ISIL ups use of children in suicide missions

The boy appears to be no older than 12. He hugs his father, climbs into an armoured vehicle packed with explosives and then kisses his father’s hand before departing on a mission that ends in a fireball on the horizon.

That attack in Aleppo last month was one of at least 89 cases over the past year in which the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant employed children or teenagers in suicide missions, according to new research that indicates the terrorist group is sending youths to their deaths in greater and greater numbers.

The father- son sequence was memorialized in propaganda photos released last month by ISIL, adding to an expanding collection of online eulogies that provides insight into how the organization uses children in combat operations and mass-casualty attacks on civilians in Iraq and Syria.

“The Islamic State is mobilizing children and youth at an increasing and unprecedented rate,” according to a report published Friday by the Combating Terrorism Centre at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

The study describes ISIL’s use of children in suicide attacks as part of a broader strategy to cultivate a generation of school-age militants indoctrinated in the group’s ideology and completely inured to its extreme brand of violence.

Since its emergence as a dominant force in Syria, ISIL has frequently cast children in roles designed to shock outsiders. A video released last month showed a child in an ISIL headband pressing the button on a remote control, detonating a bomb strapped to a car containing three accused spies.

But the new study is the first comprehensive catalogue of cases in which ISIL State used children in missions where they were expected to die. Roughly 60 per cent of the victims were categorized as “adolescent,” meaning ages 12 to 16. None were older than 18, and some were as young as 8 or 9, according to researchers at Georgia State University who were involved in the project.

At least 11 children or adolescents were killed in ISIL operations in January, compared with six in the same month a year ago, according to the report, Depictions of Children and Youth in the Islamic State’s ‘ Martyrdom’ Propaganda.

“It is striking that children are being integrated into the ISIL war machine not as substitutes but as soldiers and suicide attackers fighting alongside adult ( militants),” said Charlie Winter, a senior research associate at Georgia State and co-author of the report.

Winter said that the practice could intensify as ISIL loses territory and fighters.

“We know that there are a lot more ( children) being recruited than eulogized,” Winter said. “As the military situation becomes more difficult for ISIL in the months and years to come, we’ll see more instances of youths being used on the battlefield.”