Manner of Speaking
Joined: 09 Jan 2003
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 Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2006 3:37 pm Post subject: This one hits a little bit closer to home... |
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...if you're a teacher. Unbelievable.
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Afghan Teacher who Taught Girls Beheaded
Jan. 4, 2006. 02:25 PM
ASSOCIATED PRESS
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- Militants broke into the home of a headmaster of a school in central Afghanistan that educates girls and beheaded him while forcing his family to watch, the latest in a spate of alleged Taliban attacks that have forced many schools to close, officials said today.
The insurgents claim that educating girls is against Islam and they even oppose government-funded schools for boys because the schools teach subjects besides religion.
Four armed men stabbed Malim Abdul Habib, 45, eight times before decapitating him in the courtyard of his home in the town of Qalat late yesterday, said Ali Khail, a provincial government spokesman, and Dr. Esanullah, a cousin of the victim. The insurgents killed him after he refused to go with them to meet their commander, Esanullah said.
The assailants made Habib's wife and four sons and four daughters, aged between two and 22, watch the killing but did not hurt them physically, Khail said. The attackers then fled and the wife called the police. Investigators were questioning three people who were guests in the victim's home.
The government condemned the killing. Masood Khalili, the Afghan ambassador to Turkey, where President Hamid Karzai was visiting, said it was a "disgusting action by the enemies of Afghanistan." Habib was the headmaster and a teacher at Shaikh Mathi Baba high school, which is attended by some 1,300 boys and girls.
Zabul province's education director, Nabi Khushal, blamed the Taliban for the killing, saying the insurgents have occasionally put up posters around Qalat demanding girls' schools be closed and threatening to kill teachers.
"Only the Taliban are against girls being educated," he said. "The Taliban often attack our teachers and beat them. But this is the first time one has been killed in this province."
Esanullah said Habib restarted his more then 20-year teaching career two years ago after the Taliban threatened him while he was working for an aid group helping the disabled. Since then, the Taliban told him twice to stop teaching, he said. Habib's funeral was held today and was attended by hundreds of students and teachers. Taliban spokesmen and commanders in the region, one of the most volatile in Afghanistan, could not immediately be reached for comment.
Dozens of schools have been attacked and burned since U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban in 2001. Most of the attacks have come at night and not caused fatalities, but in October gunmen shot dead another headmaster in front of his students at a boys school in southern Kandahar province, the former stronghold of the Taliban regime.
Before the Taliban was forced from power, they prohibited girls from attending school and forced boys to study only Islam as part of its drive to establish what it considered a "pure" Islamic state. Cleric Sayed Omer Munib, a member of the nation's top Islamic council, said there was no justification in Islam to prevent girls from studying.
"Nowhere in the Qur'an does it say that girls do not have the right to education," he said. "It says that people should be educated. This means girls too." Though hundreds of thousands of children have since returned to school, many have not. There are some 1.2 million primary school-aged girls alone who are not being educated, according to the United Nations.
Khushal said 100 of the Zabul province's 170 registered schools have closed over the past two to three years because of security fears, mostly in outlying districts. Of Zabul's 35,000 students, only 2,700 are girls, he said.
A spokesman for UNICEF, the UN's children's agency, said the attacks were "incredibly worrying." "Militants are clearly trying to intimidate communities and force families not to send their girls to school," said Edward Carwardine. "We hope these incidents will not deter families. . . Fortunately, so far we have not seen a decline in girls attending."
He said about 90 per cent of Afghan adults are believed to be in favour of girls being educated, with many of those who oppose it being in conservative rural areas where the Taliban is most powerful. Zabul, a remote and mountainous province populated mainly by Pashtuns and bordering Pakistan, is a hot-bed of Taliban militancy.
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1136376795015&call_pageid=968332188492&col=968793972154&t=TS_Home |
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