Jostling ISIS
"What's important to us now is that the children continue receiving knowledge correctly, even if they lose a whole academic year and an official certification."
"They [Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham] will brainwash them and contaminate their thoughts."
Abu Hassan, Mosul resident
A child is photographed, waiting to be killed by
militants. ISIS uses these images to terrorize others and to glorify
their spree of terror - Catholic onlineAn ISIS statement was circulated this past weekend according to some families living in Mosul. The statement demands that students appear for class. It would appear that few students have been showing up to resume school. And it remains unclear whether or not school teachers and administrators have been absent, rather then return to work under their new ISIS-corrected curricula. This situation does not please ISIS.
"This announcement is binding" concluded the statement. "Anyone who acts against it will face punishment." That might appear a supremely chilling promise, given the excesses to which the jihadi group is well known to practise in its well-publicized Iraqi-horror-show production of vicious predation on Yazidis, Christians and Shiites.
Their barbarism so so well known as they indulge in crucifixions, beheadings, mass slaughter, abduction of women into slavery and threats against the Iraqi Shiite government that the American-trained-and-armed Iraqi military simply melted away at the first prospect of their invasion of Mosul. Handily leaving behind all that state-of-the-art military hardware so generously pressed upon them by the Americans.
The ISIL terrorists must have thoughtfully hesitated between running after the hastily departing Iraqi troops to remind them to take their weapons and tanks and armoured vehicles with them, but reconsidered and decided to take advantage of the bonanza. And while they were at it, taking possession as well of the hundreds of millions left 'abandoned' in the Mosul central bank, theirs for the taking.
And were they grateful? Not the least bit! They didn't rest on their laurels, but continued to expand their presence, gobbling up more Iraqi/Syrian geography, subsuming it into their newly declared caliphate. And, as befits a caliphate they fully intend to rule the territory they have now 'inherited' by conquest as part of their core strategy to administer its lands. Not merely a formidable fighting force but a capable administering entity as well.
So schools now have a new set of rules set out in a bulletin posted within mosques, in marketplaces, on electrical utility poles. Any reference to the republics of Iraq or Syria must henceforth be replaced with "Islamic State". Pictures violating ultraconservative Islamic interpretation to be ripped out of books. Art or music forbidden. Classes in history, literature and Christianity "permanently annulled".
In response, parents in Mosul have withheld their children's appearance at school. Surely an unhealthy attitude, one born of equal parts uncertainty and resistance, leavened with trepidation closing in on fear. But who knows, that kind of grassroots resentment at lives being turned inside out, upside down, might just lay the foundation of resistance that might upend ISIS's plans to dominate the region.
Where battalions of demoralized state militias fear to confront the Islamic State, citizen-parents' concern for their children's future might turn the tide. Then again, that's clearly wishful thinking of the most fanciful kind, in a general atmosphere of intimidation, threat and violence that in fact, represents the greater Middle East community, simply accentuated to the Nth degree by the Islamic State.
The Frankenstein the Sunnis have built to confront their Shia opponents.
Labels: Child Welfare, Iraq, ISIS, Islamism
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, September 17, 2014
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