February 08, 2015
Janissaries
Via Instapundit, this article is rather hard to read without putting down the keyboard and crawling under the bed.
It seems that ISIS has made some progress in governing their state. They have established a comprehensive and rapidly expanding a program of universal and compulsory education.
Specifically, after killing all the teachers, they are sending the kids to religious and military indoctrination camps. Kids to young or not yet ready to fight are transported with assault forces and serve in rear echelon as blood donors.
There is more here, and bit of that is touched on in this video from Vice, which, while not really graphic is nevertheless high octane nightmare fuel.
On the other hand, I was not aware that Turkey had turned off the Euphrates.
Note that Boko Haram, which has had some cooperation with ISIS despite the two groups distance has been doing more of this as well of late. Previously, they had been killing boys and abducting girls but that seems to have changed in recent months.
In the 1300s the Muslims created the Jannissaries; children abducted from non moselem families on raids who were trained using Spartan methods to be shock troops that would not only have great combat prowess, but give their enemies pause due to the fear that they might be fighting their own relatives. These are no such elite force but they are a dreadful problem that is likely to linger rather unpleasantly, and will be both worse and more persistent the longer we allow these vile groups to fester .
This began as the 21st century. In some ways it is looking more like the 12th.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at
08:19 PM
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I worry that this situation is inherently unstable. Like other abhorrent forms of warfare that ended up practiced by one side in a conflict, it may only be a matter of time before we too embrace the idea of war between non-state parties. And as was done with unrestricted submarine warfare, as was done with bombing of civilians in cities, when we pick up these tools we work a fearful slaughter.
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at Mon Feb 9 05:17:19 2015 (ZeBdf)
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The Janissaries were merely the Ottoman variant on the centuries-old Muslim practice of marmluk employment, which, as you can see from that link, goes back to the late 9th century. It was aimed internally, rather than externally, and the fact that it saw its hey-day after the expansionist years says a lot about the priorities of the rulers of the dar-es-salaam. Basically, the Muslim warriors, absent a reliable source of external plunder in the form of jihad, had very little loyalty to the heads of state, and their primary sentiments were aligned with tribal loyalties. They made terrible supports for the tyrants of the Muslim world, who were absolutists and thus wanted absolutely loyal troops. Slaves without any of the rights and privileges of freeborn Muslim men, and no tie to existing tribal or community power-centers was exactly what the Emir ordered. You couldn't enslave a Muslim, so importing pagans and kidnapping Christians to be battle-slaves was the solution.
Posted by: Mitch H. at Mon Feb 9 17:03:25 2015 (jwKxK)
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