View of Mosul in 2019, following war with ISIS, Author Levi Clancy (CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication)
In 27 prison camps and detention centers across Syria, some 50,000 of the most dangerous ISIS members and their families are being held indefinitely. CNN was recently accorded rare access, and found these locations a spawning ground for ISIS [1].
Five years after the caliphate was defeated, the ISIS ideology lives on here.
Though ISIS is known for rape and brutality toward women, the women who defected to ISIS came from over 60 countries. They complain of the conditions in these camps, but radiate hostility toward the outside world and continue to profess loyalty to ISIS.
Unauthorized training sessions are conducted to prepare child soldiers for conflict. Young boys are married off to produce the next generation of ISIS fighters. Some 60 births occur each month.
In an effort to counter this, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) remove adolescent boys from their families, so that they are not further radicalized by their mothers.
Conditions in the SDF rehabilitation centers are somewhat better. But the number of beds there is limited.
Condemned from Birth
These are children of the damned — condemned from birth to lives constrained by their parents’ choices.
Unlike the children in a 60’s science fiction film by the same name, they are not harbingers of peace [2]. Not only are they confined to detention camps by no fault of their own. They are fed hate with their mother’s milk, and raised on a diet of lies.
Statements of moral superiority and contempt for others form the basis of the ISIS ideology [3]. Religious reasoning is used to justify criminal actions. Violent behavior is normalized. Personal grievances are blamed on others.
And so blood begets blood (Ezek.35: 6; Matt. 26: 52).
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