This still image of a child soldier was taken from a video reportedly made by al-Qaida.

Washington -- Al-Qaida in Iraq is recruiting and training boys -- some younger than 11 -- to kidnap and kill, senior U.S. and Iraqi military spokesmen said during a February 6 press briefing in Iraq.

Five training tapes recovered in a December 2007 raid show as many as 20 boys, most thought to be younger than 11 years old, carrying automatic weapons and grenades, storming homes in mock kidnappings and assassinations and sitting in a circle chanting their allegiance to al-Qaida.

In the videos, which carry what appear to be July 13, 2007, date stamps, the boys carry weapons, including pistols, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

Multi-National Force - Iraq spokesman Navy Rear Admiral Gregory J. Smith said that this is not the first such recovery of videos and photos showing al-Qaida in Iraq training children, but that the “the volume and content was the most significant and disturbing we’ve found to date.”

Iraqi Major General Mohammad al Askari, a spokesman for Iraq’s Defense Ministry, said al-Qaida in Iraq is using children ages 8 to 14 as suicide bombers. He also cited a recent trend by al-Qaida to kidnap children and hold them for ransom to fund the organization’s operations.

The rescue of an 11-year-old boy who had been kidnapped was documented in a video shown at the briefing. Al-Qaida in Iraq demanded that $100,000 be given for the boy’s return or, the group said, he would be beheaded, Askari said.

WOMEN ALSO TARGETED

Al-Qaida often refers to children as the “new generation of the Mujahidin,” or warriors engaged in a jihad, Smith said. There are also reports of al-Qaida entering schools and distributing its propaganda. Thousands of al-Qaida-sponsored Web sites target children, he said.

Recently, two 15-year-old boys were used in suicide bombings in Iraq. Al-Qaida also appears to be increasing the use of women as suicide bombers. Prior to 2007, only five women were known to have carried out suicide attacks. In 2007, there were 10 such attacks, and attacks using women already have taken place in 2008, Smith said.

Terrorism experts say that the use of children and women by terrorist groups is becoming increasingly common as a method that is designed to thwart anti-terrorist and security measures.

Some 300,000 children under 18 are being exploited in more than 30 armed conflicts worldwide, according to estimates from UNICEF. The United Nations’ International Labour Organization condemns the forced or compulsory recruitment of children for use in armed conflict at one of “the worst forms of child labour.”

For additional information, see a transcript of the press briefing and a video link to the briefing on the Defense Department Web site.

Using Children as Suicide Attackers Increases Sense of Barbarity Suicide attacks have risen rapidly in Afghanistan By Merle D. Kellerhals, Jr. Staff Writer "When they first put the vest on my body I didn't know what to think, but then I felt the bomb," recalls 6-year-old Juma, who says he was tricked into wearing an explosive vest by a Taliban insurgent in Afghanistan. The insurgent told him that if he pushed the detonator button it "would spray flowers." Once Juma realized what it was he notified Afghan security forces. The boy was selected to kill others with an explosive vest because it was believed he would easily slip past security forces that would be unlikely to suspect a child suicide bomber, terrorism experts say. "The use of children, in particular, suggests that the [terrorist] groups responsible for their 'recruitment' are seeing a need to employ increasing extremes of barbarity," says Tom Koenigs, the U.N. secretary-general's special representative for Afghanistan. In April, the Taliban used a 12-year-old boy to behead a Pakistani they believed was a spy. The father of the beheaded man said, "The Taliban are not mujahedeen (which fought successfully against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan). They are not fighting for the cause of Islam ... They are the enemies of Islam. They are behaving like savages." According to terrorism experts, the use of children in suicide attacks, although still infrequent, is becoming more common as terrorist groups continue to experiment with ways to breach security measures and enhance the ruthless nature and lethality of the violence. In Afghanistan, suicide attacks are a new phenomenon, says Christine Fair, a former political affairs officer with the U.N. Assistance Mission to Afghanistan (UNAMA) who coordinated the UNAMA study Suicide Attacks in Afghanistan (2001-2007). Before September 9, 2001, there had not been a known suicide attack in Afghanistan. On that day two al-Qaida operatives, posing as news media, blew up themselves and assassinated Ahmad Shah Massoud, leader of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance. Taliban insurgents have conducted 103 suicide bombings in Afghanistan in the first eight months of this year, a 69 percent increase over the same period in 2006, according to the UNAMA report. In all of 2006, 123 attacks, which killed 305 people, were carried out, according to the report. "The immediate victims of a suicide attack are those who are killed or wounded, their families, and their friends. However, the target of such attacks is also society as a whole," Koenigs says. "Suicide attacks traumatize entire communities, undermine popular faith in institutions of the state, provoke responses that limit freedoms, and intimidate populations into a sense that hopes of peace rest only with the providers of violence," he said. Fair said that the primary targets of terrorists in Afghanistan are police, security forces and coalition forces, not the civilian population. However, civilians make up the largest group of victims. Fair also noted that Afghanistan lacks "the cult of martyrdom," which is found in other areas that have experienced suicide terrorism. Afghans tend not to support suicide attackers, she said.

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