NAJAF, Iraq — During his speech at the third Middle East Forum held in Erbil Oct. 26, Iraqi parliament Speaker Salim al-Jubouri warned of future threats from the Islamic State (IS), saying that the terrorist organization “will not follow the same tactic once defeated in Mosul and will seek to reinvent itself to produce a new generation of terrorists with the ability to cope with the post-defeat phase and meet the resulting challenges.”

The results of an investigation, published Oct. 19, showed that over the past two years of controlling Ninevah province and other Sunni areas in Iraq, IS has managed to indoctrinate and militarily train 4,000 children to carry out suicide attacks and other terrorist tasks in the future. Europol warned July 30 that these child recruits will be the new generation of jihadis.

IS calls these young recruits the “Caliphate Cubs.” They have received radical ideological teachings based on those of Ibn Taymiyyah, Muhammad Ibn Abdul Wahhab and other Salafist jihadi imams, turning them into ticking time bombs who might end up committing even more violence than IS itself. The Iraqi government has yet to create rehabilitation programs to bring this massive number of young people back into the community.

IS militants reportedly went into hiding after Iraqi forces entered the city from the west on Oct. 31.