Generation Jihad

Since 2014, thousands of Iraqi children have been brainwashed into the murderous madness of the Islamic State. Can they be rehabilitated? Or are they the next wave of global terrorists?

- Manon Querouil

In a refugee camp on the outskirts of Tikrit, Iraq, the women known as “ISIS widows” are quarantined into a separate tent ghetto. Most of them s till wear the black niqab required under Islamic State. It’s like “a second skin”, says 16-year-old Inas. She was married against her will to a jihadist by her policeman uncle, anxious to protect himself by forging a blood bond with the new rulers. Her husband died in combat during her pregnancy

The teenager found herself alone with a three-month-old baby boy who has no birth certificate or official papers of any kind. Like many combatants’ wives who have escaped the caliphate, Inas has destroyed all the documents bearing ISIS’s seal, fearing discrimination for her child. He is now known only as a “son of ISIS”

Next to her is Adiwiha, whose second marriage to a jihadist ended when he was killed three months ago. She’s concerned about revenge against her family from Iraqi militia. A few weeks after the army recaptured her village in the Sherqat region, soldiers destroyed the house where she lived with her husband’s other wife and their 12 children, and took everyone inside away

“They beat us and dragged us by the hair, calling us terrorists,” says the young woman, adding that she’d done everything in her power to shield her children from ISIS’s extremist doctrine. “Yes, my husband was an ISIS fighter. But what did we do?”

After her husband’s death, Adiwiha sent her six-year-old daughter back to school. But the other children threw stones and shouted “death to ISIS” at her. She didn’t return. In the eyes of the world,” Adiwiha laments, “even our children are the enemy.” Women in every tent repeat Adiwiha’s statement, combining to form a bitter chorus of fear. “Ma ko mustaqbal!” they cry. “No future.”