This world is getting close to hitting an all-time low in history. There are people protesting for their rights. There are others that are being told to leave this safe haven we call America. But these problems don't even come close to what the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has done to thousands of civilians including those civilians children. They have also destroyed historical sites and monuments, blown up thousands of homes, and have caused millions of casualties in the middle east. When it comes to the children of Iraq and Syria, it gets a hundred times worse. Between kidnapping children from their homes, and teaching them how to fight in combat, and forcing some to even to be suicide bombers, these children are going to have a horrific future in front of them, if they have a future, that is.

Though the United States is putting in an amazing amount of effort to help all of the children and their families, ultimately it's not enough. ISIS became a real problem because they believed that Islam should run the government for all Muslim cultures, and some extremists agree with them. Thankfully, many people rejected the thought of what ISIS wanted. Families were then forced to leave or risk dying to the Islamic State. If they choose not to leave they were told that they had to fight in the war or would once again, be killed. Some families had their children taken from them and in return, ISIS would sort of “help” the family. In total, more than 100,000 people have been killed. In  “ISIS has abducted up to 400 Yazidi children and could be using them as suicide bombers“ written by Caroline Mortimer for Independent on January 14, 2016, stating, “Up to 400 abducted Yazidi children are reportedly being trained as potential suicide bombers by Isis. “she also said, “600 children were originally captured in Iraq's Sinjar province and any small villages nearby but, 200 were able to escape”.  If these children had not been able to escape they would likely have become suicide bombers.

A twelve-year-old boy, whose name was not given, explained what it was like to be kidnapped and trained to become a ‘Caliphate cub', a suicide bomber. The boy was told that the best fighters of ISIS would be in the front and that he and the rest of the children were there to “fill the gaps.” The boy described one of his scariest times by saying “There were 60 of us. The scariest times were when the air strikes happened”. The boy then talks about how they would bring all the children into underground tunnels to hide. He then says “They told us the Americans, the unbelievers, were trying to kill us but they, the fighters, they loved us. They would look after us better than our parents”. The boy then explains that when they were training they were told that their parents were non-believers, like the Americans, and that their first job was to go back and kill them. The youngest child out of this group was a 5-year-old boy. On January 14, 2016, Syrian Observatory for human rights told Independent that, there have been 29 suicide attacks carried out by children suicide bombers over the past 4 months.

There were two other young boys who went through a very similar thing. Lisa Daftari who wrote an article for Fox News on February 15, 2017, explains that ISIS released a video having one of the boys identifying himself. The boy identifies himself as Amjad, though this was not his real name it is a very common name used by ISIS. When the video was released his parents confirmed that it was their child. They had not seen him since he was kidnapped back in 2014. In the video, the boy talks about what he is studying. ISIS had been teaching him sacred Islamic texts in the ‘Sham’ ( a historical name for greater Syria). He chooses to carry out the mission that his new “leaders” gave to him. His mission was to go into a town with a truck full of explosives and blow up the town. These cases of kidnapping and also educational and mental changes are not the only thing that ISIS is progressing in.

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria( ISIS) Is also using children as human shields. In “As pressure mounts, ISIS militants hide behind kids” by Margaret Brennan from CBS News on December 4, 2015, saying  “ISIS is using civilians, mostly children, to prevent to the U.S.-led coalition from carrying out airstrikes in key areas such as Ramadi.” Since ISIS chooses to use children as human shields, it complicates the U.S. military operation that the pentagon likes to call “the most precise air campaign in the history of war”. By not getting complete access to ISIS to be able to help aid and defend the civilians Margaret believes that “they are stuck in a battle that will be difficult to get out of without any more casualties ISIS has Abducted more than 8,000 civilians from a district surrounding Mosul to use as human shields.The population of Mosul is now 60,000 from its previous 23,000.
David Martin who is a National Security Correspondent said: “while there is no hard and fast rule governing permissible civilian casualties in U.S. airstrikes and each strike is evaluated individually, he is not aware of any case when a bombing was authorized with knowledge that more than five innocent people were present”. Since ISIS is barricading themselves with civilians it makes the US airpower very hard to target just ISIS. This means there will have to be a “street by street” battle in the key Iraqi City of Ramadi to remove the parasite that is ISIS from the once beautiful city.

ISIS does not seem to be going anywhere with the current power that they hold over civilians and the government. Even with the United States making efforts to help, it simply just isn't enough. This does not mean that we should stop providing help towards children and their families. We all simply have to figure out a way to defeat ISIS.