As United Nations (UN) statistics
estimate that over 5-million children’s lives have been affected in Syria as a
result of the Islamic State’s (ISIS) ongoing jihad, UN officials are saying
that ISIS has created new and more barbaric ways to utilize children in the
conflict, including using them as human shields and forcing them to donate
blood to injured jihadis.
UN International Children’s Fund
regional child protection adviser, Laurent Chapuis, recently said in an interview
that ISIS militants are recruiting children, including those of younger ages,
to join the caliphate by providing them with various paying roles within the
caliphate. Although Chapuis says that
some children are used in more civil and “domestic” roles like “cooking, cleaning,
bringing water or providing medical aid to the wounded,” some children are
thrust to the front lines and used in military roles like combatants or human
shields. “There is conclusive evidence
that children in Syria have and continue to be used by all parties to the
conflict – as combatants, human shields, messengers, spies, guards [and]
porters,” Chapuis said.
According to a report by the Office
of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the human rights office of the
UN Assistance Mission in Iraq, some of ISIS’ child soldiers “were forced to
form the front line to shield ISIL fighters during fighting,” and others “had
been forced to donate blood for treating injured ISIL fighters.”
The report also found that ISIS is
using children for propaganda purposes and states that the testimonies tell of
one instance where militants went to a hospital and forced two very sick kids
with cancer to hold the ISIS flag while posing for a picture with the militants.
According to testimony from an
escaped 15-year-old former ISIS fighter, the militant leaders are also forcing
child fighters to take anti-anxiety pills in order to make them more likely to
follow through on a suicide attack. “That
drug makes you lose your mind,” the ex-militant teen named Mufleh told CBS News. “If they give you a suicide belt and tell you
to blow yourself up, you’ll do it.”
Ivan Simonovic, the UN Assistant Secretary-General
for human rights, told International
Business Times that the reason why ISIS recruitment is so successful with
children in the region is because the recruiters really press the importance of
fighting and dying for their faith. “What
is striking for me is to meet mothers who [tell us], ‘We don’t know what to do,’”
Simonovic said. “‘Our sons are volunteering
and we can’t prevent it.’”
Chapuis further added that he thinks
the new ways that children are starting to be recruited, trained and utilized
in front line roles by extremist groups like ISIS is causing a change to the
traditional “child soldier’s paradigm.”
Chapuis asserts, “The geopolitical, regional and international dimensions
of today’s armed conflicts and the growing polarization around specific
ideological, religious and sectarian agendas are all contributing to the emergence
of a new ‘child soldier’s paradigm,’ or new ways in which children are being
mobilized, recruited and dragged into conflict and extreme violence.”
When
it comes to children, we have a duty to protect and ensure that they are not put
in harms way. Jesus said it would be
better for us to drown than to cause one of His children to stumble and sin!
(Matthew 18:5-6)
Rev.
Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.
Chaplain
(Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army
Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel
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