Armed Groups and International Legitimacy

Child Soldiers in Intra-State Conflict

William Plowright

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780367649319
• eBook ISBN: 9781000351910
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book analyses the issue of child soldiers in order to understand how armed groups engage with international organizations to gain international legitimacy.

The work examines why some armed groups 'follow the rules' of international humanitarian law and others do not. It argues that armed groups in conflicts around the world engage with international organizations in order to gain international legitimacy and to show they are following the laws of war. By examining the issue of child soldiers in contemporary armed conflict, the volume establishes a typology of which groups will engage with international actors and follow the laws of war – and which will not. The main aim of the book is to understand the rationality of even the most violent of actors, and to understand when and how armed groups can be encouraged to follow the laws of war. The work draws from extensive primary research conducted among armed groups in Syria and Myanmar, including al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, and the many small ethnic insurgent groups of Myanmar.

This book will be of much interest to students of war and conflict studies, security studies, international humanitarian law, and International Relations.

1 Introduction
Armed non-state groups and international legitimacy

You should be afraid of us. Everyone in the West should be afraid of us… But tell your friends and family that we do not hate them, and that we do not use child soldiers. This is very important because it is against Islam, and we want the world to know it.

X. (Name withheld), Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS¹) commander. Aleppo, Syria. 2013²

It is very sad; children are supposed to be in school. Instead, you see [them] dying in the front lines.

Colonel New Dah Mya, Karen National Liberation Army – Kayin State, Myanmar, 2012³

The puzzle

Late on a summer night in Aleppo, as the regime’s bombs fall around us, an exhausted leader of the Free Syrian Army explains the armed group’s recruitment strategy, showing the mechanisms by which children are prevented from joining. In Myanmar, a general of a minority ethnic rebellion proudly displays children who have been demobilized from his armed group, and who are now studying. These events may at first appear unrelated and unconnected. They are not. Both represent trends in conflicts around the world, in which armed groups are changing their behaviour in order to gain international legitimacy by engaging with salient norms associated with international humanitarian law (IHL), in this case, the norm prohibiting the use of children as soldiers.

The use of children and youths as fighters is a problem that pervades conflicts the world over.⁴ There is no clear estimation of the total number, due to the inherent difficulty in counting or estimating. A common estimate, used since the early 2000s, is that there are 300,000 child soldiers in the world.⁵ Another oft-quoted statistic estimates that there are child soldiers in 40% of the world’s state armed forces and non-state armed groups. Other estimates have noted that in addition to the 300,000 actively fighting child soldiers, there are as many as half a million child soldiers not currently engaged in armed conflict.⁶ Although the precise number is difficult, if not impossible, to determine, child soldiers are present in significant numbers in conflicts around the world.

The existence of so many children in armed groups around the world prompts a morally imperative question for those who wish to reduce suffering: what conditions lead armed groups to cease this practice, and what role do international actors play in this process? This practical question prompts a broader theoretical one: what is the relationship of armed non-state groups (ANSGs) to the contemporary international order? What role does that order play in the decision to demobilize child soldiers and to respect the laws of war? In order to answer this question, we must analyse cases where armed groups have voluntarily ceased using child soldiers and have demobilized them, and also cases where they have not. Such cases do exist, and many armed groups have taken active measures to follow the laws of war and to gain recognition for doing so. At the same time, transnational advocacy networks have sought to directly engage with ANSGs in order to catalyse this process of demobilization. Organizations such as Geneva Call make it their priority to approach ANSGs on issues like the child soldier norm in order to compel them to engage with it. The result is that some armed groups do engage in dialogue with members of transnational advocacy networks, and some of them end up demobilizing the children in their ranks.

Herein lies a puzzle; though children are used as soldiers in conflicts around the world, some armed groups release them from their ranks even as the armed conflict continues. They do this even though it puts the armed group at a strategic disadvantage in the conflicts they are fighting, since they are reducing their capacity to fight while continuing to do so. Armed groups use children as active fighters when they cannot recruit other soldiers, and they then may come to rely on children who are easy to abduct, indoctrinate, and replace.⁷ Recent research has also begun to suggest that child soldiers actually increase an armed group’s ability to fight (Haer and Böhmelt 2016). Yet, as noted, some groups demobilize them during their campaign of violence. There is an unexplained issue here, which provokes the key research question of this project: why are ANSGs who are known to violate IHL releasing some of their fighters when they are in the middle of fighting a civil war? Why do they willingly sacrifice vital strategic resources, often for no clear or immediate gain? Why do some adopt this behaviour while others do not?

I argue that these armed groups are adopting a form of costly signalling to both domestic and international audiences in order to show their commitment to the norm of the prohibition against the use of child soldiers, and therefore displaying a desire to be seen as internationally legitimate.⁸ They are showing a concern for longer time horizons in favour of an undetermined future gain. However, not all armed groups engage in this behaviour. The puzzle here comes in explaining why some ANSGs make decisions that seem to run contrary to their strategic needs in waging insurgency. This behaviour shows that there is more occurring than a short-term cost-benefit analysis, and this necessitates digging deeper than hypotheses deduced from immediate material self-interest. Below, I will develop my argument for why some armed groups engage in this behaviour and why some do not.

The theory and hypotheses

This research uncovers why some armed groups may become more willing to comply with IHL. The core argument is that groups who demobilize child soldiers do so in order to gain legitimacy not in order to seek a specific material good, but instead the gains from being seen as a legitimate actor. Although a full discussion of concept of legitimacy will take place in Chapter 2, it is worth noting here that legitimacy is understood as the intersubjective perception of a rule, organization, or institution which actors believe are desirable, proper, or appropriate because of its favourable outcomes and/or procedural fairness. In general, armed groups can seek legitimacy from four broad audiences: (1) the international community (including international organizations and transnational advocacy networks); (2) populations providing both material and non-material support to the ANSG; (3) the population in the ANSGs’ zone of operations that do not yet support the ANSG in question; and (4) states, including enemies, allies, and state sponsors.⁹ Although the focus here will be placed predominantly on the first of these categories, in the ensuing analysis, these audiences will be discussed since the legitimacy-seeking behaviour of each individual armed group depends on which of these audiences they are seeking legitimacy from.

In order to come to an understanding of how armed groups may make appeals to international legitimacy from specific audiences, this study will look at how ANSGs will engage with a single norm, and demonstrate this engagement. For the purposes of this study, norm engagement will be defined as the participation or involvement of an individual (or group) in discussion, internationalization, and/or institutionalization of a specific norm (or group of norms) with norm entrepreneurs.¹⁰ Norm engagement can take place on a spectrum of involvement – anything from a conversation of the content of a norm to the active planning to ensure the norm is followed, internalized, institutionalized, and even spread.

In order to assess the presence or absence of this engagement and its effects, this study will use several indicators. The first is the presence or absence of child soldiers themselves, and whether or not their presence is accepted or approved by leadership. The presence of child soldiers, and the tacit or explicit approval of their use by leaders, indicates a clear rejection of the child soldier norm. However, the presence of child soldiers is not sufficient to assume that the norm has been rejected. Violation of a norm does not signify rejection of it, as there may be individuals within the broader group that violate the norm, which does not mean the group approves of these violations. For example, the occurrence of multiple murders by a member of any given community does not mean that the group condones those actions. As studies in this book will show, armed groups such as the Free Syrian Army may still have child soldiers in their ranks even when the leadership is trying to demobilize them and prevent further recruitment.¹¹ As such, the mere presence of child soldiers is not sufficient to determine norm acceptance or rejection, and we must also look at whether the leadership approves of or rejects the use of these child soldiers.

A second means of assessing norm engagement comes with gaining an understanding of how the ANSG in question views child soldiers, which can be done by analysing the internal beliefs of the armed group’s narrative and identity. This study will seek to do this through qualitative interviews and discussions with fighters and leaders of the armed groups in question. Third, and finally, the experiences of the organization Geneva Call will also be used as an indicator. Geneva Call is a humanitarian organization working to improve the protection of civilians in armed conflict by working to encourage ANSGs to respect IHL. In order to encourage this process, Geneva Call has ANSGs sign a “Deed of Commitment,” committing the ANSG to follow a given norm and to allow for means of verification. Throughout its 20-year history, Geneva Call has worked with ANSGs to sign Deeds of Commitment concerning landmines, violence against civilians, and child soldiers. As such, the engagement of ASNGs with Geneva Call on the subject of child soldiers can help to show the leadership...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• 1 Introduction: armed non-state groups and international legitimacy
• 2 The study of legitimacy, norms, and armed conflict
• 3 Myanmar: low intensity conflict and the child soldier norm
• 4 Syria: child soldiers on the front lines of transnational conflict
• 5 Conclusion: norms in an era of transnational conflict
• Index