B’Haram publishes photos of child soldiers
JANUARY 29, 2015 BY ADELANI ADEPEGBA
Members of Boko Haram sect
A media group associated with Boko Haram has published two images revealing child soldiers in a military training camp in North-East Nigeria, according to Newsweekmagazine.
The organisation, al-Urwa al-Wuthaqa, shows the children dressed in dark clothes with their heads covered with garments.
In one photo, the children are seeing aiming their guns while in another they are posing with their weapons.
The Long War Journal claimed that both young girls and boys were present in the photos, while some were holding AK47 assault rifles, others were holding cut-outs of weapons.
According to Max Abrahms, professor of political science at the Northwestern University and member at the Council of Foreign Relations, Boko Haram uses child soldiers in order to boost its membership.
“Terrorist organisations have power in numbers; the more members in the group, the greater its capability. There is a correlation between the membership size of a terrorist group and its ability to inflict bloodshed. Terrorist groups will often try to amass the most members as possible even if they’re young boys or girls,” he said.
Andrew Noakes, coordinator of the Nigeria Security Network, said the group had been struggling to recruit fighters, having “started alienating local people across northeast Nigeria with their brutal tactics.”
He said, “To fill the gap they’ve turned to recruiting children and recruiting in neighbouring countries.
“Boko Haram often uses its child soldiers and other forced recruits to form the first wave of an attack, before sending in the more experienced fighters to finish off operations.”
Abrahms also believed that because the group had ambitions of creating an eternal caliphate, in the same vein as the ISIS, it had been indoctrinating children in the hope that its message would be continued by the young soldiers.
“(ISIS) has ambitions in building up a caliphate for eternity. I think Boko Haram shares this aspiration certainly in Nigeria and the indoctrination of youths is important not just for fielding an army against the Nigerian military, but also breeding a future generation of like-minded sympathisers,” he said.
A number of other terrorist organisations have resorted to using child soldiers to boost their numbers. ISIS had previously released videos of children training at a combat camp, where they were seen being beaten by their instructor and taught how to use a gun.
