ISISIslamic State schooled children as soldiers – how can their ‘education’ be undone?
There is a fundamental difference between IS’s use of child soldiers and the practice elsewhere. IS hasn’t just recruited child soldiers. It systematically militarized the education systems of captured Iraqi and Syrian territory to turn the region’s children into ideological timebombs. The regular processes of identifying child combatants, disarming and reintegrating them into their communities through rehabilitation and reconciliation are all necessary. But they are vastly insufficient in this instance.
Over the last few years, the Islamic State (IS) terror group has shocked the world with its gruesome public spectacles. Especially abhorrent to our moral sensibilities is its overt use of children as frontline fighters, suicide bombers and propaganda tools.
From macabre hide-and-seek exercises, in which children hunt and kill enemy prisoners in specially constructed mazes, to the mass execution and decapitation of adult soldiers, young people living under IS have been indoctrinated and encouraged to engage in violence.
Meanwhile, IS’s quasi-government instituted an education system explicitly aimed at indoctrinating and weaponizing the children living under it.
Mathematics was practiced by determining how many more fighters IS has than an opposing force. Chemistry was taught by discussion of methods of gas inhalation. And physical education focused on the correct body positions for firing various weapons.
Their education has been compounded by the retaliatory and sometimes excessive violence of the vast array of forces committed to destroying IS. Through this, children have been exposed to horrific violence on a daily basis – thus generating trauma and, undoubtedly, genuine long-term grievances.
How IS’s use of child soldiers differs
There is a fundamental difference between IS’s use of child soldiers and the practice elsewhere.
IS hasn’t just recruited child soldiers. It systematically militarized the education systems of captured Iraqi and Syrian territory to turn the region’s children into ideological timebombs.
These children, saturated in IS’s particular brand of violent and uncompromising “religious” instruction from about the age of five, were trained in the use of small arms before their teenage years. They constitute a new challenge for the international community.
IS’s state-building efforts appear to have been thwarted for now. But saving the children exposed and potentially indoctrinated in its ideology is key to avoiding further terror attacks in the West, tackling the root causes of regional upheaval, and working toward a future where children play instead of fight, and schools teach instead of drill.
