Taliban Targeting Schools in Afghanistan

Perhaps it’s time for the Afghans to wake up and start burning medrassahs in Pakistan, and putting the teachers of hate and death to their destruction

Perhaps it’s time for the Afghans to wake up and start burning medrassahs in Pakistan, and putting the teachers of hate and death to their destruction. The last few months the terrorists have figured out that they can’t win against Afghani army, police, and Nato forces, and have shifted to schools, with a preference for burning down girl’s schools and killing teachers. This is the same tactic you see in Kashmir, and in remote areas of India, to the taliban a teacher is evil. To the taliban, knowledge is their death.

This is just another sign of desperation by the Taliban, only an idiot would think to win people to their cause by killing their children. Eventually this will turn on them, the fear will vanish as more children die, and a host of informers will turn on the Taliban. Hitting the opportunistic soft targets of schools is not going to stop education, it’s not going to stop democracy, it’s not going to stop freedom.

From Khaleej Times:

KAMPERAKA, Afghanistan – They came at night and no one saw them, but by morning the brand new school in this dusty northern Afghan village was almost entirely gutted. “I am afraid—we can’t do anything and we don’t know when the insurgents will come back,’ says Mohammad Hashim, the 40-year-old caretaker at the Nawaqel Aria Primary School, an hour’s drive outside the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.

At least 41 teachers and students have been killed over the past 12 months in a wave of attacks on the country’s schools. Education Minister Mohammed Hanif Atmar says attacks have closed more than 208 schools—including 144 burned down—in the past year as militants changed tactics to hit soft targets. By some estimates, attacks have increased six-fold over 2005.

‘Over the past couple of months, the enemy of this nation has been targeting our kids in schools, our schools and our teachers,’ Atmar says. “They know that education is about the future of our people. They know that education is about democracy, about true Islam, and about prosperity in Afghanistan. The main reason is killing the future, the future of Afghanistan. ‘Because they cannot now face our national army and national police … there’s been a significant change of tactics.