Islamic State trains ‘purer’ child killers in doctrine of hate

A new generation of Isis recruits is being developed in the Islamic State’s “caliphate”, indoctrinated with religious concepts from birth, and viewed by its fighters as better and purer than themselves, according to the first study of the exploitation and abuse of children as a means of securing the group’s future.

Researchers for Quilliam, a London counter-extremism thinktank have investigated they way Isis recruits children and indoctrinates and trains them for jihad. As many as 50 children from the UK are growing up in Islamic State-controlled territory, with an estimated 30,000 foreign recruits, including more than 800 Britons, believed to have gone to Syria to fight.

The report, Children of Islamic State, has been endorsed by the UN and will be published on Wednesday in parliament. It was compiled through a study of propaganda released by Isis featuring children and liasing with trusted sources within the caliphate. The portrait painted is of a terrorist group eager to enlist children to help safeguard its future. Many are being trained as spies, preachers, soldiers, “executioners” and suicide bombers.

The authors state: “The organisation … focuses a large number of its efforts in indoctrinating children through an extremism-based education curriculum, and fostering them to become future terrorists. The current generation of fighters sees these children as better and more lethal fighters than themselves, because rather than being converted into radical ideologies they have been indoctrinated into these extreme values from birth, or a very young age.”

Not having been corrupted by living according to secular values, they are considered purer than adult fighters. “These children are saved from corruption,” states the study, “making them stronger than the current mujahideen [fighters] because they have a superior understanding of Islam from youth and from school curriculum and are better and more brutal fighters as they are trained in violence from a very young age”.

The foreign recruits represent a potentially significant strengthening of the group’s cohort of around 80,000 militants, 50,000 in Syria and 30,000 in Iraq. An estimated six million men, women and children are estimated to be living within its self-styled Isis calpihate.

“The aim is to prepare a new, stronger, second generation of mujahideen, conditioned and taught to be a future resource for the group,” the report adds. “The area of most concern is that Islamic State is preparing its army by indoctrinating young children in its schools and normalising them to violence through witnessing public executions, watching Islamic State videos in media centres and giving children toy weapons to play with.”