The forgotten boys: ISIS's Yazidi child soldiers demand urgent global action and tailored healing

Iraqi News

28-05-2025

Washington D.C. (IraqiNews.com) – While the world rightly recoiled at the horrific enslavement of Yazidi women and girls by ISIS during its 2014 genocidal assault on Sinjar, Iraq, another profound atrocity has remained dangerously overlooked: the systematic militarization and indoctrination of Yazidi boys. A comprehensive report, 'They Who Have Seen Hell,' by Georgetown University's Center for Security Studies, now casts a stark light on these forgotten child soldiers, arguing that this neglect represents a failure to confront the full scope of ISIS's strategy to annihilate the Yazidi people and poses a ticking security and social time bomb.
ISIS did not treat these boys as mere collateral damage. Instead, they were deliberately targeted, forcibly assimilated, and indoctrinated to perpetuate the genocide. Stripped of their names, language, and faith under threat of death, boys as young as seven were re-programmed through chanting ISIS slogans, and being taught that their Yazidi beliefs were devil worship. The aim was total identity erasure. As one 16-year-old survivor recounted being told: 'You are Yazidis and you are infidels. We want to convert you to the true religion so you can go to heaven.' The success of this brutal indoctrination is chillingly evident in accounts of rescued boys initially rejecting their families, unable to speak their native Kurmanji, or even viewing ISIS as their new family, as detailed in the report.
The psychological and physical trauma inflicted is immense. Nearly 2,000 Yazidi children who escaped ISIS face an unprecedented health crisis. Clinical studies cited in the report found nearly half of former ISIS child soldiers (mostly Yazidi boys aged 8-14) met criteria for PTSD (48.3%), with similarly high rates for depression (45.6%) and anxiety disorders (45.8%). Many endured extreme violence, malnutrition, and war injuries, including lost limbs. Without robust, specialized support, experts like renowned clinical psychologist Jan Ilhan Kizilhan warn that untreated trauma can fuel future cycles of violence.
Reintegration is a torturous path. These boys return as strangers to communities that may fear them as ticking time bombs. Compounding this, Iraq's 2021 Yazidi Survivors Law, while providing crucial reparations for female survivors, critically fails to meaningfully include boys in its eligibility or programming, leaving them largely excluded from state-sponsored psychological, educational, and reintegration aid. While girls faced horrific sexual slavery, boys were turned into instruments of violence, creating different but equally profound scars and distinct reintegration needs.
The 'They Who Have Seen Hell' report issues urgent calls to action. Firstly, it demands the expansion of specialized, culturally sensitive, trauma-informed mental health services, like those provided by NGOs such as the Jiyan Foundation, to reach these children consistently. Secondly, deradicalization and identity restoration are presented as strategic imperatives, requiring tailored religious counseling by Yazidi leaders, community-led rituals, and an educational response that promotes critical thinking and reconnects them with their heritage.
Most crucially, the report calls for legal recognition and justice through the amendment of the Yazidi Survivors Law. Its language must be changed to explicitly include male survivors, followed by creating mechanisms for their registration, assessment, and compensation via stipends, educational scholarships, or healthcare subsidies.
Leaving this generation of deeply traumatized youth in an ideological limbo, alienated and unsupported, risks their permanent marginalization and could destabilize the fragile Yazidi community further. The international community and the Iraqi government must heed this call to transform these victims of terror into agents of recovery and resilience for a more stable future.