Feral Jundi

     I think I will let the articles below speak for themselves.  Using children as suicide bombers or hanging 7 year old kids in public? Pffft. I have no respect for an enemy that uses children like this, and this is Lords Resistance Army material here. –Matt

Edit: 06/12/2010- Oh, and now the Taliban is using poison gas on children.  These guys are pathetic.

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Young Afghan suicide bomber approached wedding guests

‘Everyone immediately tried to escape,’ one guest said. But the boy’s suicide vest detonated, killing more than 40 and wounding at least 80, said a police chief who witnessed the attack.

By Alex Rodriguez, Los Angeles Times

June 11, 2010

Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan

The boy, dressed in white and thought to be no older than 13, appeared amid the din of a wedding party in a small southern Afghan village and walked up to within 15 feet of a cluster of tables where everyone was eating. As he prepared to detonate his suicide bomb vest, the gathering flew into a panic.”Everyone immediately tried to escape,” said Abdullah Jan, a guest at the wedding. But there was no time.The boy’s suicide vest packed with explosives detonated, killing more than 40 people and wounding at least 80, said Zemarai Khan, a local police chief who was at the wedding and witnessed the attack.Carried out late Wednesday in a small village in Kandahar province, the attack underscored the vulnerability of Afghan society even as President Hamid Karzai pursues negotiations with Taliban insurgents who have waged war with his government and Western forces for nearly nine years.The Taliban has scoffed at Karzai’s peace offer and has carried out a wave of deadly attacks since the Afghan leader convened a national peace conference in Kabul, the capital, last week aimed at establishing a framework for talks with the insurgency.The bombing of the wedding in the village of Nagahan in the Arghandab district was the deadliest of those attacks. The bomber, who witnesses said was 12 or 13, targeted a housing compound where men and young boys were celebrating the wedding, authorities said. Female guests were in a different area. The groom was injured but survived, Jan said. His brother was killed. Though authorities have not determined why the wedding was targeted, witnesses said the groom and several members of his family were Afghan police officers. Also, residents of Nagahan have formed a tribal militia to help keep Taliban militants from infiltrating their area.The Afghan Interior Ministry sent a team of investigators to Nagahan.Zalmay Ayubi, a spokesman for Kandahar Gov. Tooryalai Wesa, said villagers were supportive of the Afghan government.The blast drew condemnations from Western officials as well as Karzai, who called it an act by “merciless people, who target innocent people at social gatherings and simply want to kill as many as they can.”Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations’ special representative for Afghanistan, called the attack an “outrageous act.””To specifically target people who were gathering at a moment of happiness to celebrate a wedding shows a total disregard for civilian life,” he said.U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization commanders hope to turn the tide against the insurgency by defeating it in Kandahar, the Taliban’s former headquarters and birthplace. With thousands of additional U.S. troops in southern Afghanistan or on their way, the United States and its Western allies will try to secure Kandahar while ramping up civilian projects in a bid to strengthen the Afghan government’s presence in the region and ultimately turn its residents against the rebels.U.S. commanders have moved away from using the term “offensive” to describe their strategy in Kandahar, and are now trying to characterize their efforts in the crucial province as a gradual process that might take longer than initially expected.Speaking Thursday in Brussels, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, U.S. Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, said the campaign to secure Kandahar, originally expected to conclude by August, probably would stretch into the fall.”I do think it will happen more slowly than we had originally anticipated,” McChrystal said. “It will take a number of months for this to play out, but I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing…. I think it’s more important that we get it right than we get it fast.”The Taliban has been fighting back in the south with a wave of attacks that have included assassinations of Afghan officials and the shooting down of a NATO helicopter this week that killed four U.S. soldiers.Daud Ahmadi, a spokesman for the Helmand province governor’s office, said that on Tuesday insurgents in the Sangin district hanged a 7-year-old boy they had accused of spying for U.S. forces. Ahmadi said insurgents kidnapped the boy from his home and hanged him from a tree in his village. Taliban leaders denied that they executed the boy.The Taliban also denied any involvement in the attack on the wedding. However, Wesa, the Kandahar governor, said he was convinced that the Taliban was responsible.”The Taliban are doing two things at once,” Wesa said. “On one side, they target people who are in favor of the government. Then, at the same time, they don’t want people to know their real face.”

Story here.

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Taliban Hangs 7-Year-Old Boy in Grisly Warning

Taliban’s Vengeful Attacks Include Wedding Attack That Killed More Than 40

By NICK SCHIFRIN

KABUL, Afghanistan June 10, 2010—

As thousands of American troops pour into southern Afghanistan, insurgents have launched a vicious offensive against the Afghans supporting the surge. In the last day a suicide bomber blew himself up inside a wedding hosted by an anti-Taliban tribal leader, and insurgents publicly hanged someone who they labeled a spy for local troops.

The Afghan accused of spying was a 7-year-old boy.

He was hanged from a tree in front of a crowd in Helmand’s Sangin district, where more than a thousand British troops are based. He was the son and grandson of prominent tribal leaders, one of whom had recently spoken out against the Taliban, according to local journalists.

“A 7-year-old boy cannot be a spy,” President Hamid Karzai said in a press conference in Kabul. “A 7-year-old boy cannot be anything but a 7-year-old boy, and therefore hanging or shooting to kill a 7-year-old boy … is a crime against humanity.”

The hanging occurred hours before a man walked into the main section of a wedding just north of Kandahar City and pulled the trigger on a suicide vest, killing more than 40 and injuring more than 70, including the groom.

The groom’s family had opposed the Taliban, and his uncle, the local tribal leader, had successfully organized a militia against insurgents, according to Ahmed Wali Karzai, the head of the provincial council and the president’s brother.

Taken together, the grisly incidents will serve as a warning that American soldiers and Marines have not yet guaranteed security for those Afghans willing to help them. And that will make the surge into southern Afghanistan more difficult. American commanders admit they need local help in order to defeat an insurgency deeply embedded into the ethnic and tribal population of Helmand and Kandahar.

Today the top American commander in Afghanistan admitted the military had not yet won over skeptical local leaders in Kandahar, and that it was taking longer than he anticipated to do so ahead of a summer surge.

Taliban Denies Bloody Attack on Wedding

“I think it will take a number of months for this to play out. But I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. I think it’s more important that we get it right than we get it fast,” Gen. Stanley McChrystal told reporters in Brussels on the sidelines of a NATO conference.

The wedding attack occurred in Arghandab district, which American officials have held up as an example of progress. In the last year more than 50 soldiers died among its lush pomegranate fields, and the district is approximately 60 percent controlled by Western troops and the Afghan government, according to American military officials. Early last year, it was an insurgent safehaven.

The village where the wedding took place, Nagan, is on the border of Arghandab and Zhari, a much less secure district where many of Arghandab’s leaders have fled. Nagan had been safe for years because of local elders had successfully rallied villagers to oppose Taliban presence, according to Wali Karzai.

The bomber walked into the wedding ceremony at approximately 9 p.m. His detonation was so powerful, body parts ended up in trees outside the compound.

“Some people were waiting for food, others were dancing inside a big tent, when I heard a deafening blast,” a survivor named Aminullah told Reuters. “The dust went up in the sky and I saw dead bodies everywhere. Women and children were screaming. I thought it was end of the world.”

The Taliban denied responsibility, and some villagers told the Associated Press they saw helicopters above the wedding and blamed Western troops for firing into the wedding.

But NATO said none of its troops were involved, and the provincial governor held a press conference where he blamed insurgents and said ball bearings had been found in victims’ bodies — a sign that a suicide bomb had been used.

“On one side they target people who are in favor of the government. Then at the same time, they don’t want people to know their real face,” Gov. Tooryalai Wesa said, referring to the Taliban’s denial.

Taliban’s Shocking Attacks Warn Afghan to Not Cooperate With U.S.

The attacks have not been limited to Afghans. The first 10 days of June have been one of the deadliest stretches of the war for American troops. At least 19 have died, and McChrystal today acknowledged that the war would get more violent as troops deployed to areas where NATO has not had a significant presence.

“I think it’s likely that our casualties and violence will continue to rise particularly through the summer months. They could rise well into the fall.” McChrystal told ABC News in Brussels. “We are pressuring the enemy and they are reacting to that. As we predicted, violence would go up the more places we were, the more forces we used to take the momentum away from the enemy.”

But a day like yesterday will help reinforce local leaders’ doubts about the Americans’ ability to protect them. Yesterday afternoon, insurgents dragged a member of the Kandahar provincial council out of his house and killed him, the Associated Press reported.

Story here.