Back to school: The child who once fought for ISIS

Khalil says he ran away from home to join ISIS a year and a half ago. Today, he sits in a rehabilitation center in Syria's Aleppo province for former extremist fighters. At the age of 14, he's the youngest in his class. As a former child soldier, Khalil is classified as a "level 2" detainee -- an active ISIS fighter. He's shy and struggles to find words to express himself, looking away sheepishly as we ask him about what he was thinking the first time he carried a gun in battle. He pauses, scratches his head and says, "I don't really have anything to tell you about this, I just wanted to advance. Just to advance. There is no retreat."

At the center in Marea he is couched between battle-hardened fighters -- some of them "level 3" detainees, foreign fighters mostly from Eastern Europe and Asia. It looks like a school classroom, but it sits inside a compound secured by the Free Syrian Army. The instructor at the front of the class is tearing into ISIS' ideology. The Turkish military presence here has created a bit of stability in this part of war-torn Syria. The Turkish military carried out Operation Euphrates Shield in late 2016 and early 2017 kicking out extremist groups in parts of Aleppo province. For years, parts of the province were overrun by some of the most extreme groups in the country, including al Qaeda and ISIS. The Syrian Center for Anti-Extremist Ideology opened just a few weeks ago. It is run by Syrian activists who have enlisted Muslim scholars, imams, lawyers and community leaders to help convince ISIS prisoners to drop their extremist ways. The Syrians who run this fledgling rehabilitation center say their work is crucial if there is to be a post-ISIS Syria. "The most dangerous thing is the ISIS ideology," says the center's director, Hussein Nasser. "We want to teach them that the most sacred thing is freedom and human rights." Both of Khalil's older brothers had also joined ISIS and were killed in battle. Khalil was ferried to the front lines along with a unit of children who served as little more than cannon fodder. He was shot on his first day in the trenches. At the rehabilitation center, the instructor draws on Islamic history, with some examples of seventh-century Muslims battles, and touts an Islam based on justice and coexistence. By lecturing almost entirely on Islam, he says he hopes to graduate a class of moderate Muslims who can be integrated into a society divorced from the more brutal realities ISIS created in their so-called Caliphate -- that is once they have served their sentence imposed by the local judiciary. "After you get out of here, reflect on everything. Don't lose your mind, don't let others manipulate it," says the lecturer who did not want to be named out of concerns for his own security. He stands in front of a five-row classroom of men, dressed in their uniform sweatshirts. Their look is a far cry from the Kalashnikov-wielding, bearded fighters in black uniform that these students were not too long ago. Source: CNN