(Afghan) Girls 'poisoned by militants for going to school'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,1284,1208299,00.html

(Afghan) Girls 'poisoned by militants for going to school'

Greg Bearup in Islamabad
Monday May 3, 2004
The Guardian

Three young girls in eastern Afghanistan were in critical condition in hospital last night after being poisoned, apparently by militants as punishment for attending school.

The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, said those responsible for the poisonings, in the province of Khost, were less than human. He said the attack had been carried out by terrorists and was the work of foreign elements. <snip>

Vikram Parekh, from the International Crisis Group, said there had been a series of attacks on girls' schools, particularly in the south of the country, in recent months but this was the first time children had been attacked.

"A girl's school was recently burnt to the ground in Kandahar and others have been attacked, but this is a horrible development to see that the girls themselves would be targeted," he told the Guardian.

Few details of the incident were available last night, but militants are angry about the Karzai government's reversal of a Taliban ban on female education. Attacks on schools have also taken place in Pakistan's neighbouring North West Frontier Province . <snip>

I'm not real charitable about this kind of thing. In fact, the atrocities done on the Falluja bodies would be nothing compared to what these darlings deserve. Where are the Afghani men rising to avenge this outrage? Seen any?

..where females are kept ignorant, caged, shrouded, and beaten. It makes them feel more manly.

Before you get all self righteous about the US, consider some of the religious cults here. The worst of them keep women ignorant, caged, shrouded, and beaten.

That's it, and it amazes me that you will never hear a misogynist state "I think women should be denied civil rights and kept uneducated because then they will have big families and my _____ (insert appropriate term: nation, tribe, clan,church, etc.) will grow and I will have access to tons of free labor through children and cannon fodder any time there is a war." I'm not sure that gender bigots even actually consciously think this or feel this, but these are the end results, over and over throughout the world and down through history. It maybe a totally instintive thing, embedded on the Y chromosome, but you can't tell me there isn't some kind of subconscious knowledge in the male psyche that knows what will happen if women are respected and not restricted. Europe is in crisis right now because in many countries young women are opting out of childbearing completely or waiting until their 30's and 40's and having only one or two children.

The whole world needs to address this problem RIGHT NOW, because the islamic population is exploding simply because breeding, and unless the world wants to be dominated by islamic fundamentalism, which will happen at the current reproduction rates, all countries need to do everything they can to help muslim women, and to embrace the fight for women's rights everywhere. That's the cold harsh truth, twisted as it may sound. Muslim feminists, probably THE most courageous people on this planet, risk their lives everyday to try to bring the real teachings of the Koran, instead of violent extremism, into their societies. This is a battle that the world as a whole can't afford to lose.

:cry:

Women in Afghanistan are now free and happy. The Taliban is gone and no longer persecute anyone.

Good God, get with it!

I guess we are failing miserably in that country, too.

Aren't you glad your tax dollars are going to free these people?

They won't hate us for our freedoms much longer.

speech of last year - where we learned about Bush's concern for women's right as long as they do not try to claim control of their own bodies while pregnant?

:-)

Anyone want to bet how much anniversary coverage this gets?

:-(

as background, here's a blurb from (couldn't find what i was actually looking for, see comments at end):

http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/news/election2004/joseph_nye_us_power.html

Q: What other advice would you give the incoming President regarding foreign policy?

Nye: When the new president or the returning president looks at the budget for foreign affairs in 05, he will notice that we spend an extraordinary disproportionate proportion of our resources on hard power and a pittance on soft power. If you look at the ratio it is 400:1. That is the ratio of our military budget to our expenditures on public diplomacy, exchanges, broadcasting and so forth. There is something wrong with that balance. If we would spend another 1 percent of the military budget for launching ideas as well as bombs, we can have, I think, a much greater impact.

We could also try to do things, like Senator Biden has suggested, which is spending $20,000 on schooling per village in Afghanistan. We could do this in ways in the range that might cost us 20 million dollars. This is a trivial amount of money in terms of the daily defense expenditures, but imagine the impact on the group of young people growing up in Afghanistan knowing that the Americans had really made a significant contribution to their education. So I would say to whomever is the President in 2005: take a look at your budget. Ask whether you don’t really want to spend a good deal more on soft power, without necessarily reducing your hard power. We can afford it and we will be far more effective if we learn to combine hard and soft power—what I would call “smart power.”


anyhow, biden was on c-span a couple weeks ago and was totally pissed at bush (kinda surprising since he's usually quite the apologist from bush's foreign military ventures) because bush had reneged on a promise for providing $20 million for building schools in afghanistan. wtf is going on here - we can spend 500 times that amount each week blowing things up, and can't even allocate a pittance for something that might actually help someone?

He is a fraud, speaking out of both sides of his mouth. He does not represent democratic forces in that country. Since 1992, when the nationalist PDPA forces were overthrown, Afghan women have tasted no freedom.

on the plus side, looks like his brother could use a bit of help in his baltimore restaurant, so if he steps down it's not like he'd even be unemployed or anything:

HELMAND. An Afghan restaurant seems supremely topical these days, of course. But even better is finding one that's interesting on its merits, not just because of the day's headlines. Helmand is both; it's a perennial on Baltimore best-of lists, and it's owned by Qayum Karzai, brother of Afghanistan's head of state, Hamid Karzai. You may have to wait for a table, (not enough wait-staff?) but the signature sauteed pumpkin alone is worth it and the eggplant will have all those Little Italy chefs gnashing their teeth in jealousy.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A46209-2002Nov12¬Found=true

Sometimes they get just a little crazy...eh?

but Bush is fucking that up too.

or are you endorsing more of the following type of "accomplishments" for the benefit of the afghani people?

1. The Convoy of Death

It tells the story of thousands of prisoners who surrendered to the US military’s Afghan allies after the siege of Kunduz. According to eyewitnesses, some three thousand of the prisoners were forced into sealed containers and loaded onto trucks for transport to Sheberghan prison. Eyewitnesses say when the prisoners began shouting for air, U.S.-allied Afghan soldiers fired directly into the truck, killing many of them. The rest suffered through an appalling road trip lasting up to four days, so thirsty they clawed at the skin of their fellow prisoners as they licked perspiration and even drank blood from open wounds.

Witnesses say that when the trucks arrived and soldiers opened the containers, most of the people inside were dead. They also say US Special Forces re-directed the containers carrying the living and dead into the desert and stood by as survivors were shot and buried. Now, up to three thousand bodies lie buried in a mass grave.

The film has sent shockwaves around the world. It has been broadcast on national television in Britain, Germany, Italy and Australia. It has been screened by the European parliament. It has outraged human rights groups and international human rights lawyers. They are calling for investigation into whether U.S. Special Forces are guilty of war crimes.

But most Americans have never heard of the film. That’s because not one corporate media outlet in the U.S. will touch it. It has never before been broadcast in this country.


http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3267.htm

Airlifting the "real terrorists" out of Afghanistan

On November 25th, the Northern Alliance took Kunduz, capturing some four thousand of the Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters. The next day, President Bush said, "We're smoking them out. They're running, and now we're going to bring them to justice."

Even before the siege ended, however, a puzzling series of reports appeared in the Times and in other publications, quoting Northern Alliance officials who claimed that Pakistani airplanes had flown into Kunduz to evacuate the Pakistanis there. . . . American intelligence officials and high-ranking military officers said that Pakistanis were indeed flown to safety, in a series of nighttime airlifts that were approved by the Bush Administration. The Americans also said that what was supposed to be a limited evacuation apparently slipped out of control, and, as an unintended consequence, an unknown number of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters managed to join in the exodus.

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?020128fa_FACT


3. Pilots on drugs killing our allies

Four Canadian soldiers died in Afghanistan last night after a US fighter jet mistakenly dropped one or two 500lb, laser-guided bombs on their unit.
Canadian officials said at least eight of their soldiers were wounded in the incident, which occurred during a well publicised live-fire training exercise near the southern town of Kandahar.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,1284,686313,00.html


4. Killing more innocent afghani civilians than were killed in 9-11

http://www.cursor.org/stories/civilian_deaths.htm


5. But on the positive side, agriculture is making a comeback, with certain crops at record high levels . . .

Poppy crop highest ever in Afghanistan


By Anwar Iqbal
UPI South Asian Affairs Analyst


WASHINGTON, March 1 (UPI) -- Afghanistan had the highest-ever cultivation of opium poppy in 2003 despite the government's effort to curb narcotics, a U.S. government agency reported Monday.

http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040301-054323-1416r.htm

. I am not a pacifist. What is happening in Iraq is not worth it because Al Qaeda aren't there.