At an age when most teenage boys are preoccupied with PlayStations and kicking a football around with their friends, 13-year-old Hassan has seen horrors beyond imagination. When Kurdish soldiers rescued him, the son of a senior ISIS commander was found with pictures of himself proudly clutching a severed head. Kurdish authorities in northeastern Syria's Tal Maarouf district are engaged in an experimental rehabilitation programme that seeks to tame the so-called cubs of the caliphate, boys aged 12 to 17 who are either children of ISIS fighters or were recruited by the group. This is one small initiative dealing with about 80 children but it seeks to creatively tackle a problem that is global. Terrorist groups have long viewed children as valuable commodities. The malleable minds of the young make them receptive to the poisonous ideologies of recruiters while their appearance means that they are inconspicuous and more likely to evade detection by the authorities. That is why children are conscripted by terrorists and deployed in the service of terror.
According to a UN report, the number of minors involved in conflict in the Middle East and North Africa more than doubled, from 476 in 2014 to 1,168 in 2015. Yemen alone witnessed a fivefold increase, with Houthi militias known to recruit boys as young as 15. Just this week, Arab coalition forces rescued a four-year-old girl who was about to be used as a human shield by terrorists in Yemen. And ISIS suicide bombers used four children under 12 in a series of attacks on churches in Indonesia last week.
The terrorist group plunged the depths of depravity by forcing child refugees created by its own regime to perpetuate violence in its name. But this is not a phenomenon restricted to any one region. The Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka were notorious for their use of child fighters and in the 1990s, IRA terrorists in Northern Ireland recruited children as young as 14 to carry out atrocities. The Colombian conflict, too, saw children used as guerrillas to gather intelligence and deploy mines. Many are now being reintegrated into normal society via government programmes.
As the UN Children’s Fund has noted, minors exploited by terrorist groups are victims of violence on multiple levels. Their recruitment process is often indescribably brutal, involving enslavement, sexual exploitation and thorough indoctrination. They are made to live in a state of permanent fear as they are taught the virtues of taking innocent lives to advance the ideological ambitions of their adult masters. The existence and proliferation of child terrorists is an indictment of the failure of the world to protect them. Rehabilitation centres and government initiatives form a small step in giving them the life they never had but that is one battle worth fighting for.
Electric scooters: some rules to remember
- Riders must be 14-years-old or over
- Wear a protective helmet
- Park the electric scooter in designated parking lots (if any)
- Do not leave electric scooter in locations that obstruct traffic or pedestrians
- Solo riders only, no passengers allowed
- Do not drive outside designated lanes
The National's picks
4.35pm: Tilal Al Khalediah
5.10pm: Continous
5.45pm: Raging Torrent
6.20pm: West Acre
7pm: Flood Zone
7.40pm: Straight No Chaser
8.15pm: Romantic Warrior
8.50pm: Calandogan
9.30pm: Forever Young
Test
Director: S Sashikanth
Cast: Nayanthara, Siddharth, Meera Jasmine, R Madhavan
Star rating: 2/5
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
Formula Middle East Calendar (Formula Regional and Formula 4)
Round 1: January 17-19, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 2: January 22-23, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 3: February 7-9, Dubai Autodrome – Dubai
Round 4: February 14-16, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 5: February 25-27, Jeddah Corniche Circuit – Saudi Arabia
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
Real estate tokenisation project
Dubai launched the pilot phase of its real estate tokenisation project last month.
The initiative focuses on converting real estate assets into digital tokens recorded on blockchain technology and helps in streamlining the process of buying, selling and investing, the Dubai Land Department said.
Dubai’s real estate tokenisation market is projected to reach Dh60 billion ($16.33 billion) by 2033, representing 7 per cent of the emirate’s total property transactions, according to the DLD.
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