Another sign that the Taliban is desperate?

Somehow I can't believe that having to recruit children is a sign of strength.

Anyway, that is my reaction to yesterday's BBC report from Tank, Pakistan, that "pro-Taleban militants" are trying to get children as young as 11 to go fight their jihad.

Most families in Tank are reportedly too afraid to talk about what is going on a local teacher was prodded to go on the record and this is some of what he said:

"They don't really kidnap the children," says a local teacher. But he is hesitant and thinks his words through.

"The Taleban convince them it is their duty to carry out jihad [holy struggle]." But then he admits what he's left unsaid.

"How much convincing does a child need? ... Especially when promised adventure." The trouble is that in most cases, the "adventure" the Taleban offer usually results in no possibility of return.

"They are being trained as fidayeen," the teacher half whispers. "Fidayeen" literally means "those who sacrifice their lives".

As the BBC goes on to report, what this translates to is that these youngsters are being recruited for suicide missions.

The BBC did ask the obvious question: that is, why the adults in charge don't intervene in this process.

"Do you want me to lose my neck?" one summed up the situation for the reporter. "The Taleban don't ask for permission - they just tell us."

In March, however, some adults did intervene. When the Taliban showed up at a private English school, Oxford High, the students were still taking their exams. The militants were convinced to let the kids finish. By the time the test was over, security forces had been summoned and were able to drive the militants out - at least for a minute.

But the militants are back now and now it seems it is the security forces who are in retreat.

If the adults in Tank live in fear of the militants, the youth in town are more ambivalent. "We are not extremists... we are liberal people," a college physics student told the BBC. "But our identity is Islamic," he added, clarifying his position.

Another student was frustrated by the government's impotence: "They are the ones who should be protecting us," as one told the reporter.

Anyway, it must be fun to raise a family in Tank. One, um, hair-raising adventure.

Another reason to oppose Al Qaeda

Al Qaeda's latest beheading video shows a boy "barely 12" as the executioner, according to the Associated Press, which obtained a copy of the video in Peshawar, Pakistan.

According to the AP, the video records the "grisly death of Ghulam Nabi, a Pakistani militant accused of betraying a top Taliban official who was killed in a December airstrike."

"He is an American spy. Those who do this kind of thing will get this kind of fate," the boy can be heard saying.

Even human rights monitors are expressing outrage:

Sam Zarifi, Asia research director for Human Rights Watch, said the use of a child to commit such an act constituted a war crime and was a "new low" in the conflict in Afghanistan.

He noted the Taliban had teenage combatants but they were not recruited on a large scale because of the availability of adult fighters. He said he had seen children in the background of some jihadist videos but none in which they were directly involved in violence.

"I don't know why they would do this," Zarifi said. "The Taliban have to some extent tried to play to the public in Afghanistan and have not engaged in the complete sowing of mayhem that we have seen in Iraq. But this kind of act is really egregious. It's off the charts."