Women and Children in Terrorism: A Four-Part Analysis (Part 2: Philippines-ISIS in East Asia and the CPP-NPA Communist-terrorist Network)
Introduction
After the retreat of the IS-Maute forces from the Marawi Siege, there is an estimated number of 165 women who are supporters of ISIS East Asia in the surrounding areas of Lanao del Sur and Lanao del Norte. Based on personal fieldnotes, these women have an average of 6 to 7 children. Most of these women focused on providing safe haven to the ISIS Foreign Terrorist Fighters (FTF) composed mostly of Malaysian and Indonesian nationals. Given the refusal of the Indonesian Government to accept women and children of ISIS FTF, these families are expected to make the Philippines their permanent residence.
Increasing Combat-readiness of Female Extremists
The specific skill sets of the ISIS East Asia female combatants have now incorporated Improvised Explosive Device (IED) assembly and conducting suicide bombing activities. In recent suicide bombings in the town of Jolo, Sulu province, female members had assumed significant lead roles in carrying out suicide roles. These women decided to take on more than the usual combat support roles. In most cases, female terrorists are heavily involved in the procurement of weapons and ammunition.
Female combatants also help in the procurement, recruitment, training and the handling of terrorism financing tasks. They, too, conduct intelligence gathering, transporting supplies and arms, logistics, food, resistance, and offering nursing services for the wounded. Despite their participation in combat, they are not expected to be rewarded with authority or political power over the male combatants.
For female combatants of terror groups operating in the Philippines, their skills entail identifying safe havens for fighters and the provision of food, medicines and clothing. Child soldiers, on the other hand, help provide surveillance activities of the police and military units in the area. The nondescript tandem of female terrorists accompanied either by their own babies or other child soldiers is an effective strategy to avoid detection by local authorities.
More recently, Jevilyn Cullamat, the 22-year-old communist-terrorist daughter of a CPP-NPA-NDF-linked Filipino lawmaker was killed in an encounter between government troops and New People’s Army rebels in Surigao del Sur. According to the 3rd Special Forces “Arrowhead” Battalion of the Philippine Army, Jevilyn Cullamat served as an armed medic of the New People’s Army. By recruiting family members, terrorist groups can avoid detection and capture by limiting contact with outsiders and increasing the costs of defection for individual members. Family members also provide an additional source of labour; women and children contribute to terrorist groups through support roles, such as providing food or medical care and maintaining camps, as well as direct participation in attacks.
Women occupy strong political and social roles within their respective terrorist groups. They actively take part in strategic supporting roles that are necessary for warfare. Due to their dedication to daily and mundane tasks, they are highly regarded by other members. These women recruit their sisters and close cousins, their respective husbands, and their own children. For many of these women, the terrorist groups provided a space where they could share their political ideas, a fundamental right that was previously denied to them by their families and communities. These female leaders organized meetings between terrorist women’s groups and meetings between the leaders of terrorist groups contributing to their collective empowerment. Their decision to join terrorist groups can be seen as a way of seeking protection for their families and improving their chances in life. Since these women are given false hopes by terrorist organizations during the recruitment phase and false dreams of a better life, they were pushed to join these terrorist organizations without really fully understanding what they are getting into.
In countries and communities wherein girls and women seek a place of importance or significance, some fall into the trap of being part of what we call the “Sisterhood of Destruction.” Increasingly, more girls and women become masterminds, and not merely accessories to crimes and acts of terror, in the Philippines.
Continued Recruitment of Child Soldiers into Extremism
Children are more vulnerable than adults when a nation faces on-going warfare because family, society, and law cannot fully provide adequate legal and physical protection for children. This is despite the presence of a UN convention catered to children. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child of 1989 seeks “…to ensure that persons who have not attained the age of fifteen years do not take a direct part in hostilities.”
As of 2020, a former ASG member disclosed to the authors that there is an estimated 150 child soldiers in the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) comprising several battalions prepared to go to war at any time.
The Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) had actively recruited individuals from 15 years of age and above and providing these minors improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and high-powered guns. During the Marawi siege, however, the ASG and ISIS were discovered to have recruited and radicalized child soldiers as young as 6 to 8 years old. Even the youngest child combatants, both girls and boys, served in some of the world’s most destructive war zones. They were utilized as frontline soldiers, spies, cooks, messengers, and porters. Children were instrumental, small and easily unnoticed in suicide bombings and in other surprise attacks.
In the last three years alone, between 2016 to 2019, the Communist Party of the Philippines took pride in being able to recruit over 8,000 students for their underground movement, a former communist rebel stated during a Senate hearing on alleged military red-tagging last November 3, 2020. Jeffrey Celiz, alias “Ka Eric,” told senators that a CPP-NPA-NDF document seized from the National Democratic Front (NDF) consultant Vic Ladlad revealed that majority of the over 8,000 youth recruits came from senior high schools, which pertained to 16 or 17-year-old targets for recruitment and radicalization by the CPP-NPA-NDF communist-terrorist network.
The commonplace perception about child soldiers was that those most likely to be recruited were:
(1) economically poor;
(2) separated from their families;
(3) displaced from their homes;
(4) living in a combat zone; and
(5) with limited access to education.
Globally, while it may be true that the predominant recruitment of child soldiers takes place in areas where there is little or no government presence at all, in the Philippines, the insidiously pervasive nature of the CPP-NPA terrorist network has led to the phenomena of mass recruitment among children and youth leaders from good and God-fearing families enrolled in elite schools and not just public academic institutions.
“90 percent of the cadres of the CPP-NPA-NDF come from schools. Lahat kami dun nanggaling halos (most of us were recruited from schools). We all started through a legal organization, but they are not purely legal,” said Jeffrey Celiz, a former cadre of the CPP-NPA who served the communist-terrorist movement for 27 years.
Early Intervention and Reintegration Programmes for Sustainable Peace
A successful approach in preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE) demands identification of early signs of radicalization and the mitigation of individual and collective grievances, structural factors and drivers that in the worst case may support or fuel violence. Key actors need to be engaged through cross-sectoral efforts to prevent and counter the spread of radicalization and recruitment in their local communities. Particular focus should be put on the role of women, youth, children, local stakeholders and civil society, including religious and community leaders.
Initiatives aimed at reintegrating individuals willing to leave violent extremism behind and return to their communities should also be enhanced and encouraged — while keeping in sight that, according to a new study, education, not employment, is the key to reducing recidivism among ex-combatants. The authors also identified several factors that are associated with a return to crime among ex-combatants: factors such as anti-social personality traits, weak family ties, lack of educational attainment, and the presence of criminal groups are highly correlated with recidivism.
The success rate of the thousands of former terrorists and former rebels’ reintegration will be key for sustainable peace in a country that has been ravaged by internal armed conflict for over five decades. Ideally, if successfully reintegrated into their local communities, former violent extremists can serve as messengers to their communities and regions, questioning the narrative that made them commit to violent extremist ideologies in the first place. It is our clarion call for government authorities to invest sufficient resources for (1) methodical convictions in terrorism financing; (2) a long-term deradicalization program for radicalized children, youth, and women; and (3) a holistic program to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) for individuals and families afflicted by war and conflict.
