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| Afghanistan |
| Guardian Reports Taliban Using Children as Suicide Bombers |
| 2007-06-23 |
| Well, actually they report the NATO claim, but it's as close to a balanced report as I have ever seen in that publication. Children as young as six are being used by the Taliban in increasingly desperate suicide missions, coalition forces in Afghanistan claimed yesterday. The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), to which Britain contributes 5,000 troops in southern Afghanistan, revealed that soldiers defused an explosive vest which had been placed on a six-year-old who had been told to attack Afghan army forces in the east of the country. The boy was spotted after appearing confused at a checkpoint. The vest was defused and no one was hurt. The claim came only hours after the second report this week that civilians had been killed in Nato military operations. Yesterday ISAF said it was investigating reports from the Afghan authorities that civilians had been killed. But it also accused the Taliban of using civilians as battleground cover, and said the incident with the boy signalled a new type of tactic. The boy had been ordered to target a check point in Miri, in the Andar district of Ghazni province. "They placed explosives on a six-year-old boy and told him to walk up to the Afghan police or army and push the button," said Captain Michael Cormier, the company commander who intercepted the child, in a statement. "Fortunately, the boy did not understand and asked patrolling officers why he had this vest on." Lieutenant Colonel David Accetta, ISAF eastern regional command spokesman, told the Guardian: "In the past we have not seen the Taliban sink that low, to use children as suicide bombers. The personnel secured the vest to make sure the child was safe." Lt Col Accetta said the procedure for dealing with an armed minor had so far been untested in Afghanistan. "It would have been difficult to know what to do considering it was a six-year-old boy and he was presumably going to push the button himself or someone was going to detonate it for him remotely," Lt Col Accetta said. The rules of military engagement are easily muddied when a child poses a direct threat, he explained. "What we do if we identify the fact that an adult is wearing a suicide vest is we use whatever force we deem necessary to protect the lives of our soldiers and any civilians. Of course it makes it more difficult - it's a six year-old child." The date of the incident, the boy's name and information on what happened to him afterwards were not immediately available, Lt Col Accetta said. The Guardian has been unable to independently corroborate the claim. ISAF has accused the Taliban of intentionally living and fighting in residential areas, capitalising on the international forces' reticence to put ordinary Afghans at risk. "They will normally intermix with the civilian population with the thought that we won't engage them there, and it's true, we won't do that," Lt Col Accetta maintained. "They are deliberately putting civilians - women and children - at risk by bringing the combat into close proximity with them." Coalition forces have struggled in recent days to pacify a swell of anger following repeated incidents where |
| Posted by:Glenmore |
| #9 Hmm... and yet not one word of the Geneva Convention. 1) Take Pictures and Videos. Show them at every press briefings and refer to them often. Sooner or later the media will get the hint and stop ignoring stories like this. 2) Take no illegal combatants prisoner. If you find a combatant out of uniform or hiding in the civilian pop - take them out and shoot them. Do it in public and announce that you find them as illegal combatants according to the GC and subject to summarily execution. |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2007-06-23 19:44 |
| #8 Don't cha think that by now a Geneva Convention would have conviened to clearly define the rules of war for even cavemen to follow ? The total silence in this matter indicates that either they don't know what the hell's going on, or they feel so insignificant that they will not bother with the effort. Political correctness just doesn't cover complete ignorance. |
| Posted by: wxjames 2007-06-23 19:39 |
| #7 Glen no wonder the MSM isn't covering this. |
| Posted by: Icerigger 2007-06-23 19:29 |
| #6 Zen, There are those who would say the West devours its young too. They just do it VERY young (negative nine months to zero). A little 'cultural relativism' that may explain the general lack of expression of disgust by many of the Western elite at these Muslim atrocities. |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2007-06-23 17:02 |
| #5 When Islam has finally forced Western nations to reduce the entire MME (Muslim Middle East) to smoking ruins, people will recall how six year-old children were sent out with bomb vests and feel a sense of solid affirmation instead of any guilt. Watch the "Obsession" video and see Palestinian kindergarteners clamoring to become martyrs in pursuit of murdering Jews. It is enough to remove all doubt for some of us. ISLAM DEVOURS ITS YOUNG. There can be no stronger proof that an entire culture's collective moral compass is demagnetized. Whether it is six year-olds wearing bomb vests, specifically targeting children in terrorist attacks, infants abandoned to die in a car bomb detonation or the use of children as human shields, all of these are rapacious acts that should be met with universal condemnation. The Muslim community's continued and deafening silence over such wholesale neglect for the value or sanctity of human life—especially that of the very young—is one of many things helping to ensure that, if and when their collective annihilation should come about, no one shall grieve the loss. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2007-06-23 16:24 |
| #4 In the past we have not seen the Taliban sink that low, to use children as suicide bombers. Hahaha! Very diplomatically put. The ba$tards just probably haven't figured out how to do this reliably yet. Next step: Remotely detonate these bombs on unwitting children. Or maybe pack a cat full of C4 and send it off towards a checkpoint, but that can get pretty dicey. Better use a dog perhaps. |
| Posted by: gorb 2007-06-23 16:22 |
| #3 "Taliban Using Children as Suicide Bombers" In other news, water is wet. >:-( |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2007-06-23 15:26 |
| #2 Any decent human being in the realm of Islam ought to see by now what the jihadis are about: Stan's Orcs. Although their (decent humans) ability to discern may have been skewered by the Islam's ideology, it is still present. As for Left, the moral and cultural relativism may have done ireparrable damage and the discernmet ability seems to be largely missing, or framed in such a way that the moral compass is a 90 deg mirror image--totally at odds with reality. |
| Posted by: twobyfour 2007-06-23 15:21 |
| #1 shouldn't the "Surprise Meter" be shown?? There is absolutely NOTHING, no matter how cowardly or despicable, the Jihadis can ever do that would surprise me. And the fact that the Left doesn't give a damn doesn't surprise me either! |
| Posted by: Justrand 2007-06-23 14:01 |