A legion of child soldiers—about 10,000 indoctrinated young fighters, suicide bombers and spies—that's what the Islamist extremist group Boko Haram have, aside from its regular forces.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the Nigerian terrorist group has kidnapped these boys over the past three years and turned them into jihadist soldiers. Those who refused to train and serve as soldiers are killed, one teen who escaped from the terrorist group told the publication.
The source revealed that when the Boko Haram took over the city of Damask, they took about 300 students between the ages of 7 and 17, moving them to a forest outside the city.
There, the militants began training the boys in combat, the source said, adding that their instructor was a 15-year-old child soldier himself.
"I was terrified if I didn't do it, they would kill me," the teen told the WSJ.
The report said many of the children, including young girls, are effectively radicalised by the terrorist group.
What is troubling is that the children "have no idea what they're doing," it said.
"They're victims as much as they're perpetrators. Some of them are guilty of heinous things—rape, murder, killing—all kinds of horrible things. And yet, they're also victims. They're also kids plucked out of villages forced into a cult, forced to watch beheadings, with all kinds of indoctrination, beaten, starved, and at some point, they convert," the report said.
Created in 2002, Boko Haram has killed more than 20,000 people and drove more than 2.2 million from their homes over the past seven years. The group aims to set up an Islamic state in the north and has sworn allegiance to the Islamic State (ISIS), referring to itself as ISIS' "West African province."
It gained added notoriety when it kidnapped 270 schoolgirls in the Nigerian town of Chibok just over two years ago.
One of the girls rescued by soldiers and a civilian vigilante group last May revealed that her classmates were starved and resorted to eating raw maize. She said some of the girls had died in captivity, suffered broken legs or gone deaf after being too close to explosions.
She thanked God for her freedom and expressed hope that the other girls would eventually be rescued.
"I think about them a lot—I would tell them to be hopeful and prayerful," she said. "In the same way God rescued me, he will also rescue them."
"I am not scared of Boko Haram—they are not my God," she added.
