"Oh, mother, don't be
sad at my departure." These are the opening words to the theme song
played at the training camp for children in northern Syria, established
by the al-Qaida-affiliated organization, the Islamic State of Iraq and
the Levant (abbreviated "ISIS").
The core of this
organization, founded in 2004 by Abu Musab al-Zarkawi in Iraq, has
recently intensified its activities in Iraq and, at the beginning of
this year, took control of several cities in the Anbar Province in the
west of the country on the border with Syria and Jordan. The group's
operatives -- infamous for their brutality, including beheadings -- have
caused considerable casualties among the Iraqi security forces
struggling to impose order and security in the country that has been
embroiled in a civil war ever since the American invasion and the fall
of the Saddam Hussein regime in 2003.
Since the onset of the
Syrian civil war in March of 2011, ISIS operatives have fought with the
Islamist opposition trying to depose Syrian President Bashar Assad, with
the intention of instituting an Islamic caliphate.
Despite international
law prohibiting the participation of children in military activities,
which places responsibility for preventing this practice on governments
and groups involved in hostilities, according to a Human Rights Watch
report more than a quarter million children under the age of 18 are
presently involved in armed conflicts across the globe. The inclusion of
children to the ranks of terrorist organizations is not a new
phenomenon and is rather common among Islamist terrorist groups in the
Middle East, and among groups operating in Africa and East Asia.
Children have been used to perpetrate terrorist attacks and suicide
bombings in Afghanistan and Iraq against American forces stationed
there. The working assumption was that Western forces would avoid
harming children, thereby increasing the chances of a successful attack.
During the Second Intifada there were at least nine recorded cases of
suicide bombings against Israeli targets involving children. This became
acceptable practice across all the Palestinian terrorist groups in
their fight against Israel, although the practice did not always receive
official Islamic religious license.
Indeed, most Islamic
scholars oppose the phenomenon of enlisting children for terrorist
activities, citing the Prophet Muhammad, who refused to allow boys into
his army because they were too young. Sheikh Omar al-Dib,
director-general of the most renowned religious university in the Sunni
Muslim world, Al-Azhar University, rejected the phenomenon outright
claiming it was prohibited by Islam, arguing that it unjustly sentences
children to death. Other Islamic scholars have accused those who enlist
children of premeditated murder.
Despite all this, it
appears the phenomenon has been spreading, and not just among the
Palestinian terrorist groups in Gaza -- which have erected summer camps
where children learn how to kidnap Israeli soldiers, place roadside
bombs and fire rifles -- but also among the radical Islamist groups busy
fighting Assad in Syria. ISIS, active in northern Syria, has deepened
its influence among the children of the region and enlists them to carry
out terrorist attacks against Assad's forces. According to the official
Information Telegraph Agency of Russia, ISIS has enlisted some 50
children between the ages of seven and 13 to its ranks, who are
currently located in a special training base in northern Syria. The base
is slated to absorb dozens more Muslim children.
During their 25-day
training period, the children learn to use an assortment of firearms,
undergo Islamic jihadist ideological indoctrination and are made to
watch and cheer as "infidels" are beheaded. At the conclusion of their
training, the children are assigned to pre-determined terrorist
missions.
The future does not
bode well for any of these children, sentenced to a life of terrorism.
These kids, who today are taught the tools needed to take part in
terrorist actions across Syria based on this Islamic Jihadist ideology,
will one day become the new terrorist leaders in the region. Not only
will they fight Assad's heretic regime, they will fight the other
heretic regimes neighboring in the Middle East.
The writer is head of the Middle East Studies Department at Western Galilee College.
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