Islamic militants training children as terrorists in Democratic Republic of Congo
July 22, 2015
As many as 1,500 children—some as young as 9 years old—are being trained for jihad in camps run by Islamic militants in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), according to research by international charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN).
Maria Lozano, an official for ACN, said that the group had obtained photographic evidence from the camps, showing young boys in camouflage gear carrying out military exercises. The reports also showed young girls in burkas. “The images we have seen are very disturbing,” Lozano said.
ACN reported that orphans and children from poor families are lured into the Islamic camps. “The information we have is that the girls are being forced into marriages in which they will be treated as sex slaves,” Lozano said.
The appearance of jihadist camps in the eastern part of the country, traditionally a Christian stronghold, has prompted complaints that UN peacekeeping troops in the area—particularly soldiers from Pakistan—are providing encouragement to Islamic militants. Local sources observed that mosques have been built in areas where there were no native Muslim residents. “People don’t feel protected by the UN soldiers,” Lozano said.
In May, the Catholic bishops of the Bukavo province, which covers the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo, issued a statement in which they reported a dangerous surge in jihadist activity. After noting that civil war in the country has killed an estimated 6 million people since 2010, the bishops reported: “Most recently the violence has reached an intensity that is unbearable, close to rupture. Each day the killers conceive and carry out still more cruel practices.”
The latest violence, the bishops said, involved “a policy of terrorism, of systematic purging of the people, a strategy of forcibly uprooting populations with a view to progressively occupying their land and installing centers of religious fundamentalism and terrorist training bases.”
In their May statement, the bishops of the region complained that the country’s government was not giving a high priority to preserving the peace and defeating the Islamic militants. “So is the state resigned, and complicit?” they asked. “It’s possible!”
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