Ten-year-old Hamude was one of them. Getting independent information about ISIS military training of children isn't easy. But some children were willing to speak out on condition of anonymity.
But when they threatened to kill his brother he says he lost faith in ISIS and fled. ISIS propaganda videos show children being put through rigorous physical training. It's that loyalty that ISIS is exploiting for another horrifying purpose.
It starts with showing the children videos of suicide attacks. That's just a child. We tracked down an insider who says she was in charge of that process. She too narrowly escaped after becoming disillusioned by the scale of the violence.
Then they say, "Are you sure you love you love Baghdadi? MAN: Slaughter him. Because he is an infidel. This year-old boy was among those ISIS tried to recruit. Ahmed is But when we did watch we were scared They say they are forced to watch real executions too. Like this boy who was shown beheading a Syrian officer in January.
Or this boy who apparently executed two alleged Russian spies. Boys are told they too will be killed if they don't join ISIS by Yemen is a country of 29 million people, roughly 19 million of whom are in need of humanitarian aid; seven million are on the brink of famine and , are suffering from cholera. Further, the UN reported a percent increase in the number of children fighting in Yemen between and These child soldiers come from Sudan and Libya, as well as Yemen itself.
Some of the child soldiers in Yemen are as young as 10 years old and have been recruited or forced to fight. Of the total, almost 70 percent are in forces affiliated with the Houthis and units loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Regardless of their use by state or quasi-state actors, the damaging consequences for the children involved are the same. After ISIS fighters took control of swaths of Iraq and Syria and declared a caliphate in June , the approximately 30,strong terrorist group focused considerable effort on developing the next generation of violent extremists.
With nearly , children out of school in areas under its control, ISIS had easy pickings. The children had numerous uses for ISIS. While weaker, smaller, and less disciplined than adults, children served on the battlefield alongside adult ISIS soldiers as human shields. Others were also deployed as suicide bombers. For example, a year-old ISIS member was martyred as a suicide bomber , killing 53 people at a Kurdish wedding in Turkey in The children were also highlighted in a series of propaganda videos released over the internet to spread fear and increase the recruitment of foreign fighters.
In some videos released online, children are shown in uniforms executing kneeling prisoners clothed in orange jumpsuits. ISIS indoctrinated these children as a long-term, strategic investment. Most of the ISIS children are now living in refugee camps that have become hotbeds of radicalization.
All are victims of deeply tragic circumstances and egregious violations of their rights. They must be treated and cared for as children. This includes those children who find themselves linked to armed groups in their territory or abroad. It also includes children who are citizens of these Member States or born to their nationals.
Every decision regarding them, including on repatriation, must take into consideration the best interest of each child and be in full compliance with international legal standards. For countries which have requested UNICEF support, our teams have facilitated the repatriation of more than children. But since the late s, the U. The territory ISIS briefly did claim as a state served to enhance its attraction as something more difficult to confront: a global movement.
Thus the question that now preoccupies counter-terrorism officials: What devotion does the group retain among the 8 million Iraqis and -Syrians it ruled at the height of its power, the estimated 40, people who traveled from elsewhere to join its caliphate and the millions around the globe who may be entertaining its extreme vision of Islam?
The terrorists separated Yezidi children from their families, sometimes killing their parents in front of them. In the soil of that trauma, they planted the idea that the boys were the future army of ISIS, indoctrinating them with the arrogance of conquerors.
Many more were sent to the front lines where fighting was bloodiest, forced to wear suicide belts at all times, with instructions to blow themselves up if the enemy got too close. Each of these boys could grow up to become a threat to thousands, and each must be healed. Hundreds of others have returned to live with relatives, bearing the scars of battle, inside and out. The Yezidi boys like S.
No one experienced the violence of ISIS as they did. It came from every side. The Nineveh Plain , which extends north and east of the city of Mosul, has for centuries been a kind of showcase for ancient faiths: Assyrian, Chaldean, Syriac. As ISIS retreated from its last redoubt, around 3, were still missing. Some survivors tell how their Arab neighbors joined ISIS to seize their lands, kill their loved ones and drive them out.
Hundreds of thousands now live in refugee camps, in the homes of relatives or in drafty, half-constructed buildings at the edges of Kurdish towns and villages. The scattering will make it harder for their tribe to survive. The ancient Yezidi religion is inherited through birth, based on bloodlines via the father, and the tribe is divided into three castes that cannot intermarry. Shrinking the available pool makes the survival of the faith even harder — one more reason the boys who were taken, then brought back, need to be healed and woven back into the fabric of their community.
Those under 18 were asked limited questions, with guardians or caregivers present. They tell you the moment ISIS attacked and their fathers, brothers or uncles were taken away. Sometimes they were permitted to stay with their mother and sisters for a while, but somewhere along their journey, moved like cattle from schoolrooms or wedding halls, they were singled out and taken away with other boys for religious indoctrination and military training.
Around the age of 13, the unlucky ones were sent to fight. Thikran Kamiran, 19, described the moment ISIS arrived in his large northern village and tricked his grandfather, the village leader, into gathering everyone together in the school courtyard, allegedly for safe passage out if they chose not to convert to Islam.
ISIS fighters led the Yezidi men and older boys away in three truckloads, supposedly carrying them to safety at nearby Sinjar mountain.
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