Children trained in camps to become new ISIS generation
The Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), part of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) military alliance, released a video on its website showing the contents of phones secretly and illegally held by ISIS women. In the video ‘Beneath the Veil’, the YPJ exposed the mobile phone footage of foreign ISIS women. The video, entitled ‘Raising tomorrow’s mujahideen’, shows how ISIS women are training children to keep the caliphate alive.
The YPJ states that all the footage used in the video was taken from the confiscated phones of foreign ISIS women or from footage inside the Al-Hol camp. In its statement, the YPJ notes that phones are banned in the camp and illegally used phones are confiscated in order to prevent coordination with ISIS sleeper cells trying to organize the escape of those held in the camp. The video, which contains disturbing images, includes remarks on the perception of foreign ISIS women: “Foreign ISIS women are often depicted as naive wives who followed their husbands to Syria. However, they play a crucial role within the Islamic State.”
Turning children into obedient soldiers
The video features the children undergoing military training. Throughout the video, in addition to the footage, there are lines about the training given to the children: “ISIS uses children to fight as foot soldiers, making them act as executioners in beheading videos and carrying out suicide missions. Unlike other Islamist groups, ISIS never concealed their use of child soldiers. On the contrary, they use them strategically as means of propaganda. Desensitizing children to violence in early ages changes their moral conception of what is right and wrong. It turns them into obedient soldiers, willing to do everything and guarantee the ideological continuation of ISIS. The women possessing the footage used in this video have all children themselves. These children are being raised in an environment that produces the next generation of indoctrinated militants, completely familiarized to extreme violence.”
Tens of thousands ISIS families
The video is being released alongside a statement from the YPJ, which reads as follows: “As a part of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) military alliance, we as YPJ played a crucial role in the defeat of the so-called ISIS “caliphate”. Since the last battle against ISIS held territory in the town of Baghouz in March 2019, more than 10.000 ISIS militants are detained in our areas. Among the detainees there is a huge number of foreigners, who came to Syria from more than 50 different countries to join ISIS. Around 2000 of them come from western countries, while others come from the Caucasus, North Africa and the Middle and Far East. The mothers and children of these foreign ISIS members are detained in camps, with al-Hol camp being the largest one, housing 50.000 people.”
Extreme violence in camps
Murders and beheadings are frequent in the al-Hol camp, the YPJ notes, adding that secret Sharia courts punish women who refuse to obey the extremist ideology of the ISIS organization. The statement further says: “It has been observed that mothers indoctrinate their children with the terrorist group’s ideology and give them military-like physical training. The YPJ underlines that leaving children in an environment where they are exposed to an extremely violent ideology, sexual abuse and indoctrination violates the AANES Children’s Law No. 7 (2022), which mandates the protection of children from dangerous environments.”
New generation of ISIS
The footage also shows children inside the al-hol camp making beheading gestures with their hands, pretending to shoot guns and playing with self-made weapons. The YPJ warns that children growing up with mothers who want to prepare a new generation of Islamic State are being exposed to an extremely violent ideology. In the al-Hol camp, there have been various incidents of sexual abuse and forced pregnancies committed with the intention of creating a new generation of extremists, the YPJ Information and Documentation Office states, adding: “To stop ISIS from reorganizing, the children in the camps need to be saved from this extremist environment.”
ISIS a threat to all humanity
The Autonomous Administration for North and East Syria (AANES) and the SDF have repeatedly called on the international community to resolve the situation of foreign nationals by repatriating them and trying them in the courts of their home countries.The YPJ underlines the severity of the situation with the following words: “These calls have mostly fallen on deaf ears, leaving the people of Northern and Eastern Syria, who have suffered the most from ISIS’s barbaric violence, with the burden of providing support and safe detention for ISIS members, as well as prevention and de-radicalization projects for the children of ISIS members. This is why in June 2023, AANES announced that it will begin locally tracing detained foreign ISIS members on the very soil where the organization has committed its most heinous crimes.” Declaring that ISIS will continue to be a threat to all humanity as long as its ideologies are spread and passed on to future generations, the YPJ stresses that the fight against groups like ISIS is not only a military struggle, but also an ideological one.