Children are shown at a training camp in this video footage shot by the Taliban.

Nic Robertson
CNN

A top Taliban leader in Pakistan is buying and selling children for suicide bombings, Pakistani and U.S. officials said.

Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud has been increasingly using the children in attacks, the officials said. A video released by Pakistan's military shows the children training for the task.

In the video of a training camp, children can be seen going through exercises.

Mehsud has been selling the children, once trained, to other Taliban officials for $6,000 to $12,000, Pakistani military officials said.

Some of the children are as young as 11, the officials said.

"He has been admitting he holds a training center for young boys, for preparing them for suicide bombing. So he is on record saying all this, accepting these crimes," said Major General Akhtar Abbas, spokesman for the Pakistani army.

The young suicide bombers may be able to reach targets unnoticed, the military said.

"If he is approaching on foot, there is a possibility he will bypass security," Abbas said.

"In certain areas, there is a possibility in the population centers everyone can not be checked physically, so he can create havoc there."

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Residents sift through the rubble of a bombed school near Peshawar.

Editor's note: Two weeks ago in Pakistan a leading anti-Taliban cleric was killed by a suicide bomber. CNN's Senior International Correspondent Nic Robertson visited his son at the school where his father was killed and found surprises in security and nuances in attitudes toward suicide bombers.

Nic Robertson
CNN Senior International Correspondent

I first realized something was wrong when the hand-held metal detector didn't make a sound.

There were three phones in my pocket, surely one of them should have triggered the guard's electronic wand to do something. Not a bleep, not even a twinkling LED.

It was all a little surreal. Here we were just feet from where a Taliban suicide bomber had blown himself up the week before killing the owner of the establishment and yet security was so lax his brother could have come in with a second pay load and no one would have been any the wiser until it went off.

The man the suicide bomber had come to kill was Mulana Safaraz Naeemi, the proprietor of the religious schools we were now entering.

Naeemi had built a vast network of religious schools, better known here as Madrassas, all across Pakistan. In Lahore alone he had more than 100, attended by as many as 100,000 young students. The one we were now visiting was the flagship, Jamia Naeemi.

As we moved inside, there arrayed around the open courtyard and in classrooms were his students, sitting on low benches at low tables rocking backwards and forwards memorizing the Quran. Apparently they'd taken a two-day break after he'd been killed and then gone back to their studies.

Naeemi's office was by the main door; his son Mulana Raghib Naeemi told me what happened.

He described how after leading the main weekly prayers on Friday his father had retired to his office, was sitting in his chair talking with his students when a young man came in and asked for him by name.

The man they now know was a Taliban killer asked for a glass of water, slowly drank it, dropped to one knee then detonated his explosive vest.

Naeemi's crime in the eyes of the Taliban was to issue a religious ruling, a Fatwa banning suicide bombing. He was a real threat, a top level cleric with a lot of pull. If young fanatics listened to him the Taliban would be without one of their best weapons.

Naeemi junior showed me the nuts, bolts, screws and ball bearings they'd gathered from around the room, even found embedded in the store across the road. Everything that had spewed from the Taliban bomb.

Then he delivered his own stunning secret and even now it feels surreal. He tells me his father could have had security but had turned it down choosing to put his faith in God. It sort of explains the lack of attention to detail by the guard on the front gate.

At least I thought that was the scoop until I started asking Naeemi junior more about the suicide issue. His father had a huge following and Naeemi told me he was committed to following in his footsteps. To do anything else, he said, would be to turn the country over to the Taliban and anarchy.

Then he told me suicide bombings in Afghanistan against U.S. and NATO troops are justified because they are invaders killing Muslims. That's when the penny dropped so to speak. A question I'd had for a while just got answered.

While Pakistan and Pakistanis are more committed than they've ever been to crushing their own internal Taliban problem they are far from turning on the Taliban across the border in Afghanistan.

Inside Pakistan the sentiment is clear; the Taliban are a menace to stability. Outside the country however they are still seen as a tool to achieve regional goals.

Pakistan it appears is still pursuing historic national interests, what they call having "strategic depth". Simply put to have a stake in who runs Afghanistan.

Authorities beefed up security of sensitive locations in Punjab province after a suicide attack.

Program Note: Watch Nic Robertson report on his trip to Pakistan and the growing refugee crisis on AC 360º 10 P.M. ET.

Nic Robertson
CNN Senior International Correspondent

Every time I come to Pakistan these days I see more security.

This time is no exception. On the road from the airport to my hotel I counted nearly a dozen police checkpoints. Two years ago, there were none.

Some police run thorough checks, look inside the trunk, under the hood, peer inside the back of the car, even open the window and ask if I'm OK - apparently concerned I might be an unwilling passenger, a kidnap victim being taken away. Other police posts are lax, waving traffic through with nothing more than a cursory glance.

It would be foolish to think these are an effective defense against a determined bomber. Indeed, the traffic jams caused by some stop and searches are themselves a target for attackers who seem as willing to murder civilians as they are soldiers, policemen and politicians.

The reality is, a simple knowledge of the back streets is enough to bypass most police barricades. And so it is for the wider military offensive. So vast are the areas the Taliban influence that pinning them down and boxing them in is nearly impossible.

The Taliban and their supporters have become so entrenched in the Pashtu speaking lands bordering Afghanistan and wrapping northwards around the capital Islamabad that no single or even multi-pronged military offensive is going to stop them quickly.

So it is no surprise to come back after an absence of about seven weeks to discover the Taliban have organized themselves in the wake of the government crackdown against their expansionist operations in Swat.

Keep reading...

Authorities beefed up security of sensitive locations in Punjab province after a suicide attack.

Nic Robertson
CNN Senior International Correspondent

Every time I come to Pakistan these days I see more security.

This time is no exception. On the road from the airport to my hotel I counted nearly a dozen police checkpoints. Two years ago, there were none.

Some police run thorough checks, look inside the trunk, under the hood, peer inside the back of the car, even open the window and ask if I'm OK - apparently concerned I might be an unwilling passenger, a kidnap victim being taken away. Other police posts are lax, waving traffic through with nothing more than a cursory glance.

It would be foolish to think these are an effective defense against a determined bomber. Indeed, the traffic jams caused by some stop and searches are themselves a target for attackers who seem as willing to murder civilians as they are soldiers, policemen and politicians.

Keep Reading...

Program Note: Tune in tonight for Nic Robertson's full report on AC360° at 10 p.m. ET.

A Taliban spokesman gives an exclusive interview to CNN's Nic Robertson, saying U.S. troops will never win the war.

Program Note: Tune in tonight for Nic Robertson's full report on AC360° at 10 p.m. ET.

CNN's Nic Robertson, left, talks to Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid at an undisclosed location.

Nic Robertson
Senior International Correspondent

He won't look me in the eye, won't engage in any small talk, and looks more ill at ease than I feel.

The man in front of me is Zabiullah Mujahid - one of two spokesmen for the Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar.

He is around 30, maybe a little younger, bearded, but not heavily so. He is slight but not weak and close to my height - a little over six foot - and meeting him is a big deal.

I've never taken meetings with Taliban officials lightly, but the stakes are getting higher these days. They kidnap reporters and worse, and just before our interview they had announced a new offensive against U.S. and NATO troops.

Frankly just getting into this room had put my heart rate up a good few beats.

Keep Reading...

Nic Robertson
CNN International Correspondent

As good as the Catholic Sinn Fein leaders Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness were in convincing their IRA colleagues it was time to put down their weapons a decade ago, they were never going to win over all the hard liners.

In the run up to the 1998 peace agreement between Northern Ireland, mostly protestant Unionists who favored keeping Northern Ireland part of Britain and the mostly Catholic Republicans who fought to unite the province's 6 counties with Ireland, Adams and McGuinness worked at leading a united IRA out of the battle.

They failed because some in the IRA believed their leadership was selling out to the British Government. Giving up on the fight before they had a united Ireland. So a minority split with the IRA leadership calling themselves the ‘Real IRA.'

The RIRA, as the ‘Real IRA’ are known locally, had access to some weapons dumps. One local IRA quartermaster general, responsible for obtaining and concealing weapons, reputedly joined the RIRA, but they lacked the numbers, the organization and the ability to mount attacks the way the IRA had. They joined a small and mostly insignificant band of IRA splinter groups. The Continuity IRA, or CIRA, was the leading separatist group at the time.

The hard truth was British intelligence services had so penetrated the IRA by the late 1980’s early 1990’s that the IRA was finding it hard and harder to get away with attacks. The RIRA was in same position, unable to know for sure who was informer and who could be trusted.

After 30 years most people wanted peace, and a huge wave of relief swept the country when the peace agreement was signed in 1998. The RIRA kept quite for a few months before launching the province's most deadly attack in the 3 decades of violence, killing 29 people in the town of Omagh in August 1998.

As a marginal organization, the RIRA had further marginalized itself from any lingering support with the Omagh atrocity by killing Catholic and Protestant alike. For years they lay low. Various alleged members, including the former quartermaster, were arrested and charged.

But at the grass roots, some Republicans continued to feel betrayed by Sinn Fein and the old IRA leadership, who they felt had railroaded them in to a dead end deal with British that was never going to deliver a united Ireland.

Under terms of the 1998 peace deal, the IRA would stand down its operations, stop surveillance of targets and ultimately get rid of its guns. The British government would get the army off the streets and stop its surveillance of the IRA. Both sides wound down their war machines.

The intelligence gathering that had been so key to bringing the IRA to its knees was slackening off. That began to become apparent with a spat of low level attacks last year, explosives left on train tracks, an old IRA tactic. There were no deaths and the incidents stayed out of the headlines. Observers with knowledge of the splinter groups guessed the CIRA and RIRA had at least a working agreement.

A few weeks ago a huge car bomb was discovered before it went off. At that moment it became clear the RIRA at least was back with a vengeance. And it was no surprise that just before the recent killings, Northern Ireland’s police chief called in Britain’s top army surveillance unit.

Their skill at living in hedge rows and fields for days at a time providing close scrutiny of terrorists and their targets was legendary in the British military. If they were being called back in, then clearly the police were worried, and rightly so as events proved. The RIRA claimed the killing of the two soldiers Sunday, and the CIRA claimed the murder of the policeman Monday.

But the networks of informers has grown rusty through lack of use. It would take a long time to put them back in place with the efficiency they had before. How to tell how closely the RIRA the CIRA are working together will be a priority. United, the two splinter groups present a greater challenge and could be more capable of sustaining a sporadic campaign of violence.

Protestant politicians are calling on paramilitaries loyal to the union with Britain to let the police do their job and not attack Catholics and ignite sectarian violence. Most of the Loyalist men of violence these days have allegedly slipped from sectarian thuggery into drug racketeering and crime. If they ignore the calls for calm, and thus far there is no indication they will, the spike in killings could turn in to something far more ugly.

For now that still seems a remote prospect. But for the first time in many decades the British government is short of a partner inside the violent elements of Republicanism. And that means it’s short of a friend who can help call for calm.

A suicide bomber targets a reconciliation conference where Sunnis and Shiites were meeting. CNN's Nic Robertson reports.

CNN's Nic Roberston reports on the Arab response to President Obama's overtures.

Program Note: Tune in for Nic Robertson's full report on the reaction to President Obama's interview with Al-Arabiya tonight on AC360 at 10pm ET.

Prince Turki Al-Faisal of Saudi Arabia speaks to CNN's Nic Robertson about the perception of President Obama and reflects on President Bush's relationship with Israel. Tune in for Nic Robertson's full report tonight.

An Israeli pilot talks about trying to avoid civilian casualties. CNN's Nic Robertson reports the effort is failing.

Pictures emerge of Israel's ground offensive, as the number of civilian deaths escalate. CNN's Nic Robertson reports.

As CNN's Nic Robertson discovers, opinion is divided over the conflict but most still back the government.

Program Note: Watch Anderson report LIVE on the Gaza crisis from Israel tonight on AC360° at 10pm ET.

CNN's Nic Robertson reports on the plight of children caught in the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

Nic Robertson | BIO
Senior International Correspondent

There is a new fight against Bin Laden, al Qaeda and their fellow radicals. It’s coming from within Islam and may yet prove the most powerful agent for transforming the Saudi terror leader from radical Islamist Icon to a has-been hero.

Taking down one of his best loved web sites is only the beginning. Much, much more is happening behind the scenes. Muslims angry Bin Laden is giving Islam a bad name are fighting back.

I’m hearing it from guys as diverse as those that fought along side the Al Qaeda leader in the anti Soviet Jihad in Afghanistan to British Pakistani’s frustrated their children are being singled out for ridicule for being un-Islamic by their peers. These Muslims want to do something and they are.

Waseem Mahmood, a British Pakistani helped get a bunch of popular Pakistani pop stars to record a song decrying Bin Laden type terror. It was an instant hit staying at the top of the Pakistani charts for several weeks. He followed up with a SMS, phone text message petition for Pakistanis to sign up if they were against terrorism. More than 60 million did, that’s more than a third of the population, massive when you consider most of us think of Pakistan as a very Conservative Muslim nation. Mahmood is getting ready to grow that number.

A recent Pew Global Attitudes report found in Pakistan more than half the population had negative rather than positive view about al Qaeda and the Taliban. As Bob Dylan said “times they are a changing” and so are attitudes.

What I’m hearing time and again is that Bin Laden and the Egyptian’s like Ayman al Zawahiri who influence him are taking Islam in to the dumps. The world view they offer of a Global Caliphate has little resonance. The way they have set about trying to achieve it by killing innocents, Muslims and non-Muslims alike is repulsive.

Muslims are standing up to be counted because they don’t want this image. Is it going to be a problem for Bin Laden you bet. Is he going to disappear over night, no. Is he going to find it hard to be heard yes.

Just before the last US election late in October 04 Bin Laden threatened the people of the United States to stay out of the affairs of Muslim nations.. "Your security is not in the hands of Kerry or Bush or al Qaeda. Your security is in your own hands. Each state that will not play with our security, by default will secure themselves." Now the shoe is on the other foot. It is Muslims who most threaten Bin Laden’s long term security.

The al Qaeda leader has yet to be heard from on the November elections, there is still time yet, but with some of his favorite websites down he will find it much harder. Maybe he’s already tried, there is every possibility he has some now routine invective already prepared waiting to go.

In 2004 his threats had more resonance, in March that year al Qaeda had made good on his threat to target Spain or at very least a European ally of the US in Iraq, killing 191 people in coordinated bombings on early morning commuter trains in Madrid. What ever threat that was implied for US citizens in Bin Laden’s 2004 Election message it has yet to reach maturity. A similar message this year would sound hollow but as Bin Laden has so far not changed tactics and responded to growing Muslim anger it’s unlikely he has much else to offer.

But as I said he won’t be going away over night, the threat from his followers is still real but the tide is turning. As we can see in the 04 message Bin Laden favors neither Democrats nor Republican’s. The threat he will most fear is of a US President willing and able to act with both patience and precision in Pakistan and Afghanistan. As I hear time and again from both Afghans and Pakistanis the conflict there is regional and requires a regional solution. It will take patience to achieve but such a result will win local support and may ultimately help flush Bin Laden out.

Men who once fought alongside Bin Laden are today at the root of efforts to drive a wedge between the Taliban and al Qaeda. Their goal is to bring down al Qaeda by isolating them, the cost may be political reconciliation for some Taliban and even their leader Mullah Omar. A US President who can help pull that off, these men tell me, will make their job easier and Bin Laden that much more vulnerable to isolation from more and more Muslims and ultimately that means easier to catch.

Some people may find these ideas hard to stomach but when I talk to the people at the forefront of taking the Muslim jihad or inner struggle back to Bin Laden that’s what I’m hearing. The same people who are taking down al Qaeda websites are brothers in arms of the Pakistani pop stars and Bin Laden’s former allies.

Al Qaeda’s radical attacks and the carnage they cause is having a damaging effect not just on the image of Islam but increasingly on Muslims. It is a cost that is now being counted. Most of those killed in suicide attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan these days are Muslims. It’s an inescapable fact and the logic of it is finally catching up with the men ultimately responsible. Bin Laden is being called to account by the very people he seeks to win over.

Editor's Note:
We are devoting many posts today to the anniversary of 9/11, with first-hand accounts, insight, and commentary dedicated to that day seven years ago that changed our world.
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Nic Robertson | BIO
Senior International Correspondent

It’s hard for me to see clearly what’s on the blurry cell phone video from Afghanistan.

Are there children and women under those blankets, were as many as 90 people killed in a US air strike as Afghan and UN officials suggest. The countries lawmakers believe so, they want strict controls put US troops. I just don’t know.

But what is painfully clear to me the strengths and weaknesses the coalition had in it’s pursuit of Osama bin Laden in the weeks following the 9/11 attacks are not only unchanged after 7 years, but threaten to unravel the hunt of the worlds most wanted terrorist.

When bin Laden fled with hundreds of die-hard al Qaeda fighters to the mountains of Tora Bora in western Afghanistan for his last stand against the coalition, the coalition made a fatal mistake.

They had the superiority in the air. The spy planes or drones to track and locate the man who had declared war on the west 3 years earlier and the bombers to pound the caves he and his followers were hiding in. Ground troops were almost an after thought. Small teams of ‘Special Forces’ hired local warlords to cut off bin Laden’s escape.

In a London café recently, a Libyan who fought along side bin Laden in Afghanistan long before 9/11 told me he knew how the al Qaeda leader escaped. Not over the nearby border in to Pakistan as widely surmised, but back in to Afghanistan to the assured security of old tribal allies. To Warlords he could count on because their ancient customs and rigid codes of conduct forbade them to turn him in.

Capturing or killing bin Laden failed because too much faith was put in air power alone. Today the coalition’s hunt for bin Laden is unraveling because of the same reliance on airpower.

With every child or woman killed in the hunt for bin Laden or the Taliban, the threads that bind the people of Afghanistan to their President Hamid Karzai weaken. As they tear so the tolerance for the coalition that keeps Karzai in power stretches to breaking point.

In the minds of Afghans, the Soviets who occupied the country two decades ago were butchers whose barbaric tactics killed hundreds of thousands of their countrymen. A decade after putting in over 100,000 troops, the ‘Red Army’ slunk back to their collapsing empire defeated. They lost because they so enraged the Afghan's tribesmen. Across the country they turned on them in droves.

The Coalition uses wholly different tactics than the Soviets and goes out of it’s way to avoid collateral damage and civilian casualties, but the Afghan’s are finding it hard to tell the difference. When their President and their Parliamentarians tell them US forces killed 90 people, most of them children, they find it hard to feel anything else other than anger.

A couple of months ago I met Malalai Joya, a young Parliamentarian who is one of Karzai’s biggest critics. She challenges him for failing to rid the government of warlords and corruption. She is an ardent supporter of the democratic and human rights changes the West wants for Afghans. But she had a stark warning for me. “I know the people of my country” she said “they will not tolerate occupation for long”.

When a reformer like Joya says this I know patience with the coalition must be running out. And if time is running out for US troops in Afghanistan so time is running out in the hunt for Bin Laden.

According to Hamid Mir, the last journalist to interview bin Laden, the al Qaeda leader was last seen in the west of Afghanistan in early 2005. Mir, whom I met in Pakistan recently says he talked with one of Bin Laden’s guards who told him the al Qaeda leader narrowly missed capture by British forces in south Afghanistan late 2004. He narrowly escaped after a three day fire fight. British forces have not verified this account of a battle to capture bin Laden.

But perhaps more interesting is what the guard had to say about how they’ve avoided capture so long, by local support. The guard told Mir al Qaeda fighters married local women and by so doing ensured undying protection from the tribes they married in to.

Mir reports finding shopkeepers in Eastern Afghanistan who were proud to tell him they’d sold food to feed the al Qaeda leader. bin Laden is using culture to buy loyalty.

In tribal society when some one is killed a blood debt must be paid. Money given or another life taken in return. Disputes can span generations, it’s no different when coalition forces kill innocents... however unfortunate the circumstances. The debt and the anger to have it repaid in blood is growing.

Where bin Laden is able to use local culture to his advantage, the coalition is losing with every air strike that goes wrong. They lose what little leverage they had over the loyalties of the tribes bin Laden hides among.

In the past few years, as coalition casualties in Afghanistan have climbed beyond those in Iraq, I’ve heard solders and officers vent their frustrations privately away from the camera. Many feel let down, the resources they need are not there.

Officers don’t like to admit on camera they don’t have enough troops but in some cases are so strapped for soldiers they are putting car mechanics and logisticians in the front line positions. With troops so thinly spread the reliance on air power goes up, not just to defend them but to find their targets in the vast mountainous country.

There are just over 60,000 NATO troops in Afghanistan. About half are US forces. That’s less than half the number of troops in Iraq. Plus Iraq is significantly smaller and has it’s own security forces totaling over half a million now. Afghanistan doesn’t even have close to one tenth of troops anywhere close to being 'battle ready.'

The shortage of ground troops that so hampered the early efforts to catch the al Qaeda leader now appears not only to be one of the biggest factors for why he is still on the run but if air strikes continue to cause high collateral casualities may well contribute to the biggest setback at bringing him to justice. The loss of freedom for US troops to hunt him down in Afghanistan.

Nic Robertson
Senior International Correspondent

It's been over a year since I've been in Pakistan.

For the longest time I couldn't get a visa, my reporting on former President Musharraf's failed policies to take on the Taliban had apparently won me powerful enemies Pakistani insiders told me. But that's all changed now.

The former military dictator is out of power and the new government says it wants to open it's doors to all reporters. Political leadership isn't the only thing that's changed. When I was last here Spring 2007 the Taliban were a growing problem in the border region, now they are much stronger and the government is waging an increasingly violent war against them.

When I pick up the daily news papers here the headlines are dominated by reports of pro government tribes taking on the Taliban, government jets bombing Taliban hide outs. It was never this way before.

But lest I convey the wrong image here that the government is winning handily senior officials tell me they are deeply concerned about progress in this fight. There is a feeling despite their efforts they are only treading water, not beating the Taliban. The big challenge they tell me is getting popular support for a war Musharraf only ever characterized as an extension of the US war on terror.

To win officials tell me they need to sell the message to Pakistanis, particularly those in the Afghan border region that this fight is their fight. That Pakistan is not blindly fighting the war on terror for the United States but is tackling a very real threat to it's own stability and future.

Two ministers and a High Commissioner all told me nothing undermines those efforts more than US air strikes in Pakistan. So when we started getting reports US troops had come by helicopter and conducted a ground attack inside Pakistan it was clear reaction there would be an angry official reaction.

When the Foreign Minister issued a statement "strongly condemning the assault" calling it "unacceptable" a "gross violation of Pakistan's territory" and a "grave provocation" I was some what surprised when a retired Pakistani army General here told me the anger expressed could have been far greater.

He told me it was the first time he'd heard reports of US ground troops in such an attack in Pakistan. It forced him he said to consider something most Pakistanis might find hard to swallow, perhaps the new government, eager to bolster their grip on power and secure US support had signaled an increased willingness for US troops to conduct cross border operations. If it were true he said it's so sensitive it would never be announced. The government would always have plausible deniability.

I'm certainly not getting any hints of such a deal from officials, although they all convey with a very real passion an extreme dislike for the Taliban.

What's clear now that I'm back in Pakistan; the dynamic is far more fluid than before I left, after all, only today the Prime Minister's armored limo was shot up on a busy highway.

The stakes could not be higher, the government is still fragile, the Taliban getting stronger, I'm in no doubt any perceived mistakes by the new leaders will be exploited by their enemies, military and political. And that could directly impact the United States if what little gains have been achieved against the Taliban leech away as support for the government falls.

Everyone here is telling me now is the time for Pakistan, Afghanistan and the United States to accept this is a regional war, trust each other, work together, to defeat a common enemy.

What's worrying me, we've heard all this before. And I see little indication the compromises necessary to achieve cooperation between the three countries have even entered public dialogue, never mind won support from Pakistan's people.