The fate of children in the hands of ISIS

                                                           

Most youngsters at age 14 are at school in countries not overrun by Islamic militants.  They are learning math, geography, history grammar, literature and other subjects.                   

The children of the Caliphate’ (ISIS) at age 14 and younger are learning how to fire assault rifles and become suicide bombers as part of Islamic State’s twisted campaign of evil. The terror group recruits boys as young as five in areas under its control to create the new generation of jihadist fighters.

Terrorist organizations have historically indoctrinated children at an early age. Many groups in the Middle East, Europe and even North America set up children’s movements to ensure the longevity of the group.  For this reason, terrorist groups try to ensure their survival by preparing the next generation.

Terrorist organizations have established youth wings, training camps and propaganda targeting young children. Most terrorist groups engage the children in supporting roles until they are old enough for the front line. ISIS grabs children when they are mere tots.

Thousands of Yazidi children were taken captive by the militants of the Islamic state with their families and moved to Tel Afar, their ancient hometown of Sinjar in northern Iraq that fell to the hands of militants last August.

Raghib Al-Yas Ahmed, 14, is a member of the Yazidi minority that suffered at the hands of the militants. At first, he moved to Turkey with his mother and younger brother where they spent two months before they were captured by ISIS and he ended up in a military training camp in Raqqa where he spent the next seven months.

Young women of his family, including his two sisters were taken by the militants as sex slaves. His 20-year old sister Shahinaz, (who later fled the Islamic State) was raped and sold as a sex slave, while his second sister is still in the hands of the terror group.

Raghib said, “They taught us how to slit throats. We put our hand on their forehead, lift the head up and put the knife on the neck and slaughter them. They also taught us how to blow ourselves up. As for the bomb which is strapped around the waist, we were told to pull up a white piece of metal attached to it and it will immediately detonate. We are also taught to pull the ring on top of a hand grenade and throw it immediately, or it will explode on us.” Raghib added: "We learned how to dissemble weapons and anyone who does not know how to do it is punished until he learns. We also learned how to aim at a target and anyone who misses the target is punished. Another youngster, 10-year-old Hamada Shihab Ahmed, said, “Military training included how to use the machine gun.”

Training included a 30-minute run a day and anyone who cannot run is punished by beating the soles of his feet with cudgels or being forced to crawl.”

Undisciplined children were punished by leaving them naked under the sun or lashing them with a piece of rubber hose. Omar, 14, was part of a more moderate militia fighting the regime of President Bashar al-Assad but the terror thugs kidnapped him and ordered him to join their murderous ranks of ISIS. The teenager described the harrowing moment an ISIS terrorist known as The Bulldozer’ cut off the foot and hand of the teenager for refusing to join the terror group.

The children were told that when they get older, they will sacrifice themselves by being walking bombs. They were also told that they will be rewarded by Allah (God). They were told that in Paradise, they can eat all they want but first, they must blow themselves up so that the infidels will be killed and then Allah will welcome them into Paradise. 

You may ask yourselves, will children really believe that kind of nonsense?  Of course they will. The older Islamic militants also believe that for each of them that die as a terrorist and/or a militant in the name of Islam, there will be seventy-two virgins waiting for them in Paradise.      

Young children are taught how to execute ISIS prisoners. One extremely young boy is filmed shakily clutching a gun and shooting a man in the head, as another brandishes a large knife before savagely cutting a man’s throat. The victim, thought to be from the Kurdish group PKK, speaks to the camera before he is killed in an abandoned amusement park by one of the children. In the disturbing scenes the young boy climbed into an old part of a carnival ride where a man was being held and stared angrily at his victim, while clutching a large blade. Then he began cutting off the man’s head while the man was still alive.

The act of imitation by children is indicative of this ISIS environment. The children in Raqqa acted out what they saw the adults doing. At ISIS training camps, children are reportedly told to practice beheadings on blond, blue-eyed dolls dressed in orange jumpsuits like those worn by beheading victims James Foley and Steven Sotloff. 

Later a toddler walked over broken and dusty balls in an old ball pit and was handed a gun. He shot a man in the head while the toddler was screwing up his eyes and looking away from the weapon clutched in his hands.

There is a film showing brainwashed children carrying out executions and taking part in training was released as part of ISIS propaganda.

Children appearing as young as ten are shown murdering captives and raiding buildings with live ammunition. In one scene they are even filmed chasing a man to the edge of a building before he is forced to jump to his death.

Dubbed the Cubs of the Caliphate, ISIS' army of preteen terrorists have appeared in several recent videos slaughtering enemy prisoners.

The film showed uniformed terror tots in the Islamic State's so-called capital of Raqqah in Syria. Later, the Isis terrorists were driven out of that city.

The ISIS terrorists are extremely cruel. On one occasion, four Iraqi Islamic State prisoners were burned to death by being suspended over flames in an ISIS execution The video of that execution was released in late August 2015. Fifteen members of three families trying to flee the caliphate were covered with hot tar and burned alive. The execution of the three families comes after it was reported last month that the terrorist group executed another family who tried to flee from Kirkuk. That family, which consisted of four children and a mother, was also burned to death in Hawija. The militants tied up the mother and her children and then covered their bodies with oil before lighting them on fire.

Terrorist organizations such as ISIS have established youth wings, training camps and propaganda targeting young children. Most terrorist groups engage the children in supporting roles until they are “old enough” for the front lines. ISIS needs more fighters since so many of them are being killed in battles. They know it is difficult to change the ways of adults who are peace loving so they go after children who are more malleable to the ISIS way of thinking.

Although it is unlikely that an ordinary child can be radicalized or that they can hold political beliefs that they genuinely understand; it is plausible that children can be brainwashed by adults who hold such beliefs. This takes the terrorist use of children to the next level—committing terrorist acts.

Are the children who are captured by ISIS and who are forced to kill human beings in a merciless manner, going to be just as cruel when they are adults? It may be too late for them to be discouraged from acting in such horrible ways. They must n]be captured when they are still young. Once ISIS and other terrorist organizations are exterminated permanently, that form of terrorist growth will come to an end.

This means that the adult terrorists who are captured will have to be imprisoned indefinitely or executed. By choosing these two options, the adult terrorists won’t be able to radicalize more children to come.