How Indonesia is helping to rehabilitate child bombers

The world’s biggest Muslim majority nation is grappling with the growing global threat of ‘family attacks’ and also with how to reintegrate returning IS jihadists and their relatives as the extremist group’s caliphate lies in ruins

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Children, whose parents were suicide bombers or those directly involved in terror plots, attending a religious function in Jakarta during the holy fasting month of Ramadan. Photo: AFP

Published: 1:00pm, 13 Jul 2019Updated: 2:14pm, 13 Jul 2019

Thrown off a motorbike as her parents blew themselves up, nine-year-old Mila was the sole survivor of a family suicide bombing, part of a wave of such attacks involving children that rocked Indonesia.

Orphaned and radicalised, there were concerns for her future after the Islamic State-inspired strike, but a renewed focus on rehabilitating the children of terror suspects may offer Mila, and others like her, a chance at normality.

She is among a small group who are being treated at a Jakarta safe house in a unique scheme that provides psychological and social care to the offspring of suicide bombers or children directly involved in terror plots.

The world’s biggest Muslim majority nation is grappling with the growing global threat of ‘family attacks’ and also with how to reintegrate returning IS jihadists and their relatives as the extremist group’s caliphate lies in ruins, a challenge faced by many nations including France and the United States.

Firefighters try to extinghuish a fire after a blast outside the Gereja Pantekosta Pusat Surabaya after a suicide blast. The world's biggest Muslim majority nation is grappling with the growing global threat of family attacks. Photo: AFP

“It has not been easy dealing with [the children] because they believed in radicalism … and that bombing was a good thing,” said safe-house head Neneng Heryani, who provided exclusive access to the state-run compound on the edge of Indonesia’s capital.

“They were taught that jihad was essential to go to heaven and that you must kill non-believers. It was very hard to change that mindset,” she added.

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