Children in terrorist organizations

Undoubtedly, the children are the present and the future of any nation. Imam al-Ghazali once said: "The way one raises children is one of the most important matters. The child’s pure heart is a naive and a true gem. The child is so innocent. The future of children is the future of the whole nation.

Since the outbreak of chaos in the Arab region following the popular uprisings in 2011, recruitment of children by terrorist groups and organizations has become widespread, especially ISIS.  This paper discusses reasons for the phenomenon and the means used by terrorist groups in the recruitment process.

The term "childhood" refers to the age range from the birth of man until maturity. Islam considers children to be the best in life and the true hope for the future. Therefore, Islam gives special attention to children in addition to special provisions and rights from birth.

The Holy Qur’an has defined the conditions and duties of those commissioned with jihad and also explained the people excluded.

“There is not upon the weak or upon the ill or upon those who do not find anything to spend any discomfort when they are sincere to Allah and His Messenger. There is not upon the doers of good any cause [for blame]. And Allah is Forgiving and Merciful.” [Surat At-Tawbah Verse 91]

The verse indicates that Allah has dismissed any embarrassment in jihad for the weak, which is the term used to describe those who are unable to fight. Therefore, it is meaningless to commission children with what Allah does not want. The verse totally bans the involvement of children in wars and conflicts.

Moreover, the hadith of Prophet Mohamed [PBUH] is full of other examples. Al-Tabarani narrated that Rafie ibn Khadij said: "I and my uncle came to the Messenger of Allah (PBUH). I said I want to go out with you, Prophet of Allah. He told me not. That’s why I did not witness the Battle of Badr.”

In the same context, Prophet Mohamed [PBUH] refused to take in 14 young men in the Battle of Uhud. Al-Bukhari also quoted the Prophet’s companion Baraa ibn Aazib as saying: The Prophet dismissed me and ibn Umar at the Battle of Badr.

Conscripted children

In general, most of the legal definitions in force agree that a child conscript is "any individual under the age of 18. The recruitment may be done by the state or any other militant groups. This recruitment of children, boys and girls, who are employed as fighters, cooks, porters, spies, or even for sexual purposes.

The recruitment is aimed at fulfilling certain roles to serve a particular organization or entity. Meanwhile, child labor refers not only to forcing children to participate in combat, but also to carry water and other things, in addition to the marriage of minor girls and sexual exploitation. The recruitment of children as fighters is considered to be a war crime.

Children… strategic treasure of terrorist organizations

Terrorist organizations – ISIS in particular -- misrepresented some of the Islamic prophetic traditions and some narrations in Al-Sirah Al-Nabawiyah (the Prophet's biography) to justify and authorize recruitment of children in their alleged jihad against the infidels.

We may say that terrorist organizations like ISIS, aka Daesh, consider children to be a strategic treasure for them. Terrorist groups always seek permanence. So, they are in need of manpower that embraces their dogmas for loyalty and the survival of organization. Children are easier in the recruitment process. They are trained and taught the ideology of the organization.

For instance, during the battle of Kobani in May 2014, ISIS abducted 153 Kurdish children aged 14-16, according to a study by the United Nations on the recruitment of children.

The children were taught and trained on the jihadi ideology for five months. In a bid to promote the brutality of takfiri groups and win a psychological war against its adversaries, it has sought to recruit children to promote that it is the most dangerous terrorist organization in the world.

ISIS also used images of children carrying various weapons. The children were also trained on camouflage as well as suicide operations.

ISIS has brainwashed these children who were taught the organization’s ideology to bring up a generation that loves caliphate and detests peace. That’s why ISIS was keen on filming children killing the captives.

Moreover, the terrorist groups take advantage of children’s religious tendency persuading them of freeing the Muslim world from Western domination by urging them to combat injustice and tyranny away from political complexities. ISIS also seeks to link the families of children to the organization after some of its members moved to the territory controlled by the organization with their wives and children.

At a later stage of the alleged caliphate, ISIS was keen on recruiting children to make up for the lack of fighters, who were killed or injured.  

The financial crisis in the aftermath of the war on terror has opened the way for the recruitment of children and adolescents. We may say that ISIS considers this category to be cheap and effective labor. Children can be satisfied with so little and easily controlled.

The most crucial aspect is their enthusiasm and willingness to sacrifice. As a matter of fact, children and adolescents have become the dominant element and probably the only human reservists of ISIS.

Jalal al-Hamad, director of the Justice Center for Life in Deir al-Zour, said: "The children do not need a great effort to be brainwashed and to be turned into human bombs”.  

ISIS strategy to recruit children

The recruitment of children has banked on a key idea inculcating in the minds of children that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi" is their master. If they do not obey the master’s orders, they will be infidels.  

The number of foreign migrants who left their countries and moved to ISIS’ strongholds in Iraq and Syria has increased ISIS declared the caliphate in Mosul in 2014.

ISIS has followed a six-pronged strategy to deal with children. One of the most well-known publications issued by ISIS for raising children has been a guide educating mothers of jihadists how to bring up their children in an extremist environment. The mothers would read stories about jihad. The guide stresses that pleasure is not dancing and music. Children must not watch TV, which promotes insanity, depravity and random violence.  

The first step in applying the strategy, ISIS took advantage of public occasions by handing out candy and toys to lure children. The children then go to classes in which they receive lessons on types of weapons and extremist Islamic jurisprudence.

The children watch scenes of beheadings carried out by young executioners aged 12. The children would be distributed later on three levels of education and training.

Within 15 days, the children learn sharia principles such as prayer and ablution. The second level is hard physical work, and within 40 days, the children should learn martial arts.

The third level is psychological training, where the scenes of murder, stoning, beheading, and at a later stage move from just watching to attending the executions. 

The abovementioned curriculum is considered to be part of the intellectual rehabilitation phase for aimed at the brainwashing of these children.

It is aimed at making the societies that do not believe in the values of ISIS as infidels who have to be fought and harassed wherever they are. It is also aimed at persuading the children that what they are doing is in line with the holy religious war for the survival and survival of the caliphate.

The specialization and concentration stage is the final phase. The children will then get their duties. These duties include standing at checkpoints, guarding and suicide operations.

ISIS also selects skillful children to prepare them for leadership and learn the takfiri ideology.

In the process of recruiting children, ISIS applies a number of approaches that rely on starvation, the temptation of families to send their children for money. It also tempts the children themselves.

For example, the Somali Al-Shabab Movement, like ISIS, used gifts via organizing contests for memorizing the Holy Qur’an. The first prize was an RPG (worth $700), and the second winner got a Kalashnikov rifle (worth $500). The third prize was 2 grenades (worth $400).

Omar Hussein, aka Abu Saeed the British, who was responsible for the recruitment, ISIS forces the children to carry out killings.

Ibrahim Najm al-Nazaa,  from Aleppo, confirmed that. He said: ”ISIS detained me for more than three years. It tortured the children. ISIS put them in car bombs. The Syrian Arab Army freed the region and saved the people from the grip of ISIS”.

Horrible statistics

The militant children can be divided into: children born to foreign fighters, children born to local militants, children who have been abandoned and found their way to an orphanage controlled by ISIS, children forcibly taken away from their families, and those children who voluntarily joined the terrorist organization.

A report by the United Nations has found that ISIS has recruited about 3,000-5,000 children. The abducted children were 800 – 900.

Roughly 1,800 children, mostly Syrians, joined ISIS. A total of 350 children were killed, and around 48 others carried out suicide bombings in 2016.

According to a report by the CTC Sentinel magazine, ISIS mourned 89 children, of whom 51 percent were killed in Iraq and 36 percent of them were killed in Syria.

Another report issued by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 175 children were missioned in 2017. They were sent to fight in Raqqa and Aleppo.

Brutality against children and adolescents

Although Islam bans the killing of children as Prophet Mohamed (PBUH) said: "Do not kill offspring, do not kill offspring!” Abu Dawood narrated another saying of the Prophet: "Do not kill an old woman, nor a child, nor a young woman or a woman!”

However, terrorist groups like ISIS use children, especially mentally handicapped, as suicide bombers and human shields.

Moreover, the involvement of children in terrorist groups is nothing new in Iraq. Mounir Adib, a political Islam researcher, said this tradition was common at the time of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq.

The exploitation of orphans in combat operations totally contradicts the teachings of Islam and the normal human nature.

According to the fatwa, an edict based on sharia or Islamic law, released by the Dar al-Iftaa Observatory ISIS abandoned the Prophet’s commandments to mercy the orphans. Prophet Mohamed (PBUH) said: “I and the one who takes the responsibility of an orphan will be in Paradise thus, and he joined his middle finger and forefinger”.

ISIS’ most brutal conduct was driving the children to carry out suicide operations. An Iraqi officer said a suicide child in Kirkuk, Ossaid Berhu surrendered himself to the police before carrying out a suicide attack.

Apparently, the innocence of the child has overcome what ISIS sought to inculcate in his mind. The child trembled while carrying on the suicide operation.

ISIS also bombed a police station in Damascus, using a nine-year-old girl, who wore an explosive belt.

Moreover, the terrorist groups perpetrated the most obscene and heinous crimes against innocent children. In Nigeria, Boko Haram anesthetizes children prior to suicide bombings.

Around 80 percent of these children are abducted to be bomb public places and camps of the Nigerian army. According to a UN report, around 117 suicide bombings of children have been carried out since 2014.

The atrocities of ISIS extended to use children as executioners. A UN report said there has been a systematic employment of children under the age of 18 as soldiers.  The report cited a 16-year-old fighter who beheaded 2 soldiers, who were abducted in late August 2014.

A videotape showed an eight-year-old boy executing 2 other men ISIS had accused of spying for Russia.

Daesh has taken pride in their cub fighters. It circulated images and videos of a 10-year-old boy, dubbed as the youngest martyr. Former British Prime Minister David Cameron called him the “youngest terrorist”.

ISIS & e-war

ISIS is keen on electronic recruitment more than traditional due to easy use of social media worldwide and fast circulation of information on the cyberspace. The social media facilitate the promoting of violence due to low cost of financial networks.

Moreover, recruiters over the Internet can easily hide their identity. The e-war is one of the key types of wars. Daesh draws on electronic jihad as it has lost its strongholds in Raqqa and Mosul.

It considers hacking and piracy a kind of Jihad. Daesh set up Dabiq Battalion, which is specialized in hacking accounts and pages on Facebook and Twitter, which attacked the terrorist organization.

Moreover, ISIS set up Omar Al-Farouq Brigades for training its supporters on evading electronic prosecution and methods of cyberspace hiding.

The media and propaganda unit is one of the most influential divisions of ISIS. It heavily relies on this unit to keep up with sophisticated technology to recruit child soldiers.

The media and propaganda unit introduced electronic applications such as the application of ‘Horouf’, or letters, to teach children the Arabic alphabet using names of weapons such as ‘B for Bonoqiah, or rifle, and ‘S’ for ‘Seif’, or sword.

According to Dar al-Iftaa Observatory, the application is aimed at teaching children the meaning of violence and fighting to create a new generation of suicide children, who would embrace the misled and wrong ideology of the terrorist organization.

ISIS released a video titled "Flames of War," using state-of-the-art technology ,and it also worked on  developing “Arma” game, which allows the children to select the military uniforms as well as the geographical territories.

ISIS also released ‘Salil al-Sawarem’, which is an application that emulates ‘Grand Theft Auto. The terrorist organization has said the game allows users to carry out bombings, headhunting and attacks.

Studies show that there is a strong link between violent behavior and violent games which may make criminal children in the future.

Undoubtedly, the phenomenon of using children as soldiers creates a class in the society deeply involved in crime and well trained to carry arms. This class has been misguided by false ideas at a very young age.

That requires solutions for the integrating of these children into the society. They should be rehabilitated under the supervision of qualified specialists from the religious, educational and psychological experts.

Finally, the insistence of terrorist groups on children recruitment reveals an organizational and intellectual bankruptcy. It is aimed at recruiting people in conflict zones by falsely claiming that these groups attract widespread support and even from children.

By all means, this is a war crime against humanity, and the international law in this concern should be activated to protect children and raise awareness of the dangers of these violations.