The prognostic aspect of framing, here, stresses the necessity for political action that actions from less powerful populations can nevertheless lead to concessions from a reluctant target. This certainty in movement tactics has been referred to as agency or collective efficacy (Hipp 2016). Lastly, CAFs must generate a common identity among the wronged parties. Hence, collective identities create social boundaries between “us” and “them” by indicating who belongs to the in-groups of the wronged ones and who belongs to the out–groups that are antagonistic to the in-groups. These collective identities challenge mainstream narratives that members of their in-group are not as good or are inferior. This is why CAFs present counter-­ narratives about the qualities of similar people and claim that their in-group is unfairly treated. These collective identities give rise to a sense of solidarity and loyalty for those wronged people, while fostering a level of distrust or contempt for the out-groups or the powers-that-be that maintain these problems (Swank and Fahs 2011).

6.4.3 Frame Alignment and Narrative Fidelity Unlike violent movements that use CAFs to mobilize people to take up arms, peace activists do the exact opposite. Peaceful CAFs do not surface on their own but rather are the products of processes of integration whereby enthused individuals organize their ideas into a coherent and collective frame. Such processes of integration facilitate collective action because the coherent and collectively ideas are framed in a way that align with the ideas of the audience. As such, these processes operate as “frame alignment processes,” which are necessary to associate interpretation of a movement to the frame offered by the social movement (Benford and Snow 1988). What the idea of “frame alignment processes” also signifies is that the cultural resonance of frames hinges on “narrative fidelity.” It is the extent to which a frame fits

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with existing cultural understandings, ideologies, or feelings. Inspired by the mainstream discourse, social movement actors employ language and symbols with which audiences are already familiar to achieve cultural resonance. Therefore, they exploit the dominant discourse to formulate alternative meanings (Ellingson 1995). Explained differently, when social movements seek narrative fidelity, they co-opt elements of popular discourse to associate their ideas with beliefs already embraced by the audience. This framing tactic increases the chances that their missions and agendas find wider acceptance within society at large (Woehrle et al. 2008). A few years after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, representatives of the Singaporean and Saudi governments implemented programs to decrease support for terrorist violence. In the first case, moderate Muslim clerics were recruited to apply CAFs built around peaceful interpretations of the Quran. Their CAFs were to target fundamentalist supporters in prisons. In the second case, peace activists joined Internet fora to champion peaceful actions by creating frames of love, forgiveness, and fairness for everyone. In both Singaporean and Saudi cases, the activists used frame alignment processes by using similar styles, words, and dialects as those of the listeners, thereby fostering an immediate cultural and emotional connection with them. When listening to the peaceful, compassionate messages, they showed declined support for extremist doctrines (cited in Motyl et al. 2009, p. 165). What this anecdote on frame alignment informs us is that discourses can be framed in culturally specific narratives, even when discussing controversial issues centered around fundamentalism. What this anecdote also demonstrates is that some frames can obtain greater traction and become dominant when used by people who have a recognized authority (i.e., moderate clerics and peace activists working for the government). It is, of course, the government’s hope that these positive frames become part of the hegemonic discourse against terrorism (Gramsci 1971; Steinberg 1999). While only time will tell if such tactics will remain effective for a long period, these examples represent real-world applications of efforts to convert others to anti-terrorist behavior.

6.5 Social Representations Theory (SRT) Social representations theory (SRT) hypothesizes that individuals and groups are constantly and actively engaged in the creation and transmission of shared social meanings (Moscovici 2008). Social representations provide a “way of acquiring and communicating knowledge, a way that creates realities and common sense” (Moscovici 1981, p.  186). The principal function of social representations is to facilitate individuals and groups in improving their understanding of the world on a daily basis. Jovchelovitch (2007) affirms that representations are active at both the societal and interpersonal level, in such manner that social representation “relates to the construction of worldviews, to the establishment of systems of everyday knowledge” and “actively express projects and identities of social actors and the interrelations between them” (p. 12). Consequently, social representations pertain to more

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than the passive production and communication of knowledge; they are active circumstances in which individuals are personally and socially involved during their daily interactions. SRT emphasizes the significance of the processes of communication within collectives in the emergence of representations. When confronted with an important but unknown event, thoughts and conversations on the subject emerge within groups, and such interactions spark new social representations (Wagner et al. 1996). Hence, a social representation is an explanation given by a collective to deal with something new. This primary function, called “symbolic coping,” is experienced via processes of anchoring and objectification. Anchoring operates on a series of responses that seek to associate the content and structures of a person’s prior knowledge to the new event (the purpose is to make sense of it) (Sarrica and Contarello 2004). The importance laid by SRT on communication positions language centrally. Moscovici (2008) contends that language and thought are completely integrated in the creation of shared social knowledge. For Kilby (2015), social representations are “co–constructed, negotiated, dynamic forms of social knowledge that are powerfully realized through language and put to various use by members, both within and between groups” (p. 231). Therefore, the type of mass media will determine what vehicles for the diffusion of social representations should be used. Social representations that become visible through mass media communications occupy an important position in the production of shared social knowledge. For the audience, it offers broadly shared forms of simple truths (Höijer 2011). Like collective representations, social representations circulate within groups. As is the case in primitive societies and in operative thinking, they do not depend on logic. They are usually defined as forms of socially constructed knowledge or common sense. They are emotionally loaded and allow group members to understand and interact with each other (Moscovici 1998). The fundamental concept of SRT is that individuals espouse a reality that is, indeed, socially constructed, based on a shared understanding of what is real and not real. Social representations delineate the environment in which everyday life takes place and how that life should be lived by group members (Sarrica and Contarello 2004). They can also develop, expand to other areas, and trickle up from specific groups to the wider society (Doise et al. 1999).

References Andrews, Charles, Writing against War: Literature, Activism, and the British Peace Movement. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2017. Armstrong, Taylor, and Jonathan Matusitz, “Hezbollah as a Group Phenomenon: Differential Association Theory,” Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment 23, no. 4 (2013): 475–84. https://doi.org/10.1080/10911359.2013.772425 Ashmore, Richard D., Kay Deaux, and Tracy McLaughlin–Volpe, “An Organizing Framework for Collective Identity: Articulation and Significance of Multidimensionality,” Psychological Bulletin 130, no. 1 (2004): 80–114. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-­2909.130.1.80.

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Chapter 7

From Child Terrorism to Peace Activism: Case Studies

This chapter provides a description of 24 former child terrorists–turned–peace activists. A detailed thematic analysis is conducted in the next chapter (Chap. 8). The ultimate objective of this study is to examine the factors and reasons that caused former child terrorists to renounce their violent activities and undertake peace activism today. From the beginning stages of radicalization to fighting as part of a terrorist movement, all 24 subjects eventually became disillusioned and wanted to reveal it to the world. To this day, a gap exists in the literature, one that needs to investigate the turning points in the lives of such individuals and understand why they have become who they are today. Describing the terrorist backgrounds and life-changing moments of these people is important because it sets the tone and context of the stories or statements that they put out there in the media. It is often a gruesome experience that they want to share with the world. These short biographic accounts will allow readers to trace the data and results (in the next chapter) back to the descriptions offered here.

7.1 Identification of the 24 Subjects These 24 subjects were identified on the Internet thanks to online search engines like Google, GoogleScholar, EBSCOhost, and Yahoo. While, for some critics, 24 cases may seem too small of a sample, it still provides a large volume of fresh insights that fill important gaps in current research. In addition, finding child terrorists–turned–peace activists was more challenging than finding former terrorists– turned–peace activists. The “child” component was the biggest obstacle. We should remain keenly aware that many more child terrorists are now leading normal lives, but, for unknown reasons, very few have come out publicly to share their experiences with various media outlets. Based on their level of visibility and quality of

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 J. Matusitz, From Child Terrorism to Peace Activism, Springer Series in Social Work and Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16582-5_7

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media representation, it would be fair to consider the subjects as either public personalities or semipublic personalities. All of the names and other personal identifiers of these 24 former child terrorists are in the public domain and are publicly available. The subjects come from five different continents (all but Australia and Antarctica), spanning 16 different countries, from Peru to England to Sri Lanka. For the purpose of this analysis, rather than classifying them geographically, a structure of classification was followed based on the types of child terrorism described in previous chapters in this book. As such, the first six are former child jihadists (i.e., from Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, the Palestinian territories, England [two], and the USA); the following five are former African child terrorists (i.e., from Uganda [two], Sierra Leone [two], and the Democratic Republic of the Congo); the next five are former child separatist terrorists (i.e., from Northern Ireland [two], Sri Lanka, India, and Lebanon); the next four are former child terrorists in Latin America (i.e., from Peru, Colombia [two], and El Salvador); and the last four are former White child supremacists or neo-Nazis (i.e., from the USA [three] and Canada).

7.2 Mean Age, Median Age, and Gender Of particular interest is the age at which each of these former children became a terrorist or joined a terrorist militia or movement (against their will or of their own volition). The mean age for all 24 subjects was 13.5 years old, and the median age was 15. The youngest subject in this study was merely 5 years old. The child terrorists from Africa formed the youngest group in this sample (the mean age was only 10.6 years old). This is actually consistent with the statistics and academic literature included in Chap. 4. Conversely, the White child supremacists formed the oldest group (the mean age was 15.5 years old). Lastly, of the 24 former child terrorists in this case analysis, 6 of them were girls.

7.3 Former Child Jihadists The six former child jihadists in this section are Arab, Southeast Asian, and even Western citizens. After joining Al-Qaeda, Jemaah Islamiyah, and Hamas (among others) or after embarking on solo mujahideen (jihadist) journeys, they became disenchanted with their dreams of the global jihadist movement (GJM), their aspirations to fight the West, or their duty to replace their oppressive government with an ideal Islamic state. As each of the six short biographic descriptions reveals, they “defected” to the other side in order to fight terrorism or promote peace.

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7.3.1 Aimen Dean Aimen Dean was one of the founding fathers of Al-Qaeda. Born and raised in Saudi Arabia, he had five brothers (Dean 2020). When he turned 15, he became a jihadist in an effort to fight alongside Bosnian Muslims (who had been attacked by Serbian nationalists). When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in the 1980s, militant jihad was elevated to a noble concept. His mujahideen comrade, Khalid al-Hajj, rose as the leader of Al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia (Marshall 2015). Aimen was personally initiated into Al-Qaeda by Osama bin Laden himself. He was tasked with training recruits in Afghanistan, many of whom came from Yemen, and teaching them Islamic principles and history. Interacting face-to-face with the new recruits awakened him to “the many different mentalities that jihadis possess” (The Week 2015, p. A1). He was also tasked with making bombs for Al-Qaeda (Campbell 2018). However, after the terrorist attacks at the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in 1998, Aimen Dean became disillusioned with the GJM. After spending over 4 years as a mujahideen, he switched to the “good side” and became an agent for MI6  in Afghanistan and the UK.  His mission was to gather information on Islamist militants like Abu Hamza and Abu Qatada. In the midst of Al-Qaeda’s chemical weapons program, he helped the West thwart attacks on civilians and saved numerous lives, often escaping death by a hair’s breadth. His MI6 associates even called him their spy with nine lives (Dean et al. 2018). Unfortunately, his cover was blown in 2007 (The Week 2015). No matter what, Aimen continues to save lives by preventing suicide bombings and poison attacks on civilians (Marshall 2015). His life still remains in danger; his former mujahideen comrades have issued a fatwa on him and called for his murder. As he said in an interview, with a nervous smile, “London is dangerous for me. I could bump into someone I know” Campbell 2018, p. A1).

7.3.2 Khairul Ghazali Khairul Ghazali was born and raised in Indonesia. His father and uncles were already members of a militant organization (Beech and Suhartono 2019). At only 16, Khairul was recruited by Abdullah Sungkar, founder and leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, the terrorist group responsible for the Bali bombings in 2002 (Pavlova 2007). Khairul soon recruited new members and choreographed terrorist attacks. During the Suharto administration, radical Muslims were overpowered, which forced Ghazali to migrate to Malaysia and then Thailand for 12  years, where he became a weaponry and bomb-making specialist. When Suharto resigned in 1998, Khairul returned to Indonesia in hopes of establishing an Islamic state (Topsfield and Rosa 2017). By the end of his journey in Malaysia, he had also become a prolific propagandist for Jemaah Islamiyah in order to indoctrinate members into jihad. As he admits, “I brainwashed them with jihad ideologies” (cited in Dagur 2016, p.

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A1). In 2011, Khairul was arrested on terrorist-funding charges. Experiencing the devastating impact of his arrest on his children persuaded him that terrorism was damaging to his cause (Rowe 2017). Before his prison sentence, Khairul was teaching four of his ten children to fire weapons (Beech and Suhartono 2019). He was also convicted for harboring terrorists in his house in exchange for two million rupiah ($200) (Topsfield and Rosa 2017). During his incarceration, Khairul Ghazali turned his previous hatred for the police into a passion for defending them. He articulated his peaceful thoughts in books. Upon his release, Khairul applied his earnings from book sales and tours to building a madrassa, an Islamic educational institution. By 2015, Khairul was now an Islamic teacher and leader of the Al-Hidayah madrassa so as to educate the children of Indonesian militants (Rowe 2017). Located in the city of Medan, on the island of Sumatra, his peaceful teachings draw on his own experience as a terrorist to deradicalize militants’ children (Beech and Suhartono 2019). Today, it hosts 20 boys aged 9–15. They are the sons of Islamist militants who perpetrated killings and terrorist attacks based on radical interpretations of Islam. Almost 50% of the boys’ fathers have already been killed by law enforcement. In some instances, the children witnessed their demise. Most of the other fathers are sitting in jail (Haaretz 2017). As a former jihadist, Khairul Ghazali’s mission in his madrassa is particularly crucial. He teaches Islam as a religion of love and mercy, challenging the fundamentalist ideology espoused by the boys’ fathers. His Al-Hidayah school openly supports the police and military, which has led the latter to endorse and fund the deradicalization efforts at the school (Rowe 2017). In fact, his madrassa is the only one in Indonesia to benefit from massive government support for deradicalization purposes (Beech and Suhartono 2019). The terrorists’ children were taught to loathe the police and military. Therefore, the fact that, today, some of the pupils aspire to become police officers or soldiers is proof of success of Al-Hidayah’s deradicalization measures (Topsfield and Rosa 2017).

7.3.3 Mosab Hassan Yousef Raised in Ramallah, in the West Bank, Mosab Hassan Yousef wanted to be a Soldier of Allah against the Israelis because he said that Palestinian children were expected to do that. At the mere age of 7, Yousef trained for jihad and was first arrested 3  years later during the First Intifada―for throwing rocks at Israelis (Kirchofer 2015). He was arrested again and sent to Israeli prisons on many occasions. Yousef’s father, Sheikh Hassan Yousef, lived in Jordan in the 1970s under the assumed name of “Ibrahim Abu Salem, one of the founders of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan” (Yousef 2010). As his father’s eldest son, he was considered his direct heir. As such, he quickly rose through the ranks of the Hamas terrorist organization (Busza 2011). Yousef’s worries about Islam and Hamas began emerging when he understood Hamas’s utmost violence. He rejected Hamas’s exploitation of Palestinian civilians’

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lives―and children’s―to accomplish its goals. In 1996, Yousef was held by Shin Bet agents. Shin Bet is Israel’s internal security agency (Pascovish 2015). While in jail, he was impressed by Shin Bet’s interrogation procedures, which he deemed humane, as compared with Hamas’s torturing methods. He eventually accepted Shin Bet’s offer to become a spy for them (Yousef 2010). He did this for 10 years. According to Loai, his trainer, by providing intelligence from the inner milieu of Hamas, he was able to spare hundreds of Israeli and Palestinian lives (Busza 2011). After experiencing militancy within the Arab–Israeli conflict, his journey as a high-ranking member of Hamas, and his time as an Israeli informer, he gradually converted to Christianity (Worman 2012). In his autobiography, Son of Hamas, he writes: “I had money, power, and position in my former life, but what I really wanted was freedom” Yousef 2010, p. 248–9). As he continues: “That meant, among other things, leaving behind hate, prejudice, and a desire for revenge. The message of Jesus—love your enemies—is what finally set me free” (p. 249).

7.3.4 Maajid Nawaz Maajid Nawaz is a British activist and former Islamist terrorist. Born in Essex (England), he is said to have been subjected to institutional racism and racist attacks in his youth (Avon 2016). He spent his formative years listening to US hip-hop music and studying radical Islamist principles spreading throughout Europe and Asia. At 16, he was already holding an important position as an officer in Hizb ut-­ Tahrir, a London-based Islamist organization. While studying at Newham College, and then at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, Nawaz rose through the ranks even more. By the age of 17, he was a jihadist recruiter of Cambridge University students, and by 19, he was one of the national leaders of Hizb ut-Tahrir in the UK. He explained all this in his autobiography titled Radical: My Journey out of Islamist Extremism (Nawaz 2016). Maajid Nawaz also joined Hizb ut-Tahrir after his Muslim friends were attacked by White people with knives and other violent methods. Isolated and struggling with his identity, he was looking for a space; so, he joined the terrorist group. As with many others, he thought that violence was the answer (Segall 2011). He even went undercover in Pakistan as a spy for Hizb ut-Tahrir, infiltrating institutions of higher education to attract more recruits (Sexton 2009). During the course of his bachelor’s degree in Law and Arabic, Maajid Nawaz spent 1 year in Egypt, arriving only 1 day before the September 11, 2011 attacks occurred. Since Islamist organizations like Hizb ut-Tahrir were designated as terrorist in countries like Egypt, Nawaz was arrested and sent to jail for several years (Bjørgo 2011). As an important member of Hizb ut-Tahir in both the UK and Pakistan, he served 4 years as an Amnesty International “prisoner of conscience.” During his incarceration, his views changed progressively. As he remembers,

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I was in prison when the July 7 London bombings happened. There was a professional bomb-maker in prison who was sentenced to 27 years. We had a lot of time to discuss and learn and we talked each other into change. (cited in Segall 2011)

In 2007, he repudiated his jihadist beliefs. His incarceration in Egypt allowed him to examine Islamic literature in depth and discover its authentic peaceful side (Sexton 2009). Today, he is the founder and president of Quilliam, a counter– extremism think tank that charges itself with confronting the narratives of Muslim fundamentalists (Abbas 2019). Maajid has become a high-flying public personality championing the revival of the Islamic principle of ijtihad (critical thinking) in an effort to engender a Muslim reformation in the twenty-first century. He opposed the term “Islamophobia,” which he regards as an unnecessary obstacle to open debate on Islam and its shortcomings (Segall 2011). For Maajid, criticism of Islam (and other religions) must be fully allowed because such criticism is in accordance with the secular right to freedom of speech. Put another way, Islam should not be above criticism. Such a position underlines the idea that religions (and their cultural traditions)—unlike the actual people who follow those religions or abide by such traditions—do not have rights, in and of themselves. Rather, such rights are granted to people, not the doctrines or ideologies in which they believe. Human rights must have precedence over religious and/or cultural rights (El Younssi 2018). Maajid Nawaz refers to himself as a liberal Muslim, to the point of launching his own political campaign for the Liberal Democrats (Hampstead and Kilburn) in England (Benson 2014).

7.3.5 Yasmin Mulbocus Yasmin Mulbocus is a former member of a London-based Islamist organization called al-Muhajiroun (The Economist 2011). When she was 16 or 17, Yasmin, of Guyanese and Afghan descent, and having been shuffled off between foster families in her childhood, found her home in that radical Islamist organization. What also drew her to al-Muhajiroun was the sense of protection and belonging that she needed after she took her sexual abuser to court, only to be disappointed when the case was thrown out of court (Zehra 2019). From 1996 to 2001 (shortly after 9/11), Yasmin acted as the jihadist recruiter for the group so that, 1 day, they would conquer Washington and hoist its Islamist standard on top of the White House. As a young adult, she was so intoxicated with reaching that objective that she would aggressively urge young women to join the “ideal Islamic state” as a solution to their problems. At some point, Yasmin began to question such an “Islamic state” plan and how it could be executed. When a family member confronted her about this issue, she had no answer. She was now realizing how foolish she had been about the intensity of violence necessary to fulfill that dream (Bharath 2016b). She noticed contradictions

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between Islamic teachings and the politico-ideological standards imposed by the organization. In addition to being isolated from her family and friends, she said that she “had to subscribe to their version of Islam… So, if you’re not political, you’re not a ‘pure’ Muslim” (Bharath 2016a). Having started a family herself, Yasmin grew increasingly aware of the danger that her children could face and found the courage to break away from that jihadist group. Today, Yasmin Mulbocus works hard to preclude female Muslim youth from joining terrorist movements like ISIS. For example, she has given lectures to her own female Muslim crowds on the profound psychology that young girls and women experience when joining extremist groups (Zehra 2019). As she explains, “I knew the feeling. I was bullied for being dark–skinned. I was physically and sexually abused” (Bharath 2016b , pp. 12–3). This is why, she says, jihad propagandists promised her an Islamic haven with free food, shelter, and utilities, as well as justice against perpetrators of crimes against women. She was also assured that the differences between “rich” and “poor” would no longer be a problem (Bharath 2016b).

7.3.6 Mohammed Khalid Of Pakistani descent, Mohammed Khalid was the youngest individual to ever be prosecuted for terrorism in the USA. In 2011, he was sentenced to 5 years in prison for participating in an online jihadist plan to commit murder against Lars Vilks, a Swedish artist renowned for grafting the head of the Prophet Muhammad onto a dog’s body (Taylor 2018). At the tender age of 15, Mohammed was already trying to recruit would-be jihadists and solicit funds to help “Jihad Jane”―another US citizen who was later convicted on terrorism-related charges―kill the Swedish cartoonist. “Jihad Jane” familiarized Khalid with a secret jihadist chat room where the teenager employed his Urdu language skills to translate videos into English (Klasfeld 2018). Before his arrest, Mohammed was making preparations to attend Johns Hopkins University, where he was granted early acceptance. Now that he was released and has become a US citizen, looking back at his first months in a Pennsylvania prison, he explains how the efforts provided by the juvenile correction counselors helped him engage in conversation and develop sympathy for the human race. This was in sharp contrast to his early jihadist days when he expressed “twisted empathy,” showing compassion only for Muslims suffering around the world (while being indifferent to others) (Taylor 2018). Today, he spends time with his family and is a student in computer science at the University of Maryland. He vehemently wants to fight terrorism. Like a certain number of convicts who were in his position, he is now contributing to counter-terrorism research and has collaborated with Quilliam, the aforementioned counterextremism think tank (Caulderwood 2018).

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7.4 Former African Child Terrorists In this section, the experiences of five former terrorists from Africa are provided. Whether joining terrorist movements by force or out of free will, this is the youngest group of child terrorists in this sample of 24 subjects. The mean age was only 10.6 years old. Whereas, in some cases, “child soldier” is being used (rather than “child terrorist”), in most cases, the former is equal to the latter. For example, the first case study here deals with the life of Grace Akallo as a child soldier in the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). The LRA was considered a terrorist organization by the US government for several years (https://fas.org/irp/world/para/dos120601. html). The designation of “terrorist” is still being used by some US federal agencies, like the Office the Director of National Intelligence (https://www.dni.gov/nctc/ groups/lra.html). By the same token, a great many nations across the world officially designate “soldiers,” “militants,” or “rebels” as terrorists.

7.4.1 Grace Akallo Born in 1981, Grace Akallo is a Northern Ugandan woman who was abducted by Joseph Kony when she was a 15-year-old pupil at a Catholic school. She was forcibly conscripted as a child soldier in the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). During her initiation into the LRA, she was forced to murder another girl, a very common routine among militias that use child soldiers. Grace remained in the terrorist group for 7 months and became a skilled AK-47 operator. She was raped and served as a sexual slave. In time, she left the LRA and rehabilitated herself as a normal woman and mother (Akallo 2009). Grace’s horrid journey of abduction and forcible recruitment is something to behold. After fainting out of fatigue and thirst, she was believed to be dead. She was then interred in a shallow grave by other LRA child soldiers (Moynagh 2016). After regaining consciousness under a bedspread of mud and leaves, Grace proclaimed the following: “Seven months after my capture, I am no longer myself” (McDonnell and Akallo 2007, p. 28). Grace was so weak and skinny that she looked like “a skeleton that will not stay peacefully in [her] grave” (p. 28). Nevertheless, this moment marked her eventual return to freedom and her existential pursuit to fight for the freedom of all child soldiers left behind (Moynagh 2016). Today, Grace delivers many lectures at educational institutions such as Rutgers University in New Jersey and Roosevelt University in Chicago. She has also shared her experience on entertainment television, like The Oprah Winfrey Show. Grace has also launched her career as advocate for peace and justice. To this end, she has dedicated her time and energy to the Rachelle Rehabilitation Center and World Vision USA. More recently, she has worked as a Public Relations and Advocacy Intern in the USA, publishing news releases and essays for the media establishment. She has participated in conferences like the Interfaith Summit on Africa and drafted amendments for the US Senate bill on children affected by war. In the USA, she also

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started a nonprofit organization called United Africans for Women and Children Rights (UAWCR) to stop the prosecution of child soldiers (see http://www.africanwomenrights.org/who_we_are/staff.php and https://www.npr.org/templates/story/ story.php?storyId=128010112).

7.4.2 Junior Nzita Nsuami Born and raised in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Junior Nzita Nsuami was forcibly recruited at age 12 and descended into a spiral of extreme violence. In 1996, he left his parents’ house in Goma (the capital of North Kivu in the DRC) to study in Kiondo, a village on the other side of Lake Kivu. In Kiondo, he and his friends were approached by militants of the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo (Alliance des Forces Démocratiques pour la Libération du Congo, AFDL), who forced them to join the fight. After 3 years of gruesome killings, his rehabilitation in society was tedious and living a normal life was difficult (Nsuami 2013). In October 2001, Junior Nzita Nsuami had the opportunity of being adopted by a family who gave him a stable and encouraging living environment (Stickle et al. 2020). Today, he gives speeches on the horrors of child terror. For example, in March 2015, he told the United Nations Security Council that he regretted the harm he inflicted on fellow Congolese children and adults, despite the fact that he was forcefully conscripted at age 12 (cited in Nichols 2015). His experience has made him a good citizen who treats his neighbors, his friends, and his community with the highest respect. He now lives in Kinshasa (the capital of the DRC) and serves as an Ambassador at the Paix pour l’enfance in Paris. Paix pour l’enfance focuses on children’s rights in the wars involving children in the DRC (https://undocs.org/ pdf?symbol=en/A/69/918).

7.4.3 Mohamed Sidibay When Mohamed Sidibay was 5, a Sierra Leone militia stormed his village, massacred his family, and forced him to join that militia. For the next 5  years, he escaped death on a daily basis by fighting for the Revolutionary United Front (RUF). The RUF has been designated as a terrorist organization by various institutions (see https://www.trackingterrorism.org/group/revolutionary–united–front– sierra–leone and https://web.archive.org/web/20071018215706/http://tkb.org/ Group.jsp?groupID=4247). When he was ready to leave at the end of the war in Sierra Leone, he realized that he had nowhere to run, having constantly been on the move with his militia (Bickley and Carleton 2009). He struggled to survive in the direst circumstances. Upon his liberation from the RUF, his reintegration into society and his aspiration for a peaceful life were not painless (Hart 2019).

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Mohamed Sidibay’s life took an unexpected turn when an Italian priest rescued several boys in his regiment. It was a moment that not only emancipated Sidibay, but that also contributed to his first educational experience without weapons and bullets. More precisely, Father Giuseppe Berton, founder of the Family Homes Movement for disadvantaged children in Sierra Leone, rescued Mohamed and other child militants in January 2002. Mohamed’s nightmare had finally ended. Nevertheless, hostility from his community persisted. The Red Cross placed him with a family with the same last name, despite no relation. Oftentimes, Sierra Leonean communities rejected child soldiers’ reintegration into society because individuals like Mohamed were regarded as mass killers who had ruined the livelihood of a great many people. On the other hand, Sierra Leonean communities, Mohamed explains, did not consider the torment that child soldiers had to endure (Legendre 2018). Today, Mohamed Sidibay is a peace activist based in New York City.

7.4.4 Ishmael Beah Born in 1980, Ishmael Beah was only 13 when he became a child soldier for the aforementioned RUF in Sierra Leone. Having no choice in the matter, he could either join or be killed. His family was already dead during the civil war; the RUF was his only means of survival. He and his fellow child soldiers were often found fighting and killing others (Sarri 2009). Though he cannot remember how many people he murdered, he and his comrades smoked cannabis and sniffed amphetamines and “brown-brown,” a mélange of cocaine and gunpowder (Pitkin 2007). According to Ishmael, child soldiers in Sierra Leone were brainwashed, compelled to fight, forcibly inebriated, and trained to kill. Shooting random individuals with firearms was as easy as drinking water (Pananjung and Poerana 2019). He also recalls a situation in which he cut an enemy’s throat open with a machete, admitting that he no longer felt any pity for the human race (Minslow 2019). Three years after being recruited by the militia, Ishmael Beah was admitted to a grassroots rehabilitation center for child soldiers. In 1996, rescued by a partnership between UNICEF and NGOs, he had a difficult time being reintegrated into society (Sarri 2009). Ishmael migrated to the USA and chose New York City as his main place of residence. In 2007, he published a book about his experience, titled A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, and became an advocate for ex-child soldiers. Today, Ishmael Beah is a United Nations ambassador and shared his experience with the Senate Judiciary Committee.

7.4.5 China Keitetsi Born in 1976 in Western Uganda, China Keitetsi was motherless and spent her first years with her father and new companion. In 1984, at the age of 8, she escaped her home with her sister to look for their mother. Unfortunately, China ran into the

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National Resistance Army (NRA) and was immediately enlisted (Tembo 2017). The NRA was a rebel army that waged a guerrilla war in the 1980s and early 1990s (Green 2008). In her memoir titled Child Soldier: Fighting for My Life, China Keitetsi (2015) tells of the trauma she experienced as a child militant during Yoweri Museveni’s guerrilla war against Milton Obote, the Ugandan president at that time. In her book, we learn about the abuses that she had to endure (particularly from her fellow soldiers) in many rebel camps where she was positioned. She was trained to be a killer and torturer (Woods 2004). China Keitetsi also explains how being abused by her own family contributed to her willingness to kill random individuals when fighting for the NRA. As she continues, it was no longer a situation in which someone was forced to murder another against his or her will (Tembo 2017). For child soldiers, engaging in such extreme terror was, in some sense, a way to compensate for a lost childhood (Coundouriotis 2010). Today, China lives in Denmark and has dedicated her life to fighting the use of child soldiers anywhere in the world (Gewertz 2002). She has become an international spokesperson on that subject, having met important political personalities like Kofi Annan, Bill Clinton, and Nelson Mandela. She has also met Hollywood celebrities like Harrison Ford, Whoopi Goldberg, and Robert De Niro (Lacey 2003).

7.5 Former Child Separatist Terrorists Separatist terrorism is a form of terrorism motivated by nationalism, self-­governance, and self-determination (Matusitz 2015). In this section, the accounts of five child terrorists’ experiences with terrorist organizations like the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the Tamil Tigers (or the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam [LTTE]), among others, inform readers on their transition from terrorism to anti-terrorism. This section is the most diverse: the five individuals came from four different regions in the world.

7.5.1 Shane Paul O’Doherty Shane Paul O’Doherty joined the IRA at the age of 15. He came from a middle-class family in Londonderry, Northern Ireland (Breen 2019). In contrast to most of Northern Ireland, Londonderry was mostly Catholic (with an established middle class), which was one of the reasons for the Catholic civil rights movement to flourish in the late 1960s there. Shane was one of eight children in a family that did not particularly discuss politics. When the Protestant government’s reaction to the Catholic civil rights movement was violent (e.g., during the street demonstrations in 1968 and 1969), and when British troops were deployed, Shane was already throwing Molotov cocktails at law enforcement, and the IRA was up-and-running again (Cullen 2007). In 1973, by the time he was 18, Shane had mailed a series of letter bombs across London (Higgins 2016). Active in London, he masqueraded as a

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student and bought a copy of Who’s Who to identify possible targets for killing. One of his letter bombs injured Reginald Maudling, member of the British Cabinet responsible for the security on Bloody Sunday. Bloody Sunday was a mass shooting committed by British paratroopers on Irish demonstrators (Ó Dochartaigh 2010). He also mailed a bomb to Bishop Gerard Tickle, the Catholic chaplain in the British Army (Cullen 2007). In 1976, at 21, he was convicted on 30 terrorism-related charges and was sent to prison for 20 years. In prison, he penned numerous letters apologizing to his victims, making him the first IRA volunteer to do so (Higgins 2016). His disappointment with the IRA’s terrorist motivations led him to champion publicly (and privately) an end to violence and a full commitment to the democratic process. He was set free from jail after 14  years and went on to pursue studies in English at Trinity College, Dublin. In 2011, he published a book titled The Volunteer: A Former IRA Man’s True Story. He also got married and became a devout Catholic. In 2005, the Catholic Church asked him to be a priest. Today, he remains one of the IRA’s most enthusiastic critics and continues to publicly urge the organization to negotiate a ceasefire for a lifetime (Cullen 2007).

7.5.2 Henry Robinson Another former member of the IRA, Henry Robinson also turned over a new leaf during his incarceration. In 1978, Henry joined the IRA at 16 years old (Ingham 2018). With the IRA, he became a professional kneecapper. Kneecapping is shooting an enemy in the knee so that he or she cannot walk adequately again (Matassa 1997). Henry came from Downpatrick, a Catholic suburb of Belfast, Northern Ireland, and was one of 18 children. The family was so poor that they all lived in a three-bedroom house. His father was a bus and ambulance driver. Henry was not doing well in school. From his own words, he was “at the very bottom of the slowest classes” and abandoned school at 16 to join the IRA (cited in Remnick 1994). With the IRA, he was trying to concentrate the organization’s power in the working-class ghettos (Landrey 2005). Henry Robinson was jailed for 2 and a half years for shooting and wounding a Provisional IRA man (a “Provo”) in the legs in 1981 during an internal rift. During his incarceration, he slowly realized that he no longer wanted to be a terrorist. He remembers a particular point in prison that became his definite “Damascus Road” moment: upon watching coverage of the yearly Wimbledon tennis tournament on TV, he was delighted by “the normality of it.” He was now aspiring to leading a regular life and championing nonviolence (Segall 2011). In 1990, revolted by ongoing sectarian violence, Henry Robinson co-founded the Families Against Intimidation and Terror (FAIT), an organization that was operational for 9 years before disappearing in 1999 (McEvoy 2003). The mission of FAIT was to condemn attacks by both the IRA and the Loyalists. The organization’s principal method was to embarrass the political wings of Republicanism and Loyalism

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in the media. This was done by emphasizing the cruelties that were committed and the victims’ families’ lives being ruined. The media tactics often included daily news releases, advertising political meetings, and finding speaking venues for victims (McEvoy 2001). Henry Robinson even tried to negotiate a deal to end more than 50 years of war in Colombia (Ingham 2018). Today, Henry is an avid democrat and a determined opponent to terrorism. He fights it with carefully selected weapons: words, wisdom, and courage (Dudley 1994).

7.5.3 Antonythasan Jesuthasan Born and raised in Sri Lanka, Antonythasan Jesuthasan is a former child terrorist of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) (Perera 2016). At 15  years old, he joined the LTTE as a “helper.” He became a full-fledged member of the organization in 1984, after receiving weapons training, and assumed the noms de guerre “Thasan” and “Buckle” (Aftab 2015; Cole 2015). In December 1986, Antonythasan left the LTTE after becoming disillusioned with them. Nevertheless, he still suffered from customary punishment for breaking away from the organization. After the signing of the Indo-Lanka Accord in July 1987, Antonythasan moved to Colombo, the capital city of Sri Lanka (Jeyaraj 2015). When conflict erupted between the LTTE and the Indian Peace Keeping Force, Antonythasan Jesuthasan was arrested for his former participation in LTTE terrorist activities (Jeyaraj 2015). After his release from jail, he and his leftist friends began campaigning against the war in Sri Lanka and the numerous killings and human rights abuses perpetrated by both the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government (Raote 2008). Today, Antonythasan is both a peace activist and a star of the Sri Lankan movie industry. In fact, he performed in Dheepan, which was awarded the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2015. Filmed in the Tamil language, the movie tells the story of an ex-LTTE member, Dheepan (Jesuthasan), who seeks political asylum in France by taking a fake woman and girl to act as his wife and daughter (Hastie 2016; Massonnat 2018). He has resided in France since the late 1990s.

7.5.4 Nazir Ahmad Wani Born in 1980, Nazir Ahmad Wani became a pro-Kashmir separatist terrorist at 14. At that time, Nazir was still living in the Cheki Ashmuji village, Kulgam District, Jammu and Kashmir, in India (Pandit 2018). In the early 1990s, as a young boy, Nazir weaved Kashmiri carpets for a meager salary of few hundred rupees (about $5) per month. When the insurgency erupted in Kashmir, it crushed their work prospects and trying to make ends meet became even more of a struggle (Jain 2019). Nazir became a pro-Kashmir separatist terrorist against the “Indian oppressor.” Later, he joined a militia led by Javed Ahmad Shah, a notorious warlord dreaded by many residents in the region (Yasir 2015).

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After his disenchantment with sectarian violence, he surrendered before the Indian Army in Kashmir (India News 2019) and became an Ikhwan―a terrorist who surrenders and becomes a counterinsurgency operative. In 2004, he joined the Indian Army and launched his career with Territorial Army’s 162 Battalion. The battalion consisted of many recruits from the Ikhwanis, despite being accused of atrocities and blatant human rights violations (Raina 2019). In November 2018, he lost his life in a counter-terrorist operation in the Shopian district (in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir) in which six terrorists were killed (Pandit 2018). In January 2019, he was posthumously given the Ashoka Chakra, the highest peacetime military decoration in India. This made him the first recipient of the Ashok Chakra award from the Indian union territory of Jammu and Kashmir (The Hindu 2019).

7.5.5 Yussef Bazzi Born in 1966, Yussef Bazzi was only 15 years old when he joined one of the militia groups during the Lebanese Civil War. These militias had instigated sectarian violence between Christians and Muslims. The conflict intensified into a regional civil war involving the Palestinian Liberation Organization, Israel, and Syria (Salhani 2020). During the first half of the 1980s, Yussef and his friends both suffered from and engaged in unprecedented terror. As a teenage fighter, he used unconventional weapons of war, such as IEDs. He also idolized older male fighters who were notorious for drawing teenagers to their ranks. During the Lebanese Civil War, the state of lawlessness was so deep that Yussef could also access a great deal of finances and women for his enjoyment (Haugbolle 2010). The terrorist factions involved in the conflict required rites of passage for boys. Once admitted into the ranks, they were promptly―and brutally―exposed to sex, drugs, and violence (Haugbolle 2010). In 1986, disheartened by the interminable militancy in Lebanon, Yussef Bazzi fled to Africa with a family member 4 years before the war officially ended. Then, he went on to work as a journalist in Abu Dhabi and Kuwait. In the 1990s, he returned to Lebanon, where he is now a correspondent for al-Mustaqbal (a daily newspaper in the Arabic language in Lebanon) and the editor of its weekly cultural column. In his editorials, Yussef discusses diplomatic and civic strategies to keep Lebanon (particularly Beirut) safe. Lastly, an author of a collections of poems (Salhani 2020), he also published an autobiography titled Yasser Arafat Looked at Me and Smiled (Diary of a Fighter) (Bazzi 2005).

7.6 Former Child Terrorists in Latin America In the 1980s and 1990s, countries like Peru, Colombia, and El Salvador were plagued by civil wars, sectarian violence, and gross human rights violations perpetrated by terrorist organizations like Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) and the

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FARC. This section uncovers the lives of four child–terrorists–turned–peace–activists in Latin America, including two girls.

7.6.1 Lurgio Gavilán Sánchez Lurgio Gavilán Sánchez voluntarily joined Peru’s Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) at age 12. He is the author of the applauded autobiography titled When Rains Became Floods: A Child Soldier’s Story, tracing his journey from a Quechua Indian village boy to a terrorist, before joining the Peruvian military (Sánchez 2015). In his book, Lurgio also recounts his post-military work as a Franciscan priest and his more recent endeavors as an anthropologist and peace activist. In the early 1980s, Shining Path quickly developed into a full-scale guerilla insurgency in the Ayacucho Region, one of the poorest areas in southern Peru. The terrorist movement was particularly appealing to youths like Lurgio with open calls for justice and equality, all of which was in the name of the Peruvian peasantry (Rosen 2016). Lurgio Gavilán Sánchez’s small group of insurgents (compañeros) lacked adequate weapons training or fighting experience to directly confront the Peruvian military. Consequently, although they targeted military installations on occasion, their actions primarily consisted of assaulting local police posts and killing so-­ called traitors in farmhand villages (Rosen 2016). The compañeros also imposed hardline Maoist discipline on peasants and collected food supplies (generally through theft and blackmail) from local villages (Yezer 2008). Though Shining Path’s philosophy requested that its soldiers live among the peasants and unify with them, the former were often threatened by military-backed peasant guerrillas that sought to protect the villagers from a descent into terrorism (Rosen 2016). From a “people’s war,” that purported to champion peasants’ rights, Shining Path’s actions precipitously devolved into a terrorist campaign against the peasantry itself (Becker 2015). In due course, at age 15, Lurgio Gavilán Sánchez quit his senderista routine and embarked on a mission to help the downtrodden. He soon joined a Franciscan monastery to become a priest (Milton 2018). During this phase, he wanted to improve the world by living like an ordinary man and be around peasant farmers. However, he quickly switched gears to focus on his education before renouncing his religious lifestyle. He went on to enroll as a student of anthropology and continues to share his life experience at various venues (Pisani 2016).

7.6.2 Sara Morales Colombian woman Sara Morales was only 11 years old when the FARC terrorist organization forcibly conscripted her into their ranks (Alquist 2018). She was taken away from the street while walking to buy breakfast for her family. The FARC were running a camp in northern Colombia where female recruits were forced to have

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abortions (Morales 2011). The “abortion camp,” where over 100 abortions were performed, was located on a mountain in the Magdalena region. In addition to becoming trained killers, all minors, except those impregnated by guerrilla commanders, were compelled to abort pregnancies. The fetuses were discarded into a hole dug in the ground (Alsema 2009). According to her guerrilla comrades, when she was 11 years old, Sara Morales underwent intense military training upon joining the guerrillas. Because she was said to possess a nice-sounding voice, she was also hired as a propagandist for the terrorist group. As such, she became the spokesperson for the local FARC radio program called Voice of the Resistance (Morales 2011). When she turned 13, she became pregnant for the first time after one of the FARC militants raped her. Sara said that she managed to avoid being redirected to the “abortion camp” and bore two children in the jungle. She eventually escaped the FARC in 2007 and participated in a reintegration program sponsored by the Colombian government. By 2009, Sara Morales was expecting her third child (Alquist 2018). Today, she is occasionally featured on radio and television programs to share her story as a FARC guerrilla fighter.

7.6.3 Yineth Trujillo Born and raised in Colombia, Yineth Trujillo began fighting for the FARC at age 12 when she was snatched from her village. She was a guerrilla fighter for 5  years. Owing to her small physique and her small hands, she was placed in a position to assist with forced abortions, an activity that she loathed doing. However, she had no choice in the matter as the FARC promised to kill her mother if she did not obey (White 2019). The pregnant female recruits were forbidden from having babies because their main task was to concentrate on their guerrilla duties. At some point, the guerrillas instructed Yineth to become an informant. Eventually, she too was able to break away from the FARC by escaping. Today, Yineth Trujillo resides in Bogotá with her two daughters. Her existential mission is to rehabilitate other ex-­ guerrillas through the Colombian government’s reintegration program (Esslemont 2013). More specifically, for several years, she has worked for the Colombian Agency for Reintegration, which consists of assisting former male and female Colombian militants with their reintegration into society (Bautista 2018).

7.6.4 Mario Escobar Born in 1978, Mario Escobar was a child soldier during the Salvadoran Civil War, which lasted from 1979 to 1992. When Mario was only 10, he ran away from home to join the guerillas. He recounts that, in 1989, he was held captive by paramilitaries so they could mold him into a soldier. Later, he was rescued by his maternal

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grandmother, who was volunteering for an organization of matriarchs searching for abducted or imprisoned children (Hartelius 2016). His family members were at odds with each other, mostly due to political and ethnic tensions. For instance, his father was Caucasian and his mother Salvadoran (Foxman 2006). Because the civil war was preventing Mario Escobar from studying at the local elementary school, his grandfather—whose own peasant father was murdered in a carnage in 1932—taught him to read and replace his preoccupation with the violence by a passion for literature. Mario recalls various folktales and stories about the Salvadoran indígenas (López 2009). After the civil war was over in El Salvador, Mario migrated to the USA. His father, grandmother, and cousins had already been killed—brutally killed (Foxman 2006). In 1990, he reunited with his mother in South Los Angeles (https://www.alhambrasource.org/story/a–child–soldiers–journey–to–alhambra). In 2008, he was granted asylum in the USA (López 2009). Today, in addition to being a prolific poet, he is “an activist and an agent of positive social change” (Hartelius 2016, p. 139).

7.7 Former White Child Supremacists These former White child supremacists come from the USA and Canada. Of all five groups, they killed the fewest people and formed the oldest group (with a mean age of 15.5 years) upon joining White supremacist or neo-Nazi movements. Their antiterrorist platform today resonates mostly with North American audiences. Nevertheless, they seem to benefit from a great deal of visibility within the media establishment.

7.7.1 Angela King Angela King is a former White supremacist from Florida. She was only 16 when she became an active member of the neo-Nazi skinhead movement, in which she remained for 8 years (BBC News 2014). Absorbed by South Florida’s far-right ideologies, her deep-seated odium for minorities and her inclination to aggression and violence were quickly embraced by others (Gander 2017). A propagandist for various neo-Nazi organizations in the early 1990s, she admitted to spreading hatred and disinformation to promote higher birth rates among Caucasian women. The neo-­ Nazis and skinheads associated with Angela believed that homosexuals were mentally ill. For this reason, she often perpetrated violence against LGBTQ people on the street (Compton 2017). What began as resentment toward bullies and frustration with her own sexuality developed into White supremacist ideals and a desire to kill the Other. Searching for a place to belong, she joined a posse of teenagers who were flirting with neo-Nazism. Her mob of neo-Nazi skinheads created propaganda and planned to start a race war and attack the US government (Schmidt 2017).

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Angela King was convinced that she was taking the right path. She was now pleased with her new identity and wore it “like a mantle” on a daily basis. Notwithstanding this, she received little discipline at school. During one earth science lesson, she placed a swastika flag on top of a model of a moon base that she had built. It was left on display for weeks before it was removed. Angela began to associate with older skinheads and joined a violent White supremacist organization as a teenager. As she recounts, they told her that Jews were the ones who owned the slave ships and shuffled black Africans to America to imperil the White race (Bates 2017). In 1999, Angela King was sentenced to 5 years on charges of armed robbery of a Jewish-owned store. She was sent to the county prison so she could testify against one of her former neo-Nazi groups. Upon her return to the detention center, she soon realized that her inner neo-Nazi circle had been sent to a prison in Tallahassee. The detention center was the place where she turned her back on hatred and supremacism (Bates 2017). Today, Angela is a peace activist, lecturer, and researcher who co-founded Life After Hate, a peace advocacy group (Mitchell 2016). In fact, she is the deputy director of that group, the nation’s only NGO that is entirely devoted to helping individuals break away from neo-Nazi and White supremacist groups (Osberg 2017). Her former tattoos of the Swastikas, SS bolts, and other far-right symbols on her various body parts have been covered with other tattoos because she could not get them removed, even with laser removal (Schmidt 2017).

7.7.2 Christian Picciolini Born in Illinois, Christian Picciolini was only 14 when he joined his first rally of the Hammerskin Nation, a violent White supremacist group. After being introduced to the group, one generally receives a “lifeline of acceptance.” From day one, Christian espoused the White supremacist message and evolved into leading White American Youth, a White-power punk band. He composed and performed songs to incite others to commit racial terrorism (Davies 2018). A momentous meeting with a charismatic mentor, who exploited Christian’s youthful naïveté and obvious need for a place to belong, sent him into a hazardous spiral during the next decade of his life. When his mentor was sentenced to jail for a violent hate crime, Christian became his replacement. At 18, he was now one of the most dangerous White supremacist leaders across the nation. From ferocious street fights to drunken skinhead gatherings, recruitment by foreign terrorist top dogs to revolutionary white power music, Christian immersed himself in racial terrorist culture and behavior (Picciolini 2015). Christian Picciolini became director of the Northern Hammerskins, another violent White supremacist group devoted to promoting the Aryan race. Its ideology was straightforward: White people are a superior race and eliminating the Other was necessary to preserve it (Bensing 2010). Christian’s daily task was to publish propaganda, formulate infiltration strategies, and create mergers with similar organizations in the USA (Pashman 2017). In 2015, he published his memoir, Romantic Violence: Memoirs of an American Skinhead, which describes his time as a leader

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of the White supremacist movement in the USA (Picciolini 2020). He claims that he and Dylann Roof may once have crossed paths and cooked up a terrorist plot. In those days, he would have commended Roof for his mass shooting (Reynolds 2015). Dylann Roof is an unrepentant White supremacist terrorist who murdered nine African Americans at a Charleston church in June 2015 (Brown and Matusitz 2019). However, after 8  years in the White supremacist and neo-Nazi movement, Christian Picciolini began to question the hateful ideology that had so intoxicated him (Davies 2018). At some point, he recalls a particular incident in which he was beating a young African–American man. His eyes locked with him and he suddenly felt compassion. It was a decisive moment. He disengaged from the movement and, in 2011, co-founded Life After Hate, the aforementioned NGO that helps members of racial terrorist groups to leave them. Life After Hate also focuses on loving oneself and accepting the Other, irrespective of skin color, religious belief, or sexual orientation. Today, Christian continues to share his experience of hate-filled life built on lies and how he has managed to reinvent himself. Christian is a promoter of peace, inclusion, and racial diversity (Picciolini 2020). Lastly, he created the Free Radicals Project, an international, multidisciplinary undertaking for extremism and violence prevention (Brennan 2015).

7.7.3 Arno Michaelis In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Arno Michaelis was a US founder and leader of a global racial terrorist group―arguably the biggest racist skinhead mob in the world (Stewart 2020) ―that was determined to launch a Racial Holy War. Starting at the age of 16, he was deeply involved in the White supremacist movement and spent a number of years committing attacks under the banner of White power. He was also the lead singer of Centurion, a far-right punk metal band, selling more than 20,000 CDs to racial supremacists around the world (Michaelis and Kaleka 2018). A talented orator, he preached hate and White superiority. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, it is a racial belief system believed to have increased by 55% since 2017 in the USA (cited in Stewart 2020). When he learned about specific racial terrorist attacks, Arno Michaelis began to express guilt and remorse. From that moment on, his mission was to combat the very wrongdoings that he used to commit. In 2007, he began writing a reflective autobiography, My Life After Hate: Teacher’s Edition (Michaelis and Sanders 2013) and co-founded Life After Hate (Michaelis and Kaleka 2018). Today, Arno is a peace activist. He still has a difficult time wrapping his head around the fact that his racial terrorist past continues to inspire White supremacists today. He can feel the tension between using his experience as public advocacy against hate and the remorse he feels about the harm he is still causing. As admitted to CBC Canada (2019) that he committed horrible things, Arno Michaelis has also collaborated with Serve 2 Unite, which strongly opposes violence and racism in the aftermath of the Wisconsin Sikh temple shooting in 2012 (Michaelis 2017).

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7.7.4 Tony McAleer Raised in Canada, Tony McAleer came from a well-off middle-class background. His father was a doctor (Newman 2020). At age 16, he became involved in the White supremacist movement and White Aryan Resistance (WAR), a neo-Nazi group immersed in xenophobic activism, Holocaust denial, and street violence. In 1984, Tony returned to England―his place of birth―for a vacation and went back to Canada with a larger number of Skrewdriver records. The neo-Nazi punk band’s call for race-based warfare was an immense inspiration for him, and he spread the neo-Nazi message to his comrades in Vancouver. In the 1990s, he gained increasing infamy thanks to his publicity stunts and his White supremacist hotline (Wilson 2017). In his autobiography, The Cure for Hat: A Former White Supremacist’s Journey from Violent Extremism to Radical Compassion, Tony McAleer (2019) details his life as a boy who was thirsty for power and attention and how he would navigate through dark times to reach it. After joining the WAR, he quickly rose through the ranks and became a leader. As it was the beginning of the Internet revolution, he soon embraced that technology to expose White supremacist ideals through the digital age. Embedded in his WAR dogma was the belief that the Jews had to die because they promote abortion of the White race so as to kill off White babies. The White genocide conspiracy was a central concern within his ideology (Newman 2020). After attending the youth congress of the Aryan Nations group at the Idaho compound, Tony McAleer nurtured relationships with fellow Canadian White supremacists like Wolfgang Droege, who was jailed for a terrorist plot in Dominica and murdered in Toronto in 2005. Tony and others in the Aryan Resistance were also hired as security for anti-immigration meetings, propaganda recruiters within White supremacist campaigns, and architects of sophisticated operations (Wilson 2017). One day, Tony McAleer had an epiphany and realized that his White supremacism limited his ability to support his own family―particularly his children and their social milieu. In the late 1990s, Tony met Dov Baron, a Jewish lecturer and leadership coach whom he credits as his mentor today. Tony and Dov took a liking to each other based on their ancestry in the north of England and their appreciation of Monty Python. By 2009, Tony had connected with the other members of Dov Baron’s circle. They began publishing Life After Hate through an online journal. In 2011, Tony and some of his White supremacist friends were invited to participate in a Google Ideas summit in Dublin. It was a highly positive experience. Today, Tony McAleer travels around the world to share his experience with all kinds of publics (Wilson 2017). Taken as a whole, after spending 15 years in the neo-Nazi and WAR movement, Tony openly fights his previous racial terrorist sentiment and attempts to get others in the movement to question their hateful beliefs (McAleer, 2019).

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Salhani, Claude Laude, “A Child Soldier in the Lebanese Civil War,” The Quarterly Journal of Military History 32, no. 2 (2020): 10–21. Sánchez, Lurgio Gavilán, When Rains Became Floods: A Child Soldier’s Story. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015. Sarri, Rosemary, “Foreword,” in Childhood, Youth, and Social Work in Transformation: Implications for Policy and Practice, edited by Lynn Nybell, Jeffrey Shook, and Janet Finn, xi–xv. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. Schmidt, Ann, “‘I’ll Be Apologizing for the Rest of My Life―I’m OK with That’,” Daily Mail (2017, March 7): A1. Retrieved on July 2, 2022 from https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-­4286678/Former-­skinhead-­Angela-­King-­converted-­life-­hate.html Segall, Mandy, “Former Skinhead: ‘My Hate Had No Basis’,” Al Jazeera (2011, July 1). Retrieved on July 4, 2020 from https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/06/2011630123643988652.html Sexton, Christine, “Ex–Extremist: My Message of Peace to the Islamic World,” Echo News (2009, June 25): A1. Retrieved on July 2, 2022 from https://www.echo-­news.co.uk/news/local_ news/4457638.ex-­extremist-­my-­message-­of-­peace-­to-­the-­islamic-­world/ Stewart, Chris, “Former White Supremacist Now Uses Voice to Pull Others from Hate,” The Denver Channel (2020, July 3). Retrieved on July 4, 2020 from h t t p s : / / w w w. t h e d e nv e r c h a n n e l . c o m / n ew s / n a t i o n a l -­p o l i t i c s / t h e -­r a c e -­2 0 2 0 / former-­white-­supremacist-­now-­uses-­voice-­to-­pull-­others-­from-­hate Stickle, Wendy, Shelby Hickman, and Christine White, Human Trafficking: A Comprehensive Exploration of Modern Day Slavery. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2020. Taylor, David, “He Was a Teenage Terrorist. Now He’s Fighting Extremism,” The Guardian (2018, June 3): A1. Retrieved on July 2, 2022 from https://www.theguardian.com/us-­news/2018/ jun/03/mohammed-­khalid-­america-­youngest-­terrorist-­interview Tembo, Nick Mdika, “Katabasis, Adult Betrayals and Liminal Identities in China Keitetsi’s Child Soldier: Fighting for My Life,” Social Dynamics 43, no. 3 (2017): 421–34. https://doi.org/1 0.1080/02533952.2017.1387847 The Economist, “Of Skinheads and Jihadists,” The Economist (2011, June 30). Retrieved on July 4, 2020 from https://www.economist.com/international/2011/06/30/of–skinheads–and–jihadists The Hindu, “Kashmir’s First Ashok Chakra for Lance Naik Nazir Ahmad Wani,” The Hindu (2019, January 24): A1. Retrieved on July 2, 2022 from https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/ ashok-­chakra-­for-­lance-­naik-­nazir-­ahmad-­wani/article26077991.ece The Week, “MI5 Double Agent Offers Rare Insight into Al–Qaeda and Jihad,” The Week (2015, March 3): A1. Retrieved on July 2, 2022 from https://www.theweek.co.uk/62771/ mi5-­double-­agent-­offers-­rare-­insight-­into-­al-­qaeda-­and-­jihad Topsfield, Jewel, and Amilia Rosa, “A Different Jihad: How a Convicted Man Is Working to Redeem Terrorists’ Children,” The Sydney Morning Herald (2017, July 28): A1. Retrieved on July 2, 2022 from https://www.smh.com.au/world/a-­different-­jihad-­how-­a-­convicted-­man-­is-­ working-­to-­redeem-­terrorists-­children-­20170727-­gxjtqg.html White, Blaise Lidstone, “Woman: A Slave to the Man,” 360 International (2019, December 4): A1. Retrieved on July 2, 2022 from https://360internationalblog.com/category/ prime-­ministers-­scholarship/pmsla-­conflict-­and-­peace-­in-­colombia-­november-­2019/ Wilson, Jason, “Life after White Supremacy: The Former Neo–Fascist Now Working to Fight Hate,” The Guardian (2017, April 4): A1. Retrieved on July 2, 2022 from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/04/life-­after-­hate-­groups-­neo-­fascism-­racism Woods, Judith, “I Got My First Uzi When I Was Nine,” The Telegraph (2004, May 18): A1. Retrieved on July 2, 2022 from https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/3617238/I-­got-­my-­first-­ Uzi-­when-­I-­was-­nine.html Worman, John G., “The New Egypt and The Global Community’s Perceptions of Islamic Rule: Undermining the Political Aspirations of the Muslim Brotherhood as the Freely Elected Government,” Global Security Studies 3, no. 4 (2012): 1–13.

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Yasir, Sameer, “Nazir Ahmad Wani: From Militancy to Ashok Chakra, This Soldier from Kashmir Braved a Hard Life and Bullets,” First Post (2015, January 25): A1. Retrieved on July 2, 2022 from https://www.firstpost.com/india/nazir-­ahmad-­wani-­from-­militancy-­to-­ashok-­chakra-­this-­ soldier-­from-­kashmir-­braved-­a-­hard-­life-­and-­bullets-­5959501.html Yezer, Caroline, “Who Wants to Know? Rumors, Suspicions, and Opposition to Truth–telling in Ayacucho,” Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies 3, 3 (2008): 271–89. https://doi. org/10.1080/17442220802462386 Yousef, Mosab Hassan, Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices. Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale Momentum, 2010. Zehra, Ishaal, “Trapping Women in Emotional Jihad,” Asian Tribune (2019, January 8): A1. Retrieved on July 2, 2022 from http://southasiajournal.net/page/283/?wordfence_logHuman=1 &hid=D6BDDA99DA4238AA4F64605ED10227ED

Chapter 8

From Child Terrorism to Peace Activism: A Thematic Analysis

The method employed in this study is thematic analysis, a descriptive approach that falls under the larger umbrella of “narrative analysis.” Before discussing thematic analysis, it would be useful to define narrative analysis. It is a technique that seeks to examine how individuals interpret reality, make sense of their circumstances, and perform social acts (Phoenix et al. 2010). It focuses on the manner by which people share their accounts of themselves; self-narration is regarded as both a construction and an assertion of identity (Linde 1993). Narrative analysis looks at verbal or written material, typically stories or accounts of personal events. Units of analysis can be individuals, groups, societies, or historical periods using either qualitative or quantitative research (Smith 2000). Narrative analysis has the ability to register and keep details of various human dimensions of experience and relationships within cultural contexts (Saihito and Vaisanen 2019). It interprets narratives into a language that the general public can understand (Polkinghorne 1995).

8.1 Making Sense of One’s Life Experience The 24 subjects in this study made sense of their child terrorist experiences through the narratives available to them. This is why “narrative should not be looked upon as separate from real life, but as forming meaningful connections to that life” (Webster and Mertova 2007, p. 2). What qualified the subjects’ diverse texts as “narrative” was sequence and consequence: events were chosen, connected, and assessed as meaningful. The objective was to determine how former child terrorists from diverse backgrounds interpreted their multistep transition from child terrorism to peace activism. They followed order―either consciously or unconsciously―on the flow of their experience to make sense of moments, incidents, and actions in their lives. As Riessman (2005) puts it, narratives do not mirror. Instead, “they refract the past. Imagination and strategic interests influence how storytellers choose to connect events © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 J. Matusitz, From Child Terrorism to Peace Activism, Springer Series in Social Work and Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16582-5_8

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and make them meaningful for others. Narratives are useful in research precisely because storytellers interpret the past rather than reproduce it as it was” (p. 6). The qualitative approach to narrative analysis was chosen because it was appropriate for the sample size under study (rather than a large number of nameless and faceless subjects). The conventional approach started with research questions and, from there, the methodologically appropriate toolbox to confirm or disconfirm those research questions. Quantitative methods can, in many cases, be quite unproductive with respect to certain key aspects of the phenomena under study. They would overlook the complex issues of shared experiences of terrorist training, killing, torture, or remorse (as many of the 24 subjects expressed in clear terms). Put another way, quantitative methods often fail to cover the necessary scope to address profound, multifaceted human-centered issues (Webster and Mertova 2007).

8.2 Research Questions Narrative is not an objective restoration or rebuilding of life. Rather, it is a rendition of how life is interpreted. It is based on an individual’s life experience and incorporates selected aspects of their lives (Bell 2002). The narrative process “seeks to collect data to describe lives” (Marshall and Rossman 1995, p. 86). At the personal level of examination, narratives are reflections of the lived experience of the narrator (Murray 2000). Narratives can offer fresh insights as to how they construct meaning, make sense of our experiences, and communicate these meanings and experiences to the world. Most humans are similar in the way they infuse their experiences with meanings. Indeed, it is human nature to make our experiences meaningful and generate our actions and attitudes from this meaningfulness (Smith and Sparkes 2009). For these reasons, the study of child terrorism “needs to include an exploration of the meaning systems that form human experience” (Polkinghorne 1988, p. 1). It is important to understand the commonalties and differences in the way the five groups infused their experiences of child terrorism with meanings and how they communicated them to the world. These ideas paved the way for the first and second research questions (RQ1 and RQ2): RQ1: To what extent do the five groups of former child terrorists share in commonalties and differences for their experiences and meanings? RQ2: To what extent do the five groups of former child terrorists share in commonalties and differences in the way they communicate their experiences and meanings to the world? Narrative analysis is well suited to study time and change in a person’s life. Based on the 24 short biographies from the previous chapter, readers now know that all subjects eventually became anti-terrorist activists―after breaking away from their terrorist movements and, in all cases, after being disenchanted with their fundamentalist ideologies. This is why it was necessary to address a key question that turned out to be the third and last research question (RQ3):

8.4 Step 1: Familiarization with the Data

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RQ3: To what extent do the five groups of former child terrorists share in commonalties and differences for their disillusionment and anti-terrorist activism? It is the researcher’s hope that these essential questions provide rich data through which we can better understand the ways these five groups experienced the world depicted through their stories.

8.3 Thematic Analysis The specific method of narrative inquiry in this study was thematic analysis. Thematic analysis identifies, examines, and interprets patterns of meaning (“themes”) within data. It is more of a method―a tool or technique―than a methodology (a theoretically driven, and limited, framework for research) (Clarke and Braun 2017). It minimally―but clearly―structures and describes a dataset in ample detail (Boyatzis 1998). As Coffey and Atkinson (1996) point out, “There are no formulae or recipes for the ‘best’ way to analyze stories… Indeed, one of the strengths of thinking about our data as narrative is that this opens up the possibilities for a variety of analytic strategies” (p. 80). In this study, the method used an accessible and systematic technique for producing codes and themes from qualitative data. As the smallest units of analysis, codes register and depict noteworthy features of the data that pertain to each research question. They constitute the foundation for themes, reinforced by a central organizing concept―a common denominator for all ideas (Clarke and Braun 2017). In this study, emphasis was on the content of the 24 subjects’ “texts.” More precisely, the focus was on “what” was said, rather than “how” it was said. It was the “told,” not the “telling.” The words uttered by each former child terrorist were a direct and unambiguous conduit to meaning. Many stories were identified and inductively produced conceptual classifications from the data. A typology of shared experiences organized by theme is a regular representational strategy in thematic analysis, with case studies offering illustration. Overall, the purpose of this thematic analysis was not only to summarize the data content of 24 former child terrorists’ experiences. It was also to identify and interpret essential features of the data, driven by the three research questions (Riessman 2007). The next sections lay out the six steps of thematic analysis in this study: (1) familiarization with the data, (2) creation of codes, (3) theme search, (4) theme definition, (5) data analysis, and (6) conclusions.

8.4 Step 1: Familiarization with the Data The data was contained within 260 verbal and written statements made by the 24 subjects. Also available were some interviews on television and/or with newspaper or magazine editors. All this information was available through open sources on the Internet. Examples of open sources include audio podcasts, video podcasts, or televised interviews on evening news (e.g., BBC News, CBC Canada, etc.), newspaper

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interviews (e.g., The New York Times, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Telegraph, The Guardian, etc.), and published autobiographic books by some of the former child terrorists themselves. Most of the 24 subjects speak English. For those who do not speak English, their statements and books were already translated in English by publishers and/or news editors. The available information allowed the researcher to select specific quotes or excerpts to address the hypotheses and build up the themes; everything was cited in the endnotes and references. At the time of this publication, all 24 subjects were still alive, except for the 1 from India, Nazir Ahmad Wani, who was killed by terrorists in November 2018. Depending on the type of source, both oral and written statements of personal experience were selected. The thematic approach was useful in this study because it allowed the researcher to build up theoretization across a number of cases―finding common thematic elements across all subjects and the events they recounted. A typology was created to develop a developing theory. The level of analysis in this study rested on a reasonably low level of interpretation, contrary to grounded theory or hermeneutic phenomenology, for which a higher degree of interpretive complexity is involved (Vaismoradi et al. 2013). In this first step of familiarization with the data, the researcher became immersed in the personal stories of lived experience through the repeated reading of the data in an active manner, looking for meanings and patterns.

8.5 Step 2: Creation of Codes As it was important to address the specific research questions and analyze the data accordingly, it was a theoretical thematic analysis, not an inductive one. Under these circumstances, each portion of data was coded, especially when it was germane to or encapsulated something important about each research question. The researcher did not code every fragment of texts available through the aforementioned open sources on the Internet. On the other hand, if a more inductive analysis had been conducted, the researcher would have operated on a line-by-line coding technique to take every single line into account. Open coding was used; rather than having preset codes, the codes were built up and altered through the coding process (Maguire and Delahunt 2017). Open coding consists of creating initial codes from the data. Codes select a feature of the data that is worthy of note to the researcher and refer to “the most basic segment, or element, of the raw data or information that can be assessed in a meaningful way regarding the phenomenon” (Boyatzis 1998, p. 63). The data becomes organized into meaningful clusters. However, the coded data is not necessarily the same as the units of analysis (i.e., the themes), which can be broader. Searching for themes (the next step) is the point at which the interpretative analysis of the data happens. This is the place where arguments about the phenomena under analysis are made (Saldaña 2015). In this Step 2, the codes were created under preliminary categories (i.e., the above-referenced meaningful clusters) in relation to the whole dataset. Then, after identifying the most pertinent sections of texts, labels were ascribed to index these meaningful clusters based on their relevance to potential themes from the data (Nowell et al. 2017).

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8.6 Step 3: Theme Search To search for themes, a template approach was used. The template was a type of a codebook applied as a method of arranging text for subsequent interpretation. The template was based on an initial scanning of the texts (Crabtree and Miller 1999). The researcher worked through each segment of text coding in the template. Every segment that had relevance to the study was included. Each code was compared with the others and changed when necessary (before continuing with the rest of the texts). A theme captures essential elements about the data vis-à-vis the research questions. It embodies some degree of patterned response or meaning in the dataset. Therefore, two important questions addressed in terms of coding were (1) what counted as a pattern and (2) how big/sizable does a theme have to be? The importance of a theme does not automatically hinge on quantifiable measures, but it is based on whether it captures something essential within the framework of the research questions (Guest et al. 2018). There is no steadfast rule as to what makes a theme, as long as it is characterized by its significance (Maguire and Delahunt 2017). As the researcher worked methodically through the entire dataset, giving undivided attention to each data item, he coded manually. This was done by writing notes on the texts being analyzed, by color-coding segments of data to identify potential patterns. By the end of this “theme search” step, the codes were now organized into broader themes that revealed something specific about each research question. All themes are descriptive; they simply describe patterns in the data.

8.7 Step 4: Theme Definition This thematic analysis focused entirely on one level; no attempt was made to find anything beyond what a subject stated verbally or in writing. In other words, theme definition was grounded in the interpretation of the patterns in the data and their broader meanings. Step 4 involved defining coherent themes that were dissimilar from each other (Parent 2013). At the same time, it was indispensable to avoid labeling a theme that covered too much ground or was excessively diverse or complex. Eventually, the researcher came up with four themes that followed a comparable chronological pattern of evolution for each of the 24 subjects regarding their life experiences from child terrorism to peace activism. More precisely, the four themes of “metamorphosis,” “terrorist behavior,” “disillusionment,” and “anti-terrorist behavior” were present across all 24 case studies and outlined a progressive transition―oftentimes taking many years―from joining a terrorist movement to fighting the very crimes that initially made them a grave threat to humankind. What this also implies is that every theme marks a major step in the person’s life. Whereas the first theme (metamorphosis) occurred during the childhood of all 24 subjects, evidence for the last theme (anti-terrorist behavior) emerged toward the end of the terrorist journey for some subjects (when they

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became exasperated by the idea of harming or killing innocent people) but became fully present for all of them after leaving the terrorist movements. In other cases that fall outside this study, anti-terrorist behavior can already surface during childhood. Before disclosing and analyzing the specific data that helped identify these themes (see Step 5), it is important to introduce the themes based on a past and current review of the literature.

8.7.1 Theme 1: Metamorphosis In this context, metamorphosis refers to the process of transformation of an individual into a completely different one. It is reflected through a series of changes in a person’s behavior (Wilson and Krause 2012). In Ancient Greek, meta means “change,” and morphe means “form,” denoting a process of life-stage modularity in Homo sapiens (Greer et al. 2017). In child terrorism, this phenomenon is frequently associated with abrupt or gradual shifts that develop into adult-like “predatory crime” behaviors. Becoming a terrorist does not necessarily depend on a “cumulative, incrementally sustained, and focused commitment to the group” (Post 2006, p. 23). Factors that influence sudden or multi-staged radicalization into terrorism include, but are not limited to, (1) external factors like forcible recruitment (e.g., see Faulkner 2016; Haer et  al. 2020), grooming and brainwashing (e.g., see Bloom 2019), or group dynamics (e.g., see LoCicero and Sinclair 2008; Matusitz 2020); (2) internal factors like religious identity, political motivations (e.g., see Hudson 2018; Pašagić 2019), or curiosity (Matusitz 2013); (3) and societal factors like economic conditions or armed conflicts (e.g., see Botha 2014; Specht and Brett 2004). Radicalization into terrorism can be a passive or active process, or a combination of both, depending on the circumstances and stages of the metamorphosis. In a certain number of cases, it also stems from more than one factor (Crenshaw 1981; Rúbbelke 2005). Unsurprisingly, because the child grows into a child terrorist, the metamorphosis is successful. By extension, in all cases in this study, the metamorphosis was clear and visible, not hidden or open to interpretation.

8.7.2 Theme 2: Terrorist Behavior Terrorist behavior can be concrete. Such intentional use of violence to create a climate of fear includes, but is not limited to, hijackings, hostage takings, abductions, mass shootings, random executions, machete and knife attacks, sniper attacks, bomb-making, car bombings, mail bombings, racial genocide, and recruitment for a terrorist movement. To this very point, traditional and Internet-based terrorist propaganda that targets the enemy also constitutes concrete terrorist behavior. The victims and sites of terrorist attacks are generally chosen for their shock value (Townshend 2002).

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Terrorist behavior can also be symbolic. Deep-seated hatred of the enemy with a political or ideological plot to eliminate them could be an example of this. By the same token, expressing intent of starting a Racial Holy War and organizing gatherings for such purpose also symbolize terrorist behavior. Lastly, displaying emblems of the swastika or the jihad logo is also symbolic hate that is tantamount to terrorism (Matusitz 2015). In all cases within Theme 2, terrorist behavior involves violent criminal acts or the intention to commit them (Athens 1997; Saul 2007).

8.7.3 Theme 3: Disillusionment Disillusionment is a feeling of disenchantment or disappointment with the status quo or current circumstances. Status quo means “existing state” in Latin (Eidelman and Crandall 2012). Within the parameters of this study, disillusioned terrorists can still be children or have already entered adulthood. In all cases, they are disenchanted with the terrorist movement’s prospects for bettering society, they see little to no opportunity for improving the terrorist movement itself, they disagree with the tactics being used (while sometimes continuing to agree with the movement itself), or they reject the concept of terrorism altogether (Bjorgoand and Horgan 2009). Dissatisfaction with terrorism as a result of “burnout” is a rarer occurrence (Cronin 2009). However, it can be the case that one no longer likes his or her day-to-day tasks (Altier et  al. 2017). Spending time in prison has also caused a significant minority of terrorists to question their violent lives, which eventually led to their disillusionment (see Horgan 2009; Jacobson 2008). A distinction needs to be drawn between disillusionment and disengagement. Though disillusionment frequently leads to disengagement, the latter is less often caused by the former. The reasons behind individuals disengaging from terrorism can be (1) intentional―e.g., the terrorist group dies out or significantly dwindles in numbers, some members want to break away, they worry about public perception, or leaders want to negotiate peace deals―or (2) forced (e.g., as in the case of imprisonment, incapacitation, or wounding) (Ferguson 2010). In addition, whereas disengagement can be temporary or permanent, disillusionment is generally permanent. Of equal relevance is the fact that disillusionment can precede actual disengagement for a number of years, arguably due to psychological resistance (e.g., lack of awareness or feeling of guilt), fear of reprisal, or physical barriers that prevent one from leaving (e.g., see Ganor 2005; Yılmaz 2014).

8.7.4 Theme 4: Anti-Terrorist Behavior Just as it was for Theme 2, anti-terrorist behavior can be concrete in the “physical” sense. For example, upon awakening to the fact that terrorism is inherently wrong, one could switch to the other side and decide to join an anti-terrorism unit and physically fight the enemy. He or she can also become an informant or spy for the

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government. However, as the data analysis will reveal, most anti-terrorist behavior is actually symbolic. The most frequent manifestation of this sentiment is reflected through the notion of peace activism, in which case he or she wants to achieve overarching universal ideals of conquering hatred. Examples include ending terrorism, stopping the recruitment of children into terrorist movements and armed conflicts, reducing human–on–human violence, fighting racial discrimination, and achieving world peace across all peoples and nations. In practical terms, symbolic anti-terrorist behavior assumes an “awareness” approach. This can be seen through the subjects’ lectures at various venues (e.g., institutions of higher education, the United Nations, UNICEF, etc.), autobiographies or memoirs aimed at revealing their experiences to the world, participation in television or radio shows, leadership of goodwill NGOs, creation of peace-oriented schools or establishments, confrontation or engagement with terrorist suspects or wannabes (in jail or through online fora), and daily communication updates on blogs and websites. Although some “awareness” approaches are more impactful than others, in all cases they communicate the idea that the world needs to be reformed for the benefit of humankind.

8.8 Step 5: Data Analysis In this step, vivid, compelling excerpts and quotes from the 24 subjects themselves were selected (thanks to various sources available on the Internet) to describe the themes and relate ideas back of the three research questions. The objective was to create a report of the analysis. Direct verbal or written statements―both short and long―from the subjects are a fundamental component in this step. The statements helped understand the particular points of interpretation and corroborate the prevalence of the themes. Twenty tables were included. As such, there are five tables within each of the four themes. Each table corresponds to each of the five groups: (1) former child jihadists, (2) former African child terrorists, (3) former child separatist terrorists, (4) former child terrorists in Latin America, and (5) former White child supremacists. An important reason for this type of data organization was to compare the five groups with one another in order to determine commonalties and/or differences (as stipulated in the three research questions). This format was also adopted to make Step 5 more reader-friendly.

8.8.1 Analysis of Theme 1: Metamorphosis The quotes and statements identified in all 5 tables demonstrate a sense of metamorphosis across all 24 individual accounts. However, differences exist between the groups. For example, in Table  8.1, key phrases such as “the most eye-opening

8.8 Step 5: Data Analysis

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Table 8.1  Former child jihadists Former child Jihadists Aimen Dean

Khairul Ghazali

Mosab Hassan Yousef

Maajid Nawaz

Yasmin Mulbocus

Mohammed Khalid

Examples of metamorphosis “I would say it was the most eye-opening experience I ever had. I was a bookish nerd from Saudi Arabia just weeks ago and then suddenly I find myself prancing up on the mountains of Bosnia holding an AK-47 feeling a sense of immense empowerment―and the feeling that I was participating in writing history rather than just watching history on the side” (cited in Marshall 2015). “At the time I wanted to go to Afghanistan to fight for Islam. It started when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan and tried to convert Muslims into communism. It aroused a lot of sympathy in Indonesia because we wanted to protect our fellow Muslims” (cited in Topsfield and Rosa 2017, p. A1). “Torture can only be heard by animals, not humans’. For an eight-year-old boy, that explanation made perfect sense. Every day after that, I watched as more bodies were brought to the cemetery. After a while, I actually began to get used to it and started hanging around just to see who had died. Yesterday, a woman. Today, a man” (Yousef 2010, p. 18). “The Islamist narrative. This was a powerful toxin and it resonated with us” (Nawaz 2016, p. 49). “The gradual yet complete ideological transformation of a disillusioned young British teenager to a hardened Islamist recruiter. I came to live―and was prepared to die―to counter what I saw as American hegemony on a global scale” (ibid, p. xix). “The number of people [Muslims] killed… was horrific. It strongly reinforced the message that Nasim’s leaflet and Hizb al-Tahrir were pushing. Southend, Gaza, Bosnia, Iraq, India: wherever you went in the world, the story was the same―Muslims were unprotected and under attack, and now was the time to do something about it. After all, we didn’t believe in turning the other cheek” (ibid, p. 47). “Yes, race was a factor, but even if we solved that, Western society would never be satisfied with us” (ibid, p. 49). “I basically joined this group [al-Muhajiroun]. We got cultured” (cited in Bagenal 2017, p. A1). “To go and work for a state, visionary state [the Islamic state] meant that for me, personally, I would get justice against secular law” (ibid, p. A1). Khalid said that he felt isolated and abandoned as a result of George W Bush’s war on Terror (Taylor 2018). As a result, he added, he spent hours on the extremist forums interacting with a handful of extremists to express his anger and inability to adapt to U.S. mainstream culture. He also said that he was not happy with his family and had problems at school. Because they listened to his grievances, the online extremists became his best and only friends (ibid).

experience,” “The Islamist narrative. This was a powerful toxin,” and “I basically joined this group. We got cultured” accurately depict a massive internal motivator that pushed Muslim youths to join the global jihad movement. Indeed, unlike some other groups, the willingness to fight at such a young age was mostly driven by ideological or political motivations. This was also evident in these additional quotes:

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“The gradual yet complete ideological transformation of a disillusioned young British teenager to a hardened Islamist recruiter,” “I wanted to go to Afghanistan to fight for Islam,” and “I began to spend hours upon hours on the extremist forums talking to a handful of extremists all about my grievances and difficulties adjusting to the United States.” In Table 8.2, statements such as “Sadly, my dream of a great future was cut short” and “Without my consent, or that of my parents, I became a soldier” point to the idea that young African lives suddenly changed overnight when they were forced to join militias. Multiple excerpts in Table 8.3 also mirror external factors, such as civil war, for the metamorphosis of children into killing machines: “When I had barely reached five years of age, we were engulfed in a civil war,” “Before the war, I had a really simple, remarkable childhood, and then that changed very quickly,” “When we arrived in Sudan, I and my friends were given AK–47s,” and “I witnessed murder for the first time when I was only five years old.” The examples of metamorphosis in Table 8.4 (for former child separatist terrorists) do not particularly show a higher focus on internal, external, or societal factors. Nevertheless, unlike Table  8.5, there does not seem to be any sudden or forced recruitment into child terrorism. Rather, the willingness to fight came from within each individual, as reflected in the following quotes: “I wrote a pledge on a sheet of paper when I was 10, vowing to fight and if necessary die for Ireland’s freedom” and “I couldn’t wait to start killing British soldiers. I was in Catholic schools, where we’d recite the names of the 32 counties of Ireland,” “I joined up with something called the Official IRA,” and “[He joined the militia] out of his free will, and that of God, nothing else.” The metamorphosis of former child terrorists in Latin America, in Table  8.4, bears great resemblance with Table  8.2: “When we children had not yet reached adolescence, we were fighting in the so–called people’s war,” “The loss of innocence was abrupt and total,” and “As a young child in the war, my idea of safety was destroyed.” These are examples of the most sudden life change and reluctant recruitment into terrorist conflicts. Like child African terrorists, the Latin American ones also received military training and ideological brainwashing in a highly rapid fashion: “They gave the boys lots of training in handling explosives and me in intelligence gathering” and “The children were told to forget their families and their previous lives.” Lastly, like former child jihadists (Table 8.1), internal motivations that explain metamorphosis are also obvious in Table 8.5, where former White child supremacists are focused on ideology, on politics, and, in this case, on racial issues too. In other words, they sought to protect their own groups against the threatening Other: “Embracing the white supremacist philosophy was not the result of a single moment, but rather a slide toward normalization of the extreme” and “These younger skinheads were known as ‘fresh cuts.’ I joined them because they accepted my violence and anger without question” and “Extremist groups offered a sense of belonging.” In Table 8.5, the internal factor was also about a search for identity, not only an ideological or political motivation. For instance, a quote such as “What drew me in at 14 years old in 1987 was that I was searching for identity, community, and purpose” reflect an identity crisis.

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Table 8.2  Former African child terrorists Former African Child terrorists Grace Akallo

Junior Nzita Nsuami

Mohamed Sidibay

Ishmael Beah

China Keitetsi

Examples of metamorphosis

“My dream of a great future was cut short when, on October 9, 1996, the Lord’s resistance Army stormed into my dorm and abducted me along with 138 other girls at gun point. I was among the first five who were tied and pushed to move out. We were forced by the LRA soldiers to form four straight lines and were marched out into the woods” (Akallo 2009). “I was an innocent young girl. I had never known a man in my life until that day. I felt like a rock was being thrust into my skin. Yet, I had to survive” (ibid). “When we arrived in Sudan, I and my friends were given AK47. We were taught to dismantle, clean, and assemble the gun” (ibid). “Without my consent, or that of my parents, I became a soldier at the age of 12” (Nsuami 2013) “Our recruiters succeeded in awakening in us the animal instinct that was slumbering there. In magic ceremonies they convinced us that we were invincible, but the reality always showed us that the opposite was true” (cited in Nichols 2015). “Soon after our forced recruitment, my friends and I were transferred to a training camp where we were taught how to use guns, how to kill, and how to hate” (Nsuami 2013). “When I had barely reached five years of age, we were engulfed in a civil war. Kidnapped by rebels, I lived in a world where my captors made me fear not god but children, high on, drugs, wielding AK-47 rifles taller than them, and forced to kill or be killed” (Sidibay 2017). “I learned to refill a bullet chamber instead of an ink cartridge, and I mastered the ‘skill’ of spraying a wall with lead before I could write 1, 2, and 3″ (ibid). “I witnessed murder for the first time when I was only five years old. In 1997 the civil war had reached my village. It was only after I was forcibly taken away from our house that I got a sense of the evil that would befall me” (ibid). Beah admitted that, prior to the war in Sierra Leone, his childhood was wonderful, but everything went downhill quickly (interview on “TheHOUR,” CBC, November 10, 2008, available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nx37eVo23Zw) “The rest of us were between the ages of 13 and 16… A soldier wearing civilian clothes, with a whistle around his neck, stepped up to a rack of AK-47 s and handed one to each of us. When the soldier stood in front of me, I avoided eye contact, so he straightened my head until my eyes met his. He gave me a gun” (Beah 2007, p. 109). “[Upon joining the terrorist movement] I could feel an excitement growing in my stomach. It was like a brand-new game and I wished that I was there marching along with them” (Keitetsi 2015). “Sometimes I feel as if I am 6 years old, and sometimes it’s as though I am 100 years old because of all I have seen” (ibid). Keitetsi says she stills dreams about capture and shootings. Every morning, her heart beats so fast that she has a hard time carrying on with the rest of the day (Lacey 2003).

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Table 8.3  Former child separatist terrorists FormerchildSEPA- Examples of metamorphosis Ratist terrorists Shane Paul “As a boy I devoured books on Irish history in my father’s library. I found 1916 O’Doherty and Pearse and Connolly particularly spellbinding. I wrote a pledge on a sheet of paper when I was 10 vowing to ‘fight and if necessary die for Ireland’s freedom” (cited in Breen 2019, p. A1). He adds that he was no longer the average child. He felt heroic overnight. He felt intoxicated with power (Cullen 2007, p. A1). “I was 15 years old, and I think the use of child soldiers by the IRA, or any army, is immoral” (cited in Breen 2019, p. A1). Henry “I couldn’t wait to start killing British soldiers. I was in Catholic schools, Robinson where we’d recite the names of the 32 counties of Ireland (counting the six of the north) as indoctrination” (cited in Remnick 1994, p. 15). “A lot of recruiting went on… when I got into the whole thing, I was working as a barman, and it was the secretness of the paramilitaries that was the appeal. You know—boys as kids like meeting in secret and talking about secret things. Now, with the paramilitaries it was the same thing, only they were talking about sinister things” (ibid, pp. 15–6). “I joined up with something called the Official IRA” (ibid, pp. 15–6). Antonythasan When he was only seven, he said, the Tamil tigers perpetrated their first Jesuthasan political execution: The mayor of Jaffna, Alfred Duraiappa, was murdered by them. Thanks to their anti-state activities and occasional Marxist speeches on inequities and anti-imperialism, young folks like him saw the tigers as their saviors (interview conducted with Elle on March 5, 2008, https://www. shobasakthi.com/shobasakthi/2008/03/05/no-­man’s-­land/) He added that because his father was supportive of the tigers, his family’s main goal was to be protected from police brutality. In fact, the police often searched for him (ibid). He experienced many difficulties since childhood and, at some point, both his mind and body became numb (ibid). Nazir Ahmad “[He joined the militia] out of his free will, and that of God, nothing else” Wani (cited in Yasir 2015, p. A1). Yussef Bazzi “I took part in a battle against the Murabitoun… We climbed on to the roof of the Dar al-Handasah building in Verdun street, and exchanged gun and missile fire with the Murabitou guys in Tallet al-Khayyat. Suddenly, we saw a car speeding down Verdun Street in our direction, its occupants shooting at us. We showered them with bullets, shot two missiles from our B7s, and turned them into a burning lump of metal and flesh” (Bazzi 2005).

8.8.2 Analysis of Theme 2: Terrorist Behavior The quotes and excerpts in Tables 8.6, 8.7, 8.8 and 8.9 indicate a form of terrorist behavior that is a mélange of concrete, material terrorism, and symbolic terrorism. As such, in Table 8.6, former child jihadists “made bombs for Al–Qaida,” received knowledge “about “warfare and war tactics and military maneuvers,” and “participated in throwing stones.” On the other hand, they also “wanted revenge” for their “parents’ death,” sought “to overthrow democratically elected governments and

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Table 8.4  Former child terrorists in Latin America F. Child terrorists In Latin America Lurgio Gavilán Sánchez

Examples of metamorphosis

“When we children had not yet reached adolescence, we were fighting in the so-called people’s war. Back then, the idea was to contribute to the needs of a new nation, one that was more developed, with greater justice and equality, where man’s exploitation of man did not exist” (Sánchez 2015). Sara Morales Morales explained that, at the mere age of 11, she was raped by the FARC. For the next 11 years, she was physically and mentally tortured by them. There were about 300 children at the beginning, but only 12 of them survived (McKenzie and Clarke 2016). “The loss of innocence was abrupt and total. The children were told to forget their families and their previous lives” (Morales 2011). Yineth “They gave the boys lots of training in handling explosives and me in intelligence Trujillo gathering. The FARC really wanted to recruit girls for this reason, because no-one suspects a little girl. A little girl can transport money, weapons, drugs much more easily” (cited in Esslemont 2013). Mario “As a young child in the war, my idea of safety was destroyed” (cited in Alvarado Escobar 2017). “If you were out on the streets, you would get killed – no ifs or buts. Bodies were lying on the streets” (cited in Hong 2013).

establish a worldwide government of Islam,” and “daydreamed of martyrdom operations at their high school.” In Table 8.7, former child African terrorists were “were forced to kill those girls who tried to escape or refused their husbands,” “transported cases of ammunition,” and “knew how to load an AK–47.” At the same time, “the idea of death didn’t cross my mind at all and killing had become as easy as drinking water.” In like fashion, in Table 8.9, former child terrorists in Latin America expressed direct violent behavior on the one hand: “By the age of 12, I was a fully trained killer” and “[I fought as a child soldier] to cope with the situation. You’re talking about seeing atrocities every day.” They displayed symbolic terrorist behavior on the other: “Whatever the situation, we always took this task seriously and observed the lessons we had learned of first honoring the thought of Marx, Lenin, Mao, and Gonzalo” and “So noble was the goal that even the bloodiest means could seem justified in achieving it.” The quotes and excerpts in Table 8.8, regarding former child separatist terrorists, are mostly about material and physical terrorism: We “were great with explosives and not a lot of people wanted to work in that area,” “sent dozens and dozens of letter bombs,” “had a .38 revolver,” and were “sticking a gun at someone.” In contrast, the subjects’ statements in Table 8.10, about former While child supremacists, tend to indicate a form of terrorist behavior that is predominantly symbolic: “I had tattoos all over my body. I had Vikings tattooed on my chest, a swastika on my middle finger and ‘Sieg Heil’ on the inside of my bottom lip, which was the Hitler salute.” The subjects also talked about recruiting White people who were as angry as they were. Not only were they Holocaust-deniers, but they also believed that White people were superior to other groups.

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Table 8.5  Former white child supremacists Former white Child supremacists Angela king

Examples of metamorphosis

King said that, during her teenage years, she was an angry young woman with an identity crisis. She felt like she belonged or was accepted nowhere. She wanted a voice that mattered. Hence, she began to assume various self-­ destructive identities, of which the best was that of a neo-Nazi group member (Gander 2017). “These younger skinheads were known as ‘fresh cuts.’ I joined them because they accepted my violence and anger without question” (cited in Bates 2017). She added that, initially, she did not feel hatred. At first, it was fear of the unknown. Yet, the the fear turned into anger, which soon turned into hate. In due course, the hate turned to violence. Because she was so young, she also experienced a lot of bullying and negativity. Now, she felt it was about time to do the same to others (Gander 2017). She was groomed into a way of life based on white supremacy (ibid). Christian “What drew me in at 14 years old in 1987 was that I was searching for identity, Picciolini community, and purpose, and that’s something that everybody searches for. I hadn’t found it until I was 14, standing in an alley, and a man approached me and gave me the narrative of white supremacy… the appeal was that they filled me with a sense of purpose and provided that camaraderie that I was missing” (interview on NPR, March 16, 2019, npr. org/2019/03/16/704137555/ former–neo–nazi–white–supremacy–is–certainly–not–a–fringe–movement). Picciolini added that each youth aspires to belong to a certain group. For some, it is a radical leftist group, but for him, it was a right-wing one (Segall 2011). He became a member of a neo-Nazi group in the United States (ibid). Arno Michaelis said that, at age 16, he was already a drunkard and at ease with the Michaelis idea of hatred and violence. He hated his town, his school, most of his teachers, and even his peers. He strongly despised the police. When he came across racist skinhead music and the punk scene, he learned that the Nazi cross was an efficient way of angering the world. The antagonism that he displayed was mirrored by his neo-Nazi peers, validating his new identity. He went on to become a founding member of the Northern Hammerskins which, in turn, became part of Hammerskin Nation (Michaelis 2015). Because everything in his life was on the wrong path, it felt natural to blame minority groups like the Jews, Muslims, blacks, Mexicans, homosexuals, and so forth. In essence, he had a “valid” reason to hurt them in order to make the world better (ibid). Tony McAleer “Embracing the white supremacist philosophy was not the result of a single moment, but rather a slide toward normalization of the extreme” (cited in McAleer 2019, Chap. 6). By his own admission, extremist circles provided a sense of belonging, bonding, meaning, and relevance in his life (Wilson 2017). “Nobody becomes Adolf Hitler overnight; there is a learning curve, a progression, a desensitization” (cited in McAleer 2019, Chap. 6).

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Table 8.6  Former child jihadists Former child Examples of terrorist behavior Jihadists Aimen Dean Dean admitted that he built bombs for Al-Qaeda (Dean 2020). “Being in the military training camps, receiving knowledge that I never thought in a thousand years I would be receiving about warfare and war tactics and military maneuvers, and to be receiving it alongside people from many different nationalities, with the one common factor among them that they were all Muslims. And they were all there in order to participate in the jihad” (cited in Marshall 2015). Khairul Ghalazi said that it was natural for children from his culture and religion to Ghazali avenge their parents’ deaths. They were indoctrinated into hating the Indonesian state because it was anti-Caliphate (Beech and Suhartono 2019). In Indonesia, he opined, there are countless vulnerable youths who are being brainwashed by their radical parents (ibid). “If you had asked me before if I was a terrorist, I would have said I was a mujahid. Terrorist is a label put on you by the government” (cited in Topsfield and Rosa 2017, p. A1). Mosab “Most of us prisoners were Muslims affiliated with Hamas or Islamic Jihad, so Hassan this was our Yousef regular routine anyway” (Yousef 2010, p. 89). As he continued, he and his cohort often threw rocks. He was even arrested at age 10 (CNN 2010, http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1003/02/ampr.01. html) “There was so much violence that I actually became bored during those rare seasons when things were quiet” (Yousef 2010, p. 22). Maajid “As part of Hizb al-Tahrir training, he [Osman, the leader] had the answers and Nawaz counter-arguments at his fingertips, so any questions I had, he could respond to and throw straight back” (Nawaz 2016, p. 49). “My aim was to overthrow democratically elected governments and establish a worldwide government of Islam” (cited in Sexton 2009, p. A1). Yasmin “We were out there doing ‘missionary work’: Anybody who was interested, I’d Mulbocus be the point of call. Then, I’d set up meetings with them and just try to convince them to join our cause” (cited in Bagenal 2017. p. A1). “When you have experienced injustice, you want the world to become a better place by implementing this superior way of life system called the Islamic state” (ibid, p. A1). Mohammed Khalid explained that he could not see clearly and rationally like a normal Khalid person. He was lost beyond the point of no return. His participation in terrorist plots would create unanticipated and lasting consequences (Taylor 2018). “I daydreamed of martyrdom operations at my high school” (cited in Picart 2017, p. 49).

8.8.3 Analysis of Theme 3: Disillusionment The jihadist situation in Table  8.11 is interesting in that the subjects’ causes for disillusionment are the most diverse of all groups: whereas some disagreed with the direction taken by the global jihad movement (“I discovered that Islam basically

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Table 8.7  Former African child terrorists Child terrorists Grace Akallo

“In addition to being forced to fight, I and my friends were distributed to the rebel commanders. We were forced to kill those girls who tried to escape or refused their husbands” (Akallo 2009). “On the way, many children who could not walk were killed and their bodies abandoned in the forest. The rebels would use sticks, axes, bayonets or machetes” (ibid). Akallo also said that the first thing they experienced was physical beating. The goal was initiation into the army. What came subsequently was being forced to kill (Brown 2014). Junior Nzita “We killed, we looted. We transported cases of ammunition, we walked thousands Nsuami of kilometers with just one belief―we must fire on everything that moves out of fear that we will be fired upon” (cited in Nichols 2015). “The rule was becoming simpler and simpler: One had to kill in order not to be killed” (Nsuami 2013). Mohamed “I was one of those child soldiers and I lived in a world where your best friend Sidibay could kill you because his own life depended on it” (Sidibay 2017). “The more youthful we appeared, the more gruesome the carnage we inflicted” (ibid). “All I knew was how to load an AK-47” (cited in Bardon 2019). “There was this guy, his name was Rambo. In my opinion, he was the devil disguised as an average Joe. I remember him walking around, saying, ‘We are family. But in our family, we do not forgive and we do not forget.’ I watched most of the people in my village who were part of that crew die in battle. That was life” (cited in Hart 2019). Ishmael “My squad was my family, my gun was my provider and protector, and my rule Beah was to kill or be killed. The extent of my thoughts didn’t go much beyond that” (Beah 2007, p. 126). Beah said that his terrorist leaders professed the idea of hatred, which soon became a psychological weapon that allowed children to never run away from war and killing innocent people. Killing was their food and means of survival (McFadden and Yiu 2008). As he continued, the life of a child was to simply shoot people and follow all commanders’ orders, risking capital punishment for non-compliance. They were also initiated into drugs and rituals of public executions to desensitize child recruits (interview on TheHOUR, CBC, November 10, 2008, https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=nx37eVo23Zw) “The idea of death didn’t cross my mind at all and killing had become as easy as drinking water. My mind had only snapped during the first killing, it had also stopped making remorseful records” (Beah 2007, p. 126). China Keitetsi said that she was handed her first Uzi at age nine (Woods 2004). Keitetsi She also admitted to having been so scarred, as a child terrorist, that she still gives orders to regular people today. To some degree, she will always be a combatant (Lacey 2003)

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Table 8.8  Former child separatist terrorists FormerchildSEPA- Examples of terrorist behavior Ratist terrorists Shane Paul “I was great with explosives and not a lot of people wanted to work in that O’Doherty area given the risks. I bombed shops, banks, and police stations. I developed the letter bomb in 1973. I’d seen an article in the Sunday times about how the PLO used them. I actually blew myself up in a house in the Creggan – went right through the window and into the garden. I damaged my eye and a finger” (cited in Breen 2019, p. A1). “I learned to make incendiaries with condoms, acid and other chemicals. I didn’t even know the real purpose of condoms. I thought they actually were intended for incendiary devices. I burned down shops. Myself and others took on Army patrols with handguns” (ibid, p. A1). “I sent dozens and dozens of letter bombs. To downing street, the Bank of England, the Stock exchange, judges, generals, and the home secretary Reginald Maudling, whom I held responsible for bloody Sunday. He was injured opening it. This was the politics of revenge. An eye for an eye” (ibid, p. A1). Henry Robinson “I had a 0.38 revolver. It was a really strange feeling, a rush. A lot of adrenaline” (cited in Remnick 1994, p. 15). “That’s how you advance your argument, sticking a gun at someone” (ibid, p. 15). “I had a mask on, and there was another guy with me. The guy was with two of his mates. I walked up to him and said I was with the Irish republican Army. When his mates saw the gun, they scattered. I shot him three times, hit him in both legs. If I’d been told to kill him, I’d have done it. Paramilitaries are like fundamentalists. They don’t question, they just do it” (ibid, p. 15). Antonythasan He said that he has numerous stories to tell about his terrorist experiences. He Jesuthasan just does not Have the time to tell them all (interview conducted with Elle on march 5, 2008, available at https://www.shobasakthi.com/shobasakthi/2008/03/05/no-­man’s-­land/) As he added, when the Sri Lankan government attacked the Tamils in July 1983, the anti-government feeling among young Tamils spread like wildfire. He and his cohort were now motivated to acquire weapons and training in order to establish a separate state of Eelam. They were promised that the political system based on caste, class, and ethnic oppression would totally disappear when Tamil Eelam is achieved (ibid). This explains how he joined the terrorist movement. He became a terrorist at 15 (ibid). “My hope that we would gain a socialist Tamil Eelam through militancy” (cited in Chakrabarti 2010, p. A1). Nazir Ahmad “[I was part of] Ikhwan-ul-Muslimoon, a dreaded militia that evoked fear Wani among people for their brazen and often deadly ways” (cited in Yasir 2015, p. A1). (continued)

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170 Table 8.8 (continued)

FormerchildSEPA- Examples of terrorist behavior Ratist terrorists Yussef Bazzi “In total, we were 200 fighters or more, setting off at the same time” (Bazzi 2005). “Beirut was completely empty as its streets totally cleared after a militia uprising transformed the city into what one observer called ‘a playing field for armed gangs’” (ibid). “I regarded the neglect of my personal hygiene as part of my demeanor as a fighter, as dditional evidence of my ‘commitment’ to the war—a visible sign of the effort I invested. That filth was the unconscious expression of my eagerness to earn recognition from the guys, all my seniors, who treated me like a kid, and referred to me as ‘that cub’” (ibid). Table 8.9  Former child terrorists in Latin America F. Child terrorists In Latin America Lurgio Gavilán Sánchez

Sara Morales

Yineth Trujillo

Mario Escobar

Examples of terrorist behavior

“Whatever the situation, we always took this task seriously and observed the lessons we had learned of first honoring the thought of Marx, Lenin, Mao, and Gonzalo, those words that guided us. We raised our fists and in loud energetic voices shouted: ‘Yes, compañero!’ (Ari compañero!). At that small but significant gathering, I became the political leader. Three months later, I would turn 14. In spite of my youth and the fact that I could neither read nor write, I had reached the hierarchy” (Sánchez 2015). “We repeated those words mechanically, without any idea what they meant” (ibid). “All we wanted was a more just and egalitarian society. Did we children know anything about the consequences of the war we fought? How could we have? Chairman Gonzalo proclaimed that in 1985 we would take power and the people would govern Peru’s destiny. Was it passion that led us to follow the leader?” (ibid). “So noble was the goal that even the bloodiest means could seem justified in achieving it” (ibid). “By the age of 12, I was a fully trained killer” (Morales 2011). “It’s sad. There are children, they are left in the jungle. Their parents still think they will see them again, but they will never know what happened to them” (ibid). “I will tell you thing: I have never, thank god, killed anyone in cold blood. When they ask me how many people I have killed, I have to say ‘I don’t know’.” I never counted the bullets. I couldn’t tell before if my bullets killed people or not” (ibid). “My hands, very rough and hard, and my feet, were broken, because of those boots that I wore almost every day” (cited in Bautista 2018, p. A1). “The mistreatment present in the organization, since they were obligated to have sexual relations with the commanders of this structure, which in general began upon finishing the guerrilla training” (cited in White 2019, p. A1). “[I fought as a child soldier] to cope with the situation. You’re talking about seeing atrocities every day, over and over again. You could easily go crazy or find ways or mechanisms to cope with reality” (cited in Hong 2013). “It was just torture. There’s so much pressure knowing you may not be here today” (ibid).

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Table 8.10  Former white child supremacists Former white Child supremacists Angela king

Examples of terrorist behavior

“By the time I got to high school, I was extremely violent” (Helfand-Rogers 2017, p. A1). “I had tattoos all over my body. I had Vikings tattooed on my chest, a swastika on my middle finger and ‘Sieg Heil’ on the inside of my bottom lip, which was the Hitler salute. They hated black people and Jews and were also virulently homophobic” (see Bates 2017). King said that, upon joining the violent far-right movement as a child, she experienced the same “evil world” that we see in the U.S. mainstream media today. This is exactly the type of world that she wanted back then (Gander 2017). She wrote articles for several racist periodicals on anti-abortion issues for White women. On the other hand, she explained, she wrote that colored people should (Compton 2017). Christian Picciolini admitted to committing physical violence. He would often push Picciolini people out of his turf. Even though there was no valid reason for it, violence was committed for racial reasons. If people were different sexually, they would suffer at his hands too (Segall 2011). He said that he was a neo-Nazi skinhead from 1987 to 1995 (from age 14 to age 21). If Dylan Roof (the Charleston church shooter) had been around during his days, he would have said that Roof was a courageous man who acted on behalf of all neo-Nazis (Reynolds 2015). He and his friends thought that White people were superior to all (Bensing 2010). Arno Michaelis Michaelis said that he recruited White angry folks. They resorted to violence at that time and would receive a beating as often as they beat others (Michaelis 2017). As a younger person, his own pain was a massive motivator behind his hatred (ibid). He served as a leader of hate groups for a few years, committing random violence against innocent people, and manipulating other lost White children to do this (Michaelis 2015). He and his neo-Nazi friends scouted the city to identify “anti-racist skinheads” and beat them up. On the one hand, they often attacked people because of their race and sexual orientation. On the other hand, they also attacked random White folks, allegedly because they were race-traitors (ibid). It was his conviction that White people were different and better than everyone else, and, most of all, threatened by everyone else (Stewart 2020). He and his neo-Nazi friends recruited other angry White people by littering areas (filled with racial tension) with fliers bearing swastikas and anti-Black slogans (Michaelis 2015). (continued)

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172 Table 8.10 (continued) Former white Child supremacists Tony McAleer

Examples of terrorist behavior

McAleer admitted to be part of neo-Nazi groups, the Aryan nations, and the White Aryan Resistance for about 15 years (Lopez and Drechsler 2019). In fact, he was a prolific Holocaust-denier (Wilson 2017). For him, the feeling was ecstatic, like a rush of adrenaline. In the realm of neo-Nazis and White punks, he and his friends enjoyed the notoriety and people were scared of them. This is what happens when one has a false sense of power (ibid). A massive motivator in the successful recruitment of teenagers was neo-Nazi music. McAleer said he quickly became one of the key leaders of his movement. What began as “Canada first” and a movement for immigration reform progressively became more extreme. The more radical the positions, the more electrifying things were (ibid).

teaches us to save, not kill. While in prison I experienced a reversal of thinking. I felt I had misused the teachings of Islam”), others disagreed with the notion of jihad altogether (“I came to the realization there was something wrong with what we considered jihad [just war]”). By extension, one subject even became disillusioned with the religion of Islam itself (“Hamas cannot make peace with the Israelis. That is against what their God tells them. It is impossible to make peace with Infidels, only a cease–fire, and no one knows that better than I”). The African situation is also unique in the sense that Table 8.12 includes the most experiences of disillusionment whereby the subjects got away from their terrorist predicament: (1) By escaping their terrorist movements or physically leaving their posts (“On April 9, 1997, after seven months in captivity, I finally got a chance to escape from the rebels” and “An Italian priest gave me shelter”) or (2) by escaping the groups in order to focus on education elsewhere (“I started my education and was soon sponsored to join a primary school in Sierra Leone” and “What changed my life significantly was having an education”). The child separatists’ situation in Table 8.13 tends to reflect a higher level of pessimism with the ideological wars in which the subjects were involved. Their pessimism eventually contributed to their disillusionment with terrorism as a whole: “I was a part of the Trotsky movement. Only after I lost my faith in all forms of political movements did I begin writing in earnest,” and “[After my time as a militant] optimism was everywhere and Mum and I planned for the future” are few examples. Of course, the subjects also disagreed with the killing methods themselves (e.g., “It would be a long time before I’d ever think that sending British soldiers home in coffins was not the whole answer” and “I was a terrorist initially and became a counter–insurgent after I realized the futility of violence”). The Latin American situation in Table  8.14 bears some similarities with the African situation in that disillusionment grew with the day-to-day nightmares experienced by the four subjects. Examples are the following: “We lived a frozen, half– starved life on the run, hunted by green army helicopters and village militiamen, as

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Table 8.11  Former child jihadists Former child Examples of disillusionment Jihadists Aimen Dean In 1998, after the two U.S. embassies were bombed in Africa, killing 200 Africans, Dean no longer wanted to be a terrorist (Dean 2020). “This [the bombings of US embassies in Nairobi and Dar Es Salaam] is when I realized that if this is the opening salvo of this war. Ehere is the next target? Argentina, South Africa, Mozambique? Are we going to fight Americans in Africa in order to expel them from the Middle East, from the Arabian Peninsula? It just didn’t make sense” (cited in Marshall 2015). For Dean, Al-Qaeda no longer defended Muslims. Rather, its chief purpose now was to bring down régimes and encourage terrorism against U.S. interests (The Week 2015) Khairul “In prison you can’t do much other than think. I came to the realization there was Ghazali something wrong with what we considered jihad [just war]. Women and children―even Muslims― were also victims in the attacks” (cited in Topsfield and Rosa 2017, p. A1). “I discovered that Islam basically teaches us to save, not kill. While in prison I experienced a reversal of thinking. I felt I had misused the teachings of Islam” (cited in Dagur 2016, p. A1). For Ghazali, stigmatization, misery, and the reality that many harmless people lost their lives (as a result of terrorism) all contributed to his an inner torment (Haaretz 2017). “I threw stones. I violated curfew. But I didn’t understand why our people Mosab pursued violence. Now I wanted to know why we were doing it all over again” Hassan (Yousef 2010, p. 136). Yousef “Something had to be done to stop this rolling madness. I knew the time had come for me to begin working for shin bet [the Israel security agency]” (ibid, p. 134). He said he became confused as to who his real enemy was and why everybody was hurting everybody (CNN 2010, http://transcripts.cnn.com/ TRANSCRIPTS/1003/02/ampr.01.html) “Hamas cannot make peace with the Israelis. That is against what their god tells them. It is impossible to make peace with infidels, only a cease-fire. No one knows that better than I. The Hamas leadership is responsible for killing alestinians” (Issacharoff 2010, p. A1). Maajid “It took me years in prison to finally realize that my hatred was against myself” Nawaz (Nawaz 2016, p. xxvii). “I raised my head arguing for political pluralism and reconciliation” (ibid, p. xxvii). “I began to join the dots and think, ‘my god, if these guys that I’m here with ever came to power, they would be the Islamist equivalent of Animal Farm’” (National Public Radio 2015, npr.org/2015/01/15/377442344/ how-­orwells-­animal-­farm-­led-­a-­radical-­muslim-­to-­moderation) (continued)

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Table 8.11 (continued) Former child Examples of disillusionment Jihadists Yasmin “I just hated who I was. To leave this [terrorist] organization was very difficult Mulbocus because you have to understand that I got away from the mainstream Muslim community, I got away from my friends” (cited in Bagenal 2017, p. A1). “I was just embarrassed, shocked. What kind of a family structure was I creating? What was happening to my child? The prophet [Muhammad] wasn’t about hate and killing. He was about love and mercy. This wasn’t Islam” (cited in Bharath 2016, 2016, p. 11). Mohammed Khalid recalls that the people who “saved” him were counselors wanting to learn Khalid about what led someone into terrorism. He said they were able to get him out of his dangerously narrow world of which he was a part. Forcing him to discuss the wrongs he had committed was a catalyst and wake-up call (Taylor 2018). For him, revenge is too strong of a concept, but he was somewhat cognizant that people who had manipulated him would do the same to others (ibid).

often as not tortured to death when captured,” “The jungle was a place of fear and paranoia. Friendships were hard to maintain. Sexual relations, however, were encouraged,” and “I think it was very important for me to regain my femininity. My expression was very masculine.” The White supremacist situation in Table 8.15 reveals the most experiences of disillusionment with terrorism after developing face-to-face interactions with people from “enemy groups.” The following quotes or statements exemplify this: “There were a lot of women who treated me kindly, with compassion, even knowing I was a racist skinhead,” “Ultimately, you know, it was interactions with people of color who, you know, showed me compassion when I had least deserved it. And those moments of clarity added up” and “When I realized it was someone like me who had committed that violence, it was the first time that made me reconsider.” Lastly, it is important to mention that one third of the 24 subjects became disillusioned while sitting in jail. As such, four of the six former child jihadists in Table 8.11 had “converted” from terrorism to anti-terrorism in prison. This was also the case for two of the five child separatist terrorists in Table 8.13 and two of the four White child supremacists in Table 8.15.

8.8.4 Analysis of Theme 4: Anti-Terrorist Behavior Anti-terrorist behavior in Table 8.16 is evident when some of the former child jihadists say that they switched sides by joining anti-terrorist endeavors as spies, informants, or special forces. For example, “Passing back information [as a spy for MI6], that’s what my primary objective was, to collect as much information as possible” and “I would put on an army uniform and join Israel’s special forces in order to liberate Gilad Shalit.” As it is the case for all subjects in this study, the former child jihadists’ actions in Theme 4 highly reflect a desire for long-lasting peace activism:

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Table 8.12  Former African child terrorists Former African Child terrorists Grace Akallo

Examples of disillusionment

“On April 9, 1997, after seven months in captivity, I finally got a chance to escape from the rebels… I was happy to be back, but my heart was saddened by the ongoing torture my friends were still going through. I left too many of them behind” (Akallo 2009). “Most of the children are sent to the forefront, with the leaders behind them. Your bullets are finished? You shoot your friend in order to get more bullets. At the same time, the leaders used children as shields, so that the children get shot and they survive” (cited in de Grave 2012, p. A1). “I don’t even know how to speak about it. It was horrible” (interview on wbur.org, April 19, 2012, available at https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2012/04/19/ kony-­child-­soldier) Junior Nzita “I started lamenting and wondering why I had to lead such a life” (Nsuami 2016). Nsuami “I did not feel like going on with this military service was either my dream or my destiny” (ibid). “After having spent years witnessing abuse of all kinds, I realized that it was time to protect the land, the richness, and beauty of my country, and to work to reconstruct my nation” (Nsuami 2013). Mohamed “One day something unexpected happened. A complete stranger told me the truth I Sidibay did not want to hear: I had the power to create my own destiny” (Sidibay 2017). “An Italian priest gave me shelter and connected me to an NGO that links students and teachers worldwide through technology. This is where I started my education and was soon sponsored to join a primary school in Sierra Leone” (ibid). “Once I started liking school, I discovered I wanted to be a lawyer, thinking law was a way to bring about effective change” (cited in Hart 2019). Ishmael “Each day went by very slowly as I busied myself thinking about what other Beah possibilities lay ahead. Was there an end to this madness, and was there any future for me beyond the bushes?” (Beah 2007, p. 45). For Beah, education is what changed his life extraordinarily. It was something that was stolen from his childhood. Upon graduating from college, he came to the realization that now nobody could take it from him (McFadden and Yiu 2008). China “You will never know how I feel inside. It’s like I have lived 100 years, because I Keitetsi have seen so much. It’s hard to talk about this, and if I cry, don’t feel sorry for me, because I am free. I am no longer told who to hate and who to kill” (cited in Gewertz 2002, p. A1). “If I go back, it’s like, OK, the lion is hungry―‘can I hide in your mouth?’ Museveni and his generals are very angry with me. It shows our president doesn’t care about freedom. He still uses children. In northern Uganda, kids are being taken every day to fight in the Congo war” (ibid, p. A1).

“People from all ethnicities and all faiths and none helped me yesterday. It’s in that spirit that I wish to carry on my work,” “We have to have a tolerant mutual dialogue. This is where we need to bring our young people back to the surface,” and “My hope is to come here with others, and together help to start a civil society.”

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Table 8.13  Former child separatist terrorists FormerchildSEPA- Examples of disillusionment Ratist terrorists Shane Paul O’Doherty says that the IRA did not care for the well-being of its own O’Doherty members. Though concerned with the group’s armed struggle, they felt particularly abandoned when leaving the group or sitting in prison (Higgins 2016). “If you end up in prison as a young idealist freedom fighter and then discover you’ve a tonne of victims out there, it’s a horrific awakening” (ibid, p. A1). “Prison is, for many people, an awakening to the horrors of war, the horrors of victims, the horrors of violence, and if you spend almost 15 years in prison getting through that, you’ve to spend the next 15 or 20 years of your life getting over that” (ibid, p. A1). “My friends were killed within two or three years, either blown up or shot dead” (ibid, p. A1). Henry Robinson “It would be a long time before I’d ever think that sending British soldiers home in coffins was not the whole answer” (cited in Remnick 1994, p. 15). For Robinson, Gerry Adams [the long-time Sinn Féin leader] had to come clean about his terrorist past. And his “employees” in the provisional IRA were not granting freedom of movement to hundreds of people (Pogatchnik 1994). For him, it is true that there are people who practice the mutilation of human beings. In fact, he admitted that he once did. Now, he finds it regrettable and deeply offensive (ibid, p. A1). Antonythasan In 1985, after the Tamils Tigers declared a cease-fire to engage in peace Jesuthasan talks in Bhutan, he began to lose faith in the movement and terrorism (see previous link to Elle’s interview). “I have been since childhood involved myself deeply in political activities. After I arrived in France as a refugee, I was a part of the Trotsky movement. Only after I lost my faith in all forms of political movements did I begin writing in earnest” (see Chakrabarti 2010, p. A1). Nazir Ahmad “I was a terrorist initially and became a counter-insurgent after I realized the Wani futility of violence” (cited in Pandit 2018, p. A1). “I realized that I had to change paths since the constant killing was killing me inside” (cited in Jain 2019). Yussef Bazzi “When we were young, years before you were born, we lived through war. We had our fill of exhaustion, filth and wretchedness, and thought about emigrating a lot. Peace came, and with it… People started to live normal lives again: buying and selling and planning for better times. We started hearing talk about ‘investments’ (i.e. trade and industry), ‘tourism,’ ‘infrastructure’ and ‘construction’ (i.e. we’ll make the country lovely again)” (Bazzi 2005). “[After my time as a militant] optimism was everywhere and Mum and I planned for the future. We found work, our life became a little easier and we were able to get married, and then have you, certain in the knowledge that the war was behind us, and that the life we dreamed of was finally possible. We no longer thought of emigration and travel” (ibid).

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Table 8.14  Former child terrorists in Latin America F. Child terrorists In Latin America Lurgio Gavilán Sánchez

Sara Morales

Yineth Trujillo

Mario Escobar

Examples of disillusionment

“I grew disgusted with shining Path’s especially unapologetic, almost ecstatic intention to ‘crush,’ ‘annihilate,’ and ‘pulverize’ those in its way” (Sánchez 2015). “It all disintegrated into human acting worse than beasts to one another and into times of suffering” (ibid). “We lived a frozen, half-starved life on the run, hunted by green army helicopters and village militiamen, as often as not tortured to death when captured” (ibid). “The jungle was a place of fear and paranoia. Friendships were hard to maintain. Sexual relations, however, were encouraged. The women and girls were given contraceptive injections and those who became pregnant were made to have abortions. I was sexually assaulted by a commander, and this precipitated my long escape” (Morales 2011). “I was very afraid of being caught by the army [the FARC]… I took a canoe and paddled down the river” (ibid). “Sometimes, when I’m in bed, I still go over it. I get nervous and feel the same panic” (ibid). “I began to regain my dreams. I made a process of forgiveness, of reconciliation. I managed to get out of a difficult situation” (cited in Bautista 2018, p. A1). “I think it was very important for me to regain my femininity. My expression was very masculine” (ibid, p. A1). “The aftermath of war is something we want to forget; we drop a veil with hopes of leaving behind violent and unpleasant memories. There are systems ready to discredit the narrative of those who have experienced the war. Traumatized minds are often seen as not credible enough to participate in historical dialogue” (cited in Alvarado 2017). “Perpetrators are not just individuals, it is also the institutions, organizations and even the media that seek to discredit the people’s narrative of the past” (ibid). “I remember my mind was blank, completely blank. For me, it was the beginning of a struggle. I was going to use my status to continue helping undocumented youth to support the dream of succeeding in this country” (cited in Hong 2013).

In Table  8.17, former child African terrorists demonstrate their preoccupation with anti-terrorist behavior by focusing on prevention, education, and reintegration into society: “It is very important that girl child soldiers are reintegrated into the community otherwise they are left to fend for themselves” and “I have devoted myself to community work to help disadvantaged children. I hope my story can serve as an example to help them avoid what happened to me. In December 2010, I created the association ‘Peace for Children’,” and “I want every kid, from Sierra Leone to Somalia, to have the same opportunities as the kid in Scandinavia or in Northern Europe or even the U.S. Education is every child’s right.” Unlike the subjects in the two previous tables, in Table 8.18, former child separatist terrorists have the most diverse ways of channeling their energy toward anti-­ terrorism: “I’ve publicly condemned all my own past activities. I’ve apologized to my victims and worked tirelessly to try to convince paramilitaries to give up

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Table 8.15  Former white child supremacists Former white Child supremacists Angela king

Examples of disillusionment

“When I realized it was someone like me who had committed that violence, it was the first time that made me reconsider” (cited in Helfand-Rogers 2017, p. A1). “There were a lot of women who treated me kindly, with compassion, even knowing I was a racist skinhead” (ibid, p. A1). “The current administration is trying to target Muslims and that will put us in even more danger. Statistically domestic extremists in our country are a far bigger threat than fundamentalists abroad” (cited in Osberg 2017, p. A1). “I have a lot of healthy guilt about who I was and the things I did to hurt others and myself. But I know I would not have been able to do this work had I not had those experiences” (cited in Bates 2017). Christian “I always had doubts about what I believed in. And, of course, I could never Picciolini vocalize them because I didn’t want to seem weak or anything like that. But ultimately, you know, it was interactions with people of color who, you know, showed me compassion when I had least deserved it” (interview on NPR, March 16, 2019, npr. org/2019/03/16/704137555/ former–neo–nazi–white–supremacy–is–certainly–not–a–fringe–movement). What Picciolini had hated for all these years was not rooted in truth. He said he was young and impressionable, that he was surrounded by bad but influential people. They were alcoholics from broken families who often had fights with each other. It was a major reason why he began to realize it was the wrong path and turned over a new leaf. In essence, he became a new person, in part, thanks to his environment (Bensing 2010). Arno What also altered the course of his life was the sincere courage offered to him Michaelis by those he hated initially. Their generosity, forgiveness, and compassion helped extinguish his life and ideology of oppression (Michaelis 2017). Life eventually hit him. All that death or prison would do is separate him from his daughter (Stewart 2020). Tony McAleer As McAleer reasoned, why should he be like Don Quixote, fighting with windmills, i.e., for a group of White supremacists who could not care less where he lived or died (Wilson 2017). People who abandon their terrorist selves tend to spend time in a void, without a circle of friends. This can be worse than the dysfunction of the terrorist group. As he continued, usually this is when people give up and get back with the group (ibid).

violence,” “We need to flag IS sites and make them unavailable to web viewers. They can play a part in that because they know how to identify recruiters, be it online or at the street corner,” and “He sacrificed his life defending India from Lashkar–e–Taiba terrorists.”

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Table 8.16  Former child jihadists Former child Jihadists Aimen Dean

Examples of anti-terrorist behavior

For Dean, if people are willing to risk their lives for a cause that is lost from the beginning, then people should do the same (Cruickshank and Lister 2018) It will take a long time to defeat ISIS terrorists whose ignorance shields them against doubts about the value of their cause (Black 2015). Because he was an Al-Qaeda terrorist himself, then became a spy for MI6, he knows that deradicalization does not work (McCoogan 2020). “Passing back information [as a spy for MI6], that’s what my primary objective was, to collect as much information as possible” (cited in Marshall 2015). Khairul “They [the police] are not evil” (cited in Rowe 2017, p. A1). Ghazali Because Ghalazi was deradicalized, he thinks that it can be done (Beech and Suhartono 2019). “In Islam, it is haram [forbidden] to commit a crime against anybody. Don’t do what I did and your parents did and kill people” (cited in Topsfield and Rosa 2017, p. A1). Deradicalizing his own children was a challenging task. At first, his whole family looked at him strangely after his prison sentence because he had changed (Beech and Suhartono 2019). Mosab Hassan “I wish I were in Gaza now. I would put on an army uniform and join Israel’s Yousef special forces in order to liberate Gilad Shalit. If I were there, I could help. We wasted so many years with investigations and arrests to capture the very terrorists that they now want to release in return for Shalit. That must not be done” (Issacharoff 2010, p. A1). As Yousef explains it, what is his responsibility today? He refuses to see people dying. Rather, he wants to stand up and say that terrorism is wrong. This is why he had to make this move towards peace (Elsworth and Wheeler 2008). “I became a Christian, during that time, the first few months, and I was convinced by the principle of loving your enemies. And I saw that my enemy, who I thought that they were my enemies, they had morality, they had their responsibilities more than my own people” (Yousef 2010). Maajid Nawaz “My hope is to come here with others, and together help to start a civil society” (cited in Sexton 2009, p. A1). “People from all ethnicities and all faiths and none helped me yesterday. It’s in that spirit that I wish to carry on my work” (cited in BBC News 2019). Yasmin “We have to have a tolerant mutual dialogue. This is where we need to bring Mulbocus our young people back to the surface” (cited in Bagenal 2017, p. A1). For Mulbocus, girls who are being recruited as terrorists do not understand that they have been brainwashed by an ideology that is not a reflection of true Islam. These women should wake up and discover the real sisterhood within Islam. They should question the radical ideology. They are so brainwashed that they lost their own soul (Styles 2015). Mohammed Khalid was the youngest one in the United States to be found guilty of terrorist Khalid crimes. As he puts it, the next one could be even younger than he. As he asks, how could we stop that from happening? This move toward peace is something important to him (Taylor 2018). This is why his existential goal in life is to help others counter the charismatic appeal of internet-based extremists and terrorist groups (ibid).

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Table 8.17  Former African child terrorists Former African Examples of anti-terrorist behavior Child terrorists Grace Akallo “It is very important that girl child soldiers are reintegrated into the community otherwise they are left to fend for themselves” (cited in de Grave 2012, p. A1). As she continues, we should not allow terrorists to make children a lost generation (Provencher 2010). “I have told my own story, but the stories you have not heard are thousands-fold. There are dozens of armies and rebel groups who continue to ruin the lives of children in the same ways around the world. I’m here to remind you of the very real suffering of these children who are hoping for you to act” (Akallo 2009). “I still wait for some of my friends to return, and I hope that everyone here will be committed to bring people like my friends back home” (ibid). Junior Nzita “I am asking for forgiveness from all those to whom I caused harm with the Nsuami weapons I was made to carry” (Nsuami 2016). “I have devoted myself to community work to help disadvantaged children. I hope my story can serve as an example to help them avoid what happened to me. In December 2010, I created the association ‘Peace for Children’” (Nsuami 2013). “I hope that all children have equal opportunity to succeed in life—In other words, that their childhoods are all protected and they have the chance to grow up safely” (ibid). “I also ask that no one reject these former child soldiers. A child’s place is in the family, the school, and not in armed forces or groups waging war. I still work every day to build my future and I hope to have the chance to continue my studies to be able to better defend the fundamental rights of children” (ibid). Mohamed “I want every kid, from Sierra Leone to Somalia, to have the same opportunities Sidibay as the kid in Scandinavia or in northern Europe or even the U.S. education is every child’s right” (cited in Hart 2019). “I am now dedicating my life to advocacy and service through my work with the Education Commission on financing global education opportunity and the my hero project” (Sidibay 2017). “What I’m hoping to gain from law school is to be able to go back and help my country develop a strong judicial system” (cited in Hart 2019). Ishmael “I continued working for UNICEF and became an advocate for children affected Beah by war to make sure that what happened to me did not continue to happen to other people, but also to put a human face to this experience that may seem far removed in the lives of other people” (cited in UN News 2015). “If I choose to feel guilty for what I have done, I will want to be dead myself. I live knowing that I have been given a second life, and I just try to have fun, and be happy and live it the best I can” (cited in Swango 2007). China “We shouldn’t just trust to organizations. If everyone would look in their hearts, Keiretsi they would find an answer. The world is so big―we can do it!” (cited in Gewertz 2002, p. A1). “They have committed a crime against us, but we have not committed any crime. When all of the kids are safe, that’s when I will smile” (ibid, p. A1).

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Table 8.18  Former child separatist terrorists FormerchildSEPA- Examples of anti-terrorist behavior Ratist terrorists Shane Paul “I give talks about my life story and repentance to students on behalf of a O’Doherty Spanish charity whose patron is tennis star Rafael Nadal” (cited in Breen 2019, p. A1). “I’ve publicly condemned all my own past activities. I’ve apologized to my victims and worked tirelessly to try to convince paramilitaries to give up violence” (ibid, p. A1). “You lose a universe by taking life, and don’t gain a single speck of territory. If you go down this route, you end up a civil and human rights abuser” (ibid, p. A1). Henry Robinson “[The standing Anglo-Irish conference] should have a special responsibility for overseeing the implementation of measures aimed, solely at the eradication of paramilitary terrorism” (cited in Moriarty 1995, p. A1). “We need to flag IS sites and make them unavailable to web viewers. They can play a part in that because they know how to identify recruiters, be it online or at the street corner” (cited in Bharath 2016, 2016). “Whether you’re white supremacist, [IS], Al Qaeda, or IRA, when you take away the ideology, they’re all the same” (ibid). Antonythasan He said he had reason and proof to totally oppose the Tamil tigers in Sri Jesuthasan Lanka on political grounds. Throughout the year, he writes extensively on this subject (see previous Elle link). As he continues, the Tamil tigers’ values do not reflect those of a people’s liberation movement. With their constant attacks on other movements, opposing thinkers, journalists, labor unionists, as well as Muslim and Sinhala farmers, they might as well call themselves Fascists (ibid). In Jesuthasan’s opinion, we should repeat the president of Croatia’s words at the united Nations: “To have spent 10 years in peace talks is better than 10 days of war” (ibid). The Tamil tigers who seem irritated by Jesuthasan’s writings have threatened and assaulted him physically. They have posted defamatory statements in blogs and other venues. Yet, Jesuthasan has shown them that he will not be silenced (ibid). Nazir Ahmad “He sacrificed his life defending India from Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists” Wani (cited in Jain 2019). “He is responsible for the death of around 30 terrorists, say his family members. He killed several terrorists, until death found him” (ibid). Yussef Bazzi “Martyrs Square [a square of Beirut that was a site in the Lebanese civil war] had reclaimed its forgotten role: a place of meeting, continuity and community. In a single moment it had shrugged off its emptiness and separateness, becoming a place of new symbols in harmony with the symbols of the past and the rebirths of history” (cited in Gual 2008, p. 16). “In the end, thank goodness, it was decided to restore it, leaving the scars of war on its side to bear witness to the past, and to place it in its original position in the center of the square” (cited in Bazzi 2012).

The Latin American subjects in Table 8.19 assume anti-terrorist approaches that tend to focus on education and reintegration into society, as it was for Table 8.17: “The more people demobilize, the bigger the need for a better education, for more houses, and more business so it will be easier to get a job,” “We are highly

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Table 8.19  Former child terrorists in Latin America F. Child terrorists In Latin America Lurgio Gavilán Sánchez

Sara Morales

Yineth Trujillo

Mario Escobar

Examples of anti-terrorist behavior

“I hope my story contributes to human understanding, and that others may share the sentiments of this writer” (Sánchez 2015). “We all wanted to be Franciscans but, as Jesus said: ‘Many are called but few are chosen’” (ibid). “I want to be an evangelist abandon myself in your arms, Lord” (ibid). “I want the world to know that the feeling of being in combat is terror. It’s hell. No one can imagine what you lived there. It’s ugly. It’s ugly. I can’t tell you what I saw there. There are no words. Sometimes, I wished I was dead so I wouldn’t have to see such ugly things” (Morales 2011). “The hardest challenge of my life is right now, being here in society. Not everyone sees me with good eyes. They see a demobilized person. Work opportunities are limited” (ibid). “The more people demobilize, the bigger the need for a better education, for more houses, and more business so it will be easier to get a job” (cited in Esslemont 2013) “Everybody has to work for this, not just the government or the FARC, but all Colombians” (ibid). “We are highly vulnerable. We need effective support from society” (cited in Bautista 2018, p. A1). “My plan is to become a lecturer [on the subject of child terrorism]. I love doing it because it is a transformative experience. I feel that it can elicit emotions, which will help you grow and mature” (ibid). “Not talking about war shows apathy in society, indifference, especially towards the women and men who have demobilized. They have abandoned their guns and now they want peace” (ibid). “As long as they remain in power, living the life while the survivors remain imprisoned by their grief, everything remains the same. If no one is brought to justice and no one is held accountable, regret is an inaccessible emotion. Healing remains an unfinished project for most of the people. The wounds remain open” (cited in Alvarado 2017). “I think that’s a revolution right there, when you revolutionize the mind. Not just teaching someone how to read a novel, but putting literature into political, historical, cultural context” (cited in Hong 2013). “I use poetry as a medium. It is my preferred method for communicating. A lot of my writing was (and maybe still is) ambiguous but it is the best way for me to heal and remember. It pushes me to dig deeper into the historical narration and social conceptualization of our gente” (cited in Alvarado 2017).

vulnerable. We need effective support from society,” “I think that’s a revolution right there, when you revolutionize the mind. Not just teaching someone how to read a novel, but putting literature into political, historical, cultural context,” and “I hope my story contributes to human understanding, and that others may share the sentiments of this writer.” In Table  8.20, former White child supremacists place a higher emphasis on Christ-like attributes: forgiveness, human kinship, and loving the Other: “Love is

8.8 Step 5: Data Analysis

183

Table 8.20  Former white child supremacists Former white Child supremacists Angela king

Examples of anti-terrorist behavior

“Love is the only solution” (cited in Bates 2017). “The best thing we can do is keep educating people—keep these things in the spotlight. What’s needed is compassion and kindness, but also dedication to making sure people’s human rights and civil rights are respected” (cited in Helfand-Rogers 2017, p. A1). “We’re really working to not only help the individuals who have disengaged from groups, but for those who are willing to speak out publicly. We are hoping to open up a platform for not just small team of us doing this, but for a large group [that can] prevent young people from making the kinds of choices we made” (ibid, p. A1). For king, we should have compassion for all because former extremists like her know that they were both haters and hated. When meeting extremists like the one she used to be, she takes necessary steps to humanize him or her and find common ground (Gander 2017). Christian “We need better gun laws and more common-sense gun laws, but what is Picciolini going to happen is they’re just going to find other ways to do this, so we need a more comprehensive approach” (cited in Brennan 2015, p. A1). Picciolini claims to be a leader. However, it is a different position of power because now he treats others with more respect and turns them into partners in daily life (instead of giving them directives). He is proud to work with great people today (Bensing 2010). Having been previously on the wrong side allows Picciolini to see the good side. Now, he never wants to go back. He says he is happy to be on this side (ibid). Equality, justice, and diversity are his three reminders on a daily basis (ibid). Arno Michaelis For Michaelis, love is the best way to veer people away from hate. Hate and violence are both cyclical. More of either will only reinforce the cycle (Michaelis 2015). He thinks that the Black lives matter movement has taken off for noble purposes, not only in the U.S., but also across the world. As he continues, it is great that people are waking up to the ills that racial superiority has done to fellow humans (Stewart 2020). Human kindness can combat the terror and ignorance fueling all the ideologies of violent extremism (whether White supremacist or otherwise). Telling people they are on the wrong path is not enough. We need to demonstrate what is right, and it can make a huge difference in a world consumed by hate (Michaelis 2017). Tony McAleer For McAleer, the most difficult part is to forgive ourselves for the wrongs we have made. It seems selfish, he opines, but the more compassion and forgiveness for oneself, the more dimished the willingness to cause harm to others (Wilson 2017). McAleer finds that people hate people, even though these people have never met or do not know each other. They have never met a Black or native American, but they harbor these negative views (CBC News Network 2019). For him, education is key. We all have to denounce people’s racial injustices when they do occur and reject racist attitudes. On the other hand, we have to call people in and bring them closer to loving humanity when they get caught up in a whirlpool of hate (ibid).

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the only solution,” “What’s needed is compassion and kindness, but also dedication to making sure people’s human rights and civil rights are respected,” and “We’re really working to not only help the individuals who have disengaged from groups, but for those who are willing to speak out publicly.”

8.9 Step 6: Conclusions In regard to RQ1, “To what extent do the five groups of former child terrorists share in commonalties and differences for their experiences and meanings?,” many commonalties emerged across the 260 statements delivered by the 24 subjects. Through forcible recruitment or out of their own willingness to join terrorist movements, or driven by external factors like group dynamics or societal factors like civil wars, the five groups took some of the most gruesome, adult-like predatory actions ever committed against other human beings. At a young age, many of them became trained killers after rigorous militant preparation. As we have seen, however, some groups differed across the patterns of meanings in the data. For example, the former African and Latin American child terrorists endured more indoctrination and brainwashing than the other three groups. The meaning of terrorism, then, had a more “unconscious” or “insensible” implication for them. Another departure point was the type of violent aggression exerted by some of the groups. The terrorist behavior assumed by former White child supremacists was more symbolic than the one assumed by former African and Latin American child terrorists. Yet, the metamorphosis into terrorism was more sudden for the latter two groups than the other groups. Of equal relevance is the fact that the White supremacist and neo-Nazi movement is not as hierarchically organized (i.e., with a highly controlled power structure or top-down approach), in contrast to other groups in this study. Statements by the former White supremacists revealed an extremely patriarchal White identity that strove to normalize the in-group values against the other racial groups in the world. In regard to RQ2, “To what extent do the five groups of former child terrorists share in commonalties and differences in the way they communicate their experiences and meanings to the world?,” few differences could be identified between the five groups. Most of the 24 participants took advantage of radio shows, television platforms, interviews with newspapers and magazines, lectures at institutions of higher education and NGOs, or autobiographic memoirs to communicate their own experiences and meanings of child terrorism to the world. Several of the subjects even used poetry as a medium to express their thoughts on this pervasive phenomenon. Based on the quality of open sources in both mass media and online media, it appears that the first group (former child jihadists), second group (former child African terrorists), and the fifth group (former White child supremacists) have benefited from more visible news outlets, better book publishing companies, and wider public speaking platforms than the other two groups.

8.9 Step 6: Conclusions

185

In regard to RQ3, “To what extent do the five groups of former child terrorists share in commonalties and differences for their disillusionment and anti–terrorist activism?,” all of the 24 subjects were undoubtedly disenchanted with their day-to-­ day terrorist activities at some point. However, what is worth noting are the differences in the path toward disillusionment taken by the five groups. For instance, four of the six former child jihadists became disillusioned while sitting in jail. The former White child supremacists turned over a new leaf after their interpersonal interactions with members of their “enemy groups.” This is a far cry from the ideology in which they were immersed, one that adopted a polarized view of the world (White vs. the rest of the world). The former child separatist terrorists expressed a higher level of pessimism with the ideological wars in which they were immersed. Their pessimism was a major indicator of their disillusionment with terrorism overall. A propos the subjects’ anti-terrorist activism, all 24 individuals in this study aspire to long-lasting peace activism. Therefore, no differences exist between the five groups when it comes to understanding their existential goal today. Nevertheless, differences arise in regard to the form of activism that they have carried out. For example, the former White child supremacists undertake the most symbolic form of peace activism: forgiveness, human kinship, and loving the Other. On the other hand, former African and Latin American child terrorists focus more on prevention, education, and reintegration into society. Rather than being propagandistic, all 24 subjects used dialogic communication―focusing on meaning making, mutual interpretation, co-construction of reality, and sympathetic–empathetic communication. Taken as a whole, what this study has demonstrated is that, in spite of the widely diverse backgrounds of the 24 case studies, spanning 16 different countries across 5 continents, the statements uttered or written by all subjects had a great deal of coherence and many things in common. These former affiliates of Al-Qaeda, Hamas, the IRA, the FARC, Shining Path, White supremacist groups, and so on may have espoused different ideologies, but they once shared a common path: the transformation into hateful beings and the propagation of fear and violence. At the same time, some cases also highlighted different threads of factors leading to join terrorist movements, roles within groups, and reasons to break away―just to name a few. Some of these groups of former child terrorists also experienced higher levels of nightmares, intense anxiety, and intrusive flashbacks. Nevertheless, the four themes of metamorphosis, terrorist behavior, disillusionment, and anti-terrorist behavior successfully detailed a progressive transition toward peace activism for all of them today. It also indicates their longing for a peaceful coexistence between human beings by condemning terrorism in all shapes and forms. Now, it is important for readers to understand that, even when quotes and excerpts are clustered into a similar thematic category (like the four themes), we should not automatically presuppose that every subject in the group intended to express the same idea or meaning. As a reminder, this thematic analysis was not an in-depth examination of semantics but a descriptive one based on the dataset produced by the researcher (thanks to a variety of open sources). More importantly, readers should also be aware that the subjects’ statements may not reflect the same experiences or

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interpretations that other child terrorists have had in their own communities or environments. We could obtain clearer answers to these issues when additional applied studies (at a much higher scale) are conducted, but they would fall outside the scope of this manuscript.

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McFadden, Cynthia, and Karson Yiu, “Child Soldier’s Long Way Home,” ABC News (2008, August 7). Retrieved on July 5, 2020 from https://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/ story?id=5518157&page=1 McKenzie, Sheena, and Rachel Clarke, “Colombia’s FARC Rebels Release Child Soldiers in Potential Peace Deal,” CNN (2016, September 10). Retrieved on July 7, 2020 from https://edition.cnn.com/2016/09/10/americas/farc-­colombia-­release-­child-­soldiers/index.html Michaelis, Arno, “This Is How You Become a White Supremacist,” The Washington Post (2015, June 25): A1. Retrieved on June 25, 2022 from https://www.washingtonpost.com/ posteverything/wp/2015/06/25/this-­is-­how-­you-­become-­a-­white-­supremacist/ __________ “I Learned the Hard Way How to Stop Hate,” CNN (2017, August 15). Retrieved on July 4, 2020 from https://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/15/opinions/ex-­white-­power-­compassion-­ answer-­michaelis-­opinion/index.html Morales, Sara, “Taken by Colombian Rebels Aged 11 and Trained to Kill―A Woman’s Escape from Terror,” BBC News (2011, November 7). Retrieved on July 7, 2020 from https://www. bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00hpfr0 Moriarty, Gerry, “FAIT Founder Says Paramilitaries Should Enter Talks Conditionally,” The Irish Times (1995, January 5): A1. Retrieved on June 25, 2022 from https://www.irishtimes.com/ news/fait-­founder-­says-­paramilitaries-­should-­enter-­talks-­conditionally-­1.19176 Murray, Michael, “Levels of Narrative Analysis in Health Psychology,” Journal of Health Psychology 5, no. 3 (2000): 337–47. https://doi.org/10.1177/135910530000500305 National Public Radio, “How Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’ Led a Radical Muslim to Moderation,” National Public Radio (2015, January 15). https://www.npr.org/2015/01/15/377442344/ how-­orwells-­animal-­farm-­led-­a-­radical-­muslim-­to-­moderation Nawaz, Maajid, Radical: My Journey out of Islamist Extremism. Guilford, CT: Lyons Press, 2016. Nichols, Michele, “Ex–Congo Child Soldier Apologises at U.N. for 1990s Killings,” Reuters (2015, March 15). Retrieved on June 25, 2022 from https://www.reuters.com/article/ uk-­congodemocratic-­childsoldiers-­un-­idUKKBN0ML2FH20150325 Nowell, Lorelli S., Jill M. Norris, Deborah E. White, and Nancy J. Moules, “Thematic Analysis: Striving to Meet the Trustworthiness Criteria,” International Journal of Qualitative Methods 16 (2017): 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406917733847 Nsuami, Junior Nzita, Junior Nzita Nsuami: A Former Child Soldier Rebuilds His Life. New York: United Nations Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary–General for Children and Armed Conflict, 2013. __________ If My Life as a Child Soldier Could Be Told. Brookline, MA: Trauma Healing and Creative Arts Coalition, 2016. Osberg, Molly, “This Woman Was Once a Violent Skinhead. Now She Rehabs Former Neo–Nazis,” Splinter (2017, February 22): A1. Retrieved on June 25, 2022 from https://splinternews.com/ this-­woman-­was-­once-­a-­violent-­skinhead-­now-­she-­rehabs-­1793858778 Pandit, M. Saleem, “A Terrorist Who Became a Decorated Armyman Dies Fighting for Nation,” The Times of India (2018, November 27): A1. Retrieved on June 25, 2022 from https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/a-­terrorist-­who-­became-­a-­decorated-­armyman-­dies-­fighting-­for-­ nation/articleshow/66818835.cms Parent, Mike C., “Handling Item–Level Missing Data: Simpler Is Just as Good,” The Counseling Psychologist 41, no. 4 (2013): 568–600. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011000012445176 Pašagić, Aleksandar, “Between Child Soldiers and Terrorists: Reintegrating Child Members of the Islamic State,” Journal for Deradicalization 20 (2019): 109–55. Phoenix, Cassandra, Brett Smith, and Andrew C. Sparkes, “Narrative Analysis in Aging Studies: A Typology for Consideration,” Journal of Aging Studies 24 (2010): 1–11. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.jaging.2008.06.003 Picart, Caroline Joan (Kay), American Self–Radicalizing Terrorists and the Allure of “Jihadi Cool/ Chic.” Newcastle, England: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017. Pogatchnik, Shawn, “Attacks by IRA ‘Enforcers’ Go on Despite Cease–Fire: Belfast Vigilantes Club Teenagers for Alleged ‘Antisocial Behavior’,” The Seattle Times (1994, September 25): A1. Retrieved on June 25, 2022 from https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=1994092 5&slug=1932445

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April 8): A1. Retrieved on June 25, 2022 from https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article­3030324/The-­devil-­took-­away-­Heartbroken-­mother-­British-­jihadi-­bride-­Khadijah-­Dare-­uses-­ TV-­interview-­beg-­daughter-­come-­home.html Swango, Alissa, A Child Soldier Grows Up. New York: Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, 2007. Taylor, David, “He Was a Teenage Terrorist. Now He’s Fighting Extremism,” The Guardian (2018, June 3): A1. Retrieved on June 25, 2022 from https://www.theguardian.com/us-­news/2018/ jun/03/mohammed-­khalid-­america-­youngest-­terrorist-­interview The Week, “MI5 Double Agent Offers Rare Insight into Al–Qaeda and Jihad,” The Week (2015, March 3): A1. Retrieved on June 25, 2022 from https://www.theweek.co.uk/62771/ mi5-­double-­agent-­offers-­rare-­insight-­into-­al-­qaeda-­and-­jihad Topsfield, Jewel, and Amilia Rosa, “A Different Jihad: How a Convicted Man Is Working to Redeem Terrorists’ Children,” The Sydney Morning Herald (2017, July 28): A1. Retrieved on June 25, 2022 from https://www.smh.com.au//world/a-­different-­jihad-­how-­a-­convicted-­man-­ is-­working-­to-­redeem-­terrorists-­children-­20170727-­gxjtqg.html Townshend, Charles, Terrorism: A Very Short Introduction. New  York: Oxford University Press, 2002. UN News, “Former Sierra Leonean Child Soldier Wants Human Face on Suffering,” UN News (2015, December 2). Retrieved on July 5, 2020 from https://news.un.org/en/audio/2015/12/607192 Vaismoradi, Mojtaba, Hannele Turunen, and Terese Bondas, “Content Analysis and Thematic Analysis: Implications for Conducting a Qualitative Descriptive Study,” Nursing and Health Sciences 15 (2013): 398–405. https://doi.org/10.1111/nhs.12048 Webster, Leonard, and Patricie Mertova, Using Narrative Inquiry as a Research Method. New York: Routledge, 2007. White, Blaise Lidstone, “Woman: A Slave to the Man,” 360 International (2019, December 4): A1. Retrieved on June 25, 2022 from https://360internationalblog.com/category/ prime-­ministers-­scholarship/pmsla-­conflict-­and-­peace-­in-­colombia-­november-­2019/ Wilson, Alexander D.  M., and Jens Krause, “Personality and Metamorphosis: Is Behavioral Variation Consistent across Ontogenetic Niche Shifts?” Behavioral Ecology 23, no. 6 (2012): 1316–23. https://doi.org/10.1093/beheco/ars123 Wilson, Jason, “Life after White Supremacy: The Former Neo–Fascist Now Working to Fight Hate,” The Guardian (2017, April 4): A1. Retrieved on June 25, 2022 from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/04/life-­after-­hate-­groups-­neo-­fascism-­racism Woods, Judith, “I Got My First Uzi When I Was Nine,” The Telegraph (2004, May 18): A1. Retrieved on June 25, 2022 from https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/3617238/I-­got-­my-­first-­ Uzi-­when-­I-­was-­nine.html Yasir, Sameer, “Nazir Ahmad Wani: From Militancy to Ashok Chakra, This Soldier from Kashmir Braved a Hard Life and Bullets,” First Post (2015, January 25): A1. Retrieved on June 25, 2022 from https://www.firstpost.com/india/nazir-­ahmad-­wani-­from-­militancy-­to-­ashok-­chakra-­this-­ soldier-­from-­kashmir-­braved-­a-­hard-­life-­and-­bullets-­5959501.html Yılmaz, Kamil, Disengaging from Terrorism: Lessons from the Turkish Penitents. New  York: Routledge, 2014. Yousef, Mosab Hassan, Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices. Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale Momentum, 2010.

Chapter 9

Discussion, Theoretical Implications, and Solutions

Although youths have always participated in conflicts since the dawn of humankind, they were rarely the primary actors. This has changed drastically for the past few decades. No longer the principal domain of adults, terrorism increasingly involves groups of non-state actors who are as young as 5 years old. Child terrorists are contributing to the barbarization of conflict, maneuvering outside the norms of war and the rule of law, abandoning the long-established proscriptions against attacks on non-combatants, slaughter, undue punishment, torture, and public humiliations. Not surprisingly, images of child terrorists have overwhelmed the mass media. Whether featured on the front pages of popular magazines or newspapers or appearing before audiences through video clips and news reports, images of children with rocket-­ propelled grenades (RPGs) and AK-47s are omnipresent. This phenomenon is a warning sign not only of the reality of innocuous childhood gone astray but also of children as intensely vulnerable, precarious, victimized, troubled, and sometimes heroic (Denov 2010). Though the age to be fit as a fighter varies from culture to culture, they are all regarded as children under international law. As explained in Chap. 1, the terms child soldier, child terrorist, and child militant are often synonymous due to the contexts, ideologies, and tactics inherent to the conflicts. These terms overlap and defy any straightforward or specific definition. After all, a child armed with an automatic weapon or a suicide bomb poses a threat irrespective of the label or status attached to him or her—a reality that anti-terrorist forces are increasingly facing today. What this also means is that child terrorists remain a clear and present danger to communities involved in civil wars or targeted by terror campaigns. As we are nearing the end of this book, readers have hopefully become keenly aware that failure to consider child terrorists as an unequivocal threat could bear severe consequences. The unwillingness to do so represents a psychological and physical barrier that must be overcome to ensure both the safety and emancipation of civilizations. Hence, anti-terrorist undertakings need to be led by psychologically and physically equipped individuals who can deal with these situations in the most © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 J. Matusitz, From Child Terrorism to Peace Activism, Springer Series in Social Work and Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16582-5_9

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optimal ways—without fear of negative public perception in the media or feeling disheartened when facing child terrorists on the battlefield. A wide array of technological and weaponry options offer conventional forces manifold possibilities for neutralizing and unsettling the threat of child terrorism in an efficient and humane manner. Force protection efforts should require that children be inspected and vetted to the same scale as adults (Singer 2006). In Chap. 2, the author identified ten reasons for child terrorism: (1) state failure, (2) cultural arena, (3) social media influences, (4) total institution, (5) kinship factors, (6) identity crises and psychological factors, (7) susceptibility and naïveté, (8) kidnapping or forced recruitment, (9) easy prey for suicide missions, and (10) gender-­related and sexual reasons. For example, in regard to the first reason, calamitous structural conditions that spark conflict allow terrorists to exploit disaffected children as low-cost, expendable warriors. Large hordes of hungry, naïve, and malleable youths are trained to kill the enemy without mercy. Ravaging conflicts, weakened state structures, financial instability, and infinite opportunities for child recruitment invigorate the trend of child militant labor (Sullivan 2005). An overarching conclusion of these ten reasons is that child terrorists are not born. Rather, they are made and shaped in various ways. They “learn to want to be a part of a violent group, either with or without the knowledge and support of their families” (Bloom 2019, p. 1). This book explored the extent of children’s involvement in terrorism across five main categories: child jihadists, child terrorists in Africa and Latin America, child separatist terrorists, and White child supremacists. Introduced in Chaps. 3, 4, and 5, these classifications were organized in this manner because they consist of the vast majority of child terrorists in the world (both past and present). This book specifically examined children’s transition from nonviolent citizens to terrorists to disillusioned individuals to peace activists. By its very nature, examining their stories and testimonies through a thematic analysis means that the researcher had a desire to probe the processes of personal change within such individuals. Thematic analysis is useful for summarizing essential features of a large dataset by creating codes. After the coding process was done, data was collated to each relevant code (Vaismoradi et al. 2013). Four themes provided a framework for encapsulating the researcher’s analytic observations of the 24 case studies. As such, the four themes of “metamorphosis,” “terrorist behavior,” “disillusionment,” and “anti-terrorist behavior” were present across all cases and outlined a progressive transition from joining a terrorist movement to fighting the very crimes that initially made them an immense peril to humankind.

9.1 On Being Child Terrorists As we have seen, in many instances, children are easy to abduct or forced into a terrorist organization, especially if they live in unprotected villages. This was the case with most of the African child terrorists in this study—as expressed clearly by

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Grace Akallo, Junior Nzita Nsuami, Mohamed Sidibay, and China Keitetsi—and some of the Latin American ones (e.g., Sara Morales and Mario Escobar). In the event that they join an extremist movement voluntarily, it may be out of revenge or due to ideological ideals that were inculcated in them. As explained by Khairul Ghazali, it was “natural” for children “to want revenge” for their “parents’ deaths.” As he continued, this is why they hated the Indonesian state “because it [the state] is against the Caliphate.” What many children experience upon joining such organizations is a type of education where orders that come from an unchallenged authority are framed in a way that these orders can never be turned down for any reason—as it is the case with commands from authoritarian parents. This results in disturbed but alarmingly stronger children. A great number of the 24 former child terrorists in this study learned violence through a total institution. Terrorist leaders understood the importance of initiating the indoctrination process at a young age, when ideas inculcated in children can be controlled and make them even more susceptible. Indoctrination programs through intense training and instruction generally precede both voluntary and forced recruitment endeavors, as was the case for Maajid Nawaz as part of his Hizb al-Tahrir training. Osman, the leader, could respond to any question, which was part of the process. It was aimed at preparing future fighters to commit terrible atrocities against Western targets. Hefty psychological pressure was placed on child recruits. Under these circumstances, terrorist training represented a process of “initiation” marked by (1) erasing the links of the children with their relatives and friends and (2) calibrating them as agents of violence and only violence. In many cases, the “initiation” procedure is to dehumanize the children and transform them into killing machines. Numerous statements provided by the African and Latin American subjects point to the fact that they were trained to be killing machines early on. Sometimes, recruits are given their first terrorist assignment without delay; they are given a machine gun to kill a peer on the spot. To save his or her own life, this order has to be carried out. The purpose is to render them fearless and remorseless for the atrocity committed. It is important to note that not all children radicalized through intense education and indoctrination are automatically separated from their family and friends. For some of the former child jihadists and separatist terrorists in this study, they were even encouraged by their own parents to be terrorists. Children who are socialized into animosity and savagery have a more difficult time detaching themselves from it or even growing aware that they have been programmed into hating the Other since their childhood. This was certainly the case for many former child terrorists in this study. For example, the former White child supremacists who were socialized into hate and violence oozed a form of symbolic terrorism from which it was difficult to extricate themselves: “I had tattoos all over my body. I had Vikings tattooed on my chest, a swastika on my middle finger and ‘Sieg Heil’ on the inside of my bottom lip, which was the Hitler salute,” “I recruited White people who were as angry as I was,” “I became a prolific Holocaust–denier,” and “We thought that White people were superior to everyone else.” The testimonies given by the child jihadists also reflect a type of socialization into extremism that

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was meant to stick with the recruits for a lifetime. In the words of Mosab Hassan Yousef, “Most of us prisoners were Muslims affiliated with Hamas or Islamic Jihad, so this was our regular routine anyway.” Taken as a whole, child terrorism is such a multifaceted phenomenon that there is no clear profile of what a child terrorist is.

9.2 On Being Peace Activists Upon experiencing a wake-up call, reaching sufficient maturity, growing disgusted with their daily tasks, or disagreeing with the way the struggle was moving, the 24 subjects decided to turn over a new leaf and become anti-terrorist activists. An important objective of this book was to shed light on the way peace is articulated and put into practice by actors whose conceptualization of child terrorism is an experienced one, beyond ethnic, national, and political borders. All 24 subjects appear to begin their journeys toward peace as accidental activists due to their own life circumstances during childhood. Prior to their disillusionment and subsequent peace orientations, they were not involved in social or political activism. Nevertheless, the subjects have evolved into lifelong activists today (except for the one who was killed in India). All have unquestionably made peace activism their existential concerns for several or many years. They have either created community-­ oriented initiatives, delivered lectures at public institutions, and NGOs like the United Nations or shared their testimonies through their own autobiographies and subsequent interviews in the media. Certain groups tend to care for prevention, education, and reintegration of former combatants into society more than other groups. “Social justice activism” is a term applied by certain commentators to the type of fervent work accomplished by the 24 subjects in this study. Social justice activism has similar objectives as peace activism: human rights for all and the end to violence (Moradi and Grzanka 2017). A more pejorative term is “social justice warriors,” which denotes a person’s desire for personal validation and success rather than any genuinely felt conviction (Phelan 2019). Based on the 260 verbal and written statements across 20 tables, this would be an inaccurate and disparaging representation of their true motives because there is no evidence pointing to that direction. In like fashion, some of the subjects have a unique approach to peace activism. For example, Mario Escobar is the archetype of a literary activist. Literary activism cultivates the idea of peace through literature (e.g., fiction writing, poetry, etc.). The aim is to get audiences to form communities of participants in order to help reduce suffering in the world (Chaudhuri 2017). Escobar has expressed his desire to end violence by means of publishing poems that center on human beings deserving freedom and human rights. What also emerged in this study were the experiences of former child combatants who were incarcerated after being caught. During their imprisonment, many of them played key roles in the advancement of peace-oriented initiatives, which have not only facilitated their reintegration into their own societies; they have also contributed to a broader process of post-terrorist regeneration and social development for others across the world. Activist identities are often linked to narratives of how

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to enact a desired or idealized behavior and how to live an honorable life (Kelly and Breilinger 1995). To individuals who assume activist identities, political engagement is an opportunity to articulate fundamental moral convictions and to fulfill promises of reciprocity, equality, and altruism (Polletta and Jasper 2001). Peace activism is not only about championing the end of violence during and after conflict (e.g., through symbolic peace representation at NGOs or through the media); it can also be used to put an end to the physical and structural violence coming from terrorist groups. The fourth theme, “anti-terrorist behavior,” was manifestly a hands-on endeavor for some of the former child jihadists, who eventually switched sides by joining anti-terrorist units as spies, informants, or special forces. Examples are evident through statements such as “Passing back information [as a spy for MI6], that’s what my primary objective was, to collect as much information as possible” and “I would put on an army uniform and join Israel’s special forces in order to liberate Gilad Shalit.” No matter how symbolic or “hands-on,” the subjects’ experiences with peace activism are predicated upon the notion that the systemic forms of child terrorism are reflections of a deeper systemic indifference toward children. This is particularly worrisome in developing societies such as those in Africa and Latin America.

9.3 Theoretical Implications In this section, the author will look at all the theories that were described in Chap. 2—social learning theory, cultural evolution (CE) theory, performance theory, and social identity theory (SIT)—and Chap. 6, social movement theory (SMT), framing theory, and social representations theory (SRT). The purpose is to relate each of the theories to fundamental arguments and conclusions about child terrorism and peace activism within this manuscript. It also gives readers an indication as to where the four themes of “metamorphosis,” “terrorist behavior,” “disillusionment,” and “anti-­ terrorist behavior” belong within the entire framework of this analysis.

9.3.1 Social Learning Theory Albert Bandura’s (1977) social learning theory postulates that new behaviors can be learned through the observation and imitation of others. In all cases within the thematic analysis, learning and social behavior took place in a social context. One of the former child jihadists said it best: “I began to spend hours upon hours on the extremist forums talking to a handful of extremists all about my grievances and difficulties adjusting to the United States.” One of the former African child terrorists said it even better: “I witnessed murder for the first time when I was only five years old.” The motivation of individuals for some specific behavior is not only influenced by psychological factors but also by structural or societal factors (Fayyaz 2017).

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What this also indicates is that social learning goes hand in hand with the metamorphosis stage toward becoming a terrorist. Social learning of a violent ideology is often made easier when the whole apparatus is ideologically slanted. Enter the excerpt taken from an interview with one of the former Latin American terrorists: “Whatever the situation, we always took this task seriously and observed the lessons we had learned of first honoring the thought of Marx, Lenin, Mao, and Gonzalo.” In addition to the observation of behavior, learning is also facilitated through the observation of rewards and punishments (Rotter 1954). The punishment could happen if the child leaves the group or if he or she does not kill the enemy. Consider the statement by one of the African subjects, Mohamed Sidibay: “Kidnapped by rebels, I lived in a world where my captors made me fear not God but children, high on drugs, wielding AK–47 rifles taller than them, and forced to kill or be killed.”

9.3.2 Cultural Evolution (CE) Theory Cultural evolution (CE) theory explains how human beings essentially create cultures by transmitting information to others and reinvent their ways of thinking and acting in the world (Boyd and Richerson 1985). CE theory examines the social transmission of knowledge, the method by which information is passed from person to person via social learning mechanisms (Mesoudi and Whiten 2008). Think of the following three excerpts: “They gave the boys lots of training in handling explosives and me in intelligence gathering,” “I learned to refill a bullet chamber instead of an ink cartridge, and I mastered the ‘skill’ of spraying a wall with lead before I could write 1, 2, and 3,” and “Nobody becomes Adolf Hitler overnight; there is a learning curve, a progression, a desensitization.” Both the metamorphosis and terrorist behavior stages are obvious through these three examples because they portray how social transmission of dangerous behaviors is facilitated within total institutions. CE theory can also be applied to the domain of peace activism, particularly regarding the concept of social change communication. Social change communication looks at communication as a long-term strategy to induce attitudinal change within audiences in hopes of sculpting resilient futures and emboldening communities (Dutta 2011). In the context of this manuscript, it would be communication based on the cultural transmission of peaceful concepts such as fairness, justice, and collective action. For instance, in the following statements—“I am now dedicating my life to advocacy and service through my work with the Education” and “It is very important that girl child soldiers are reintegrated into the community otherwise”—the former child terrorists attempt to transmit social and cultural messages of activism, understanding, education, and reintegration to various publics. Every communicative decision, from every source, adds to the type of collective actions and frames that peace activists want to live by. This is why they seek to infuse their communication policies and responsibilities with positive frameworks of equality, political engagement, and peaceful values (Nos Aldás and Calatayud 2013).

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9.3.3 Performance Theory Performance theory assumes that one’s identity is built by both the individual and communal and social processes. The performer never builds his or her identity on his or her own; rather, performance is constructed and empowered by both performer and external forces like communities or audiences (Alexander 2004). Performance is a disputed term because it is interpreted beyond theatrics and regarded as essential to life and culture. It can be powerful during the indoctrination of children. Remember the quote by former IRA member Henry Robinson: “I couldn’t wait to start killing British soldiers. I was in Catholic schools, where we’d recite the names of the 32 counties of Ireland (counting the six of the North) as indoctrination.” Here, rote learning (i.e., intense recitation) functions as performance as indoctrination. This process functions through the application of particular frames of actions—some basic guidelines for what should actually occur during a performance. It also includes the opportunity to identify roles, settings, sequences of action, and so on (Cossu 2010). Performance also prescribes rules of conduct by which the performers have to abide. Rituals are particular modes of action for such rules of conduct. Rituals help solidify coherence and stability in a group (Turner 1968). They create magical moments to embolden in-group members before taking specific actions. This is a throwback to the notion of positive cult, that powerful social environment born out of the transition from profane to sacred space (Polzer 2014). Remember Junior Nzita Nsuami’s routine experience of rituals before embarking on terrorist missions: “Our recruiters succeeded in awakening in us the animal instinct that was slumbering there. In magic ceremonies they convinced us that we were invincible, but the reality always showed us that the opposite was true.” In this instance, the positive cult generated a collective emotion of intense effervescence that defied any rationality. The objective was principally about social cohesion and the erasure of individual thinking.

9.3.4 Social Identity Theory (SIT) Based on the tenets of SIT, within a given group, there is frequently ample agreement on in-group and out-group prototypes. SIT assumes that the in-group may be threatened by the out-groups—groups that are standing in opposition to the in-­ group. Members agree that they are like this and the Other is like that. Self-­ categorization engenders compliance with in-group norms (normative behavior) because it sucks the self into the in-group prototype. Conformity is not superficial behavioral submission or acquiescence but a profound process whereby individuals adopt and enact the group’s prototype (Abrams et al. 1990). Within the notion of in-group conformity emerges the notion of kinship. At the core of kinship are matters of collective identities and self-concepts that can change an individual’s behaviors in many ways.

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This is mirrored in manifold statements by the subjects in this study: “[Upon joining the terrorist movement] I could feel an excitement growing in my stomach. It was like a brand–new game,” “I was socialized into a system based on White supremacy,” and “Extremist groups offered a sense of belonging, a sense of camaraderie, meaning, and significance.” Kinship with in–group members is often entwined with issues of deep “moral obligations” (Hillygus 2005)—killing without restraint or “sticking a gun at someone” (as the aforementioned Henry Robinson would say). These moral obligations would not be met otherwise. SIT is predicated upon the belief that high emphasis on in-group conformity creates sheeple—when important life decisions are directed by others (Potter and Estren 2012). Out-groups are polarized away, which ultimately creates an “us vs. them” dichotomy. When groups are in conflict and internalize extreme actions, it is generally as a reaction to the lack of resources, rights, or equality that their own groups have faced. In this event, aggressive action becomes an identity-mediated response as a group (Bar–Tal 2000). Terrorist actions against the out-group, then, are not delegitimized and can even be encouraged by the in-group because they are both moral and justifiable (Haslam and Reicher 2007). In the realm of terrorism, the “us vs. them” dichotomy can give rise to dehumanization. The out-group is perceived to be invading the in-group’s physical or psychological space. The higher the out-group’s values differ from those of the in-group and judged to be inferior, the higher the dehumanization (Schwartz et al. 2009). Whether it was a child jihadist (“I came to live—and was prepared to die—to counter what I saw as American hegemony on a global scale”), a child separatist terrorist (“I couldn’t wait to start killing British soldiers”), or a White child supremacist (“They hated black people and Jews and were also virulently homophobic”), the in-group was pushing members to displace their hatred and frustration onto the out-group. In both performance theory and SIT, whether through ritualistic behavior or forced in-group conformity, it can be easily deduced that the metamorphosis and terrorist behavior stages are in full swing here. The idea of total institution is also relevant in that terrorist groups transform new recruits into similarly situated people who ought to be separated from the wider community (i.e., the giant out-group) (Goffman 1961).

9.3.5 Social Movement Theory (SMT) Social movement theory (SMT) rests on the premise that leaders or communicators seek to sway groups of people, for example, by changing the law or the policy process. They often want to reform systematic patterns of social behavior in the process (Morris and Mueller 2012). In this thematic analysis, collective victimhood was a massive motivator for launching a movement against child terrorism and violence at large. For example, let us look at the following quotes: “What they fail to understand is that they’ve been brainwashed by someone’s ideology,” “It is very important that girl child soldiers are reintegrated into the community otherwise they are left to fend for themselves,” and “For the future, I hope that all children have equal

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opportunity to succeed in life—in other words, that their childhoods are all protected and they have the chance to grow up safely.” The common denominator is the emphasis on large groups of people to be saved. The subjects want to create a peace activist movement for all humankind. In many cases, the subjects were former victims of child abuse themselves. Understanding the connection between victimhood and actual activism (instead of overarching conciliatory attitudes) is crucial, considering the critical role of activism in smoothing the progress of social change (Shnabel et al. 2017). Curtin and McGarty’s (2016) claim that “without activists to organize them, collective acts such as campaigns of protest, are unlikely to take place (p. 228).” Activists often aspire to promote peacemaking through “coalition-building” so as to build an inclusive narrative where the notion of vulnerability is the quintessential human equalizer, drawing attention to the child in particular need of protection. In other words, vulnerability is the “frame alignment” with which audiences should identify. Some of the 24 subjects appeared to have formed an inter-communal movement with others who were in a similar predicament during their childhood. They have shared a peace space by holding joint meetings or conferences. For instance, as discussed in Chap. 7, former White child supremacists Angela King and Christian Picciolini co-founded Life After Hate in 2011, an NGO that helps members of racial terrorist organizations to denounce them. Life After Hate also specializes in helping people love themselves and accepting the Other, regardless of skin color, faith, or sexual orientation (Picciolini 2020). While Angela was incarcerated and after Christian became disenchanted with committing crimes against people he had never met before, both individuals began to question the hateful ideology that had so intoxicated them. The application of key SMT principles within the framework of this study conjures up the third and fourth stages: disillusionment and anti-terrorist behavior.

9.3.6 Framing Theory Framing theory hypothesizes that communicators (e.g., speakers, political leaders, reporters, etc.) employ schemas, images, or mental representations to portray “what exists, what happens, and what matters” (Gitlin 1980, p. 6). To mobilize the public, communicators frame their missions and objectives in a manner that resonates with their target audience. This is where the aforementioned concept of “frame alignment” comes into play. Frame alignment increases cultural resonance with audiences (Ellingson 1995). Let us bring up an important example from the study: “We have to have a tolerant mutual dialogue. This is where we need to bring our young people back to the surface.” Here, former jihadist Yasmin Mulbocus associates the idea of tolerance and mutual dialogue with youths, as it is a popular approach in the Western world today. Peace activism is appealing to many youths in the present day because of the notions of acceptance, dialogue, and improving the world.

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Similarly, Junior Nzita Nsuami’s personal statement, “I also ask that no one reject these former child soldiers. A child’s place is in the family, the school, and not in armed forces or groups waging war,” is likely to be received positively by a great many people in the West because it fits the frame of various audiences’ existing cultural understandings and sentiments about children. Let us ponder at the public declaration made by former White supremacist Angela King: The best thing we can do is keep educating people—keep these things in the spotlight. What’s needed is compassion and kindness, but also dedication to making sure people’s human rights and civil rights are respected (cited in Helfand–Rogers 2017, p. A1).

King uses a collective action frame (CAF) as a standard set of beliefs to motivate people into joining collective efforts against racism and in favor of social change (Klandermans 1997). “Keep educating people” is very broad in scope, but it can raise consciousness and mobilize social movements that have a penchant for improving the world through education.

9.3.7 Social Representations Theory (SRT) Social representations theory (SRT) rests on the premise that people are constantly and actively engaged in the creation and communication of shared social knowledge (Moscovici 2008). Social representations provide a “way of acquiring and communicating knowledge, a way that creates realities and common sense” (Moscovici 1981, p. 186). The same example by Yasmin Mulbocus in the previous subsection, “We have to have a tolerant mutual dialogue. This is where we need to bring our young people back to the surface,” is also relevant here because, as an anti-terrorism activist today, Yasmin wants to open channels of communication with youths in a type of discourse that represents and values their group. As she expressed through another quote: “What we need to do is work constantly, consistently, with these young people.” Based on the tenets of SRT, such social representation would entail more than passive social transmission of knowledge; it actually translates into an active process in which youths are individually and socially committed to constructing and communicating peace in everyday interactions. Let us briefly examine another Angela King’s strategy toward peace: We are hoping to open up a platform for not just small team of us doing this, but for a large group [that can] prevent young people from making the kinds of choices we made (cited in Helfand–Rogers, 2007, p. A1).

Moscovici (2008) states that language and thought are totally united in the construction of shared understanding and knowledge. In Angela King’s example, the emphasis is on a certain communication style: “humanization” through interpersonal communication in order to find common ground. According to the principles of SRT, communication can be used centrally for mutual understanding and for boosting motivation toward reaching a specific objective.

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9.4 Solutions: General Perspectives This last section of the book offers solutions to the problems of child terrorism. The author of the manuscript is fully aware that other academics, practitioners, and activists have provided a great deal of effort to stop or decrease instances of child terrorism, but they have only achieved limited desirable outcomes. This section sheds light on the issue by separating solutions into three categories: general perspectives, reintegration perspectives, and legal perspectives. In 2017 alone, more than 10,000 children were liberated from the ranks of militant factions in the Central African Republic, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Myanmar, Nigeria, Somalia, and South Sudan. UNICEF reports that, between 2014 and 2019, more than 55,000 children were discharged from militant and armed groups across the world. Yet, only 70% (42,000) of these boys and girls had the opportunity to be reintegrated into society. Offering appropriate, viable, and reliably financed reintegration programs is important for the survival of these children because they need the required support to regain their old selves and fully function within their communities (United Nations 2019). Some of these children do not dare ask their municipal or federal governments for help out of fear of being punished, imprisoned, or shuffled off to the place where terrorist groups are operating. Instead, these children opt to return directly to their villages or hometowns, enduring the profound effects of post-terrorism individually. These children do not benefit from either psychosocial or financial assistance. Several NGOs, in concert with the media establishment, have published reports about children who could not extricate themselves from terrorist movements. Accordingly, a certain number of them have been forced to escape their predicament and return to their communities surreptitiously.

9.4.1 Naming and Shaming? For some child terrorists, leaving a terrorist organization can be almost as traumatic as terrorism itself. Whereas some cannot remember or fathom what normal societal life is like, others suffer severe physical wounds. Most undergo short-term psychological trauma—and perhaps drug addiction too. Returning child terrorists may learn that one or both parents are dead or may have migrated to other places. Parents may be reluctant to accepting a returning child whose persona is completely different, especially if he or she forcefully or willingly committed atrocities—even on his or her own family (remember the statements about the LRA). Often, these children have a hard time developing community relationships upon their return. They have to cope with guilt and shame. They are pigeonholed as different or disloyal, which, in turn, exacerbates their feeling of isolation. Within their own communities, they are castigated for having ruined lives, homes, property, and the social fabric itself. Those who experience high degrees of isolation are more susceptible to being addicted or in abusive relationships (Felton 2008).

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“Naming and shaming” consists of publicly declaring that an individual, group, or nation has committed a wrongdoing. It certainly discourages some type of activity from occurring again. At the national and international level, naming and shaming is best used when condemning human rights violations (Rousseau 2018). Human rights advocacy groups, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have used naming and shaming as a key element of their campaigns to attract attention to the dangers of child terrorism. These groups publish their own reports on particular conflicts, and a collaboration between them, called the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child soldiers, intermittently issues a comprehensive examination of such exploitation of children worldwide (Felton 2008). Many other organizations— ranging from the Heroic Children of Chapultepec (Mexico), the Battle of Children (Paraguay), Luis Alfonso and Brenda (Nicaragua) to Unicef Briefs and Graça Machel (1996)—have condemned, at international conferences, abuse against children in conflict and terrorist situations (Carmona et al. 2012). Some evidence points to the fact that naming and shaming can decrease atrocities because it forces states to improve their human rights records (see DeMeritt 2012; Krain 2012). However, naming and shaming does not necessarily produce the intended consequences. It is crucial that worldwide communities substitute children’s sense of shame with a sense of guilt. The rationale is that guilt is often more socially constructive and individually beneficial than shame. Guilt leads to self-­ control and empathy. On the other hand, shame inspires sufferers to retaliate both at others and oneself (Akst 2010). Shame is a concept that is already used abundantly by terror propagandists to indoctrinate recruits. In the study by Peracha et al. (2012), which was mentioned in Chaps. 2 and 3, it was reported that the terror propagandists’ doctrines relied on persuading the child recruits that dying as a martyr would be their greatest moment and that they would suffer shame life if they backpedaled from the suicide mission training or acted otherwise. Likewise, Tangney and Dearing (2002) suggest that feeling guilty about particular behaviors seem to guide people in the right moral direction, leading to productive, responsible conduct in many important domains. In contrast, shame fosters counterproductive behavior that can be regarded as a failed attempt to diminish or escape the most disciplinary or castigatory moral action. People who are made to feel guilty about particular behaviors are less prone than their non-guilt counterparts to perpetrating destructive, impetuous, immoral, and unlawful activities.

9.4.2 Financial Assistance? Governments and humanitarian agencies managing post-terrorism reintegration programs should be careful about giving cash to ex-child militants. Instead, providing the latter with clothing, food, employment training, medical assistance, and psychological therapy is more suitable, experts say, but in many situations making cash payment to them is not. “We know from many different contexts that when young people in these situations are given cash, bad things happen,” declares Michael

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Wessells, Professor of Psychology at Randolph–Macon College in Virginia, who has examined child militants in Africa and Asia. As he continues, “commanders sometimes grab the cash and use it to recruit other children, so it runs counter to the intended purpose.” Financial assistance can also be equated with a cash reward for serving in an illicit armed group, which can be dangerous. However, it is conceivable that cash payments are worthwhile if they are methodically and carefully administered by the state to guarantee the financial benefits to former child militants (cited in Felton 2008).

9.5 Solutions: Reintegration Perspectives If child terrorists are not killed or caught, they should be granted adequate psychological, socioeconomic, and educational prospects for reintegration. Reintegration is a course of action that serves to restore and turn damaged relationships into peaceful initiatives. It is predicated on the belief that former child terrorists are not a Lost Generation but an essential resource for developing societal peace (Wessells and Kostelny 2018). Methods to reintegrate (or rehabilitate) a child must center on his or her new sense of belonging, completely detached from violence and extremism. This can be concretized through a complete internalization of human rights principles. Based on the core principles of SIT, rejection of the terrorist’s in-group identity is the first step in the direction of successful reintegration. Now, readers need to be cognizant of the fact that children who performed their roles as members of terrorist in-groups to the fullest present the greatest challenge. Such level of identification with the in-group is actually the most revealing sign in regard to the degree of violence that a child is likely to enact during the reintegration process—certainly more so than a situation where the child was forced to kill another person (Schauer and Elbert 2010).

9.5.1 Child Terrorists vs. Other Offenders Societal reintegration for children who initially embraced an in-group identity linked to violent extremism or who committed acts of terrorism is highly complex. For this reason, any attempt to reintegrate former child terrorists should be situated within a well-defined security or law enforcement framework. As governments are taking actions vis-à-vis returning child militants, and as the juvenile element of the terrorist plague has proved to be increasingly relevant, it is imperative to understand how child terrorists differ from regular juvenile criminal offenders (van der Heide and Geenen 2017). By the same token, the ideological process of terrorist indoctrination is also much more impactful (and dangerous) than the one used in soldiering or military training. Incentives for societal reintegration that work for adults might not necessarily be transferable to children. Of course, these approaches are not

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totally different from each other, as some elements of one may be located in the other. Their commonalties will be more noticeable when children come from large terrorist organizations that have used strategies and tactics typically associated with traditional armies (Pašagić 2019).

9.5.2 Age and Attitude Readers should also consider the following perspective, though some may not agree. Reintegration efforts for juvenile terrorist offenders (including those returning from radical countries) can be contingent on two primary assumptions: age and attitude. Young children (0 to 9 years old), who were born in terrorist zones or introduced into terrorism by their parents from the cradle, should primarily be considered victims. For older children, underlying influences like brainwashing, training, and subsequent involvement in terrorist activities are more likely to contribute to their child militancy. This necessitates an approach that transcends the “victim” perspective. Academics and practitioners alike must establish the extent to which these children were socialized into terrorist violence and whether they would manage their experiences more internally or externally (van der Heide and Geenen 2017). To best ensure rehabilitative efforts for them, it is also important to assess their attitude toward violence and the degree to which they have internalized terrorist norms and behaviors, in comparison with adult terrorists. In due course, it is not worth reinventing the wheel, especially if the sentence and imprisonment of child terrorists remain low. Nevertheless, reintegration is considered highly efficient when adapted to individual needs. Policymakers ought to differentiate the needs associated with juvenile offenders from those associated with terrorist offenders while, at the same time, duly abiding by international laws and human rights standards in any anti-terrorist or counterterrorist undertaking (van der Heide and Geenen 2017).

9.5.3 Education and Deradicalization We need to increase our focus on educational reforms to provide systematic education for former child terrorists. Especially important is the focus on those individuals who were brainwashed in terrorist schools or total institutions. For example, such youths could be trained on both community development and technical education for skilled employment. It will prepare them for job opportunities locally and internationally. In like fashion, education and training for youths and school-age kids can be reinforced by organizing visits in other geographic areas and developing interactions with other communities (see Betancourt et  al. 2008; Wessells 2005). Integration of children coming back from dangerous regions necessitates the involvement of a wide array of actors from different fields. Using the services of

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ex-militants with community-based experience can also be beneficial when attempting to rehabilitate youths. Security and immigration agents should handle the asylum process and treatment of asylum seekers. Counselors should be employed to reeducate and, in the process, deradicalize these former wrongdoers (Bertram 2015). There is potential that a radicalized child terrorist could self-deradicalize through digital or online education. Introduction to specific counter-radicalization narratives can be added to person-to-person deradicalization programs. The benefit of online deradicalization is parallel to the advantageous intimacy of digital radicalization. Both can be done in isolation, can be effortlessly accessed, and offer a degree of anonymity and privacy to the person accessing it. Online deradicalization should lay emphasis on counterterrorist messages. In exploiting the capability of online self-­ deradicalization or self-disengagement, what is of utmost significance is the content of the counter-narrative; it must produce the same message and impact as any traditional counter-radicalization strategy (Matusitz et  al. 2019). Global social media can be detrimental anywhere, but they can also be instruments exploited for good everywhere. They are easily accessible, as opposed to military force, making such media more open to humanitarian intervention (Warshel 2019).

9.5.4 Two Case Studies Let us examine the first case study of reintegration that had some degree of success. In 1988, Save the Children launched its Children and War Program in Mozambique. The Program’s main focus was on 40 boy terrorists (aged 6–16) who had been snatched from their families by RENAMO, the terrorist group described in Chap. 4. The boys were trained to kill and, in many instances, were encouraged to do so. Ultimately, the boys escaped or were freed from military forces. After these boys were imprisoned for a short period, the government moved on to place them in the Lhanguene Center in Maputo (the capital city). Save the Children was requested to offer psychological and social assistance. Reintegration efforts at the Lhanguene Center centered on four main pillars amalgamated within all Center activities: institution of safety and proper codes of conduct, recreation of self-regulatory and impulse control procedures, championing of security versus survival-seeking actions, and endorsement of meaning-making. Moreover, a family finding and reunification database, community sensitization programs, traditional rituals, and apprenticeships were established to simplify the reintegration of the boys into their groups (Boothby and Thomson 2013). Nevertheless, with this said, readers should not assume that reintegration or rehabilitation of former child terrorists is an easy task. In regard to the second case study here, one of the largest empirical studies on demobilization and reintegration of child terrorists was conducted in Sierra Leone. The study revealed that propagandists, male fighters, and younger former terrorists have a harder time to willingly break free from their units (Humphreys and Weinstein 2007). The longer the time spent with the terrorist group, the less likely he or she leaves that group. Put simply,

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such children are harder to reintegrate into normal society because they identify themselves more as members than victims of the terrorist group (Boothby 2006). More importantly, the earlier the recruitment into the group, the higher his or her appetite for destruction and killing (Weierstall et al. 2013).

9.5.5 Helping Them Though Community Resilience Resilience research concentrates on positive signs for mental health. For example, optimism and self-esteem contribute to better well-being in spite of adversities (Gustavsson et al. 2017). Resilience does not necessarily refer to a person’s capacity to endure adversity. Rather, it is a person’s capacity to access the resources that he or she needs to maintain well-being and the ability of his or her community and state to provide what he or she needs in a manner that is meaningful. The procedure consists of both navigation and negotiation; the person’s resilience depends on how well his or her community provides important resources when risk factors are present. Klasen et al. (2010) describe a resilient individual as one who looks for a meaningful purpose of life, believes that he or she could influence life experiences, and trusts that he or she can grow from both positive and negative events in life. By extension, resilience is also the combination of resources in his or her milieu, on top of personality and personal decisions. As one can see, resilience not only pertains to a person’s ability to bounce back from difficulties but also his or her capacity to access important resources thanks to the surrounding community and the government (Ungar 2012). Community resilience, then, is reflected through support and efficient interventions in a person’s surroundings, helping him or her contend with hardships and survive and grow from adversity (Ungar 2011). Communities would be essential in constructing the world around former child terrorists because resilience would be made possible by benefiting from the opportunities offered by those communities. They represent support mechanisms that can encourage and bolster children’s capacity to adapt, deal with, and regain their old selves. When communities help them navigate through hardships or adverse environments, the outcomes are more positive (Wessells 2016).

9.5.6 Preventing Recidivism Recidivism is complex and multidimensional. It contains social, psychological, ideological, and even financial connotations. Benjamin Franklin once said, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” It has been documented that boys raised in violent milieus have a higher tendency to commit wrongdoings or take extreme actions. Without intervention, child witnesses of genocide or terrorism are more likely to espouse this violent lifestyle (Herman 1992). Though removing conflict from humankind is delusional, counterproductive, and based on false premises

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about the impact of the mass media, scholars and practitioners alike could still contemplate viable solutions because preventing recidivism remains of utmost importance. The challenge is that no clear profile of a former child terrorist exists, even when trying to return to normalcy. Wessells (2005) argues that peace education can decrease instances of recidivism because such education is an essential component of the aforementioned reintegration of former child terrorists. Whether through traditional or digital media, peace education counters any possible inclination toward committing violence and terrorism. From a post-conflict perspective, effective peace education has a higher practical than instructive element. As such, it promotes compassion, collaboration, reconciliation, and community processes for resolving conflict in a nonviolent fashion. These processes also contribute to the prevention of children’s use of racist or hateful language.

9.6 Solutions: Legal Perspectives The notion of “child terrorist” seems to confront moral senses. While “child” is vulnerable, “terrorist” is inherently damaging. Yet, under many international laws, calling a child a terrorist does not make his or her actions less vile or prevent the authorities from regarding him or her as a criminal. Current international laws, in and of themselves, cannot totally explain why children were and continue to be involved in terrorism. We already know that Chap. 2 offers ten reasons for child terrorism, but we can restate a few points. For example, the phenomenon of child terrorism is due, in part, to a shortage of fighting forces when adult units have been exhausted (Wessells 2005). Others defend the occurrence of child terrorists as a reflection of cultural propensities (Kaplan 1994). Patriarchal traditions, cultural initiations, and rites of passage to adulthood are also valid reasons to explain the phenomenon (Reno 1995; Richards 1996).

9.6.1 Considering International Humanitarian Laws An important challenge is to make international humanitarian laws known, acknowledged, comprehended, and enforced in places where children are conscripted into illicit armed conflicts. In addition to consolidating international laws and giving them more visibility, it is crucial to improve local understandings and norms about “childhood” and “child protection” from terrorist recruitment. Local communities and civic groups must interject themselves into monitoring conflicts and providing a great deal of effort to uphold children’s rights. Synchronizing global and local strategies can foster an environment that has an optimal level of protection against terrorist recruitment of children, particularly in places where such protection is indispensable (Honwana 2008). International law pertaining to children’s rights is

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far-reaching but is primarily based on two treaties that continue to be most relevant today, though we should focus primarily on the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). One specific CRC article deals with children whose liberty has been denied: Article 37 calls on states or governments to separate detained children from detained adults “unless it is considered in the child’s best interest not to do so.” It further requires that children be granted the right to access outside communication with relatives and to legal counsel (cited in Wilson 2012, p. 42).

9.6.2 Prosecuting Adult Trainers Too Those individuals who are recruiting, training, and deploying child terrorists should be indicted as war criminals (Jareg and McCallin 1993). This is not to diminish the fact that children can be perpetrators of acts of terrorism. The main point, though, is that those adults who recruit and exploit children as combatants or suicide bombers should be designated as terrorists and, thereby, be criminally charged. For instance, Somali pirates are disreputable for recruiting children during their terror campaigns (Jackson and Matusitz 2017). In regard to suicide bombing, because the child perpetrators in successful martyrdom missions are no longer alive to offer evidence, the only possibility would come from children who failed to detonate the suicide vest or IED and/or secondary sources of information. In any case, the adult who recruits and trains a child to be a walking bomb should be held accountable under the definition of terrorism (Olivier 2018). Accountability for such wrongdoings should also be on the adults choreographing the terrorist acts. If a child survives an unsuccessful suicide bombing, he or she would be held accountable under most laws, but he or she should also be used as a witness (not just being accused). These circumstances deflect attention away from the reality that these children are also victims of crime and manipulation. Hence, they should be entitled to protection under both domestic and international laws. Naturally, children should be stopped and protected before killing themselves (and those around them) in suicide attacks. Given the global move toward an overarching approach of human security, policymakers, stakeholders, and citizens at large should become more aware of how exploiting children is not only linked to suicide bombings, but it is also reason enough to afford them more human rights (Olivier 2018). Besides death and harm, the recruitment of children is even more problematic when one considers the psychological corollaries. When child combatants are admitted into psychiatric units for treatment, they display a vast array of conditions—from neurotic conditions like somatization, mental breakdown, and post-­ traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) to more acute reactive psychosis and malignant PTSD (Rosenbeck 1985). This turns children into total psychological and social wrecks. Based on recurrent observation, children are highly susceptible and impressionable during their formative years, inflicting long-lasting scarring on their developing personality. One clear symptom in their developing personality during a typical terrorist training is fearlessness, which adult recruiters cultivate and exploit. For this reason, terrorist leaders have shown their preference for child recruits

References

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because, in addition to their size and agility that make them ideal fighters, “they are less likely to question orders from adults and are more likely to be fearless, as they do not appreciate the dangers they face” (cited in Somasundaram 2005, p. 1270).

9.7 Final Thoughts What this book has demonstrated is that there are various roads to peace activism after a life of terrorism as a child. Through community involvement or by giving interviews/speeches within both regional and global media, those architects of peace not only shed light on the disillusionment that ultimately led them to walk away from terrorism; they also bravely challenged their past wrongdoings. It is the author’s hope that this work inspires lesser-known former child terrorists to take a stand and combat this global plague. By extension, the author believes that the very subject of this book is so relevant and crucial to improving humanity and bringing peace that other categories of defenseless and scarred children should speak out publicly—e.g., adults who were victims of gang rape during their childhood, those used as drug mules, those manipulated as coyotes to traffic illegal immigrants, or those serving as child slaves, along many others. As American self-help guru Napoleon Hill once said, “the only limitation is that which one sets up in one’s own mind” (Hill 2007). So, positive global change can only happen if humankind forges ahead and takes actions promptly.

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Index

A Africa, 2, 13, 28, 41, 67–71, 126, 132, 138, 194, 197, 205 Al-Qaeda, 12, 53–56, 58, 126, 127, 167, 173, 179, 181, 185 Anti-terrorist behavior, 5, 14, 118, 157–160, 174–185, 194, 197, 201 B Biographies, 154 Boko Haram, 13, 37, 38, 69–71 C Caliphate, 12, 57–62, 195 Case study, 1, 4, 12, 13, 19–20, 27–28, 31–33, 36, 39–40, 52–53, 55, 60, 70–71, 75–76, 95, 125–144, 155, 157, 185, 194, 207–208 Child, 1–14, 17–41, 49–62, 67–83, 89–101, 107–119, 125–144, 193–211 Childhood, 2, 5–8, 17, 30, 36, 97, 98, 130, 135, 157, 158, 162, 193, 195, 196, 201, 209, 211 Child jihadism, 12, 49–62 Child soldier, 9–12, 39, 75, 94, 132–135, 139, 140, 165, 177, 193, 198, 200, 202, 204 Child terrorism, 2–5, 8–11, 13, 14, 17, 57, 77, 81, 83, 93, 107–119, 125–144, 153, 154, 157, 158, 162, 163, 184, 194, 196, 197, 200, 203, 204, 209

Child terrorist experiences, 153 Child terrorists, 1–5, 9–11, 13, 19, 20, 31, 32, 37–39, 53, 61, 67, 72–73, 78, 81–83, 94, 107, 112, 114, 117, 125, 126, 132–135, 158, 160, 163, 184–186, 193–197, 203, 205–207, 209, 210 Coding, 156, 157, 194 Colombia, 3, 13, 39, 78, 81–83, 126, 137–140, 203 Culture, 2, 3, 7, 8, 19, 23–25, 27, 32, 39, 56, 67, 70, 83, 109, 113, 142, 193, 198, 199 D Data analysis, 13, 155, 160–184 Deradicalization, 128, 206–207 Dialogic communication, 13, 112–113, 115, 185 Disillusionment, 1, 4, 5, 14, 155, 157, 159, 167–174, 185, 194, 196, 197, 201, 211 F Former child terrorists, 1, 4, 5, 13, 41, 67, 83, 108, 109, 113, 125, 126, 137–141, 153–156, 160, 162, 165, 184, 185, 195, 198, 205–209, 211 Framing theory, 5, 13, 108, 115–118, 197, 201–202

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 J. Matusitz, From Child Terrorism to Peace Activism, Springer Series in Social Work and Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16582-5

215

216

Index

G Gender, 12, 17, 40–41, 62, 67, 69, 75, 77, 82, 93, 126 Global jihadist movement (GJM), 12, 49, 50, 126, 127 Grassroots activism, 13, 110–111

O Objectives, 3–6, 14, 29, 56, 62, 73, 77, 79, 89, 96, 109, 111–113, 116, 125, 130, 153, 154, 160, 174, 196, 197, 199, 201, 202 Osama bin Laden, 54, 58, 127

I Identity, 5, 7, 11, 12, 17, 20, 27, 30–36, 41, 49, 50, 53, 54, 67, 79, 80, 97, 110, 114, 117, 118, 129, 142, 153, 158, 162, 184, 194, 196, 197, 199–200, 205 Indoctrination, 3, 4, 12, 20, 24, 32, 38, 49, 54, 58, 61–62, 71, 73–74, 80, 92, 96, 184, 195, 199, 205 Irish Republican Army (IRA), 2, 13, 89, 93–96, 135, 136, 162, 185, 199 Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), 10, 12, 18, 21–23, 27–28, 31, 33, 38–41, 49, 50, 52, 56–62, 69, 131

P Pakistan, 2, 12, 19–20, 37, 49, 51–53, 129 Peace activism, 1, 5, 13, 14, 107–119, 125–144, 153, 157, 160, 164, 174, 185, 196–198, 201, 211 Peace activist experiences, 13 Peru, 4, 13, 78–81, 126, 138, 139 Political violence, 13, 18, 89, 90, 92 Positive peace, 13, 108

K Kidnapping, 12, 17, 37–38, 58, 74, 194 Kinship, 12, 17, 30–34, 39, 50, 53, 58, 182, 185, 194, 199, 200 Ku Klux Klan (KKK), 13, 89, 99–101 L Latin America, 2, 13, 78, 126, 138–141, 160, 162, 165, 170, 177, 182, 194, 197 Legality, 209–211 Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), 13, 69–70, 89–93, 135, 137 Life-changing moments, 13, 125 Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), 13, 74–76, 132, 203 M Metamorphosis, 4, 5, 14, 110, 157, 158, 160–162, 184, 185, 194, 197, 198, 200 Militias, 77, 97, 126, 132–134, 137, 138, 162 N Narratives, 13, 49, 92, 116–118, 130, 153–155, 161, 196, 201, 207 Negative peace, 108

R Recruitment, 3, 5, 11–13, 17, 18, 24, 28, 30, 35, 37–38, 41, 49, 51, 53, 58, 71, 74, 75, 79, 81, 82, 89, 91, 92, 96, 98–99, 132, 142, 158, 160, 162, 184, 194, 195, 208–210 Reintegration, 14, 78, 133, 134, 140, 177, 181, 185, 196, 198, 203–209 RENAMO, 13, 41, 71–76, 207 Revolutionary United Front (RUF), 13, 76–78, 133, 134 S Separatist terrorism, 13, 89, 95, 135 Sharia, 12, 27, 57, 61, 62 Shining Path, 13, 78–81, 138, 139, 185 Social justice activism, 196 Social media, 1, 12, 17, 22–25, 53, 58, 59, 98–100, 109, 114–115, 194, 207 Social movement theory (SMT), 5, 13, 108, 113–115, 197, 200–201 Social representations theory (SRT), 5, 13, 108, 118–119, 197, 202 Solution, 5, 11, 12, 14, 50, 108, 116, 130, 184, 193–211 Sri Lanka, 4, 12, 13, 39, 69, 89–92, 126, 137 State failure, 17–19 Stormfront, 13, 89, 99–100 Syria, 2, 3, 12, 21, 22, 38, 49–52, 58, 61, 62, 138

Index T Tamil Tiger, 2, 89, 91, 135 Terrorism, 1–7, 9–12, 18–24, 30, 32–34, 37, 51, 56–58, 83, 89, 90, 95–97, 107–109, 118, 126, 128, 131, 135, 137, 139, 142, 158–160, 164, 165, 172, 174, 177, 184, 185, 193–195, 200, 202–206, 208–211 Terrorist backgrounds, 13, 125 Terrorist behavior, 5, 14, 157–160, 164–167, 174–185, 194, 197, 198, 200, 201 Thematic analysis, 1, 4, 5, 13, 125, 153, 155–157, 169, 185, 194, 197, 200 Theme definition, 13, 155, 157–160

217 Theoretical implication, 5, 193–211 Total institution, 12, 17, 25–31, 34, 79–80, 92, 194, 195, 198, 200, 206 U United Nations, 9, 10, 37, 49, 51, 56–59, 61, 62, 67, 68, 70, 90, 133, 134, 160, 196, 203 W White supremacism, 31, 96–101, 144