ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — The capture of Tal Abyad, or Gire Spi in Kurdish, last week by Kurdish forces caused thousands of residents to flee the strategic border town.
The exodus has given the world its first chance to really appreciate the scary effects ISIS has on civilians in the areas under its rule.
Journalists rarely make contact with people living in ISIS territories. They must depend mainly on those who fled ISIS and brought back the stories of its harsh rule by Sharia law and the way the radicals indoctrinate children.
One of the unique facets of ISIS is how it targets children. It starts with their education, which has been Islamized and cleansed of Western influence and anything that differs from life in the so-called ISIS caliphate.
Children go to special camps to be ingrained in the ideology of ISIS. Then they are sent to military camps where they learn how to fight. Many end up on the frontlines.
But not all, however, because ISIS understands that its future is the children they call the “Lion Cubs of the Caliphate.”
What happens to these children has become clear in Turkey just across the border from Tal Abyad, where Lindsey Hilsum of British Channel 4 caught up with some refugees. The young men of a family she spoke with told her why they approved of ISIS.
In her blog, she quotes Mustafa Mohamed, a young man with shoulder-length hair—the way ISIS requires it—dressed in a white shirt and jeans.
Mohamed said: “The Islamic State is the best. There is no better life. Everything is under the law of God. Safety is the first thing and we had that. There were no thieves.
“Before they came we had forgotten the true Islam. These people showed us the right way.”
He was also a fan of the foreign fighters who had come to Tel Abyad, according to Hilsum. He even claims to have met the British ISIS-member known as Jihadi John from the infamous videos of the executions of Westerners.
“He’s famous! He’s in Brigade 17. He wore [clothes] the same as he did in the videos. … He was right to kill those journalists because they were all spies under the cover of journalism,” Mohamed was quoted as saying.
Mustafa and his cousin gave Hilsum some insight into the beliefs they learned from ISIS.
In Hilsum’s account: “They eagerly explained how if you stole a bicycle left unlocked in the street that wasn’t a real crime, but entering a house to steal was punishable by amputation from the wrist for a first offence, from the elbow for the second and the shoulder for the third. The guy in the green shirt, who had spent time in Raqqa, the IS headquarters, said he’d seen homosexuals thrown from high buildings.
‘It’s exactly as it was in the time of the Prophet,’ he explained. ‘Well, they didn’t have tall buildings in those days so they had to throw them off mountains.’”
It is likely that before ISIS arrived, these were normal young people who went to school, watched TV, and perhaps hoped to study and find a job.
The war in Syria changed their lives, and this was not the first battle for Tal Abyad. The town first changed hands from the Syrian government to the Free Syrian Army. Then, after 14 months of ISIS, now the FSA again along with the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG).
The war has left a mark on their lives, with deaths, traumas and food shortages. The potential breakup of Syria must also be troubling: where will they find jobs and income, or go to study?
The most important effect has been how the rule of ISIS had changed their world view. The future no longer mattered to them because ISIS took them back some 1400 years to the time of the Prophet Mohammed.
Additionally, they were told that the end of the world is coming and that their aim in this life should be to reach paradise.
It is the youth that are the easiest to deceive and indoctrinate. Once that happens, they are lost to society unless they get help to replace these fundamentalist ideas with a healthier outlook.
In the problematic life of refugees, an existence focused on survival, this will not happen. It may even strengthen their beliefs and frustrations. Worse it could deepen the animosity ingrained in them against the “unbelievers.”
These young men, once the property of ISIS, are the time bombs the refugees carry with them when they return to their homes in areas recaptured from ISIS.
These “Lion Cubs” might follow ISIS commands to attack and kill and create chaos in order to bring back the caliphate they lost.
Even as ISIS is removed from areas it once controlled, the ideas they forced on young people remain.
