Leaving Terrorism Behind

In several countries including Singapore, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, rehabilitation programs dedicated specifically to children seek to reduce the risk that children rescued from terrorist groups may re-enter those groups upon release from detention. The capture or rescue of child militants poses exceptional social and legal challenges, and some extraordinary efforts are underway to help children reintegrate into the communities from which they were recruited or coerced into involvement. The chapter explores the various push and pull factors that are at the heart of the disengagement process, and will explore these especially in light of the core psychological dynamics at play in the initial involvement pathways.

Pathways to Involvement

In cases of prolonged ethno-nationalist conflicts, children will often grow up in extreme conditions of poverty, violence, and routinized harassment. As they mature, many of the children begin their involvement with terrorist movements in largely support roles: throwing stones at demonstrations, lookouts, ferrying messages, or smuggling weapons. The terrorist organizations create separate units for children to involve them at a young age and use the youth movements as a testing ground to spot talent. Individual children are understood to be nested within layers of a social ecology, including family, society, and culture; the transactions between these layers informs child development and may make certain children more at risk of mobilization into terrorist organizations than others. Furthermore, a child’s own characteristics and experiences may lead him or her to be more vulnerable to socio-cultural factors promoting involvement in violence, or to seek out a means of involvement.

Child Soldiers versus Children in Terrorist Groups

Much of the literature thus far has tended to aggregate child soldiers with child terrorists. This chapter distinguishes between child soldiers and children involved in terrorist organizations focusing on the areas in which the two phenomena diverge. After describing key cases from history, the chapter will take a theoretical approach to understanding children and terrorism as a function of a “substitution effect” (from economic theory) that children step in when adults are no longer available to perform the same tasks and contrast it with a competitive adaptation model in which terrorist organizations adapt to changing circumstances and exploit children as a tactical innovation.