LIFE AND DEATH IN THE “ISLAMIC STATE”
The image ISIS tries to foster among those traveling to Paradise on earth: A city filled with an internationalist body of Muslims living in peace and equality while their soldiers cleanse the Middle East of unbelievers. They portray the capital, Raqqa, as a land without prejudice, fear, or hunger; where infrastructure and security has come to the cities for the first time. They claim to fulfill the promises the governments of Iraq and Syria could not. There is no disease, and every death is a celebration. This rose-tinted projection is impressive for its ability to convince susceptible followers to abandon their lives in the West. One of the five pillars of Islam is the act of giving charity. In ISIS, they emphasize giving charity in all aspects of their daily lives. This necessity has become acute in ISIS-captured lands because the supply infrastructure has broken down and only those with wealth can afford to live as they had before ISIS seized control. A class of ISIS soldiers, war-profiteering merchants, smugglers, looters, and thieves are able buy their way through ISIS lines and live extraordinarily well, but the average citizen lives in horrifically abject poverty.
In a very real sense, ISIS runs the world’s largest prison, with all aspects of life enthralled by a cult interpretation of the earliest days of Sharia law. As noted in Chapter 10 the interpretations of life in their lands is a strict interpretation from the earliest days of Islam. Their belief system brings twenty-first-century Muslims to live precisely as Muslims in the seventh century would, but with electricity and automatic weapons; a system designed to focus every aspect of the inhabitants’ lives about what constitutes a proper diet, or how they should dress on the street in order to live solely for God, even when in violation of all previous fourteen centuries of Islamic law and tradition. ISIS controls all aspects of life, from price controls in the market to the elimination of all music, art, and culture not related to religious observances. They hold control with dictatorial grip, and allow only their own soldiers to administer justice, mediate civil disagreements, and determine what one can and cannot do in the Caliphate.
ISIS keeps its population in line though a brutal internal security police force called the “Hisbah,” which is Arabic for “Accountability.” In the Islamic State, this means accountability to God’s doctrines and dogma according to ISIS’s cultist interpretation of Islam. The Hisbah are a more orthodox and murderous version of the Saudi Arabian model of Committee for the Support of Virtues and the Prevention of Vice (CSVPV), also known as the Mutawwa’. They control every aspect of life. Their mission is to ensure that the people under ISIS control now live according to the observances of the seventh-century tribes of the Western Arabian desert. The Hisbah accomplish this with soft-spoken intimidation, arrest, trial, and punishment, up to and including death.
Any vice that is not sanctioned such as alcohol, drug use, smoking cigarettes, or Shisha (Hookahs), playing music, playing western games, wearing un-Islamic clothing, theft, non-sanctioned personal violence, slandering, blaspheming, having “illicit” sex (heterosexual or homosexual), or adultery falls under their purview. The Hisbah also enforce religious rulings, price controls, mediate small-scale disputes, and essentially act as God’s Sergeant-at-Arms. On a practical level, this manifests as a liberty to meddle openly in the details of day-to-day lives of passersby, and since the Hisbah is mainly a foreign contingent, they routinely undermine the sense of self-esteem and autonomy of Syrians and Iraqis.739
Hisbah units are organized into local battalions under the Emir of Sharia law, and operate in one- or two-man vehicle police squads. They dress in white Dishdashas that end above the ankle, black vests, and carry a Mahsassil, or camel crop, so they can mete out drumhead justice for light offenses. They generally carry AK-47s and pistols, and in a manner similar to the Nazi Gestapo or the Soviet KGB, it is common knowledge that they can summon the might of the ISIS combat machine as easily as they do fear and dread. As a paramilitary force they fill the role of police as well as light combat infantry.
A noteworthy member of the ISIS Hisbah police force is a British subject named Omar Hussein. The former resident of Wycombe, Buckinghamshire made videos begging for the US and UK to send forces into Syria.
There has been some backlash against the Hisbah’s brutality and pervasive influence in ISIS life. Resistance forces and militias routinely target them for execution, to convey the message at the street level that the pre-ISIS way of life can be achieved. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claims that it is not possible to say how many members of Hisbah have now been kidnapped or killed by the “resistance.” Assailants not only decapitated the assistant commander of Hisbah in Mayadin, but they also posed his head with a cigarette in his mouth and a pious ISIS-like note at his side, exclaiming that smoking is a sin.740
The Internationalist Paradise that is Raqqa, the ISIS Capital
The Islamic traditions regarding the freedoms of women, which developed over fourteen centuries, are completely eliminated in the Islamic State. In ISIS society women are subordinated to a level of oppression and brutality that was last seen in the eighth century; they are essentially slaves. Many compare ISIS’s control of women to Saudi Arabian or Afghan culture, but the role of women in Raqqa and occupied cities makes those societies seem relatively liberal.
Women are regarded as virtual non-entities, apart from acting as nursemaids to the children of jihadist fighters, and preparing the boys to become child soldiers and the girls to become marriage chattel. The women are expected to constantly keep their education limited to waging Jihad and maintaining only ISIS’s version of Islamic cultism. As one woman said, “Jihad brings the promise of a heavenly reward… Women are primarily tasked to assist their men in their jihadist duty.”742
Any and all digressions from the rules for women are considered a religiously punishable offense, called Hudud. Leaving one’s home without a mahram or a blood/marriage related male chaperon, even to cross an alley to speak to another woman or doing so without being 100 percent covered, is one such Hudud. Any violation can provoke an arrest or a beating from a male or female police brigade member.
WOMEN RELIGIOUS ENFORCERS: AL-KHANSAA AND UMM RAYHAN BRIGADES
ISIS maintains two all-women forces to conduct social controls against the female population and to root out men infiltrating their lines dressed as women. The al-Khansaa brigades and its sister organization, the Umm Rayhan brigades, act as paramilitary police forces in support of the Hisbah religious police force. Each of the brigades operates its own all-female police stations in order to avoid the mixing of male and female officers, or women prisoners. The brigades use Kia passenger vans to hide themselves and their victims during transport. 743
To join the force the women must be age 18–25 and must be a virgin. They get paid $75 per month and are authorized to carry AK-47 rifles. The brigades have two types of units: Morality Police, and a counterintelligence combat support unit. European volunteers join the combat support arm at checkpoints and search the bodies of women to detect female-disguised male infiltrators. However, Arab women patrol the streets and enforce the oppressive laws against their own.
Local Raqqa women make up the unit, along with the wives of regional fighters who have traveled to Syria, including about sixty British members who handle the English-speaking women and children who emigrated to Syria.744 The development points to a burgeoning sort of “‘jihadi girl power’ subculture” on social media, according to some analysts. A Glaswegian named Aqsa Mahmoud was known to be a senior leader.745
A major role for the Khansaa/Umm Rayhan units is to beat women who wear proscribed clothes, make-up, any type of high heels, or anyone who dares talk back to a Hisbah officer. These women receive forty lashes of the cane. Women who attempt to escape receive more severe punishments, such as sixty lashes with a horsewhip, or are being beaten to death by the Hisbah or the husband of the victim.
Who was al-Khansaa?
VOLUNTEER WIVES: THE SEX JIHAD
Despite such a high-minded and high-handed belief system, the cultists ceaselessly extol earthly rewards for their fighters. Many groups, including famous cults such as the Manson family, Aum Shinrikyo, and Jim Jones, used abduction, rape, and sex as control tools for women and enticements for men. ISIS has taken this to a new level by convincing thousands of single women that they have a spiritual obligation to come have sex and children with jihadists.
The term “Sex Jihad” or Jihad al-Nikah describes the waves of young women who volunteer themselves to come to the jihad zone and offer their bodies and children to the terrorists as their contribution to the holy war. Yes, the cult offers pleasure, flesh, and progeny in exchange for mass murder. The prospective jihadi bride’s reward is to be “allowed” to marry a cult-sanctioned soon-to-be “martyr.”747 The women who volunteer to become sexual objects for the jihad are convinced they are giving their bodies and sexual favors to God’s chosen men, and that the jihadist’s sexual satisfaction is pleasing to God. This in turn brings in more men who want the fruits of labor along with the heroic image of a values-guided killer.
An FBI audiotape of an American recruiter for the Somali al-Shabaab terror group extols to Boston grad student Tarek Mehanne the fabulousness of the jihad zone with a passion of a spring break fraternity pledge. “Check this out. Come here. You don’t even have to have a dime in your pocket. I will set you up with everything. I’ll have people pick you up, a place for you stay and, heck, if you want, I can have a wife waiting for you!”748
The women of the cult accept the role as child producer and support system for men they have never met and are not allowed to marry unless the local “Emir” authorizes it. Usually the Emir makes the decision about who gets married to whom. In 2014 ISIS opened a marriage bureau near the Turkish-Syrian border crossing north of Aleppo for prospective women to travel and be placed into arranged marriages.
Not even the prospect of death deters the jihadi sex brides. Many send Twitter messages to their prospective beaus longing for death. One read: “True love doesn’t end in death, if Allah wills it it’ll continue in jenna (paradise) TOGETHER FOR JENNA.” Many jihadi brides even complain that they cannot die in suicide attacks in order to be with their dead partners.
Hoda Muthana, 20-year-old student at University of Alabama in Birmingham was an American citizen of Yemeni parents. She became radicalized over the internet and in November 2014 she told her parents she was going on a school trip, but secretly fled to Syria and joined ISIS. Through her twitter account she became an active ISIS recruiter. She now offers advice to American Muslims who could not travel to a jihad zone on how to kill their fellow citizens: “Americans wake up!… Men and women altogether. You have much to do while you live under our greatest enemy, enough of your sleeping! Go on drive-bys and spill all of their blood, or rent a big truck and drive all over them. Veterans, Patriot, Memorial etc Day parades…go on drive by’s + spill all of their blood or rent a big truck n drive all over them. Kill them.”
This is not a Muslim phenomenon. Many western Christian women have abandoned their lives and joined the Sex Jihad.749 Former UK punk rocker Sally Jones married a jihadi in Syria, renaming herself Sakinah Hussein. She further expressed the desire to behead Christians with blunt knives. Western and ex-Christian women become valuable propaganda tools and reliable recruiters by demonstrating that the sex jihadists have a good life and that other women should come and join them. This exodus to ISIS did not exclude Americans. According to Fordham Law School’s Center on National Security, most of the American females attempting to aid and join ISIS are teenagers. Such was the case of three siblings from the suburbs of Chicago, and in another instance some high school girls from Chicago. In both cases, they had already made it out of the country before being stopped on their way to join ISIS.750
Former punk rocker Sally Jones, now member of ISIS.
Australian Zehra Duman posts regularly about life in the paradise that is ISIS’s Syria. “Food is yummy!” she exclaimed in one tweet. Duman wrote in a chatroom discussion her views on how she feels about the West: “US + Australia, how does it feel that all 5 of us were born n raised in your lands, & now here thirsty for ur blood?”751
An interesting exchange occurred on an official ISIS website where a foreign fighter complained to women interested in marrying that they were choosing the wrong kind of men. He argued that prospective brides should avoid half-hearted jihadists who had time for chatting and courtship. Sex Jihadists were encouraged to come out to the farthest reaches of the war in order to find the real men who live in the combat outposts and fight daily. Many do just that.
ISIS designed and sold its own variant of the Hijab and Niqab dress for all women under their control. It is even more oppressive then the most severe Saudi dress.
DRESS CODE FOR WOMEN IN THE CALIPHATE
Dress laws under ISIS, which tightened after their declaration of a caliphate, require women to cover themselves over their entire body so that no skin and no female form may be apparent, or the women may be arrested and beaten by the religious police, al-Hisabah, or their all-female al-Khansaa and Umm Rayhan enforcer brigades.752
Islamic jurisprudence uses the quote from the Qur’an 66:13 as the sole basis for Islamic modesty and protection of chastity: “And [the example of] Mary, the daughter of ’Imran, who guarded her chastity, so We blew into [her garment] through Our angel, and she believed in the words of her Lord and His scriptures and was of the devoutly obedient.”
In January 2015, an Arabic language document called Women in the Islamic State: Manifesto and Case Study, began appearing online after being uploaded by the al-Khanssaa police media arm.753,754 In contrast to the romanticized role of female participants in ISIS propagated on social media, this document outlines a more realistic depiction of the restrictive policies that govern women as subjects of the Islamic State.755 It is likely that the document initially went untranslated by extremists in hopes of bypassing the more Western audience.756
The ISIS Manual for Women spells out the reason for making strict dress codes:
After the establishment of the caliphate, coverings and hijab things returned to the country and decency swept the country. Now, women are able to travel to their people in Raqqa without having to show their face to the eyes of even one inspector. Respect for their bodies has returned and has been taken from the eyes of onlookers, with their corrupted hearts. Causes of their humiliation are prevented, revealing dresses were confiscated from shops and scandalous photos were banned from walls and shelves. Muslims, with the permission of God, were cleansed.757
Components of Women’s Dress
Abaya: The Abaya is a long full-body black robe commonly worn though out the Middle East, particularly the strict interpretations of Saudi Arabia and Iran. Usually, the hands and eyes and even the face may be exposed. Under ISIS the woman must wear the most orthodox and strict interpretation with 100 percent covering of the body from neck to feet. After the June 2015 announcement of the Caliphate, a woman could not display any skin whatsoever. The face is to be covered with a sheer mask, hands must be covered with black gloves, and stockings must cover the legs. Absolutely no decorations are allowed, and the Abaya must be so loose as to show almost no female form.
Hijab: A headscarf that wraps around the entire face and head covering all hair and that drapes down over the top of the bosom. Traditionally it could be loosely worn and wrap under the chin to expose the face. Orthodoxy demands that it fit loosely over the hair and tightly around the face, with space for the niqab (see below) to cover the eyes.
Niqab: A short veil that covers the mouth and traditionally the forehead, but leaving the eyes exposed. In orthodox Islamic societies the Niqab with a double-layer semi-sheer veil is used to completely cover and hide the eyes of a woman. The purpose of the strict wear of a veiled Niqab is that in romantic Islam it is the Ayuun, or eyes, that lead one to love, much less than the female form. For centuries Islamic art and poetry extol the virtues of the eyes. (The great poet Rumi wrote: In The Heavens, I see your eyes. In Your Eyes, I see the heavens. Why look for another Moon? Or another Sun? What I see will always be enough for Me.)
ATTEMPTS TO ESCAPE ISIS
As has been widely reported, women from the West are joining ISIS at a surprising clip, though women’s numbers overall comprise perhaps only about 10 percent of recruits to the Islamic State, a number smaller than historically found in terrorist groups such as the IRA and more in keeping with right-wing organizations.759
Luring women to the group is important for state formation, analysts say. As illustrated by Boko Haram’s kidnapping of Nigerian schoolgirls, leaders of extremist groups also need to acquire and dole out young women as gifts for their fighters.760 Earlier this year, reports surfaced that ISIS has instituted a policy forbidding women under forty-five from leaving the city of Raqqa, in order to keep them on hand as potential wives for their fighters.761
Still, westerners continue to willingly go, only to find that their circumstances are not what was promised. Some are told that that they might find themselves employed on social media or in hospitals, most women find themselves relegated to the role of homemaker and babysitter.762 Major events such as marriage and pregnancy often prompt a re-evaluation of life in the Islamic State. Another disappointment is widowhood; although martyrdom is celebrated in ISIS, the loss of a husband has had a disillusioning effect on some Western converts.
Unsurprisingly, when Western women try to return home, they are detained against their will or murdered.763 Even if they are able to escape, those who willingly travel from the West to the Islamic State often have huge legal hurdles to overcome in their home countries—many of which have laws in place stipulating that returnees could face imprisonment or in some cases be barred from re-entry.764,765
For western women looking to defect, these can be overwhelming obstacles. Mia Bloom, a professor at the Center for Terrorism and Security Studies at UMass-Lowell notes, “[These members] have nowhere to go… They need a pathway out.” 766
Ill-fated teenagers Samra Kesinovic and Samina Selimovic.
CASE STUDY: ISIS EUROPEAN “POSTER GIRLS” BELIEVED EXECUTED
Austrian teenagers Samra Kesinovic, sixteen, and Sabina Selimovic, fifteen, left their homes in Vienna on April 10, 2014.767 They were daughters of Bosnian refugees who immigrated to Austria in the 1990s. According to media reports, the message they left for their loved ones was brutally succinct: “Don’t look for us. We will serve Allah—and we will die for him.”768
They reportedly traveled to Raqqa, Syria, where they married Chechen fighters and possibly both became pregnant, which Selimovic personally denied on social media. While in Syria, their social media accounts remained very active, posting images of themselves posing with weapons and fighters, in addition to positive messages—so much so that they were dubbed ISIS “poster girls” and images of the pair were used to aid recruitment. 769,770 At one point, Selimovic even tweeted her enthusiasm to Paris Match magazine, saying “Here I can really be free. I can practice my religion. I couldn’t do that in Vienna.”771 However, there were suspicions at the time that the girls’ accounts had been hijacked and that images posted there had been digitally altered.772 Prior to their leaving, Kesinovic evidently had conversations with a relative about entering into an arranged marriage.773 The two teens reportedly also attended a Viennese mosque presided over by Salafi preacher Mirsad Omerovic, a.k.a. Ebu Tejma, later arrested on charges he recruited the two teens as well as over 150 Europeans to join ISIS.774 At some point between April and early October, the girls contacted their families and expressed the desire to come home. Austrian officials publically stated that doing so might be “impossible,” due to Austrian laws preventing individuals returning from ISIS.775 In September 2014, unconfirmed reports began to surface that one of the two had been killed in fighting, later identified as Selimovic.776,777 In late November 2015, the Austrian newspaper Österreich and other Austrian media outlets reported an unconfirmed document by government officials relating that the then eighteen-year-old Kesinovic was beaten to death with a hammer after trying to escape from Raqqa.778,779
ISIS CHILDREN: BUILDING BETTER DEATH CULTISTS
What of the children who are born into the cult of Jihad? Like all large-scale cults, the control and indoctrination of children is critical to advancing the future survival of the group. From the Nazi “Hitler Youth” to Saddam Hussein’s “Saddam Cubs,” children are specifically and routinely cultivated as child soldiers and often into human guided weapons. It is a common form of exploitation to harvest the lives of child soldiers. Abducted or adopted children were staples of combat cults such as the Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge and the Lord’s Resistance Army. Cults constantly challenge the children of recruits to prove their worth by dying or killing like their fathers. The ISIS “cubs of the caliphate” are the next generation of killers.
In August 2014, just two months after Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announced the establishment of a new caliphate to be known as the Islamic State, a report on Syria from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) determined that the “so-called Islamic State” was taking a “devastating toll” in children’s lives.780 The report detailed ISIS’s treatment of children and came to the unsurprising conclusion that their form of “education” was in fact a focused brainwashing and cult indoctrination campaign that constituted war crimes.
The ISIS methodology of brainwashing the vulnerable minds of their children and those of the people whose communities they occupy is critical to building a new generation of fighters and expanding the borders of the Caliphate. A core component is the necessity of deliberately depriving children of an education except in subjects they see as critical to maintaining their warfighting capacity and religious identity.781 The educational system operates as a body mill for future soldiers and prospective wives for the fighters. It appears that with the exception of religious indoctrination, attendance in other courses is not mandatory.
ISIS schools are strictly gender-segregated; in fact, the education of girls is not a priority in occupied regions as much as the control of their bodies and morals.782 Despite claims to the contrary, the education of girls is exclusively limited to Islamic studies and preparation for marriage. According to ISIS’s Manual for Women, the following guidelines dictate female education:
From ages seven to nine, there will be three lessons: Fiqh [Deep discussion of Islamic jurisprudence] and religion, Qur’anic Arabic (written and read) and science (accounting and natural sciences). From ten to twelve, there will be more religious studies, especially fiqh, focusing more on fiqh related to women and the rulings on marriage and divorce. This is in addition to the other two subjects. Skills like textiles and knitting, basic cooking will also be taught. From thirteen to fifteen, there will be more of a focus on Shariah, as well as more manual skills (especially those related to raising children) and less of the science, the basics of which will already have been taught. In addition, they will be taught about Islamic history, the life of the Prophet and his followers.783
An activist for the NGO “Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently” claims that there are at least two schools in Syria especially for English-speaking children, since hundreds have arrived in the country during the past year.784
CHILD SOLDIERS: THE “CALIPHATE CUBS” & THEIR TRAINING CENTERS
The most widely reported aspect of educational system in ISIS territory are the Sharia Camps, a cross between ISIS ideology school and a military camp. Trainees swear fealty to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as the Caliph,785 watch sermons and videos, and receive training in practical combat skills. Boys attending the Sharia Camps are divided according to their strengths and abilities—for example, hand-to-hand combat or logistical operations. Some children are selected to become informants among the general population, reporting to ISIS’s Security Offices. These particular “soldiers” are referred to as the “Flash Memory,” as they are trained to collect information on and betray anyone, including their families.786
These young soldiers are called the “Ashbal,” or “cubs of the caliphate,” in a reference to ISIS fighters calling themselves “lions,” and are publicized as new generation of jihadists, part of ISIS’s long-term plan for war.787,788,789
In one of the known main camps west of Raqqa, it’s known that children spend some fifteen days studying the Qu’ran, Sharia law, and related subjects, then spend thirty days training for physical combat and weaponry.790 A CNN report quoted a young boy (who had since fled from Syria), who said that for thirty days “we woke up and jogged, had breakfast, then learned the Qur’an and the Hadith of the Prophet. Then we took courses on weapons, Kalashnikovs and other light military stuff.” This training included watching beheadings, lashings, and stonings, and encouraging children to participate in public brutality,791 including holding decapitated heads for public display or playing “football” with these heads. The final test of this education in loyalty is, apparently, the execution of a prisoner.792 A source told the BBC that children received blond dolls in order to practice decapitation.793
This is not happening not only in Syria or ISIS controlled territory; in October 2015, a training camp for children was reportedly found in Istanbul after a raid of some eighteen different homes, which resulted in fifty people detained for suspected links to ISIS. Of this number, approximately half were children who had been receiving training in basement apartments.794
There are many ways in which a young boy can find himself on his way to becoming a soldier: through family or social ties, such as children of foreign and local fighters, as well as supportive locals; orphans in ISIS-controlled orphanages; runaways; and children who are taken from their parents or whose parents are coerced into “volunteering” them.795 This is identical to the method that the Saddam Fedayeen used to create the “Saddam Cubs.” In some cases, families give up their children for compensation. One figure quoted in reports cites prices between $250 to $350 per month per child, which is an inducement for many families in material need.796 Some have referred to this method as bribes.797
The result of these recruiting campaigns can be seen in the many videos where dozens of boys engage in military training, where they are depicted waving the group’s flag, praying, reciting verses from the Qur’an, performing exercises, and and chanting.
BRAINWASHING CENTERS OF EXCELLENCE
ISIS’s hold over schools results in a process of indoctrination rather than education. Even when the teachers remain the same as before ISIS’s control, they teach to a new curriculum.798,799 Such is the case of a grammar school in Raqqa, recently reopened by ISIS, where, according to reports, children are instructed from the age of three.800 Dr. Mia Bloom at University of Massachusetts, Lowell, believes they operate by the “pedophile’s playbook.” She noted that ISIS indoctrinates children slowly over weeks or months into activities a child would never do, including murder, abuse, and preparation for suicide bombing.
The UN report goes on to accuse ISIS of having “established training camps to recruit children into armed roles under the guise of education.”801 ISIS’s method includes stimulating competition between children, expecting that this sense of rivalry will incite them to do better and create a sense of prestige in being chosen.802 This makes teachers “talent scouts” of a sort, looking for star jihadist pupils to move up into the organization and as junior fighters to fill the officer ranks.
ISIS toddler instructed by father to behead and immolate his own teddy bear.
One of the filmmakers of a PBS Frontline documentary on children living under ISIS rule explained that though he expected the children to learn at least some basic knowledge—such as grammar or math—they are instead taught such things as what is jihad.803
There are many advantages to this system of recruiting and training—primarily the guarantee that their jihadists are ideologically pure.804 There have been reports stating that since children are so easily brainwashed, they can be fully trusted to fulfill their orders, which has led to their being used in suicide missions.805
For the most part, the boy soldiers of the Ashbal Khalifa are engaged in a variety of combat support sessions that would be unwise to task to a adult, including acting as messengers and look-outs, assisting elder fighters, moving small quantities of rifle or mortar ammunition, and rear-area support functions such as cooking, cleaning, and carrying water. They also act as apprentice soldiers by participating in localized guard patrols and manning non-critical checkpoints and barriers.806,807 By October 2015 the blood requirements for hospitals was so dire that they were called upon to act as blood donors.808
The missions given to these young boys have become progressively more extreme, such as the fourteen-year-old boy who became a suicide bomber in 2014, a fate which has become somewhat commonplace, especially with mentally challenged children. As of mid-2015, as many as nineteen children had been used as suicide bombers.809 These suicidal missions assigned to children exemplify how the violence is performed both by and to children. They commit hideous acts of war, yes, but are also victims of extensive war crimes, and it is hard to see a way to break out of this cycle.
A report from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claims that in the year after the establishment of this new caliphate, ISIS in Syria had been responsible for executing more than three thousand people, among them seventy-four children.810 This number may well be higher, since the Observatory has received information about dozens of other, unconfirmed deaths.811 These deaths were due not only to explosions, clashes, and airstrikes, but also to suicide attacks and executions. The UN has also received at least nine reports of sexual violence against children by ISIS, though the number is also thought to be much higher.812
It is worth noting that this violence toward children is committed both against children who do not belong ideologically in ISIS’s caliphate—like countless Yazidi children executed and left to die in ISIS’s genocidal military maneuvers813—but also children supposedly on their side, like the twelve children executed for trying to flee from training, near the city of Mosul.814 Other gruesome reports claim that children were crucified as punishment for not fasting during Ramadan,815 or had a finger cut off for refusing to fight.816
The violence performed on video by ISIS’s “cubs of the caliphate” has been escalating since January 2015, when a clip showed boys shooting two alleged Russian agents in the back of the head. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, this was the first documented declared execution carried out by children. Other videos followed, showing boys performing a range of violent actions such as fighting in cages, witnessing executions, leading prisoners to their executions, handing knives to adult jihadists, and shooting enemy soldiers.817,818 In May 2015, a video emerged depicting a Roman amphitheater in Palmyra, where twenty-five children lined up and executed twenty-five Ba’athist regime soldiers by shooting them in the back of the head, while a crowd witnessed.819
The most gruesome of these videos, however, might be the one released in July of 2015, where a young boy of perhaps ten years old is shown beheading an adult. This footage was also shot in or near the city Palmyra, a UNESCO World Heritage Site that has been under ISIS control since May of 2015. In this video, the unnamed captured soldier, apprehended by ISIS at the nearby Al-Bosayri army checkpoint and believed to have been a regime leader, is forced to lie on the ground, on his stomach. The boy approaches him from behind, pulling back his head and using a small knife to cut the man’s throat and behead him. He celebrates the beheading by raising the victim’s head and then placing it on top of the cadaver’s back.
This is believed to be the first time a “cub of the Caliphate” has been recorded performing a beheading. The boy does not bother to cover his face in a mask, and is filmed wearing camouflage and a black headdress.820 Before the video ends, an older militant appears on camera to threaten any Westerners watching, vowing that ISIS’s goals are “not only Palmyra or Homs or Damascus, rather our goal is to conquer Bayt al-Maqdes [Jerusalem] and Rome, God willing.” 821
ISLAMIC STATE HEALTH SERVICE & HOSPITALS
The first feature of the Islamic State Health Service that needs to be mentioned is that, as the following headline reveals, it is a copy of the British health system; even its logo is so patterned: “ISIS mimics Britain’s NHS with ‘Islamic State Health Service ISHS’”822 The content of the same article also begs the question whether the system really exists or its existence is only propaganda designed to convey the notion that ISIS is a functioning state meeting its obligations toward its citizens. Writing for the London-based counter-extremism think tank Quilliam Foundation, researcher Charlie Winter wrote that “radical preacher Anjem Choudary said that according to a strict interpretation of Sharia law, Islamic authorities personified by the self-styled caliph have the onus to provide housing, food, clothing, and all services to their subjects in return for their obedience.”823 Thus, the first question about the ISIS Health System is about its creation and existence. A health system requires an infrastructure, but the infrastructure does not seem to be there:
It is difficult to see how an operational health system that will provide services to all of the citizens can be built given the fact that according to… statistics compiled by the Syrian American Medical Society and the WHO: approximately 60 percent of hospitals have been destroyed, 90 percent of the local pharmaceutical industry has been destroyed, 78 percent of ambulances are severely damaged, and 70 percent of whatever medical staff is left cannot access their workplaces (Al-Jadda). In certain provinces, upwards of about 90 percent of all physicians have left or have been killed, and in the stronghold of Aleppo, less than 250 physicians are left, creating a physician-to-patient ratio of about 1:500,000.824
The article quoted above also reveals that the “system” lacks the human resources necessary to be effective. This is probably true of all the levels of the “system” from the policy and leadership level to the level of the healthcare providers. There are three emergent infectious diseases that are occurring at an epidemic level in the ISIS: polio, HIV/AIDS, and leishmaniasis. The Syrian civil war has allowed major outbreaks of previously manageable diseases due to a complete collapse of the healthcare system. United Nations–managed disease prevention and immunization programs were stopped, abandoned, or prevented by almost all parties. ISIS takes this a step further. It does not manage captive populations or peoples outside of ISIS’s own hospitals, where almost all healthcare resources go to the families of fighters and then trickles down to the local populace. Polio had not been seen in Syria for over twenty years, but returned in 2013 and is spreading rapidly.825 Insects spreading disease such as leishmaniasis, a flesh-eating infection of the skin that can be fatal if untreated, have cropped up because of ISIS’s poor post-combat disposal of corpses in active combat areas. Flies in the corpses may have spread the disease.826 Media reports state that cases of HIV have been discovered among women who emigrated to the Islamic State. A complete loss of the Syrian HIV/AIDS prevention system has allowed that disease to silently spread. Apart from anecdotal evidence from refugees, and despite great efforts by the United Nations and Syrian groups, little is known about everyday medical care or daily management of chronic disease under ISIS rule. Since ISIS has limited resources, eschews science, purchases weapons over medicines, and routinely implores “the Will of God,” the mortality rate for manageable diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, asthma, and so on must be astronomical.
However, assuming it exists and functions as a system, then there are a number of questions; the first may be about access. According to sources in Syria, ISIS fighters and their families receive free healthcare, but the average person does not. Most have to rely on private doctors, charity clinics, or receive no services at all.827
Summary of ISIS Health Care
1. Approximately eight million people live under the self-styled “Islamic State” (ISIS).
2. Healthcare delivery in ISIS is characterized by a very low doctor/patient ratio of 1/500,000.
3. Most doctors and healthcare professionals have left or have gone underground.
4. Modern medical practice is secular and often incompatible with theocratic directives. Practitioners of the modern secular style in ISIS can be subjected to intimidation, abuse, and even death.
5. Only a few dozen healthcare professionals have immigrated to join ISIS. They are medically insignificant, but represent a powerful propaganda tool for ISIS.
6. Most hospitals in ISIS-controlled areas have been closed, destroyed, or repurposed as military headquarters.
7. Advanced services appear to have gone offline as trained and properly equipped personnel to use, maintain, and repair them have declined.
8. There is a paucity of public health measures in ISIS, resulting in spread of endemic diseases and resurgence of epidemic diseases.
9. Combat medicine in ISIS appears minimal. Basic interventions such as IVs, saline, and wound care are likely absent, except for high-value individuals. There appears to be no medical corps in ISIS infantry forces.
10. Survivability is expected to be low for ISIS combat casualties.
11. ISIS probably transfers its high-value personnel to Turkey for modern (and secular) medical care.
Making the same assumption as above, it may be said that the “system” coexists with a “private-non-governmental system” that seems ready to exploit the situation for its own benefit, forcing the issuance of a decree from the “Islamic State Office of Health” that attempts to control the profit being made.
DOCTORS & NURSES RUSHING FOR THE EXITS
Another critical issue for the ISIS Caliphate is that the educated hospital staffs are leaving the country in massive numbers. Syrians and Iraqis who were not caught in the ISIS takeovers are dragooned into their health systems and forced to abandon the people and communities that they served. There are reports that Iraqi ISIS-controlled provinces confiscate the homes and property of medical workers unless they return.828
The third issue of the Islamic State’s English-language online magazine Dabiq called for emigration to Muslim lands. Its message was directed to Muslims in the West and invited them to come and aid in the formation of this nascent Islamic state. The basic argument was as follows:
Therefore, every Muslim professional who delayed his jihad in the past under the pretense of studying Shari’ah, medicine, or engineering, etc., claiming he would contribute to Islam later with his expertise, should now make his number one priority to repent and answer the call to hijrah, especially after the establishment of the Khilafah [caliphate]. This Khilafah is more in need than ever before for experts, professionals, and specialists, who can help contribute in strengthening its structure and tending to the needs of their Muslim brothers. As for the Muslim students who use this same pretense now to continue abandoning the obligation of the era, then they should know that their hijrah from darul kufr [land of unbelief] to darul Islam [Islamic lands] and jihad are more obligatory and urgent than spending an unknown number of years studying while exposed to doubts and desires that will destroy their religion and thus end for themselves any possible future of jihad.
Public appeals for skilled workers come from higher-ranking ISIS officials and from online recruiters who already reside in the Islamic State.829 To attract foreign medical professionals, besides the religious argument, ISIS has created a promotional video for a health care system operating out of the Syrian city of Raqqa. Despite the earnestness of the video participants, the conditions appear to be a sham.830 The number of medical professionals immigrating to ISIS, numbering maybe a few dozen, is insignificant in terms of altering the medical landscape.831 For obvious reasons, they have value as propaganda.
