It has been described as sowing poisonous seeds of the future. Capturing young minds in the schools and cultivating the thought process for ideological reasons is a big part of the extremist agenda.
The dangers posed by propaganda has been compounded by the school closures and stay-at-home orders during the Covid-19 pandemic. New warnings are being issued by officials about the increasingly youthful profile of counter-terror arrests in recent months.
A report from Hedayah, the Abu Dhabi-based specialist centre on extremism, has analysed the material prepared and published by ISIS for the classrooms that were under its control across Iraq and Syria in the mid-2010s.
Today, the people of Mosul, the Iraqi city that fell to ISIS in 2014, know that this is a trap for young minds. The report "Planting the Seeds of the Poisonous Tree" notes 2018 research that just 2.2 per cent of children attended ISIS schools in one of the city’s districts that year, compared to 80.3 per cent seven years ago.
But despite the evident lack of exposure of children in Mosul in recent years, the material itself remains significant. This is particularly important to note as ISIS is regrouping in former strongholds, while at the same time building its base in new territories and online.
Dominic Raab, the British Foreign Secretary, revealed a seven per cent growth in terrorism-related material online as well as more arrests. “We can see a worrying rise in the proportion of children and teenagers who are now being arrested for terrorism offences,” he warned.
Neil Basu, Britain's top counter-terrorism police officer, has said the pandemic lockdowns and growth of propaganda amounted to a "perfect storm", granting the extremists a platform to expose the most vulnerable to their narratives.
Mr Raab was also asked about the young inhabitants of the extremist camps in Syria, where scores of European children flocked to when ISIS was in control. He sought to reassure questioners that the situation was not prejudged. "We regard those children as the innocents of the scourge of war and wherever it's safe and possible, we will put our protective arms around them," he said.
To many others the situation is already quite different. No one wants the children back and no one wants their mothers. After so many years, they are still exposed to radical indoctrination by virtue of the camps where they are growing up.
Even before the rapid growth of ISIS, Iraq and Syria had many problems but the education system was a point of light. Surveys showed that 53 per cent of boys and 45 per cent of girls graduated the secondary school system – not great, but in the circumstances something to build on.
A key feature of the classroom in the minds of ISIS commanders was to train children to kill or prepare to be killed
Schools run by ISIS were unlikely to be so well balanced. What the Hedayah report shows is that not only did parents withdraw consent but so to did teachers. The rigorous rules on segregation of boys and girls threw up even more hurdles to the ISIS system.
Evidence shows that a key feature of the classroom for the ISIS commanders was to train children to kill or prepare to be killed on some future battlefield. Children were forced to watch and enact the actions of executions. They were exposed to videos of suicide attacks until the notion of death became a normal concept.
A selection of the materials includes illustrated guides and checklists of what to do on Friday. There is a type of civics that was focused on governing the “Islamic state”, its geography and structures, plus the group's claims to land and territory and approach to controlling migration. Overall the Hedayah report sought to provide a detailed analysis of 29 textbooks in a cache of 67 documents retrieved from the ruins of the ISIS defeat in Mosul.
Groups such as ISIS are keen to instil in children a nihilistic view of the world. Getty Images
The intent of the authors of these textbooks was to create lifelong loyalists with deeply embedded extremist mindsets.
“In primary school, each student must learn to become a keeper of morals at home, learning to criticise acts considered heretical. Intermediary school will become a very important time,” according to one segment of the report. “We require more religious encounters and Islamic competitions in schools instead of in public places. In this phase, we must also intensify [extremist] teachings so that students learn individual weapons-handling and war tactics.”
Drawing a distinction between the everyday propaganda and the educational material, the researchers found that ISIS used “symbols, stories, and references to Islam in their educational curriculum much more frequently than their online propaganda”. Citing a 2016 study, they said that almost four fifths of Twitter propaganda used non-religious arguments.
The flip for school subject was that religious practice and beliefs predominated.
Broadly drawn themes were categorised as “Emphasis on Islam, Governing the Islamic 'state', and Doctrine and Creed”. These were designed with an internal loyalty dynamic that sought to make pupils "belongers" within the belief system. In a flip of the Twitter analysis, this comprised almost four fifths of the content.
The second set of themes was identified with "Enemies of ISIS and Fighting Enemies with Violence" and sought to build hostility to the external. Fighting the enemy is the dominant focus. Graphic depictions of conflict are incessant and Islamic history is portrayed in those terms.
Since losing its grip on schools, ISIS has developed similar approaches with computer games. It released an app targeting children with Islamic songs and filled with war-fighting images, including those of assault rifles and tanks.
All this points to the fact that ISIS is repurposing the school curriculum that it first began to flesh out when it held a swathe of territory in Iraq and Syria.
Damien McElroy is the London bureau chief at The National
Why it pays to compare
A comparison of sending Dh20,000 from the UAE using two different routes at the same time - the first direct from a UAE bank to a bank in Germany, and the second from the same UAE bank via an online platform to Germany - found key differences in cost and speed. The transfers were both initiated on January 30.
Route 1: bank transfer
The UAE bank charged Dh152.25 for the Dh20,000 transfer. On top of that, their exchange rate margin added a difference of around Dh415, compared with the mid-market rate.
Total cost: Dh567.25 - around 2.9 per cent of the total amount
Total received: €4,670.30
Route 2: online platform
The UAE bank’s charge for sending Dh20,000 to a UK dirham-denominated account was Dh2.10. The exchange rate margin cost was Dh60, plus a Dh12 fee.
Total cost: Dh74.10, around 0.4 per cent of the transaction
Total received: €4,756
The UAE bank transfer was far quicker – around two to three working days, while the online platform took around four to five days, but was considerably cheaper. In the online platform transfer, the funds were also exposed to currency risk during the period it took for them to arrive.
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
