An article I published in 2014 on the International Political Forum
We are inundated with stories of children crossing continents to join the battle and to help to establish a caliphate.
Social media has intensified this process and has brought astonishing cases to the attention of many: videos and photographs depict children being trained with weapons which are too heavy for them to even carry and parading beneath ISIS’s black and white flag, the kind of flag a child would draw on a pirate ship. These ‘junior jihadis’ have managed to stir real distress in international onlookers who are able to witness so much more, and so much more quickly than in previous wars, due to the fact that this conflict exhibits the most socially mediated hostility in history.
Admittedly, data which can give us the true numbers of children participating are scarce. This conflict is ongoing and rapidly changing.
It goes without saying that both humanitarian law and human rights law ban government forces and non-state armed groups from recruiting and allowing the direct participation of children in hostilities or in supportive roles. However, child soldiering, a truly historical practice continues to be seen in conflicts far and wide today. Syria has ratified the Geneva Convention alongside the CRC which bans using children under 18 in hostilities, the country is also accountable under the Rome Statute, which deems enlisting children under 15 into armed groups, even in supportive roles, a war crime. On top of these international protocols, Syria has its own national policy in regards to the use of children in conflict, which criminalises recruitment and use of children under the age of 18 by either armed forces and non-state armed groups, including taking part in combat, transporting weapons and equipment, standing at checkpoints, acting as a human shield or serving the perpetrators in any way.
Despite these legislations, it is common knowledge that ISIS and other armed forces within Syria are drawing on children as part of their military strategies. They are making no attempts to hide these facts. Human Rights Watch states that exact number of children participating in conflict in Syria is unknown, but by May 2014, at least 200 “non civilian” male children had been killed in conflict since the outbreak of the civil war in the country. It’s clear we can add substantial causalities since ISIS established its presence in the country. According to the Syrian Human Rights Committee (SHRC) there are approximately 800 children under the age of 18 that are fighting for or acting on behalf of ISIS. These children are mainly involved in non-hostile activities, assisting gunmen and fighters in logistics, such as transferring ammunition, preparing meals, or patrolling checkpoints. According to an article in Foreign Policy:
“They stand in the front row at public beheadings and crucifixions held in Raqqa... They’re used for blood transfusions when Islamic State fighters are injured. They are paid to inform on people who are disloyal or speak out against the Islamic State. They are trained to become suicide bombers. They are children as young as 6 years old, and they are being transformed into the Islamic State’s soldiers of the future.”
One account from HRW, details how a 15 year-old boy felt pressured to sign up for suicide attack missions, and when he eventually wrote his name down for duty, the list contained at least one hundred names of other children who had already signed up. These ‘junior jihadis’ fit uncomfortably within our conventional understandings of what it means to be a child soldier. We are forced to ask whether our conventions and mandates can offer these children sufficient protection.
Civil war has been fought in Syria since 2011, leaving families and communities in dire situations of extreme poverty. Over the course of less than five years, Syria has gone from being the world’s second largest host for refugees, to being the second largest refugee producing country. Most schools have been shut down by ISIS or have been closed as a result of extreme infrastructure damage from conflict. Those schools which remain open have their curriculums controlled by ISIS. According to Reuters, ‘Islamic State revised the school curriculum in areas it controls, eliminating physics and chemistry while promoting Islamic teachings’. It does not take much to assume that those who remain in Syria live an impossibly difficult existence under the watchful eye of ISIS and its strict enforcement of sharia law.
ISIS have transformed the situation into something which could benefit their own political objectives. They have drawn upon and benefited from the insecurity and tension felt by the population and transformed this into an effective means to persuade the children to join their training camps. These military and religious camps, with names like the Osama Bin Laden Camp, prepare children to engage in hostilities and terrorist acts. It is quite absurd to consider the establishment of these regulated and seemingly ordered camps in a context of frenzied war and panic.
A Vice documentary showed an Islamic State Press Officer, who has since been killed, explaining that every boy under the age of 15 is expected to join a sharia camp in order to learn about his religion, but those over 16 must go to military camps. In some cases, ISIS group members persuade parents to send their children to the camps in exchange for money. However, in certain circumstances, parents actually encourage their children to join the camps, regardless of financial incentives. An ISIS Gunmen tells a journalist “our children don’t waste time on electronic games or on watching cartoons...They have a dream and their dream is to establish an Islamic state”.
On top of this, children themselves are electing to join the camps. This comes as no surprise, since it seems that in most cases, there is no other real option for these children to make. It is a choice they are obliged to make due to the absence of any other opportunities or alternatives for survival. These training camps pose a difficult question for international law in regards to its treatment of child soldiering. To what extent can joining a camp, whether the child self elects or is persuaded by family, be seen as a example of recruitment or conscription? Should all those children who attend training be labelled as child soldiers?
What is even more shocking about the case of child soldiering in Syria is the age of those children participating. As far back as, October 2014, ISIS announced on Twitter that ‘Abu Ubaidah, the youngest fighter in the Islamic State got martyred with his father by US airstrikes 2 weeks ago. #IS’. The boy was 10 years old.
The internationally agreed upon minimum age for participating in hostilities appears futile and ineffectual particularly in this context for two major reasons – firstly, children may not actually have any proof of age, they may not know how old they are or may simply lie in order to get into the camps. Secondly, it’s states and nations that create legal frameworks and norms, groups like ISIS are in no way concerned with adhering to treaties which they have not been party to. Moreover, bearing in mind the kind of atrocities and crimes being committed, it becomes apparent that ISIS are only concerned with one kind of legislation, and that is their own specific, extremist interpretation of sharia law.
What is most worrying is the fact that war is nothing new for the people of Syria, and we just have to hope that it can eventually get out of this vicious and violent equilibrium for the sake of today and tomorrow’s children who deserve far more than being just another name on the suicide bomb mission list.
