Matriarch Behind Siege Of Marawi Has Been Recruiting Child Soldiers To Promote Terror

A 60-year-old woman has allegedly been funding the Maute group of militants that have held the city of Marawi under siege since May 23.

Farhana Maute’s two sons, Omarkhayam and Abudallah, are the leaders of the Maute group. The group is tied to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), and Mrs. Maute had been funding the group’s activities when they took over the Philippine city.

Marawi is a mostly Muslim city of 200,000 people in the southern part of the Philippines. A state of martial law was declared by President Rodrigo Duterte just after the beginning of the siege.

The Philippine government maintains that the violent conflict with the militant group began after they received intelligence that the Maute brothers were in the area. Instead, they spotted Isnilon Hapilon, the leader of another group affiliated with the ISIL and the Maute group and chaos ensued.

It is questionable whether or not Mrs. Maute’s two sons are still alive but she is keeping their mission, to raise the ISIL flag at the Lanao del Sur Provincial Capitol, alive with the help of child soldiers.

This information along with information that supports that the Maute matriarch, a wealthy business woman from the respected Romato clan, has, in fact, been funding the operation that has terrorized Marawi for the past month came from a former teenage soldier.

Video evidence supporting his claim was obtained by the Philippines online news site The Rappler. The video showed children “studying martial arts alongside masked men.”

There have been other eye witness accounts, from survivors who had escaped Marawi, of children in the streets armed with rifles.

The teenager who spoke with The Rappler remains anonymous. However, his story goes a little something like this, according to both The Rappler and United Kingdom’s The Daily Telegraph:.

He came from a poor family and was supposedly being given a golden opportunity. He was being given the opportunity by the Mautes to go to their headquarters in Butig, just 30 miles outside of Marawi, to study the Koran.

His parents believed what they were told and the teenager was sent to Butig. However, instead of studying the Koran he says he was handed a rifle and taught that government officials were the enemy, according to an article from The Rappler.

“They taught me how to kill people. If I don’t kill, I will die. They will kill me first.”

In his mind, he says, he was prepared to die. It was now a kill or be killed world for the boy. He was told that the greatest reward was to go to heaven and that fulfilling his duties and/or being killed would eventually lead to that reward.

The boy said he was taught to believe that it was all he ever wanted. He even described his life in Butig, Farahana Maute’s hometown, as a happy one. He could mingle with the other children, including the now infamous Omarkhayam and Abudallah Maute.

The details of the boy’s eventual departure from Butig are still being withheld for his safety and that of his family.

It’s not just teenage boys that they are brainwashing to be loyal to the Islamic State or ISIS, they are also lying to the parents of younger boys and even girls to add to their army.

Zia Alonto Aldiong, an eye witness from Marawi, told The Daily Telegraph about what he had seen before fleeing the city.

“During the early days of the war you’d see 9-to-11-year-olds manning checkpoints, holding heavy duty firearms. We are not only talking boys but several girls. They are running errands, following orders from their commanders.”

Aldiong, along with other witnesses, assumes that many of these children have already been killed during the military airstrikes that have hit Marawi over the past month.

Over a week ago, Mrs. Maute was caught riding in a vehicle of weapons and is currently facing charges of rebellion. Still, despite the unknown status of her sons and with her in custody, the war in Marawi rages on.

There was an eight-hour ceasefire Sunday so residents and militants alike could celebrate the end of Ramadan. The ceasefire came to an abrupt end as fire broke out as soon as the 2 p.m. deadline hit.

As the war in the Philippines begins to move into its second month we now know, that not unlike the wars in the 1990’s in Rwanda between the Hutus and the Tutsis, the members of these militant groups attached to ISIS and ISIL are not above using and brainwashing children to do their dirty work for them.

Hopefully, this war will not end as brutally as the one in Africa in the 90s. It ended in the genocide of hundreds of thousands of Tutsis and many moderate Hutus.

So far, it seems that one can only hope that both the adults and children in the city of Marawi and the Philippines don’t end up either joining the militants or end up slaughtered.

It’s yet another case of history beginning to repeat itself and humanity having not yet learned its lesson.

[Featured Image by Jes Aznar/Getty Images]