ISIS kids' video: out of the mouth of babes

[LilAnn]

ISIS’s official media wing in Iraq’s Dijla province released a new video Wednesday that boasts the terror group’s boy fighters and ups the ante of a bellicose propaganda campaign championing child soldiers.

The video, called “The Cubs of Dijla” in a reference to the young boys being indoctrinated and groomed to fight, shows children as the clip’s primary speakers. They deliver monologues and recite verses of the Quran, marking the first time the Islamic State has depicted boys—one as young as three—speaking at length directly into the camera.

“Where are the martrys? Where are the suicide attackers?” a young boy asks, urging Muslims and Arabs to stop talking and start acting. “Give me my weapon,” he declares as he grabs a gun almost as long as his body. He later fires the rifle.

The troubling nine-and-a-half minute clip also pictures children in a classroom sitting at desks and listening to a lecture on Sharia law. It then shifts outdoors, where the same children are depicted in military fatigues performing training exercises with rifles.

The video’s release follows a string of Islamic State killings recently carried out by kids—part of the group’s wider push to aggressively and systematically exploit children.

ISIS Boy In New Video: "Give Me My Weapon" - Vocativ

 

[DancingLady]

This makes me sick. I know kids can be evil and do evil, we are all born with that in our nature, but to indoctrinate a child into becoming a ruthless killer is just sick. These children are victims of the men who teach them these things. They are not even given a chance to think for themselves and make their own decisions. I am sure they are thinking that using kids will help them because no one is going to want to shoot a little boy, even in defense of their own land, because the humanity in us knows that that child would not do something like this unless adults put them up to it.

 

[LilAnn]

This makes me sick. I know kids can be evil and do evil, we are all born with that in our nature, but to indoctrinate a child into becoming a ruthless killer is just sick. These children are victims of the men who teach them these things. They are not even given a chance to think for themselves and make their own decisions. I am sure they are thinking that using kids will help them because no one is going to want to shoot a little boy, even in defense of their own land, because the humanity in us knows that that child would not do something like this unless adults put them up to it.

It makes me wonder... hypothetically, if ISIS were defeated today, what chance would these kids have? Are they going to be tried and executed as adults? If not, can they ever be capable of living a normal life after everything they have been through? I can't help but to doubt they can ever be integrated into society, with other children, after this.

 

[Susimi]

One as young as three? This just makes me lost for words, it really does. Obviously they are going for the shock and terror aspect by doing this to children and showing it to the western world and it is terrible because in the end these kids will just be used as human shields for the adult fighters.

 

[Corzhens]

As what @DancingLady has said, that video is sickening as to involve those young boys in the fight for their ideology. That is clearly espousing violence with the use of those young minds who may not really know what's in it for them. Over here, that act of involving children in any activity unfit for minors is a criminal case. You don't use the innocent especially for violent acts that has the intention to kill. That's overstepping... wait a minute, I thought they are religious? Where is religion there?