Islamic State’s “cubs of the caliphate” are growing up
WHEN Omar returned home after 40 days in a boot camp run by Islamic State, it was obvious something had snapped. Once a quiet boy and a fan of SpongeBob SquarePants cartoons, Omar, 12, had become aggressive. He told his mother to stop wearing make-up, refused to greet her female friends and became angry when she tried to bathe him. “I was scared to wear a T-shirt inside my own house,” his mother, Amina, says. “He told me these things were forbidden under Islam. They washed his brain.”
Omar died shortly after his last visit home. Trained by IS as one of its inghimasi—shock troops sent into battle with assault rifles and suicide vests—Omar was killed fighting Syrian government forces in the eastern city of Deir Ezzor, not far from his home, six months ago. IS allowed his mother 15 minutes with her son’s body before burying him in a grave that she was forbidden, as a woman, from visiting.
Amina’s anguish is sharpened by her relationship with the man she blames for her son’s death. Now a refugee in Turkey, she says her husband, who had become enamoured with IS’s ideology shortly after the group stormed their area, encouraged Omar to join the extremists. “He told me I should be happy when Omar died; that he was in paradise,” she says as tears slide down her face. “It felt like someone had extracted my soul.”
The ultra-violent jihadists have recruited thousands of children in Iraq and Syria. Like Omar, many have been dispatched to the front to die. Others work as spies, bomb-makers, cooks or prison guards. In extreme cases, children have executed prisoners, sawing off heads with knives or firing bullets into skulls. Thousands more have been exposed to the group’s warped ideology at IS-sponsored schools.
This story is from the June 17th - 23rd 2017 edition of The Economist.
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This story is from the June 17th - 23rd 2017 edition of The Economist.
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