Terrifying video shows Taliban's boy martyrs - some as young as age five

Al Qaeda has filmed boys training to wage jihad. The children are as young as age five. A series of still images from the video, filmed in the Waziristan region shows boys training with AK-47 rifles and machine guns.

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LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - The rifles appear hard for the kids to hold, and the recoil is as much as they can handle, but the boys obey and shoot their targets as taught. Film taken in Waziristan shows boys as young as age five who are being trained to wage jihad against America and its allies in Afghanistan.

Waziristan is on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan and these boys are being trained to fight for the Taliban. By training the boys from youth, they will have well-conditioned and trained fighters to wage the next generation of warfare against American and allied troops.

It is rare in world history that children are taught to wage warfare, but in cases where it is done, it yields lethal results. Those children grow up and enter combat with a level of veterans that can be deadly to their opponents. Even highly-trained American soldiers will find it difficult to handle such fighters.

Fortunately, the United States has been fighting successfully against the Taliban insurgency for some time, relying on superior firepower and technology to maintain the advantage in the field.

Still, a soldier trained from childhood to fight, and if necessary, die in combat or a suicide bombing, is a dangerous thing.

The video, which was shot by Al Qaeda, surfaced on a jihadist website maintained by the Turkistan Islamic Party. The video shows boys lined up in a row, firing AK-47s, pistols, and at one point, a boy firing a Soviet-manufactured machine gun.

According to the video, many of the children are orphans whose fathers have already died in combat.

The Taliban flourish in the tribal regions of Afghanistan, and more recently in Pakistan, where they have found some refuge from allied operations. Ultimately, while the Taliban may not be the only political entity in the region, it is certainly the most militant and dominant. The Taliban hope to create a hard-line Islamic state in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, at least in the tribal regions.

The problem of course, is that they also train and harbor terrorists who will leave the region o wage jihad against the United States, Israel, and their allies. This leave the world with little choice but to suppress their dominance, which typically creates yet more orphans and martyrs.

View the video here (scroll down).

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