Tackling Terrorists’ Exploitation of Youth

Key Points

• Young people serve as a vital source of support for terrorist groups. Extensive youth participation creates an intergenerational terrorism problem and lays the foundation for future conflicts.
• Youth end up in terrorist groups through forced and voluntary recruitment. They perform a range of roles that vary according to age and gender, with girls and young women often being subject to gendered social roles and sexual and domestic violence.
• To effectively counter terrorists’ exploitation of youth abroad, governments should adopt a data-based approach to improve the targeting of terrorism prevention programs, move beyond a traditional focus on young men, address the potential for radicalization within the family, and emphasize attitudinal and behavioral change among those most vulnerable to recruitment.

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Executive Summary 

Young people are a vital source of support for many terrorist groups, with roles ranging from cooks to armed fighters. But the ways young people are recruited vary widely across contexts. In many cases, young people join terrorist groups because they are duped, trafficked, kidnapped, or forcibly recruited. Others join terrorist groups voluntarily owing to the appeal of a group-based identity; perceptions of exclusion, grievances, or cultural threats; the promise of economic stability; prospects of fame, glory, or respect; and personal connections, including family and friendship networks.

The vulnerability of youth to terrorist recruitment can be affected by a multitude of factors, including their geographic proximity to a terrorist group, economic vulnerability, perceptions of social or political marginalization, exposure to permissive social networks, and exposure to extremist propaganda. However, the relative importance of these factors varies individually and according to the local context.

Youth, both male and female, are frequently employed in support, recruitment, and combat roles in terrorist groups, though a significantly higher proportion of youth combatants are male. In Salafi-jihadist groups, such as ISIS and al Shabaab, ideology often constrains the roles available to young women to that of wives and mothers. Boko Haram is a significant exception for its extensive use of young women and girls as suicide bombers. Nevertheless, female terrorist members play essential and under-recognized roles in advancing their group’s mission.

To improve the US government’s response to the exploitation of youth by terrorist groups, the report recommends (1) adopting clear criteria to be used in weighing young peoples’ vulnerability to radicalization and recruitment and in creating and targeting terrorism prevention programs, (2) fostering both attitudinal and behavioral change to build youth resilience to recruitment, (3) moving beyond a traditional focus on young men to confront the radicalization and recruitment of girls and young women, and (4) engaging the family as a potential site of radicalization and recruitment.

Introduction 

On a busy Sunday morning, two small girls wandered among the crowd near a market in the northeastern Nigerian city of Maiduguri. Then, suddenly, the bombs strapped to them exploded, killing one person and wounding more than a dozen others.¹ The repeated exploitation of children and youth in terrorist attacks by groups such as Boko Haram is a chilling reminder that terrorism knows no bounds.

Young people can serve as a vital source of support for terrorist groups.² Strategically, terrorist groups can signal both their brutality and resolve to win by using young people in attacks. Al Shabaab, meaning “the youth,” reportedly has a majority youth membership.³ Youth are also better at evading security, which serves as a tactical advantage. In conflicts featuring extensive use of small arms, young people serve as able-bodied fighters. Nearly 1 in 10 of the youth fighters who joined the Islamic State in 2013 and 2014 had previously participated in jihad, according to a report published by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point.⁴

Over time, the recruitment of youth into armed groups can lay the foundation for future conflicts.⁵ As former US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley noted in the context of South Sudan, “Conflict is planting the seeds of future hate in the next generation. . . . If we don’t do something about the way these kids are being raised . . . we might be dealing with them as adults on the battlefield.”⁶

This report addresses terrorist groups’ recruitment of youth (ranging from small children to women and men in their 20s), the roles that youth play in these groups, and how the US government can better respond to this threat through international programming to counter violent extremism. The report focuses on terrorism prevention efforts as opposed to deradicalization or disengagement programs for youth who are already affiliated with a violent extremist group. It also focuses exclusively on youth participation in designated terrorist groups, as opposed to other non-state armed actors that actively recruit youth.

While there have been sincere and even promising efforts to address youth radicalization and recruitment by terrorist groups—as discussed below—significant gaps remain. These include effectively targeting at-risk youth in US government-funded programs and confronting the issue of radicalization and recruitment within the family.

A vigorous US government response to the exploitation of youth by terrorist groups should include:

• Clear criteria to use in weighing individuals’ vulnerability to radicalization and recruitment and in designing and targeting programs to counter violent extremism,
• An emphasis on fostering both attitudinal and behavioral change among youth vulnerable to recruitment,
• An expanded effort to confront the radicalization and recruitment of girls and young women by violent extremist groups, and
• A recognition of the family as a potential site of radicalization and recruitment, as well as a source of resilience.

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Notes

1. Reuters, “Two Girl Suicide Bombers Kill at Least Three in Nigeria’s Maiduguri—Official,” December 11, 2016, https://af.reuters. com/article/topNews/idAFKBN1400R1.
2. Mia Bloom, Small Arms: Children and Terrorism, with John Horgan (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019).
3. Counter Extremism Project, “Al-Shabab,” accessed September 20, 2018, https://www.counterextremism.com/threat/al-shabab; and Mohamed Olad Hassan, “Somali Children Flee Al-Shabab Recruitment,” Voice of America, August 7, 2017, https://www.voanews. com/a/somali-children-seek-refuge-al-shabab-coastal-town-adale/3975825.html.
4. Dakota Foster and Daniel Milton, “Children at War: Foreign Child Recruits of the Islamic State,” Combating Terrorism Center Sentinel 11, no. 6 (2018): 14.
5. The terms “youth” and “young people” are used interchangeably to refer to individuals age 15–24. Those under the age of 15 are referred to as “children.” Some of the programs discussed included participants above the age of 24. This is noted where appropriate.
6. US Mission to the United Nations, “Remarks at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Program ‘Our Walls Bear Witness: South Sudan—Where Do We Go From Here?,’” November 15, 2017, https://usun.state.gov/remarks/8121.