U.S. Foreign Policy in Syria: Why Action is Needed Now to Rehabilitate and Reintegrate Children Exploited by the Islamic State

For the past nine years, two U.S. administration have sought to end the catastrophic war in Syria, reach a negotiated political settlement to the conflict and ensure the enduring defeat of the Islamic State (IS). Yet, the Syrian crisis has not been meaningfully contained and IS continues to threaten regional and global security. While U.S. counterterrorism strategy remains stagnant, heavily reliant on technological superiority and prioritizing aggressive intervention, IS has continuously found opportunities to evolve. The IS has systematically recruited and indoctrinated children across Syria and Iraq and demonstrated unprecedented capacity to influence children and youth around the world to conduct spontaneous acts of violence. Precious few new options have been put forth to defeat IS militarily. Any new strategy that fails to address the victimization and exploitation of children by IS, and does not embrace a long-term sustainable rehabilitation and reintegration strategy, will lead to instability continuing apace and regional allies finding themselves unable to contain a resurgent IS.

NEXT GENERATION JIHAD

Despite a longstanding counter-terrorism campaign by U.S. forces, the IS took advantage of the instability of the region to proselyte and mobilize members. This process sped up following the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War in 2011-2012. The group ́s long-term purpose of engineering a new society founded on the rhetoric and ideology of the purification of faith added a multigenerational dimension to the Syrian conflict. Child recruitment and reeducation constituted a major pillar of IS strategy for self-perpetuation. The tactical benefits in using children as an effective form of psychological warfare have been combined with the group intention to propagate its dogma through future generations. The IS has ultimately changed the nature of child participation in terrorism. The prolonged exposure and participation in violent acts instilled in children a deep ideological attachment to the creed of IS, while desensitization to violence disseminated a nihilist disregard for human life, thus ensuring the propagation of a utopian image of a sectarian Islam and its long-term survival.

The recruitment of children by IS has been marked by extreme brutality and violence. Children have been forcefully indoctrinated to an uncompromising adherence to Jihadi-Salafist ideology and used to perpetrate acts of violence, executions, suicide missions and other terrorist operations. As the primary vector of IS propaganda, they have been constantly featured in IS media broadcast. The youngest of which is a boy of four, dubbed as the “junior Jihadi” who was shown in a video appearing to detonate the explosive in a car and killing three prisoners. At present, more than 7,000 children are held in deteriorating conditions in the Al-Hol Annex in Northeastern Syria. Several hundred more in Ain Issa and Roj. The 66% of children are under age 18 – some even under age 12 or 5 – and are orphans whose parents are missing or dead. Some 1,500 are estimated to be detained by Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) authorities for suspected IS affiliation. Thousands more of Syrian children who lived under IS-rule or have been subjugated by the group are not even acknowledged.  While the U.S. has yet to define a strategy to prevent the return of the militant organization and the emergence of other violent extremist groups, the current conditions are laying the groundwork for a new wave of violence carried out by a reconstituted Islamic State. The magnitude of the threat posed by children indoctrinated by IS can only be understood in light of the fact that a large portion of society in Syria – and other parts of the world – will be the by-product of violent extremist ideologies. The failure to address the roots of terrorism involving children undermines not only the credibility of the defeat of IS but also galvanizes the future participation of children in extremist acts. In order to avoid the inter-generational perpetration of IS dogma and barbarity, children need to be prioritized. The current disregard for strategic procedures of disengagement, prevents the reconstruction of children’s identity as nonideological. IS-indoctrinated children may soon in fact become catalyst of a new form of warfare, surge other waves of IS-inspired terrorism and terrorist attacks and impose a further set of challenges to the U.S., its allies and the international community.

WHEN THE CAT SLEEPS, MICE DANCE

Despite the threats against Iran and IS made by U.S. President Donald Trump, typically paired with pledges of support for regional allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia, Washington is currently oriented toward a “do less” approach in the Middle East. The withdrawal of 1,000 U.S. troops from Syria, which provoked a spiral of criticism for abandoning America’s Syrian-Kurdish allies, has created a vacuum that allows IS and other terrorist actors to regroup. IS strongholds are reportedly reassembling in Syria and Iraq and children of IS in IDP camps and other areas within Syria territory and the wider region, continue to be invariably exposed to conflict, violence, pervasive trauma and to Salafi-Jihadi propaganda. The same that has proven effective in attracting thousands of Foreign Terrorist Fighters (FTFs) to the conflict, including American citizens, and children on the ground may be soon become – or already be – a tool to gather intelligence on troop movements and counterterrorism and a tool for violence. Such miscalculations recall a not-so-distant past when President Obama, in order to fulfill his promise to end the war in Iraq, withdrew all U.S. forces from the country and only three years later, sent some 5,000 troops back in after a series of attacks and Iraqi soil occupied by IS. With American attention on police brutality, racism and the COVID-19 pandemic, the group has expanded operations into Afghanistan, West Africa, Egypt, Yemen, Iraq and the Sahel, according to SITE Intelligence Group. Targeting IS-cubs in Syria is easy under the current circumstances and their re-engagement provides an opportunity to the IS to restore its network and rebuild territorial strength. While the U.S. embraces a minimalist footprint in the Middle East—both U.S. President Donald Trump and Democratic opponents discuss about “ending forever wars”— the conversation on how to withstand child radicalization to violence and the perpetuation of terrorism, conflict and instability in the region has been drowned out by other concerns.

BREAKING THE CYCLE

The United States and its allies retain tools to address evolving threats and to leverage outcomes that are better for American long-term security than those that would prevail in the absence of U.S. engagement. Using those tools effectively, however, will require better alignment of ends and means—the former must be more realistic and the U.S. investment of the latter increased—as well as clear, consistent, and high-level political leadership. Sharp shifts and reversals in American policy, and the failure of senior U.S. government officials to prioritize the issue of terrorist exploitation of children with their counterparts, have undermined the effectiveness of U.S. policy. The problems of tomorrow are sown today, just as today’s fighters were indoctrinated in yesterday’s wars. The rank and file of al-Qaeda members who carried out 9/11 were radicalized in Afghanistan and Chechnya. The threats that children of IS pose – of terrorism directed against the U.S. and its allies and partners; an increasing number of refugees; IDPs and other forms of humanitarian catastrophe; and the reemergence of IS – are sufficiently serious to merit a determined response from the U.S. If U.S. policy in Syria were to serve as a blueprint for future action in the country and in the fight against terrorism, there exists an urgent need to acknowledge transformative needs and rethink priorities of emerging global threats. To surrender children to IS at this critical time would be to hand the group a recruitment poster for the young and vulnerable and to offer continuous opportunities for growth.