Al-Shabaab Video Shows Young Children Being Taught To Kill "the Infidels"

When it comes to the al-Qaeda-linked Islamist extremist group Al-Shabaab, not all the news coming out of Somalia is laughable. They have been banning some of the most bizarre things in recent years since they have overtaken much of Somalia. In an effort to turn the country into a Taliban-styled nation, they've outlawed everything from music to women's bras to most recently school bells. They've also threatened fierce retaliation for not complying, but a recent video found on the Internet that shows footage of young boys, even some toddlers, being taught to kill "the infidels" is extremely disturbing, and not laughable at all.

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"Do you know who I will kill with this gun?" a little boy says into the video camera, waving his toy pistol.

"Who will you kill with this gun?" the cameraman asks.

"The infidels."

Of course indoctrinating young children to kill infidels and hate non-Muslims isn't anything new. You can see it on state-sponsored children's television programmes in Palestine and other regions in the Middle East. Either way, on the Internet produced by a bunch of Islamist thugs or on the TV produced by Terrorist thugs (Hamas) teaching kids to hate and to kill is incredibly offensive.

This particularly video is 28 minutes long, with an appearance by Omar Hammami (aka Abu Mansour) an American who moved to Toronto and who is now living in Somalia.

The video, distributed on the Internet this week by Al-Shabab's propaganda arm, shows a "children's fair" hosted by Al-Shabab leaders. The boys and girls, identified as the children of "martyrs," are given balloons and snacks and rewarded with toy guns for correctly identifying the late leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, from a picture.

"What brought us together today is the blood of the martyrs," Mr. Hammami tells the children, according to a translation by the SITE Intelligence Group. "So on the necks of the attendants today rests the responsibility of blood. Each of us should assume a part of this responsibility.

"As men, we have to continue the fighting started by those heroes. We have to abide by the principles for which those heroes were martyred. They honoured the responsibility on them."

Mr. Hammami then urges their mothers, who appear to be seated at the back of the room, to encourage the children to "learn military sciences" and tells the kids they "have to work hard and try to be like their hero fathers who were martyred in this path."

The children are later shown holding their plastic guns while waving black Al-Shabab flags in a pose reminiscent of terrorist videos. One child crawls prone on the floor with his rifle while another grimaces and aims his toy AK-47 at the camera.

"We are horrified by these images and by the exploitation of these very young Somali children by senior leaders of the Al-Shabab terrorist group," said Ahmed Hussen, president of the Canadian Somali Congress.

"The central role played by Omar Hammami in the recruitment of these very young children to Al-Shabab proves to us that foreign extremists will stop at nothing to bring further misery to Somalia," he said.

"We hope that this video will unmask the true nature of the Al-Shabab and make Somalis everywhere realize the fact that this group has never cared about the welfare of Somalis despite its rhetoric of doing so."

Al- Shabaab seems to have its claws all over the world. Apparently, they had a presence in Ottawa, Canada up until last month when it was banned because Canadian officials feared it was trying to recruit and radicalize Somali Canadian youth. And it seems it was succeeding.

Federal security officials are investigating six Toronto youths who allegedly joined Al-Shabab last year. One of them, Mohamed Elmi Ibrahim, a University of Toronto student, has reportedly died.

And it's not just Canada that Al-Shabaab can claim it has recruited from. It has managed to attract jihadis from Australia, Europe and even the U.S. After all, Hammami (Mansour) was born in Alabama, although it's not apparent whether he was radicalized in the US or when he moved to Toronto, Canada in 2005. While there he married a Canadian Somali woman, so perhaps it was in that country that he was introduced to Al-Shabaab. But we do know that it was shortly thereafter he shipped off to Somalia to join Al-Shabaab.

But both the RCMP and the FBI are afraid that the conflict will spread from outside of Somalia to the U.S. and Canada, with the U.S. and Canadian militants returning home to bring the fight to our countries.

The CSIS report called the Somali conflict "a direct threat to Canadian and international security."

And that assessment is not far-fetched in any way. We had a group of Somali youth disappear from Minnesota last year, destined to join Al- Shabaab it's thought. Then there are the 23 Somalis who entered Mexico illegally this year, that are thought to be headed to the U.S.

It's truly pathetic that the only legacy these people are leaving for their children is to kill and to hate.