Some Child Soldiers Get Rehabilitation, Others Get Prison

He was just a 14-year-old schoolboy when the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) took over his city, Mosul, in northern Iraq. His school soon shut down. With little else to do, he said, he joined ISIS to make money. He said he received twenty days of training, and then worked as a cook, making about $50 a month. “I never wanted to fight,” he said. “That’s why I stayed a cook.” Kurdish security forces in northern Iraq captured him during a military offensive in the fall of 2016, and detained and interrogated him. Last year, a Kurdish court convicted him of terrorism. When a colleague and I…

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