Afghanistan's bitter war
Updated on 23 August 2007
A jihadi video show how children are as much currency in the fighting as they are in the propaganda battle.
The images in the report, purportedly of a militant training camp for children, appeared this week on a jihadi website. It's not known who filmed them, or when.
"Fellow Muslims, let me tell you of a way of life that will save you from hell," says one. He is reciting verses in Arabic, although others seem to speak Uzbek, suggesting the camp is being run just outside Afghanistan's borders.
Worsening crisis
They are pictures that argue NATO's case for them - that they're fighting dangerous extremists - but at the same time, Britain's opponents in the south are almost proud that they recruit children.
Their leader Mansour Dadullah told Channel 4 News last month, that children should be used as suicide bombers.
It is an insurgency whose tactics grow ever more extreme. 24 died today as the violence reaches a peak in the six-year occupation and NATO's will is slowly drained by repeated crises.
"I am prisoner of the Taliban. I live in the mountains with the Taliban, 3000 metres high and the Taliban try to negotiate with the Afghan government."Rudolph Blechschmidt, German hostage
Hostage pleas
Today, it was Germany's turn to flinch. Sick after his month's captivity, engineer Rudolph Blechschmidt, is forced into a plea for his life by now familiar to many.
This video was played on Afghan television, but its audience is in Germany. Yesterday, Germany's leader Angela Merkel met Gordon Brown and the pair talked about Afghanistan en route to the Germany-England match.
Coalition in crisis?
Hostage crises or troop deaths have kept the domestic pressure up on the four biggest contributors to NATO forces.
American and British troops, fighting hardest in the east and south, have suffered considerable losses this year. The Americans have suffered 71 deaths out of 17,000 troops. the UK 26 out of 6,700.
But proportionately worse off are the Canadians, who have lost 26 soldiers so far this year out of a contingent of only 2500.
Pressure rises for Merkel
Today's hostage video will up the pressure on Germany's Angela Merkel, who is committed to the 3,000 troops in the North, 6 of whom have died this year.
She faces pressure from NATO allies to put them on more dangerous duties, but her domestic opponents say they should come home completely.
Hostage crises have also forced a change of plan by Italy and South Korea. 21 South Korean Christian missionaries are still being held.
