Yusuf is only 15 years old, small for his age, with narrow shoulders and a voice that still wavers between childhood and adolescence. But the scars across his body tell a far older story. A jagged wound marks his shin where burning shrapnel tore into his flesh. Another scar sits above his hip, where a bullet entered during a firefight and remains lodged inside him to this day. Each mark is a reminder of the years he spent as part of an army of child soldiers fighting for the Islamic State.
One night a decade ago, gunmen on motorcycles stormed Yusuf’s village in northeastern Nigeria. They seized the boy and carried him deep into the bushlands that stretch across the Lake Chad region. There, far from his family and home, the militants began reshaping his life. They taught him extremist doctrine and trained him to fight. By the age of ten, Yusuf was already participating in raids against Nigerian troops and battles with rival jihadist factions.
Years of relentless fighting hardened him quickly. Today, he speaks with the confidence of someone who has spent much of his childhood at war. When asked how it felt to fight trained soldiers, Yusuf responded with a smirk. He believes he is experienced enough to train others. Considering the years he spent in combat before reaching his mid-teens, that belief may not be far from reality.
According to reporting by Times UK, the militants who abducted Yusuf belonged to Islamic State West Africa Province, commonly known as ISWAP. Since the collapse of the Islamic State’s territorial caliphate in Syria in 2019, the group’s West African affiliate has emerged as one of the most powerful branches within the global network. Operating from the shifting islands and marshes of Lake Chad along Nigeria’s northeastern frontier, ISWAP is estimated to command more than 10,000 fighters.
Its growth is striking for another reason. Unlike several other Islamic State affiliates that rely heavily on foreign recruits, ISWAP is composed almost entirely of local fighters. The remote geography of the Lake Chad basin discourages large numbers of foreign volunteers from joining the group. Instead, ISWAP relies heavily on forced recruitment and mass abductions from nearby communities. Children like Yusuf often become its most valuable recruits.
Within Islamic State propaganda, these young fighters are referred to as the “Cubs of the Caliphate.” They are not simply viewed as expendable foot soldiers but as the foundation of the movement’s long-term survival. In one propaganda video circulating on official channels, viewers are shown a day in the life of recruits attending what the group calls a “Khilafah Cadet School.” Uniformed children sit in classrooms studying Arabic and Islamic law before the footage cuts to outdoor drills where they crawl under barbed wire and learn to handle assault rifles.
The film ends with a chilling sequence: several young cadets execute three captured Nigerian special forces soldiers. Their high-pitched voices shout ideological slogans before they fire bullets into the prisoners’ heads.
Yusuf underwent a similar training process. As soon as he was strong enough to carry an AK-47 rifle, he entered a six-month course that included instruction in heavy machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and other battlefield weapons. At times, he recalled, foreign instructors from the Middle East and North Africa would visit to train local commanders in the use of drones and improvised explosive devices.
Despite the violence surrounding him, Yusuf insists he rarely felt fear. Even the first time he was shot, during a clash near the town of Damboa when he was only 12, did not break his resolve. For many of the boys around him, participation in the group brought a sense of identity and status. Wearing the uniform and carrying a weapon created the illusion of belonging.
“It was a source of pride,” Yusuf said. “You want to wear the uniform, you want to belong. You want to be seen as a hero.”
But as he grew older, the rigid brutality of life within the militant camp began to weigh on him. Disobedience could lead to execution, sometimes by beheading. Gradually he began imagining another life, one where he could go to school and earn enough money to build a home for his mother and sisters.
Eventually Yusuf made contact with a former ISWAP member who had defected and was working with the Nigerian government. Encouraged by him, the boy escaped last month and surrendered to authorities.
The man who helped guide his escape, Ali Ajaban, once served as a senior ISWAP commander. After leaving the group in 2021, he began assisting Nigerian officials in persuading fighters to defect. During his time in the movement, Ajaban trained young recruits himself. He explains that children were deliberately targeted because they were easier to mold into loyal fighters.
“We use children to fight because if you begin training them at a young age they are fearless,” he said.
ISWAP itself emerged in 2016 after a bitter split within Boko Haram, the notorious Islamist insurgency that has waged war against the Nigerian state since 2009. Boko Haram gained global notoriety in 2014 after kidnapping hundreds of schoolgirls from the town of Chibok. In the years that followed, the two factions battled each other for control of forests, villages and supply routes across Borno State.
By the end of 2024 ISWAP had largely defeated its rival and consolidated control over much of the insurgent territory. The group then shifted its focus toward the Nigerian military.
Last year it launched a campaign known as Operation “Burn the Camps,” targeting military outposts across northeastern Nigeria. Using drones and night-vision equipment reportedly supplied through Islamic State networks in the Middle East, ISWAP fighters carried out increasingly sophisticated nighttime assaults on remote bases.
The results have been devastating. According to the independent conflict monitor ACLED, 568 Nigerian soldiers were killed in ISWAP attacks last year, the highest annual toll since the group was formed. The violence has continued this year, with dozens of soldiers, including senior officers, killed in a series of raids over recent weeks.
Nigeria’s government insists the insurgency is weakening. President Bola Tinubu recently described the attacks as an act of desperation by militants. Yet the scale of the violence suggests a more complicated reality.
Recognizing that military force alone cannot defeat the insurgency, authorities have also launched an amnesty initiative known as the Borno Model. Under this program, fighters who surrender are not prosecuted but instead sent to rehabilitation camps where they receive deradicalization counseling and vocational training.
Officials say more than 200,000 militants and associates have left the bush since 2021. Yet the reintegration process remains fraught with difficulties, particularly for those abducted as children.
In the rehabilitation camp in Maiduguri, hundreds of former fighters attempt to rebuild their lives. Some, like a young man named Mohammed Isa, were kidnapped so early in life that the insurgency is the only world they have ever known. Isa was abducted at the age of four and spent years with militants before escaping through the bush with several others. Only two survived the journey.
Life outside the militant camps has proven difficult. Food is scarce in the rehabilitation centers, and many civilians distrust the former fighters living among them. Some believe they should be punished rather than forgiven.
For Isa, the memories of his past remain complicated. He admits participating in raids where villages were attacked and children abducted. The experience sometimes reminded him painfully of his own kidnapping years earlier. Yet when asked if he feels guilt for what he did, he struggles with the question.
“They were victims,” he said quietly. “But I was a victim too. We’re all in it together.”
His words capture the grim reality confronting Nigeria today: an insurgency fueled not only by ideology and weapons, but by children stolen from their homes and raised in war.
