A new generation of Islamic State (IS) group recruits is being developed in the Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate, indoctrinated with religious concepts from birth and viewed by its fighters as better and purer than themselves, according to the first study of the exploitation and abuse of children as a means of securing the group’s future.
Researchers for Quilliam, a London counter-extremism think tank have investigated the way IS recruits children, and indoctrinates and trains them for jihad. As many as 50 children from Britain are growing up in IS-controlled territory, with an estimated 30,000 foreign recruits, including more than 800 Britons, believed to have gone to Syria to fight.
The report, Children of Islamic State, has been endorsed by the UN and is to be published tomorrow in parliament. It was compiled through a study of propaganda released by IS featuring children and liaising with trusted sources within the caliphate. The portrait painted is of a terrorist group eager to enlist children to help safeguard its future. Many are being trained as spies, preachers, soldiers, executioners and suicide bombers.
“The organization focuses a large number of its efforts in indoctrinating children through an extremism-based education curriculum, and fostering them to become future terrorists. The current generation of fighters sees these children as better and more lethal fighters than themselves, because rather than being converted into radical ideologies, they have been indoctrinated into these extreme values from birth, or a very young age,” the authors said.
Not having been corrupted by living according to secular values, they are considered purer than adult fighters.
“These children are saved from corruption, making them stronger than the current mujahideen [fighters] because they have a superior understanding of Islam from youth and from school curriculum, and are better and more brutal fighters as they are trained in violence from a very young age,” the study said.
The foreign recruits represent a potentially significant strengthening of the group’s cohort of about 80,000 militants — 50,000 in Syria and 30,000 in Iraq. About 6 million men, women and children are estimated to be living within the group’s self-styled caliphate.
“The aim is to prepare a new, stronger, second generation of mujahidin, conditioned and taught to be a future resource for the group,” the report said. “The area of most concern is that Islamic State is preparing its army by indoctrinating young children in its schools and normalizing them to violence through witnessing public executions, watching Islamic State videos in media centers and giving children toy weapons to play with.”
The focus on youth bears similarities, according to the report, to the forced recruitment of child soldiers in Liberia in the 1990s, when former Liberian president Charles Taylor seized power in 1997 with a rebel army filled with children.
The authors conclude that IS also appears to have studied the Nazi regime, which created the Hitler Youth to indoctrinate children. The UN has received credible, but unverified, reports about an IS youth wing, Fityan al-Islam, meaning boys of Islam.
saddam’s lion cubs
The authors also cite the precedent of the Baathist regime in Iraq, which, in the late 1970s, established the Futuwah (Youth Vanguard) movement with the most important Iraqi child soldier units, known as Ashbal Saddam, or Saddam’s Lion Cubs, made up of boys aged 10 to 15.
Researchers for Quilliam found that children were used extensively in IS propaganda — between Aug. 1 last year and Feb. 9 they identified a total of 254 events or statements featuring images of children — to help project the impression of state-building.
IS also uses children to try to normalize brutality, with the group encouraging children to hold up decapitated heads or play soccer with them. In the past six months, Islamic State propaganda has depicted 12 child killers. A macabre recent video showed a four-year-old British boy apparently detonating a car bomb, killing four alleged spies trapped in the vehicle.
Recruitment of children into IS frequently involves coercion, according to the report, with abduction being a favored method. The UN Assistance Mission for Iraq estimates that IS has abducted between 800 and 900 children between the ages of nine and 15. From August 2014 to June last year, hundreds of boys, including Yazidis and Turkmens, were forcibly taken from their families in Nineveh, Iraq, and sent to training centers, where boys as young as eight were taught the Koran, the use of weapons and combat tactics.
The organization also uses fear as a recruitment tool, with media outlets within the caliphate issuing statements warning that children who refuse to conform with IS orders would be flogged, tortured or raped.
IS has been quick to seize control of the education system in Syria and Iraq, with indoctrination beginning in schools and intensifying in training camps. In the camps, children between the ages of 10 and 15 are instructed in sharia, desensitized to violence and taught specific skills needed to serve the state and take up jihad.
Boys learn a rigid Islamic State curriculum, from which drawing, philosophy and social studies — described as the “methodology of atheism” — have been removed.
Children memorize verses of the Koran and attend jihadi training, which includes shooting, weaponry and martial arts. Girls, known as the “pearls of the caliphate,” are veiled, hidden, confined to the home and taught to look after the men.
The report’s authors recommend the creation of a commission to protect future generations from radical violence, and to help monitor and reintegrate children within the EU who are at risk.
According to a spokesperson for the Romeo Dallaire Child Soldiers Initiative, which co-wrote the report, life under the IS is “one of the gravest situations for children on Earth. It is hoped that this report will provide a critical perspective on the plight of these children, that will then create essential reflections for policymakers, child protection agencies, governments, multilateral organizations and those concerned with ending conflict in Iraq and Syria.”
From the Iran war and nuclear weapons to tariffs and artificial intelligence, the agenda for this week’s Beijing summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is packed. Xi would almost certainly bring up Taiwan, if only to demonstrate his inflexibility on the matter. However, no one needs to meet with Xi face-to-face to understand his stance. A visit to the National Museum of China in Beijing — in particular, the “Road to Rejuvenation” exhibition, which chronicles the rise and rule of the Chinese Communist Party — might be even more revealing. Xi took the members
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on Friday used their legislative majority to push their version of a special defense budget bill to fund the purchase of US military equipment, with the combined spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.78 billion). The bill, which fell short of the Executive Yuan’s NT$1.25 trillion request, was passed by a 59-0 margin with 48 abstentions in the 113-seat legislature. KMT Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文), who reportedly met with TPP Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) for a private meeting before holding a joint post-vote news conference, was said to have mobilized her
Taiwan’s higher education system is facing an existential crisis. As the demographic drop-off continues to empty classrooms, universities across the island are locked in a desperate battle for survival, international student recruitment and crucial Ministry of Education funding. To win this battle, institutions have turned to what seems like an objective measure of quality: global university rankings. Unfortunately, this chase is a costly illusion, and taxpayers are footing the bill. In the past few years, the goalposts have shifted from pure research output to “sustainability” and “societal impact,” largely driven by commercial metrics such as the UK-based Times Higher Education (THE) Impact
The inter-Korean relationship, long defined by national division, offers the clearest mirror within East Asia for cross-strait relations. Yet even there, reunification language is breaking down. The South Korean government disclosed on Wednesday last week that North Korea’s constitutional revision in March had deleted references to reunification and added a territorial clause defining its border with South Korea. South Korea is also seriously debating whether national reunification with North Korea is still necessary. On April 27, South Korean President Lee Jae-myung marked the eighth anniversary of the Panmunjom Declaration, the 2018 inter-Korean agreement in which the two Koreas pledged to
RSS