ISIS Culls From School-Aged Kids To Assembly Its Army Of Tomorrow

Transcript

ARUN RATH, HOST:

ISIS has made life hell for a lot of children. We've heard the horror stories of young girls sold as sex slaves.

(SOUNDBITE OF PROPAGANDA CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED BOY: (Speaking Arabic).

RATH: But in propaganda clips like this one, we see what ISIS does to boys - elementary school-aged kids in camouflage assembling assault rifles, pledging their allegiance to the cause.

(SOUNDBITE OF PROPAGANDA CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED BOY: (Speaking Arabic).

UNIDENTIFIED CHILDREN: (Yelling in Arabic).

RATH: Richard Engel, chief foreign correspondent for NBC, met two teenage boys in Turkey who managed to escape ISIS. We should warn you, there are some unavoidably gruesome details in these stories.

RICHARD ENGEL: We met Ahmed, and he had been cooperating with rebels. So when ISIS took over, he went into hiding. And after a while, he was seduced by ISIS's offers of amnesty.

AHMED: (Speaking Arabic).

ENGEL: "They said if I went with them, gave up my weapon that I would be unharmed," he says.

And when he went back home, he realized he had to go on a two-month ISIS-run indoctrination course in which he was constantly told that it was wrong he. He had to apologize for everything he'd ever believed in in the past. And after he took this course, he thought he was done, but he wasn't done. And there were more responsibilities to come.

RATH: And when the indoctrination is finished, what do they do with kids like Ahmed? How are they used?

ENGEL: Well, many of them are encouraged to become suicide bombers. He was told during the class, as soon as you're done with this class, then everything is fine. You will then be a true Muslim and a member of the ISIS community. And then just as the class was ending, one of the ISIS Amirs, one of the leaders, came in and said congratulations, you are all now new soldiers in the Islamic Army. And he's like, what are you talking about? We're - the way, the Amir who was telling him that he was now a soldier was holding a pistol and said, oh, really? You're not happy to be joining the ranks of the Islamic Army? Do you want to fight us? So he didn't really have a choice. You can't say no. And Ahmed was loaded onto a bus and taken to the front lines. And they said they had barely any food, any water, just a machine gun, some ammunition, and they were sent there, effectively, to die.

RATH: Now, let's talk about the other teen you talked with, Mohammed, who refused to cooperate with ISIS. What happened to him?

ENGEL: So like Ahmed, Mohammed had been cooperating with the Free Syrian Army. He'd been part of the rebel group, and he was grabbed in the middle of the night.

MOHAMMED: (Speaking Arabic).

ENGEL: "After they found me," he says, "I faced all kinds of torture, beatings and electric shocks."

Then, ISIS said to Mohammed, now we have to send you to the same indoctrination school. He decided he's - was no - there was no way he was going to go to this indoctrination school, not after what he'd just been through. So Mohammed was brought before an ISIS judge, and the ISIS judge sentenced him to have his opposing hand and foot chopped off. And the sentence was carried out the next day.

MOHAMMED: (Speaking Arabic).

ENGEL: "I put my arm on a table, and they brought in the butcher, and he cut it," he says.

They sewed up his wounds. They dumped him in a local health clinic. His mother collected him and managed to smuggle him across the border.

RATH: Can you tell us what Ahmed and Mohammed's lives are like now in Turkey and any sense of what their future might be like?

ENGEL: Well, Ahmed's chances obviously are better. He's unharmed. He hasn't been brutalized. His situation is comparable to the some two million Syrian refugees who are living in this country. Now, he's not going to school. He hasn't been going to school in a long time. He doesn't really have friends or money here. Mohammed's is a - is in much worse shape. He doesn't have money for bandages. He doesn't have money for painkillers. He doesn't have money for a hospital. This is all very new. This just - he just got his hand and foot chopped off about two weeks ago.

RATH: Was it hard to get to these kids? Why did they want to tell their stories?

ENGEL: It was difficult to get to them. They were nervous, but I think both of these boys wanted to tell their stories because - think about, if you're Mohammed, you're sitting there. You've had this horrendous, traumatic experience that's happened to you. People just walk by. You feel a victim, you feel ignored, you feel forgotten. And so it's not that they were dying to tell their story, but once they did start talking, they didn't want to stop.

RATH: Richard Engel is NBC's chief foreign correspondent. This week, he reported on ISIS's recruitment of child soldiers. You can find his story at nbcnews.com. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.