The United Nations has received credible but unverified reports suggesting that ISIS has created a youth wing called Fityan al-Islam, meaning boys of Islam. The precedent seems to have been set by the former Baathist regime of Saddam Hussain in Iraq, which in the late 1970s established the Futuwah (Youth Vanguard) movement with the most important Iraqi child soldier units known as Ashbal Saddam, or Saddam’s Lion Cubs.

Apparently after studying the Nazi regime, which created the Hitler Youth, ISIS is now busy training and indoctrinating children en masse. But as with most things ISIS lays its hands on, the group has taken its brutality involving children way beyond anything Hitler or Saddam ever did.

ISIS has abducted between 800 and 900 children ranging between the ages of 9 and 15 from various regions of Mosul city and province. From last August to February, 254 instances of children being used in ISIS propaganda were found. Many are being trained as spies, preachers, soldiers, executioners, and suicide bombers. In counting lessons children tally up guns or tanks instead of apples and oranges. Media outlets within the “caliphate” have issued statements warning that children who refuse to conform with ISIS orders will be flogged, tortured, or raped.