Taliban Attacking Afghan Elementary Schools
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James Joyner | Sunday, January 8, 2006 |
Taliban guerillas have burned down an Afghan elementary school and beheaded the headmaster of another because they taught girls.
Suspected Taliban gunmen destroyed a coed primary school in the main southern Afghan city Sunday, first tying up two security guards before setting the buildings on fire, officials said. The attack in Kandahar was the latest in a spate of assaults that have forced many schools to close. The insurgents claim that educating girls is against Islam and they even oppose government-funded schools for boys because they teach subjects besides religion.
Suspected Taliban insurgents last Tuesday beheaded the headmaster of another coed school in the region.
In Sunday’s attack, a group of men raided Qabail Primary School before dawn, briefly detaining its guards but not hurting them, said Hayabullah Rafiqi Othak, Kandahar province’s education director. The assailants then went into each classroom, making bonfires of books and wooden desks that eventually razed the whole school, he said.
Some 700 girls and boys had studied at the school. Builders were to immediately start reconstructing it and Othak said some classes may be able to resume when the current two-month vacation ends in March.
The barbarity of these people continues to astound.
About the Author: James Joyner is the publisher of Outside the Beltway and the managing editor of the Atlantic Council. He's a former Army officer, Desert Storm vet, and college professor with a PhD in political science from The University of Alabama. He lives just outside the Beltway in Alexandria, Virginia with his wife and infant daughter.
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Pity we got distracted and didn't stay and finish the job.
Yeah because in Iraq, no one ever gets beheaded, or punished for educating women...
'The barbarity of these people continues to astound.'
Why you would continue to be astounded is beyond me. It is what it is. What's astounding is the moral abdication of those who are opposed to their elimination.
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