Amidst the intensive coverage of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington and the west’s preparations for a military response, there have been suggestions in the media that Osama Bin Laden’s Al Qaida organisation may have recruited and trained children for military actions. CNN, for instance, carried archive footage purportedly taken from a training camp in which boys who appeared to be 10 or 11 were participating in military training exercises with Al Qaida fighters.