Video Showing ISIS Indoctrination and Training of Young Africans
- On January 18, 2022, the information office of ISIS’s West African Province published a video entitled “The Empowerment Generation” (jil al-tamkin).[1] The 27-minute video depicts the indoctrination and training of African youths at an ISIS training camp called “The institute for the lion cubs of the Caliphate” (Telegram, January 18, 2022). The location of the camp is not given is probably situated in northeastern Nigeria, which is where ISIS’s West African Province operates.
The opening shot of the video (Telegram January 18, 2022).
- The video shows the cadets’ daily lives, which include a wide variety of activities, including Islamic studies and ideological indoctrination, physical training and hand-to-hand combat, shooting practice and urban warfare techniques. They all wear a yellow uniform while attending classes and combat jackets and black pants during semi-military training.
- The pictures and interviews with instructors and cadets shed light on how ISIS is preparing its “empowerment generation.” The video provided the following information:
- Length of program: The indoctrination program lasts for more than a year. It begins with theoretical studies and Qur’an memorization at centers distributed throughout the Province. Cadets who have excelled take exams to find the best candidates, who are then sent to the organization’s institute for Sharia study. An instructor said the first class of Sharia students is about to graduate and apparently the efforts invested in them have begun to bear fruit. After about a year of religious studies they begin military training.
The instructor explains that the cadets were chosen from among the students excelling in Qur’an studies and memorization after passing entrance exams (Telegram, January 18, 2022).
- The general curriculum: An instructor speaking the local language, apparently Swahili, said the cadets receive both spiritual and physical training. They study the Sharia and Arabic [the language of the Qur’an of the Prophet Muhammad and the hadiths, i.e., the Islamic oral tradition]. They have physical training which includes exercises, and practice assembling, disassembling and using weapons. They expect to use everything they have learned to fight all forms of heresy.
A cadet says they receive spiritual and physical training (Telegram, January 18, 2022).
- Particular aspects of the curriculum: The video gives particulars of the curriculum as reflected though the cadets’ instruction. For example, an instructor is filmed telling the class, in Arabic, that parliaments and laws determined by men are unacceptable. According to Islam, democracy is not legitimate and the soldiers of ISIS’s Caliphate are to fight the “tyrants of democracy,” who are Western and Christian (“Crusaders”) or belong to local administrations (“agents of democracy who abandoned Islam”). He also stressed the importance of following Islamic religious law (Sharia) and of the “war against the infidels” (Telegram, January 18, 2022). A different instructor said the Christian West should know the young generation of ISIS were raised on the love of death as a martyr and fighting for the sake of Allah and with Allah’s aid they will conquer their cities and camps and cleanse them of pollution.
Right: Cadets in class. Left: The instructor teaches them Arabic. At the left is an ISIS flag (Telegram, January 18, 2022).
An instructor says, “The Crusaders should know that these generations were raised on the love of death as a martyr and fighting for the sake of Allah…and with Allah’s aid they will conquer your cities and camps and cleanse them of your pollution” (Telegram, January 18, 2022).
- Indoctrinating ISIS ideology: Interviews with indicate they have been indoctrinated with ISIS’s radical ideology. One, who spoke Arabic, said the only way to release the [Palestinian terrorist] prisoners [in Israeli jails], restore al-Aqsa mosque and Islam’s two holy cities [Mecca and al-Madinah], and conquer Rome and Andalusia [Spain] was through jihad.
- Reinforcing ties to ISIS: The cadets swear fealty to ISIS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi and watch an ISIS propaganda video of ISIS fighting for its last outpost in al-Baghouz, in southeastern Syria.
Right: Cadets swear fealty to ISIS. Left: Cadets watch an ISIS propaganda film (Telegram, January 18, 2022).
- Using what they have been taught: Towards the end of the video a graduate says that once they have graduated they will begin fighting the jihad and continue until all the infidels are dead. He then fires a mortar shell. Finally, masked cadets execute three Nigerian soldiers, one a special ops fighter.
Right: A graduate of the course says that they will now begin their jihad. Then he fires a mortar shell. Left: Executing a fighter from a Nigerian army special forces unit (Telegram, January 18, 2022).
Executing other soldiers (Telegram, January 18, 2022).
- ISIS’s indoctrination and training in its West African Province offer additional evidence of the organization’s assessment that Africa in general (and Nigeria in particular) is a region where it can base and continue extending its presence. Recruiting young men and giving them extensive training is another way to realize ISIS’s aspiration to spread and establish itself throughout Africa. It is also possible that after the younger generation has absorbed ISIS’s ideology its influence will spread beyond the borders of the continent.
Documentation of ISIS Military Training[2]
Right: Hand-to-hand combat exercises. Left: Physical training
Combat readiness training
Shooting practice
Guerrilla and urban warfare training
[1] The video itself provides the translation, "empowerment generation." The Arabic word tamkin has a broader meaning and also includes the realization of Islam's gaining power, influence and conceptual and political hegemony by means of a political entity operating by implementing the Sharia, that is, the Caliphate. ↑
[2] All pictures from Telegram, January 18, 2022.
