What kind of political cause endorses hurting little girls?
On Sunday, a girl’s school in Kunduz became the third school in the Afghan province in a week which had to hospitalize its pupils after a poison gas attack.
And its hardly a new phenomenon. During the last nine years since the hardline Taliban were supposedly deposed, girls’ schools in Afghanistan have never stopped being a target. Last year in Kandahar, men on motorbikes sprayed girls faces with acid as they walked to school.
What kind of man thinks this a courageous or righteous act? What kind of God does he believe in to be convinced that this is an act of faith?
The Taliban deny that they are behind these attacks, and indeed, there have been confessions from caught attackers implicating Pakistan’s ISI - the sinister Inter-Services Intelligence Agency. But its not a simple story of bad guys Taliban vs the good guys everyone else.
A friend of mine, a dedicated woman journalist who’s in Kabul now says that “there are many others who are against women participating. It’s a murky world, with mafia, drug lords and big time corruption and its very very ugly.”
She’s been talking to people on the ground who snap shut at the very mention of the name of Ahmed Wali Karzai, President Karzai’s brother. He’s just one example of some of the most venal people of Afghanistan’s recent bloody history who now occupy powerful positions where they are literally untouchable. And so are the key beneficiaries of the US policy of “if you can’t beat ‘em, put ‘em on the payroll.”
It’s the sort of story that reinforces my belief that the world is not doing right by Afghanistan. Nine years of military occupation, thousands of military and aid personnel, billions of dollars and there is still a prevailing fear of the power shift that could occur if little girls learn to read.
For some interesting stories from the ground that go beyond the cliche, check out this terrific blog.
Photo by Flickr: Isafmedia
on Apr 27th, 2010 at 3:40 am
Now that Western involvement in Afghanistan is heavily promoting and criticizing the gender gaps in the Islamic world, social change is now something which is both inevitable and beyond the control of established regimes and governments there. Terrorist elements who cannot face the irrovecable forces of change in the respective countries and regions, are lashing out, even with primative means outlawed after the First World War, in denial that mainstream global thinking is making an iimpact in their part of the world. The more savage the violent reaction, the more desparate the perpretators, even with the fustrations by those external foreign powers fighting the Taliban. For Afghanistan to accomodate and cope with such change within a generation, is too short a time period to see being done peacefully. Change is the hardest thing to accept from the consequences of a war such as this, as beligerents fight to maintain the status quo of their established systems. President Karsai didn’t enter into the Weastern alliance to Afghanistan’s customs and traditions errased from history so as to the country become a mirror democracy of the Western powers. Afghanistan and its neighbouring states are going to have to come to terms with the post-war societies that will become of this conflict, and openly express what it is the war is about for their own societies and the world.