31,000 pregnant women living in Daesh-held territories

The report, published by the London-based think-tank Quilliam earlier this month, released the results of a probe into how Daesh recruits children and trains them for terrorist activities through indoctrination both at home and in school.
 
    The fact that 31,000 women are now pregnant “shows it’s not being done randomly in any way, this is a very long-term preparation for these children to grow up with severe… indoctrination,” Nikita Malik, a senior researcher at Quilliam, told The Independent.
 
According to the report, Daesh regards children as better and more lethal forces than adult militants.
 
“Children are a completely blank slate and so don’t have the cognitive abilities or the adult decision-making processes, so they can be manipulated,” Malik said.
 
The report also noted that Daesh uses a variety of techniques, such as encouraging children to play football with decapitated heads, to normalize brutality among children.
 
The terror group is indoctrinating children from birth, using an education system similar to that devised by the Nazis, to create a generation “more lethal than themselves,” it said.
 
“This is one of the gravest situations on earth. Children are the key to the future. Indoctrination … begins at birth, and increases in schools and training camps,” said Noman Benotman, the head of the Quilliam.
 
The report also said that from August 2015 to February this year, 254 children, including 12 child executioners, were used in Daesh propaganda materials.