Hey Taliban: Pick on somebody your own size

Did their siblings and peers never tell them this?

Apparently not, as the New York Times reports on a recent school shooting in Afghanistan in which six students were killed:

With their teacher absent, 10 students were allowed to leave school early. These were the girls the gunmen saw first, 10 easy targets walking hand-in-hand through the blue metal gate and on to the winding dirt road.

The staccato of machine-gun fire pelted through the stillness. A 13-year-old named Shukria was hit in the arm and the back, and then teetered into the soft brown of an adjacent wheat field. Zarmina, her 12-year-old sister, ran to her side, listening to the wounded girl’s precious breath and trying to help her stand.

But Shukria was too heavy to lift, and the two gunmen, sitting astride a single motorbike, sped closer.

As Zarmina scurried away, the men took a more studied aim at those they already had shot, killing Shukria with bullets to her stomach and heart.

And this was no isolated incident, the Times goes on to report:

Shootings, beheadings, burnings and bombings: these are all tools of intimidation used by the Taliban and others to shut down hundreds of Afghanistan’s public schools. To take aim at education is to make war on the government.

Of course the U.S. is to blame here too as since Americans ousted the Taliban from power, school enrollment has skyrocketed - the Times quotes Afghanistan's Ministry of Education statistics that 6.2 million children - half the school-age population - now attends classes. And, as the Times continues:

A third of these students are girls, a marvel itself. Historically, girls’ education has been undervalued in Afghan culture. Girls and women were forbidden from school altogether during the Taliban rule.

I hope the locals realize that the next step on the Taliban agenda will no doubt be segregating vegetables for sale in the marketplace...Now that will be real cause to revolt against these totalitarians - if Anbar Province in Iraq is any example.

Swat Valley tea

Swat Valley tea, originally uploaded by .brian.

Don't let those big men see you holding that book, little girl. See posts below.

The girls from Swat

The girls from Swat, originally uploaded by KamiSyed.

These girls live in the area in the North-West Frontier Province where "religious extremists" are blowing up girls' schools. See post below.

It can't be just coincidence that wherever Islamic extremists are, girls live in terror...

Uploaded on July 18, 2006by Heartkins

Swat Valley: Yet another place radical Islamists are unleashing hell

The Christian Science Monitor reports:

All throughout the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), Pakistan's impoverished western border with Afghanistan, lie the ruins of barbershops and music and video stores – symbols of Western-oriented life that religious extremists have destroyed in a growing wave of violence. Now Islamist militants have a new target, and if they are successful, observers say their campaign could be disastrous for Pakistan's future. In what appears to be an escalating spree over the last year, extremists have bombed at least four girls' schools and circulated violent threats warning girls to stay at home. While no girls or school staff have been killed, girls in some areas have stopped attending classes – marking a direct blow to Pakistan's national enterprise of "enlightened moderation," which posits female education as a central pillar.

Recall that this is the area in which many experts believe Al Qaeda may be hiding.

Now why would these self-proclaimed pious Muslims be targeting little girls? Can't they find anyone their own size to pick on? According to the Monitor report:

Entrenched tribal, religious, and economic imperatives in conservative areas regard the schooling of girls as either improper, since girls should not venture outside the purview of the family home, or unnecessary, since girls are often needed for work. As a result, Pakistan has one of the highest rates of female illiteracy in South Asia, at about 60 percent, and the lowest rate of primary school enrollment for girls, at somewhere between 42 and 48 percent. Those shortcomings are particularly pronounced in the NWFP, which, as of 2004, had the lowest ratio of female enrollment of any province in Pakistan, according to the International Crisis Group (ICG). In areas like the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), where the government's presence has historically been weakest, only 1 percent of women and girls are literate.

The extremists' position regarding girls' education was summed up by Maulana Fazlullah, an influential Islamic cleric in the area: "A woman has been asked to remain behind the four walls of the house. Men have been given preference by God," Fazlullah, was quoted as saying.

But obviously, many parents in the area do believe their girls should be educated, as otherwise there wouldn't be any girls' schools for the militants to attack. As the Monitor reports:

Indeed, if Fazlullah and others are against female education, it is probably because girls are pouring into schools. In Swat valley alone, primary school enrollment for girls has increased by nearly 31,000 since 2002, or 77 percent. And even though Fazlullah started preaching two years ago, girls' enrollment in Swat last year grew by more than 12,000, according to government statistics. As a result, female illiteracy has gone down by 9 percentage points in less than a decade. And national statistics suggest that female enrollment at the primary level has climbed by 12 percentage points between 1998 and 2005, according to the World Bank. "We have no problem," says Ghulam Akbar, the executive district officer of education in Swat. "The girls are still going. Very [few] have stopped."

This is real courage.