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

They told him that once he detonated himself he would not die; God would save him because he had proved himself to be a true Muslim.

“I didn’t want to do it,” the boy said, “but he forced me to go.”

That young recruit, like many others, was selected at a madrassa where his father sent him to learn more about Islam and the Koran.

Many parents, lacking the ability to read and write, entrust their children to such teachers without knowing that extremists sometimes run these schools.

At the madrassas, the young people are indoctrinated in extremist interpretations of the Koran. Eventually some are selected to become bombers. Then they are taken away, without a farewell to their families, to embark on their suicide missions.

Suicide attacks by children began to occur with disturbing frequency in Iraq in 2005. Al-Qaeda would recruit children as young as nine to pose as beggars and flower vendors and to assume other, seemingly innocent behaviour in order to breach security checkpoints that adults could not overcome.

At training camps, extremist operatives assembled orphans, the handicapped, the unemployed and others who had been kidnapped and began indoctrinating them. The brutal religious zealots needed the innocent children, but in using children for evil purposes, the extremists stole innocence from Iraqi youth.

The practice has since spread, with extremist recruiters preying on what one observer called “the outrage of the immature.” The extremists encourage them to attack the forces of order and liberation, which they portray as infidels deserving to be slaughtered.

They offer the prospect of relatively large amounts of money to the children; in effect, buying their lives. The recruiters show videos about previous suicide attacks and instruct the children how to cross security checkpoints and deliver their deadly packages. The night before a designated attack, the extremists hold a hero’s party, praying for the child and offering congratulations.

But if the child somehow resists going through with the mission, the mood quickly turns. Then the jihadists apply forceful measures, including threatening to harm the child’s family.

Kenyan officials worry that the displaced Somali youth here could be recruited in similar fashion. The al-Qaeda-supported al-Shabaab group already has recruited the children of Somali refugees in other countries, including the United States, bringing them back to Somalia for training.

Investigators who are piecing together this information obtained by the Sunday Nation worry that this practice by al-Shabaab poses a threat to Kenya and other countries with large Somali immigrant populations. They worry that these young recruits could become mere cannon fodder in terror operations.

Facing this threat, officials are working to win the battle for the minds of Somali children. Sheikh Mohammad Moallem Hussein, an Islamic cleric in Nairobi, runs Fathu Rahman, a school that teaches Somali children the true meaning of Islam and explains how suicide bombing is wrong -- for them and for anyone.

Sheikh Hussein warns that such a death is a great offence in Islam.