In this photo taken Monday, Feb. 18, 2013, children attend a class in a madrassa in Gao, northern Mali. Nearly a month after the al-Qaida-linked militants were driven out of Gao and into the surrounding villages, students are now returning to the city's Quranic schools. Many classrooms, though, are still half full, as tens of thousands of people fled the fighting and strict Islamic rule imposed by the extremists. However, other pupils left Gao not with their families but with the Islamic fighters when they retreated, say human rights activists and local officials. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)
Mali radicals recruited child soldiers at schools
In this photo taken Monday, Feb. 18, 2013, children attend a class in a madrassa in Gao, northern Mali. Nearly a month after the al-Qaida-linked militants were driven out of Gao and into the surrounding villages, students are now returning to the city's Quranic schools. Many classrooms, though, are still half full, as tens of thousands of people fled the fighting and strict Islamic rule imposed by the extremists. However, other pupils left Gao not with their families but with the Islamic fighters when they retreated, say human rights activists and local officials. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)
By KRISTA LARSON
Associated Press /
February 23, 2013
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The Islamic militants capitalized on the city’s poverty, offering sign-on bonuses and monthly salaries to those who joined their cause, imams said.
Abdourhamane Maiga, assistant director of the Adadatou Alislamiatou madrassa, recalls one student who dropped out of school after being asked to repeat a grade.
The next time Maiga saw the pupil, he was wielding a firearm with the Islamic fighters at their police headquarters downtown.
‘‘They didn’t come here to practice Islam,’’ he says of the extremists. ‘‘The prophet never would have accepted a child of 10 years old waging jihad and taking up arms.’’
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