How 'Islamic State' children learn to kill ‘without batting an eye'.

How 'Islamic State' children learn to kill ‘without batting an eye'. (Raqqa).

Though not the only group in Syria to utilize child soldiers, the Islamic State’s recruitment and indoctrination of children has drawn widespread international condemnation.

The group periodically releases photos depicting children—nicknamed ‘lion cubs’ as an homage to IS fighters calling themselves ‘lions’ –wearing military fatigues and performing drills to prepare them for combat.

IS utilizes several different methods to persuade kids to enroll as fighters, including “sending already indoctrinated children back home for rest periods with the knowledge that they will encourage their friends to join up,” Abu Ibrahim a-Raqqawi, the alias of a founding member of the media campaign A-Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, tells Syria Direct’s Ghardinia Ashour.

“This issue is terrifyingly dangerous—they are not destroying their minds alone, but their hearts,” says a-Raqqawi. Here, a-Raqawi talks at length about IS’s history of child recruitment, how the group attracts children and what he has seen at the training camps.

The children, instructed by their recruiters not to tell their parents they are going off to one of the three camps in A-Raqqa province, often just disappear. Once in IS hands, they are subjected to nothing short of “brainwashing, total mental re-programming, a complete erasure of the child’s mind followed by the insertion of new information,” says a-Raqqawi.

“When families find out where there kids are and try to contact them, the child refuses to talk, saying, ‘I don’t want to talk to you, you are kufar and enemies of God. You are against the Islamic State.’”

Q: When did the Islamic State begin to recruit children?

IS began to recruit children in April or May 2014, with the opening of the “Sharia Camp for Lion Cubs” in Tabqa city. It’s a camp for kids under 16.

IS purposefully closed schools in order to recruit children, just as it prevented children under 13 from working on the pretext that they wanted to stop their exploitation—keeping in mind that IS recruits children at this age. They’re trying to recruit children through all possible means.

Q: What are the camps that are located in A-Raqqa?

There’s the Shariah Camp for Lion Cubs, the Lion Cubs of the Caliphate Institute, and recently the Al-Faruq Institute for Lion Cubs.

Q: What types of training are conducted in the camps?

Training is divided into a fast class and a slow class.

IS used the fast class when the battle for Ain al-Arab/Kobani was going on, and resorts to it when it finds itself in a large battle and in need of fighters.

The child enters a sharia course for one month, and then a military course for a second month, and afterwards is sent directly to the front. Seeing as the child is young to begin with and not supposed to be on the front, and did not undergo specific training that might allow him to stay alive in a battle, a lot of A-Raqqa’s children were killed, unfortunately.

The IS elements always come to announce, only orally [i.e. no written notice] that ‘this child of yours has died,’ without presenting the body. There is a youth whose case was documented, a 17-year-old named Basel Hamira, whom they made carry out a suicide operation in Ain al-Arab/Kobani.

As for the slow, or long-term class:

The child enters a sharia course for three to four months, and if he passes the course he enters a war course, also for three to four months. Sometimes the course is shortened, so the Sharia part will be 40 days, or a month to two months, and then three months of military training, according to how quickly the child is able to complete these sessions. Hmmmm.......Using child soldiers isa war crime. Read the full story here.

Two #Ezidi boys identify their friends in an ISIS propaganda video. ISIS abducted them & turns them into terrorists pic.twitter.com/788QxKFkKS

— Kurdistan News (@Firyayek) March 4, 2015