ISIL reactivates recruitment ploys: analysts

By featuring European children conducting executions or receiving weapons training in its new recruitment videos, the "Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant" (ISIL) aims to attract a fresh crop of foreign fighters, experts told Al-Shorfa.

The group has been trying to revamp its media arm, which supports its recruitment networks, they said, in order to reverse a decline in the number of foreign fighters due to the global security measures taken against the group.

In mid-May, a new ISIL video titled "In the footsteps of my father" that had been posted on extremist websites began circulating on social media.

The video shows two preteen French boys receiving weapons training in a remote area in Syria's Aleppo province, and finally opening fire on two men ISIL had accused of being spies.

The video is a "message to the group’s European sympathisers" that entire families have migrated to ISIL's self-declared "caliphate", military analyst and retired Egyptian military officer Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Ahmed told Al-Shorfa.

ISIL has continually exploited children in its propaganda, he said, noting that this video aims to bring "foreign fighters, and European fighters in particular, to the fore once again after their relative disappearance in the past period".

The group is trying to revive its overseas recruitment activity after the security crackdown on its cells in Europe, he said, adding that videos like these are designed to appeal to those who espouse the group's extremist ideology.

ISIL's exploitation of children

ISIL's repeated use of children in its propaganda and recruitment videos exploits vulnerable and impressionable youth, said Mazen Zaki, director of the media department at Egypt’s Ibn al-Waleed Centre for Studies and Field Research.

The implementation of a death sentence is normally a matter handled by adults, he said, but the group gives children a crack at the job, which appears to put them on equal footing with adult men.

This may draw youth to the group as they often reject or rebel against parental authority in an attempt to assert themselves as adults, he told Al-Shorfa, blindly carrying out the orders of the group’s emirs, cell leaders or trainers.

ISIL’s use of children in its propaganda is designed to put pressure on young people and send them the message: "How come you are not involved in jihad when children are doing the work of adults?", Zaki said.

"ISIL is committing a serious crime against children in the areas under its control, by directing them to kill and shed blood," said child psychologist Enas al-Jamal, who lectures at Egypt's Ain Shams University.

The group is clearly using the tactic of "conditioning children since infancy on seeing weapons, murder and carrying out punishment", she told Al-Shorfa.

Indoctrination begins in childhood

Indoctrination begins early, al-Jamal said, with ISIL-mandated curricula in schools and applications that teach children the alphabet using the names of weapons and other violent terminology.

Children are later moved to "cub" training camps, she added, where they receive combat training and some get involved in carrying out executions.

ISIL is grooming these children in order to form future teams to carry out its work "that grew up and were raised on the group’s terrorist concepts", she said.

Children who grow up in this type of environment, encountering violence and brainwashing from an early age, may end up fiercer and more dangerous than the current ISIL elements, she cautioned.

The group seeks to control the minds of these children in order to indoctrinate them in the culture of war, she explained, so it can later exploit them by getting them to do its dirty work in Syria, Iraq or their home countries.

These children are being turned into "ticking time bombs that could explode at any moment if they are ordered to do so by ISIL’s emirs", al-Jamal warned.