Jihadi Generations-Part IV
Recruitment, Retention and Proliferation
A still from an ISIS video called "Al-Farouq Institute for Cubs" -published by Independent UK, April 6, 2016
Recruitment and Procurement of Children
As mentioned in the previous parts of this series, children are either born into these terrorist groups, captured by them, sold to them, live in conditions of abject poverty, or are in proximity to these terrorist strongholds and don’t have the means to leave.
In some countries, after being displaced, families are faced with a “choiceness choice”. They cannot remain in their own neighborhoods because they have been destroyed. They have no shelter, little access to food, no money, no possibility of schooling for their children and no security. These families and individuals become refugees desperate to find a “safe” place to live and a way to make a living.
Muslim refugee families are often attracted to the housing, schools, medical facilities, and “crime-free security” areas that the Taliban or Islamic state groups seem to offer. You can watch a report made a number of years ago with hidden cameras and videos from the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan. It is still on the net for free entitled: "Children of the Taliban"
Children are first separated from their parents and promised food and shelter if they leave their family homes to join the madrassas. Separation is followed by a complete information blackout: no television, radio, newspapers allowed. Instead, children memorize the Quran in Arabic, understanding nothing but what they are told it says by their teachers, the interpretations distorted to suit the extremists’ own needs and purposes.
Children are subjected to a daily barrage of jihadist messages which include extreme violence and “hate sessions” in their schools, at the mosques, in the media they are permitted to view, and on the streets. In the most impressionable ages and stages of child development, all their senses are assaulted with psychopathy.
“Children trained by the Taliban are basically brainwashed - taught in complete isolation from the outside world in order for them to serve as live ammunition for their war against the ‘infidels,’” explains Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy director of the 2009 film, Children of the Taliban. She is a Canadian/Pakistani film maker and journalist.
“The teachers then continue brainwashing their charges, teaching them to hate the world they live in. The children are urged to focus on the next world and the ‘reward’ guaranteed them by fighting this “holy” war - jihad. These opinions are reiterated by older students, and by videos that demonstrate how collateral damage is not a concern…which is why the life of a civilian should not dominate their ‘holy purpose’ either.
The end result is a child who feels he has no choice but to sacrifice himself for the greater cause of the war against the Western occupiers of Afghanistan and the Pakistan Army. At the hands of their trainers, (themselves veterans of jihads in Afghanistan under Soviet rule and Kashmir under Indian occupation), these children become the walking dead, living, according to Obaid-Chinoy, in hope for an afterlife that is more glorious than the one they live in. They are the ghost children.“
The Afghan and Pakistan practice of “Bacha Bazi”- having young boys as slaves or ‘dancing boys’ also provides the Islamic extremist groups ongoing possibilities for recruitment and conversion. There are literally thousands of local and national police who keep from one to four bacha (dancing boys) and many will not take up their posts without assurance of a supply of bacha boys.
Bacha Bazi boys dressed as girls, abused and forced to dance-Times of India
“The custom of child sexual slavery — bacha bazi — is a centuries-old practice in Afghanistan, which US officials have called ‘a culturally sanctioned form of male rape’. The boys, typically aged between 10 and 18, are feminized, sometimes wearing makeup and bells on their feet. They are usually kidnapped or sold by their desperately poor families to the powerful elite — warlords, politicians and police commanders — who keep them for personal servitude, sexual pleasure and as a symbol of authority.Even though the Afghan government passed a law against this child abuse in 2016, not one case has been brought to court yet, not one investigation follow on or enforcement from over 1,100 complaints/tips reported.The Taliban has seen and noted this ‘addiction’ and have used this vice and vulnerability to their advantage.
“You can understand how the Taliban, who banned bacha bazi during their 1996-2001 rule, have managed to use these boys to mount insider attacks. A boy who has been tortured as a sex slave is ripe to take revenge on his tormentor. In many cases, killing their abusers is their only escape from servitude”.
So the children are victimized twice -- first as sex slaves by their captors, then as killers by the Taliban.”
Photo from article in Protema “Bacha Bazi, disgusting Muslim tradition abuses little boys!” in the Greek online journal, October 22, 2015
Children who are ‘chosen’ to carry out the most dangerous jobs such as ordinance tasks, making, planting or clearing explosive devices, transporting illegal substances, or becoming a “Shahid” -a martyr through an act such as suicide bombing or on the frontline attack force- have no say in their fate. They are celebrated only after their death. If their parents or family members are living, they will often be included in the propaganda and receive payments.
Many of the kidnapped and enslaved families will be forced to surrender their children, who are the first to be used in dangerous missions since they are viewed as the most expendable. Children are useful as well since they are not as likely to be stopped or checked due to their age and ethnicity.
The horrific ‘graduation’ videos of children performing grisly violent acts are disseminated on jihadi sites via the dark net and even through sites on mainstream media. These are often used in recruiting advertisements or in reports shared to all ages via phone/text messages/images and video clips.
“Once boys ‘graduate’ at the age of 15, they are forced to commit a repulsive inaugural act, which has the aim of desensitizing them to violence, while also demonstrating their loyalty to the group and acting as a bonding activity: beheading a prisoner. It is an act that cannot be withdrawn, and it brings the group closer together as they complete the task.” [http://www.newsweek.com/children-caliphate-isis-islamic-state-cubs-iraq-syria-434192 ]
Although boys (and girls) are sworn to secrecy, many will return to their villages and boast of the ‘brave acts’ they have seen and committed making them, in effect, recruiters for the Islamic violent extremist groups or criminal networks, of which they have become affiliates or members. They are taught to derive their “worth” through actions committed on behalf of these violent groups.
Proliferation
There appears to be a continual supply of young militants due to the conditions of poverty, conflict, the absence of the rule of law, and/or the absence of family and cohesive societal support. The Islamic State, Hamas and their various branches have been able to sustain monthly losses of hundreds of men, yet still regenerate their forces.
Many children and adults who were victims of abuse, exploitation and torture by their own local or national government employees, by military, special forces units, UN workers, and/or contractors from national or international companies, and NGOs- eventually escape or are discarded after use or imprisonment–if they are not killed.
The disastrous Operation Medusa in Khandahar and the reliance on the criminal governor Ashadullah Khalid, on Ahmed Wali Karzai and Harjit Sajjan (now Defense Minister in Canada)-is one terrifying case where the wrong people were arrested and political opponents and/or business competitors of the above named men were put on ‘terrorist lists’ and unjustly imprisoned, tortured and killed-often in front of their families.
There have been military members from NATO and US forces who tried to report and even intervene in cases where they were witness to child abuse.
“The report asks that the Defense Department determine whether child rape committed by Afghan security forces qualifies as gross violations of human rights. If so, a law already on the books called the Leahy Amendment would prohibit the United States “from using funds for assistance to units of foreign security forces” that have committed such violations.
One incident that gained media attention involved Army Sgt. 1st Class Charles Martland, a Green Beret who admitted he lost his cool during a 2011 deployment to Kunduz province. Martland and his captain struck an Afghan police officer, who allegedly had confessed to raping a boy and then beating the child’s mother for telling authorities.
The report concludes that while ”it is difficult to determine the actual extent of child sexual abuse due to a cultural taboo against reporting these crimes, both the [State Department] and the UN reported that: '“the sexual abuse of children is pervasive throughout Afghanistan.”
Survivors of these abuses are living witnesses and the walking wounded who often seek shelter wherever they can find it, and they are also often the most impassioned ‘volunteers’ to the caliphate camps.
Al Jazeera, August 2021-photo of the fall of Kabul, Afghanistan
Due to the criminal activity of a number of companies involved in child labor and child sex trafficking who are contracted by the US government programs, or the UN and NGOs, victims who have been exploited by international workers in Afghanistan and Pakistan,(and elsewhere) are more vulnerable to the promises of ‘righteous vengeance’ offered by Islamic violent extremist groups.
“There is a widespread practice of holding child sex slaves by police in southern Uruzgan and other Afghan provinces and now the Taliban are using them as Trojan Horses to kill their abusers.“ They are more vulnerable to the promises of ‘righteous vengeance’ offered by Islamic violent extremist groups.
Multinational corporations working with the US and NATO military deployed to Afghanistan, (and other countries in conflict); knowingly shelter, support and provide trafficked children. Some including: KBR (Kellogg, Brown and Root) Halliburton, Korean company Daewoo, HSBC, The Swiss embassy in Islamabad, Nike company, Stadtlander Cotton from Germany, Mining companies in Afghanistan-rely on child labor and sex slaves. They have continued operations using children with impunity.
A Wiki Leaks cable revealed that DynCorp threw “boy-play” parties for new Afghan police recruits, traded and transported child sex slaves.
The exploits of DynCorp are/were funded by the U.S. taxpayer.DynCorp, while still enjoying the lucrative privilege of doing business with the US government at the taxpayers' expense, has failed to reform itself or regulate the sexual exploits of its employees with children, according to numerous emails, released by Wiki Leaks, between Cheryl Mills and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
In spite of all these nefarious activities, DynCorp continues to be rewarded with US government contracts. Even after there was indisputable evidence of child exploitation and child abuse by Dyncorp employees on Dyncorp premises- No one stood against the granting in December of 2016, a $94 million contract the US Navy signed with DynCorp to "facilitate humanitarian aid, civic assistance, minor military construction and contingency programs to support exercises and other initiatives..."[Tue, 18 Apr 2017-https://www.sott.net/article/348577-Institutional-child-sex-trafficking-Army-general-and-former-Dyncorp-VP-charged-with-multiple-counts-of-rape- Jay Syrmopoulos, The Free Thought Project]
RETENTION
There is virtually no problem with retention of VEG members and fighters.
There is no way to leave any of these Islamic terrorist groups or violent criminal networks except by escape or death. Many die trying to escape. Their torture and execution are used as gruesome examples to any others contemplating “leaving the fold”. They know any members of their family will also face severe reprisals if they try to ‘disappear’.
For many, risking death, and death itself is preferable to continuing to live under the cruel, relentless regimes they were born or kidnapped into.
**For sources for all four parts of this series, please contact me by email, and I can send you a PDF document. My email is on my personal website under “Contact” at:
To go back and read the first three parts of this series, go to this link and proceed.
My next post will examine some of the cases and methods used to “rehabilitate and reintegrate” young children who have been subjected to terrorist trauma-based training, captivity, and who have witnessed horrific violence and indoctrination.
There is an excellent documentary “Imad’s Barndom - Imad’s Childhood” co-produced and sponsored by Sweden and Latvia about a five-year-old Yezidi boy and his family, who is released after nearly three years in ISIS/Daesh captivity.
Here is the trailer which I suggest everyone who reads these articles watches. You can purchase this film from a number of sites listed on any search engine under the title of the film-in English-”Imad’s Childhood”.