Al-Shabaab targets local youth

• In stealing children and raising them as terrorists and suicide bombers, al-Shabaab is following in the footsteps of al-Qaeda, the international terror group led by Osama bin-Laden

In abducting youths and training them to be terrorists and suicide bombers, al-Shabaab is following in the footsteps of al-Qaeda, the international terror group.

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Al-Shabaab has sworn allegiance to al-Qaeda and pledged to do whatever al-Qaeda commands. Al-Qaeda has established an extensive network for recruiting boys as young as 12, operating mostly in Asia and the Middle East.

In East Africa, al-Shabaab is the terrorist recruiting arm. In May 2008, a senior Pakistani security official discovered a video clip of the al-Qaeda training programme for children.

A boy of about 12 years old was shown using a machete to cut off the head of a middle-aged man whom the militants tied hand and foot for this gruesome display. Al-Qaeda fighters are training young children to be gunmen, kidnappers and bombers.

Videos show these youngsters being trained by adult militants to stop people on the street and abduct them. The boys held a pistol to the back of one victim’s head, tied his hands and took him away.

The boys also practise stopping a car and kidnapping its occupants. In another scene, they practised an armed assault on a village house and ran around waving weapons.

Al-Qaeda uses children and mentally deranged adults to perform suicide bombings. The training of al-Shabaab’s kidnapped recruits takes place deep in terrorist strongholds in Somalia.

There can be no doubt that after the young Kenyan boys are smuggled across the border into some remote location, they are subjected to the same traumatic and degrading exercises seen in the al-Qaeda videos.

The extremists do not stop at that. They are preying on Somali children to further their cause. The artillery shell that slammed into a school building in southern Mogadishu on February 24, while the children inside were focused on their day’s studies, killed two of the young students and injured four others.

That tragedy in Somalia, creating a familiar aftermath of chaos and pain, also involved Islamic Party insurgents proudly taking credit for the attack, which took place during their battle with African Union peacekeepers.

The deaths of the students -- and the crowing of the extremists about the deed –- are an example of the little regard the militants harbour for the lives of children.

Even in Nairobi’s Eastleigh neighbourhood, radical Islamists are preying on the anger and confusion of the youth. They have established madrassas to indoctrinate them.

Al-Shabaab and other extremist groups present a primitive interpretation of Islam, and young people – many of whom are orphaned – are attracted to the false sense of law and justice extremist Islam – practised only by a minority – provides.

At the radical madrassas, investigators have found that the extremists employ a systematic process to transform their recruits into cold-blooded killers. They use a mixture of deception, control and brainwashing in an effective and often deadly way.

Some of the Somali children have admitted being tricked into becoming bombers. One 14-year-old youth told investigators that recruiters lied to him. He said they told him it was his mission as a Muslim to kill soldiers.