Kandahar An Amen?
Amen.
Chances are pretty good you didn't hear this story. No one cares. It's not news. That, more than anything else, is what is saddest about it.
In Kandahar, Afhanistan last week a group of 10 Taliban extremists rode up on motorcycles, passing a group of school girls, and threw battery acid in their faces. They didn't know the girls, and just chose them because they were easy, and they readily admitted to committing the assault. They did it, they say, because it's immoral for girls to be educated. Six girls were badly burned and at least two have lost their sight.
Of course girls can't be educated. In a country with a literacy rate of about 15%, if we start letting girls go to school before you know it they'll be more educated than the boys! I mean, the boys apparently aren't going to school - they're driving around collecting battery acid to splash on strangers.
Oh, but no, it gets worse. The "men" said they were going to be paid by a top Taliban leader based on the number of girls disfigured. That's right. Whoever set this idiots on their path toward cruelty was too much of a coward to do his dirty work himself, so he set a bounty on schoolgirls.
I don't believe in eye for eye justice in the civilized world, but clearly we're not talking about the civilized world. Just another reason this humanist has little faith in humanity.
Comments
These men are sick creatures. They barely pass for human. If you can inflict that kind of harm on a creature that your God made (and lets remember, they do attempt to hide behind religion) you don't deserve to be considered human. They are monsters.
We'll always have these "people" though. What they are doing is similar to how minorities were treated in our own country and how minority groups were treated during world wars.
I, personally, have no idea why we cannot learn from the past and stop repeating the failings of past generations.
I think it's really important to remember that a MAJORITY of people on this earth find this behavior to be completely disgusting.
You're right, of course. This is not normal human behavior; it is the lowest outlier. It is very important to remember that, or you get all cynical like me. :->
'no thanks to the US"
What do you mean, N?
In their quest for stability in Iraq, U.S. officials have empowered tribal and religious leaders, Sunni and Shiite, who reject the secularism that Saddam Hussein once largely maintained. These leaders have imposed strict interpretations of Islam and enforced tribal codes that female activists say limit their freedom and encourage violence against them...
the article i linked to above the snippet tells about an enormously brave Iraqi (activist/journalist) woman working to better women's situations in Iraq - might want to take a deep breath before reading...
Ugh. Bloody psychos.
Some amazing people fighting against this kind of crap in Afghanistan though - even more amazing when you think about what they are up against.
Paikea, it's true, but then the U.S. has always laid down with dictators if it would shore up our own position. For all our talk of wanting to bring democracy, it seems we frequently work against democracy in the interest of brokering power networks.
That being said, women have been better off in Afghanistan since the Taliban was removed from power. The same cannot be said of Iraq, where women were more or less free under Hussein (other than the ones his sons took an interest in and had hauled off to the rape rooms), and now are being forced back into their religious cages.
not entirely sure about the improvement of women's positions in Afghanistan, though - here are the two of the latest articles i've collected - most of which seem to vacilliate between only slightly better and not at all...
Women's lives worse than ever
Women under siege in Afghanistan
That first one's pretty horrific. If anything, however, the picture I have of the situation in Afghanistan (though clearly from reading various news reports and not from any first-hand knowledge) is that the situation for women is varied now, with some women still living lives of desperation. The fact that some girls even can goes to school, however, tells me that at least for some conditions have improved. Under the Taliban, girls and women weren't even allowed to leave the house.
Let me clarify one thing, though, about my statement concerning the U.S. pursuing its own interests. Our government (and by extension, me and my compatriots) pursues what the current leaders at the time think is our interest. Traditionally, we've been very shortsighted when considering what our interests are, and much of that has come back to haunt us.