Shiloh
Editor, Senior Moderator
Source: http://observer.com/2013/10/taliban-attacks-on-girls-and-women/
Teenage Girls vs. the Taliban: What Will Happen When U.S. Leaves?
By Nina Burleigh 10/16 2:01pm
...EVEN WITH THE Americans still in Afghanistan, the things happening every day to girls and young women under the Taliban defy belief. A few weeks ago, Ms. Jan narrowly missed a bomb detonated at a major shopping center in Kabul. She said she never watches television to avoid bad news, but, when she got home, she turned it on to confirm that a friend and her children had died in the blast. Immediately after that report, the broadcast turned to a stoning in a town under Taliban control.
A girl, of age, had refused to marry an older man and married her younger lover instead. As Ms. Jan and the rest of Afghanistan watched, men in white robes stood outside a mosque, a figure draped in white was dragged to the middle of the square, and the men threw stones.
?These were not pebbles,? Ms. Jan said, wiping tears. ?They were bricks. And the men were laughing.?
At the end of next year, American troops will finally leave Afghanistan. The prospect of a resurgent Taliban is real...
...One way to help Ms. Yousafzai and the girls she represents is for other Muslims to break their silence and begin loudly objecting to the barbarism from the mosques and minarets of the Middle East and Turkey to Indonesia, Europe and America. When moderate Muslims and their religious leaders, in numbers large enough to be heard, step out and call for an end to the atrocities carried out against females in the name of their religion, girls may eventually stand a chance against the Taliban.
Meanwhile, as our soldiers prepare to come home and our negotiators get no foothold, these girls are on their own, their fates left to God and the men who claim to speak for Him...
Teenage Girls vs. the Taliban: What Will Happen When U.S. Leaves?
By Nina Burleigh 10/16 2:01pm
...EVEN WITH THE Americans still in Afghanistan, the things happening every day to girls and young women under the Taliban defy belief. A few weeks ago, Ms. Jan narrowly missed a bomb detonated at a major shopping center in Kabul. She said she never watches television to avoid bad news, but, when she got home, she turned it on to confirm that a friend and her children had died in the blast. Immediately after that report, the broadcast turned to a stoning in a town under Taliban control.
A girl, of age, had refused to marry an older man and married her younger lover instead. As Ms. Jan and the rest of Afghanistan watched, men in white robes stood outside a mosque, a figure draped in white was dragged to the middle of the square, and the men threw stones.
?These were not pebbles,? Ms. Jan said, wiping tears. ?They were bricks. And the men were laughing.?
At the end of next year, American troops will finally leave Afghanistan. The prospect of a resurgent Taliban is real...
...One way to help Ms. Yousafzai and the girls she represents is for other Muslims to break their silence and begin loudly objecting to the barbarism from the mosques and minarets of the Middle East and Turkey to Indonesia, Europe and America. When moderate Muslims and their religious leaders, in numbers large enough to be heard, step out and call for an end to the atrocities carried out against females in the name of their religion, girls may eventually stand a chance against the Taliban.
Meanwhile, as our soldiers prepare to come home and our negotiators get no foothold, these girls are on their own, their fates left to God and the men who claim to speak for Him...