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| Afghanistan | |
| Islamist gangs attacking schools in Afghanistan | |
| 2003-04-13 | |
| The men showed up at the end of the party celebrating the new school. They broke the windows, ripped the vitamins poster in half, tore the skeleton system off the wall. They set fire to biscuits and books. Abdul Bari Rohani hid his ID badge under a mattress. But the men found it. "They looked at my identification card and said, `Who is this headmaster, this Abdul Bari, son of George W. Bush? We are looking for him,' " said Rohani, who managed to escape detection. During the Taliban regime, Afghan girls were not allowed to go to school, and boys were educated in Islam. When the Taliban fell 18 months ago and schools opened their doors to all children, not everyone supported such equality. Last fall, schools for girls in Wardak province, near Kabul, were attacked. Boys' schools had been safe. But in the past two months in Kandahar province, a former Taliban stronghold, seven of the schools were attacked and burned, including the one in Sheik Mohammadi, about 6 miles south of Kandahar. The schools have been accused of teaching Western thought and relying on Western money. Such incidents are part of an increasing number of attacks in southern Afghanistan not only on Westerners but also on Afghans in recent months. The attackers are masked men with causes reminiscent of the Taliban. They call for more restrictions and seek to destabilize the central government. At many of the boys' schools and the nearby villages the men left leaflets claiming to be from the Jamiat Jehash Moslemein, or Muslim Gathering Movement, warning people working with the Afghan or U.S. government to quit for their own safety. "They want to make the situation critical," said Soltan Mohammad Azizi, a deputy education minister in Kandahar province. "They attack schools - they don't care which schools. They just don't want children to go to school." Lt. Gen. Mohammad Akram Khakrizwal, head of security in the province, said Jamiat Jehash Moslemein was just another name for Taliban. "The people who used to be against education are the Taliban," Khakrizwal said. "They are behind this. They want everybody to grow up illiterate and uneducated like them."
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| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |
| #2 Hire a bunch of local parents,especially mothers(ain't no more vicious creature than a mother protecting her offspring)give them small arms and the training.Then see what happens to these bastards next time they go after a school. |
| Posted by: raptor 2003-04-14 06:14:58 |
| #1 Its inevitable -- education and free thought always win when they have a fighting chance -- and I think your average Afghanis have HAD it with over-zealous fundamentalist crap... These bastards think they have a mandate from God to spread illiteracy and ignorance??? What kind of ridiculous nonsense is that??? |
| Posted by: Steve W, 2003-04-13 22:08:28 |