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In Seized Video, Boys Train to Fight in Iraq, U.S. Says
By ALISSA J. RUBIN
BAGHDAD — The children in black — T-shirts, trousers and face masks — hoist AK-47s and pistols and rush toward an apparently unarmed man on a bicycle. In an instant they have surrounded him, shouting in the high voices of boys who are not yet men, “Put your hands behind your back.”
The man hesitates, looking confused. He is wearing a thin, untucked button-down shirt and looks vulnerable before the boys. They wave their guns, menacingly. As the video segment ends, he is kneeling on the dirt road as the boys close in and wave their guns at him.
The scene is from a video captured by the American military in December near Khan Bani Saad, a town in Diyala, a turbulent province northeast of Baghdad. The video, shown Wednesday by the military at a news conference, is believed to be part of a propaganda tape made by Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the homegrown extremist group that American intelligence officials say has foreign leadership.
While this is not the first time that the military has found images of children in the insurgent group’s tapes and photos, the video has the largest volume of raw images that American forces have come across, a military spokesman said.
The insurgent group “wants to poison the next generation of Iraqis,” said Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, an American spokesman, at a briefing about the group’s use of women and children.
Military officials say they believe that the tapes are used during sessions with children in “the process of indoctrination and training that starts early to ensure they grow up to become future terrorists when they become of age,” he said.
Admiral Smith said the military believed that the adults playing the roles of victims in the video were probably the boys’ parents or other relatives and that the militant group had possibly intended to circulate the video either internally in extremist circles or on one of the 5,000 Web sites of its affiliates. The video was professionally made and easy to understand even for non-Arabic speakers.
In the tape, some of the boys look as if they are scarcely more than 10 or 11 years old, while others appear to be teenagers. Their energy and enthusiasm for what is almost a game, but with real guns, is palpable. After forcing the man off the bicycle, they stop a car and force the men out in a simulation of a kidnapping.
In another clip, a line of boys is seen running out of a house. As each boy emerges, he shouts “Allahu akbar!” (God is great.) Some of them speak uncertainly, half-stopping to turn to the camera; others say it as they are almost off screen. In a later scene they are sitting on the floor, their guns piled in the middle of the group, and they read a prayer.
Admiral Smith emphasized that the military did not believe that this was a real training camp, but rather a rehearsed propaganda piece meant to encourage people to go to real camps. The militant group has long used young people as spotters, watching for victims or for police officers or troops who might apprehend the insurgents.
However, the military offered no proof that suicide bombings or other attacks using teenagers had become a trend. Admiral Smith cited just two cases, in January, in which teenage boys were used as suicide bombers.
Similarly, several recent attacks have been carried out by women. Until 2007, the military found that women were bombers in five attacks. But since then 10 women have carried out attacks, 4 of them so far in 2008, Admiral Smith said. But he said it was too soon to say that it was a trend. The number of attacks carried out by women was small relative to the total number of attacks or even the total of suicide attacks.
The American and Iraqi military reiterated assertions made last week that the bombings at two pet markets in Baghdad were carried out by women with severe mental disabilities, but they did not offer forensic proof other than to say that the condition of the women’s heads, the only body parts found after the bombing, was consistent with people who have Down syndrome, a genetic disorder.
In Anbar Province, tensions between Sunni factions appeared to be high. The tribal Awakening Council, which is now the most powerful group in the province but which lacks political influence, said it was giving members of the Iraqi Islamic Party 30 days to vacate the seats it holds in the provincial council.
The Islamic Party holds a disproportionate number of seats in Anbar and some other Sunni-majority provinces; while many Sunnis boycotted the last election, the Iraqi Islamic Party was one of the few Sunni parties on the ballot. Now, as other political factions have gained ground, they are seeking to oust the party and replace its members with homegrown groups. That effort is particularly strong in Anbar, where the tribes have joined to fight Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and are an influential force.
Indications from the government in Baghdad that provincial elections would not be held until fall prompted the anger. Tribal leaders said they had expected the government to hold elections in March. Either the elections should be held sooner or, in the meantime, the provincial council needs to be replaced, said one leader, Sheik Ali al-Suleiman.
Different accounts continued to emerge Wednesday in the American military’s killing of three people near Tikrit on Tuesday. Those killed were a farmer, his wife and his son; at least one daughter was wounded.
In a statement released Wednesday, the American military said its soldiers were fired on when they entered the house. As they moved through the house, they shot one man who was “holding a woman as a human shield.” A second man was killed by a soldier who believed the man had “hostile intent.”
While checking the rest of the house, they found a dead woman and a wounded girl, the military statement said. They said the woman had been killed in the first exchange of fire as the troops advanced on the house.
However, a cousin of the farmer said the military had mounted a large operation and had used overwhelming force against his relatives, who were poor and lived in a three-room house with cattle and sheep in the yard.
“When I entered my cousin’s house the next day, I saw pools of blood everywhere,” said the cousin, Abu Hamza, 41. “His body was showered with bullets; parts of his brain were on the bed. The same was true of his wife’s body.”
“We have no idea why they made this attack,” he said.
Iraqi military officials in Samarra, an overwhelmingly Sunni area about 60 miles north of Baghdad, said Wednesday that they found a mass grave on Tuesday with 55 bodies in varying states of decay. The officials said they suspected it was the work of Islamic extremist groups.
Qais Mizher and Khalid Ansary contributed reporting from Baghdad, and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Tikrit and Samarra.
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More CIA scare tactics..........oooooooooohhhh ahhhhhhhhhhhh
so now the right wingers are afraid of 10 year old kids? :sarcasm: :grr: :grr:
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