Al-Shabab recruiting Somali children as fighters and for forced marriage, report says
TORONTO— The armed Islamist group Al-Shabab is increasingly recruiting Somali children, some as young as 10, forcing them to become fighters and wives, according to a Human Rights Watch report released Tuesday.
Its ranks dwindling following a spike in fighting, the al-Qaeda-affiliated group has turned to children to bolster its numbers, said the study, based on interviews with dozens of Somali children who had escaped Al-Shabab.
“Al-Shabab rebels have abducted children from their homes and schools to fight, for rape and for forced marriage,” Zama Coursen-Neff, of the New York-based rights group, said in a statement.
Families and children that resist the recruitment campaign “face severe consequences and even death,” it said. In one case, a teacher who tried to stop Al-Shabab from taking his students was shot dead in front of his class.
The child recruits are being used as suicide bombers and sent to front lines as “cannon fodder” to protect adult fighters, the report said. Somali government forces and pro-government militias are also deploying children.
“For children in Somali, nowhere is safe,” said the rights group, which wants all parties in the Somali conflict to release child soldiers in their ranks and protect former child fighters, schools, teachers and students.
Al-Shabab, which means “The Youth,” has been fighting to impose its harsh version of Islamic law in Somalia. Some of its top leaders are foreign extremists who have traveled to Somalia for what the call a jihad. The group recently formalized its ties to al-Qaeda.
In 2009, a half-dozen Canadian youths left Toronto to join Al-Shabab and have not been seen since. Last year, police arrested a man at Toronto’s Pearson airport as he was allegedly on his way to Somali to join Al-Shabab.
Ottawa outlawed Al-Shabab as a terrorist organization following concerns about the recruitment of Canadians. The group — which is financed, armed and trained by the Eritrean government — has called for terrorist attacks in Canada.
National Post