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the Islamic version of the old Somali warlord...has denied that it was threatening and abducting civilians to hand over their children for indoctrination and military training.
Al-Shabaab has been fighting for years to topple Somalia’s central government and rule the Horn of Africa country according to its own interpretation of Islamic law.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Monday that the gang began ordering elders and teachers in rural parts of the southern Bay region in mid-2017 to provide them with children ‐ as young as eight ‐ or face reprisals.
But an al-Shabaab front man told the Thomson Rooters Foundation the group does not recruit members below the age of 15, and that no one is forced to join. He said children were being sent to Islamic religious schools to be educated.
"There is an al-Shabaab rule in the areas we control that children should learn, and we give them teachers at boarding madrasas where they study. We have agreed with the clan elders about the education of their children," he said.
"When students complete their education, we return them to their parents. No one is forced to join our forces. We do not want children in the remote areas to become as ignorant as animals," he added, declining to be named.
HRW says the gang has recruited thousands of children for indoctrination and to become frontline fighters over the past decade, and its religious schools ‐ which began in 2015 ‐ are pressured to teach al-Shabaab’s curriculum.
"The group should immediately stop abducting children and release all children in their ranks," said Laetitia Bader, HRW’s senior Africa researcher. "The Somali government should ensure these children are not sent into harm’s way."