Taliban Hangs 7-Year-Old Boy in Grisly Warning

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.