Children of ISIS: The next generation of terror?

WASHINGTON (Sinclair Broadcast Group) -- Photos posted on social media by members and supporters of ISIS showing their babies dressed up as militants and holding weapons have outraged many observers in the U.S., but the images are merely one illustration of the terrorist group's treatment of children as props, soldiers, and executioners.

Experts said the photos of babies are generally posted unofficially by supporters in the Middle East and some may even be photoshopped, but they do reflect some of the themes of the Islamic State's official propaganda.

In the photos, babies are seen with items like ISIS flags, guns, and hand grenades. Many have been removed since they were first posted, but some are still visible with captions praising the terrorists and referring to the children with labels like "cubs of the caliphate."

Official propaganda often features older children training for ISIS activities or performing executions.

In addition to accomplishing a general goal of shocking people and getting media attention, the social media images and the official propaganda deliver several more complex messages that demonstrate a unique threat to the region and the world.

At times, ISIS attempts to appeal to the parental instincts of potential recruits, creating the impression of a utopian state where jihadists can raise their children, said Alejandro Beutel, researcher for countering violent terrorism at the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland.

Beutel said some propaganda is also aimed at showing their enemies that they are so devoted to the cause that they will turn their children into warriors.

"That's meant to send a terrifying message to the adversary," he said.

Also, on a more practical level, the group may need children to replenish their ranks with bordering countries taking some steps to prevent foreign fighters from getting into Syria.

"In a way, it's sort of judo-flipping a weakness into a strength," Beutel said, by highlighting "the next generation of soldiers" dedicated to the cause to distract from a lack of adult fighters.

Clint Watts, a Fox Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, said the images also communicate that everyone, including women and children, has a part to play in the terrorist group's struggle.

Watts also pointed out that the extreme violence of past propaganda videos released by the group makes it difficult to top itself and continue to shock people with new videos that are "more grotesque than the last."

J.M. Berger, a non-resident fellow at the Brookings Institution and co-author of ISIS: The State of Terror, dismissed the baby photos as "individuals tweeting and exercising bad judgment," but he said official propaganda featuring children training and killing people does make a very specific and chilling statement.

"They are indoctrinating a new generation of fighters and see their so-called caliphate as a generational project," he said.

Professor Ryan Mauro, a national security analyst for the Clarion Project, which aims to educate the public about Islamic extremism, agreed that the child propaganda casts the war ISIS is fighting as "a generational struggle."

The group is attempting to show "they are not just a collection of thugs who violently took over territory, but an actual government that educates and trains the population according to its beliefs, including the children," Mauro said.

Mauro also observed, "A 25-year-old ISIS member beheading an Iraqi soldier isn't news, but a 10-year-old boy doing that will get everyone talking."

Media reports, experts, and studies by human rights groups show that ISIS is actively recruiting young boys, both voluntarily and involuntarily, educating them at training camps, and assigning them roles in the group's attacks and infrastructure.

A boy who escaped an ISIS training camp told the Associated Press about over 100 boys being shown videos of executions, and then being given a doll and a sword and told to practice beheading. Several videos have been released showing children performing executions; in one, 25 children shoot 25 Syrian soldiers in the head.

Recent statistics from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights indicate at least 52 Syrian children have died fighting for ISIS so far this year, including 18 who blew themselves up. The organization says dozens of foreign children who were indoctrinated by the terrorist group have also died.

A United Nation report stated that ISIS has recruited children as young as 8 and pays them salaries of up to $400 per month.

"Kids are being subjected to a systematic process of indoctrination as they're trained by the group to be fully fledged militants," Professors John Horgan and Mia Bloom of Georgia State University wrote recently on Vice.

"They are trying to raise children who will be thoroughly indoctrinated, fanatical, and with a low threshold for committing acts of horrible violence," Berger said. However, he noted that may not work out the way the terrorists intend.

The United Nations has also criticized the Syrian government and anti-government forces for the use of child soldiers in the conflict.

Although other forces have used children, "ISIS is in a class by itself," said Marwan Khayat, a researcher at the Middle East Media Research Institute who monitors jihadist activity online.

"Even if you kill us, the younger generation will take over," the videos show, according to Khayat.

The mobilization of child soldiers and terrorists is unfortunately not a new tactic in war.

"Child soldiering is a very persistent and also very diverse problem," said Mark Drumbl, a professor at Washington and Lee Law School and author of Reimagining Child Soldiers in International Law and Policy. The category is very broad and can cover anything from the baby photographed with a hand grenade to a 17-year-old voluntary recruit.

Drumbl noted two things about the use of children by ISIS that differentiates the group from those who armed children in places like Uganda and Sierra Leone. One is that they have exhibited an ability to recruit teens from foreign jurisdictions, including young people from Britain.

"The really extreme use of both images and also the reality of children programmed, forced, perhaps in some instances even encouraged, to commit extreme acts of violence" is the other distinction he observed.

"It's functional and it's propagandistic," Beutel said of the purpose of using children in attacks and executions as ISIS has.

Beyond frightening the enemy, it also complicates the response of soldiers who find themselves facing an armed child. Even if the soldier kills the child to protect himself, "that's going to mess with you seriously in the long run."

Mauro said children can be effective as terrorists on a practical level, arousing less suspicion from security personnel or the general population until it is too late.

"There's a level of unpredictability and randomness to child violenceThere's something terrifying about that in a civilian population," Drumbl said.

The idea of pre-pubescent children terrorizing adults "upends the social order" and leaves the population scared and disconnected.

Children may also be more open to extreme terrorist ideologies, experts said.

"Children are easier to indoctrinate and less likely to resist, since they do not yet fully understand their own mortality," Horgan and Bloom wrote in a post for Foreign Affairs.

Indoctrinating children does have its strategic advantages, but it does not always work.

"It leads to one of two opposite reactions," Beutel said: the children become loyal jihadists or they just run away.

"It's an open question whether these children will grow up to be the warriors ISIS intends for them to be," Berger said.

It appears to be an effective strategy in the short term, as evidenced by the videos of children executing prisoners, but according to Drumbl, "a lot of them also become disillusioned over time."

His research on past conflicts has shown that the rate of desertion by child recruits is sometimes surprisingly high, and there are many media reports of children fleeing ISIS training camps.

Whether the children stay or leave, the ones who survive will pose a long-term challenge for the region.

"There is a great hope that many of these children will be able to exit or, if rescued, will be able to be rehabilitated," Drumbl said.

Drumbl said the way to rehabilitate former child soldiers is to recognize and address the violence the child has perpetrated and suffered, and it is a mistake to deny it or tell them they are not to blame for their actions.

"All we can say for certain is that these children will grow up with terrible psychological scars," Berger said.

"Previous research on child soldiers suggests that they are not inevitably doomed to grow up into violent adults, but each case is different, and ISIS is building a society with extreme violence in its DNA."

"At the least, it is creating a future mental health crisis of epic proportions," he predicted.

Studies have shown that former child soldiers face high levels of post-traumatic stress disorder, behavioral problems, anxiety, and depression.

Horgan and Bloom emphasize the importance of reintegrating the children into normal society, but they also emphasize the difficulty of that process.

"Stemming the tide of this complex and rising phenomenon will require a creative approach that addresses the psychological damage inflicted upon the children, how to deprogram them ideologically, train them vocationally so they do not drift back into these activities, and, most important, how to reintegrate them back into society," they wrote in Foreign Affairs.

The children who stay with ISIS and survive the current conflict could become life-long zealots and present a serious security risk to U.S. allies and interests in the Middle East.

"If that society survives long enough for these children to grow into adults, it probably means they are more likely to remain indoctrinated, but I wouldn't take that entirely for granted," Berger said.

"Once you have a trained child soldier, it's hard to demobilize them," Watts said.

Drumbl said the children could also prove to be a destabilizing threat to ISIS itself, since child fighters sometimes exceed their commanders' orders or find ways to avoid following them. It is a mistake to think they are simple just because they are children.

Experts cannot predict how the conflict in Syria will end and what will happen to the children who have been thrust into the middle of it, armed and indoctrinated with a desire to kill, but Drumbl remains somewhat hopeful for the ones who survive.

"These kids that are being photographed are not lost causes," Drumbl said.