On Combat

The Department of Defense released recent Al Qaeda video of Iraqi children being prepared for terror missions. An estimated 250,000 children are being used as soldiers in strife-ridden areas such as Africa. Some of the data collected to date on child soldiers may help better understand this crop of potential child terrorists:

Recruitment Motivation: Forced recruitment is a common (if not the most) common recruitement tactic. Captors may gain compliance with threats against children or their families. Willing volunteers may be found among impoverished or parent-less children seeking protection and support

Combat Motivation (in battle) has been observed to be considerable in African conflicts. Children may be unlikely to foresee the danger they may are in may during combat; immature notions of invulnerability and limited moral thinking can lend itself to fanatic behavior in battle.

Unlike western soldiers, primary group loyalty (to comrades) is less prevalent in some child soldier situations. Loyalty is provided to the paternalistic adult leader, who provides food, support, rewards.

Participation is often ensured with ritualistic violence in which the child recruit plays a part. This step begins an acclimatization towards violence, but it also locks in a child from fear that adult leaders may use violence against them or turn them in as war criminals

Sustaining Motivation, or keeping a child soldier from running away proves problematic, as nearly half eventually escape. Dependency on the leader, incentives, and fear of reprisal (against themselves if caught, or against their families if not) work to keep children in the units.

Engaging Child Units is a lose-lose situation for western forces and governments where soldiers will have to either jeopardize force protection (by not engaging child soldiers) or kill children posing a threat and suffer the images that will hit the world media.

Historian PW Singer suggests when engaging Child Soldiers:

1. Target the leader; if he is the center of gravity, cohesion may evaporate
2. Leave an escape route for the children. This may encourage a child already looking for an escape.

To know the enemy, consider watching minutes 10:00 to 14:00.
DoD Video on Child Terror Training