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Afghan Girls Attacked with Acid for Going to School – AlJazeera

By Lena Grove aka nasuS on November 12, 2008 at 10:55 PM in Afghanistan, Current Affairs, Misogyny, Saudi Arabia

Dear lord.

I hope you saw Reverend Amy’s story many hours ago in which she recalled the great speech that C.J. gave to the press corps on “West Wing”: ““Those Women” * OPEN THREAD.”

Here it is. What Reverend Amy wrote:

Oh, I sure wish “The West Wing” was still on – new episodes, that is. What a great show.

And I loved CJ Cregg, the Press Secretary. Now SHE was someone to whom I could listen about what was going on in the world. Like when she talked about the treatment of women in Saudi Arabia:

READ the rest of Amy’s post, ““Those Women” * OPEN THREAD.”

::::::

Important: Can anyone think of anything we can do to help those girls, or to try to help prevent such future attacks?

  • Josepine the Plumber

    Lena… Your story illustrates why we fight!

    For more information on the work being done in Afghanistan go to…

    http://world.unomaha.edu/cas/

    About Us
    The University of Nebraska at Omaha began its involvement with Afghanistan in 1972. In 1974, the Arthur and Daisy Paul Afghanistan Collection was donated to the Center; in 1975, an institutional linkage with Kabul University was established.
    The Center has obtained nearly $60 million in grants and contracts to support technical assistance programs, training, and educational exchanges, including the Education Sector Support Project (ESSP), Afghan Scholarship Program (ASP), Weber Scholarship Program (WSP), ARRENA Project, the Afghanistan Teacher Education Project (ATEP), the Japan International Cooperation Agency Afghanistan Community Development Study (JICA), and the Fulbright Program.
    In addition, the Center publishes self-study and classroom language materials for Dari, and a Dari-English Dictionary. Research Associates of the Center are engaged in an ongoing Atlas of Afghanistan Project .
    For more than 30 years, members of the CAS staff have regularly responded to requests for consulting services from federal agencies, the media, the private sector, and citizen intiative groups. In the six months following September 11, 2001, the Director and Assistant Director of the Center have provided over 2,500 interviews to local, national, and international media sources.
    The Center demonstrates its commitment to Afghans and Afghanistan by maintaining a Field Office in Kabul, Afghanistan. The Center continues its cooperation with the current Afghan government and its Ministry of Education.
    UNO and the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) collaborate to revitalize health care in Afghanistan and improve educational opportunities for Afghan health care professionals.
    The Center regularly assists scholars of Afghanistan studies, graduate students, government officials, and members of the media around the world in their research pursuits.
    Over 500 Afghans have come to UNO as participants in exchange programs and other projects managed by the Center. More than 100 faculty and staff from the University of Nebraska have participated in projects related to Afghanistan.
    The Center has provided training, coordination, development, and management for almost all sectors of education in Afghanistan: adult literacy, manpower development, gender equity, teacher training, and curriculum development.

  • AF catfish
  • Pat Racimora

    I remember a few years back when National Geographic sponsored a project to help build schools for girls in Afghanistan. I was so happy that women would finally get a chance to come out of the shadows and openly go to school. I donated more than I could easily afford.

    Needless to say, this story just makes me ill.

    • JustMe

      The book

      Three Cups of Tea
      by Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin

      about Greg Mortenson who drifted into Pakistan/Afganistan after a failed attempt to climb K2.
      Moved by the inhabitants kindness he promised to return and build a school.
      3 Cups of tea is the story of that promise & it’s extraordinary outcome.
      Over the next decade Mortenson built not only one but fifty five schools…. especially for girls.
      in the forbidding terrain that gave birth to the Taliban.
      His story is at once a riveting adventure and testament to the power of the human spirit.

      Go to http://www.threecupsoftea.com/
      to see how you can help.

  • rwc

    You realize that Shariah is the law of the land in Afghanistan thanks to Karzai. He is quite friendly with them. Its the reason acid tossing along with murdering Afghan girls for just the act of going to school is supported by the devout.

    Karzai has went so far as to install Taliban Imans as judges to enforce Shariah. Which effectively has destroyed much of the work done by western aid agencies and made Burkhas and Taliban death squads fashionable again.

    Its ironic that the U.S. has unwittingly re-installed the Taliban under a new guise in its attempt to bring Afghanistan into the modern age.

  • gregoryp

    Everybody who says Islam is a religion of peace and love has obviously never known anyone who was a muslim. One of my friends used to tell me every day that he could kill me at any time and go straight to heaven for it. Kill a fag, go to heaven. Kill an infidel, go to heaven. Kill your wife, go to heaven. Kill your daughter, go to heaven.

    I view Islam as a conquering idea. Just like all monotheistic religions there can be no competing ideas. As a result, it is a vehicle for control and a vehicle for repression. And the only way to control and repress is to use brutality. Unfortunately, short of killing every person who belongs to Islam I don’t know how to defeat these atrocious and barbaric ideas.

    • HARP

      Tell your friend that I would be happy to assist him on his trip to heaven.

    • Zee

      Laugh their fucking asses off the planet.

      Tell your friend that besides the 72 virgins for “martyrs” to rape in heaven there are also 28 pubescent boys…and since there are no anuses according to their sick fantasy of heaven, I guess that means they rape the boy children for eternity in their mouths. Ask your “friend” if that’s what he would do with his 28 boys.

    • BJ

      Kinda reminds me of other examples of the same type of problem.

      Compared to the muslims I know, your friend sounds like maybe he’s more of an extremist than you realize. The ones I know who were born in Iraq and Iran, are very amercianized and, well, civil great people.

  • AF catfish

    Republicans, pick up on this cause and RUN WITH IT!

  • Josepine the Plumber
    • JustMe

      Yes nand this is the area in the link above the London bombers came from that blew up all the buses etc in London back a few years ago in July……

      • JustMe

        and they were Doctors! What the hell is that all about.
        saving people and then go out and kill them !

        One thing I cannot get my head around.

        • NetherLands

          I’ll wont get into that..

          BTW, the murderer of that Polish girl was – according to the article – at one time a member of the Communist Party, which seems a bit difficult for a devout muslim. Guess he’s just a SOB.

          Obama Bought The Presidency

    • workingclass artist

      If there a Hell on Earth…It is being Female in a Muslim country…(sigh)

    • workingclass artist

      Hmmmm….JoseyPlumber…If you go to Catholic News sites…You’ll see this is happening with greater frequency all over the world in countries where there are religious tensions. Two Catholic nuns were kidnapped just a few days ago in Somalia ( I think )and a church burned to the ground in India….( sigh )

      • Pennsylvania Red

        You mentioned Catholic news sites, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen The World Over on EWTN. A human rights activist was interviewed, she described how the few Catholics left in Iraq were driven out of their country and had to take refuge in Kurd territory. Pope Benedict brought this to Dubya’s attention when they met this past year, and only then did our forces provide some relief to the Catholic refugees.

  • Josephine the Plumber

    I just noticed that I misspelled my name! :oops:

  • Josephine the Plumber

    It’s disappointing to see only eight comments on this topic…

    • BlueTopaz

      Maybe there’s a problem with posts. I just tried to give a complement about Larry on the MLK post above, and it didn’t take.

      • BlueTopaz

        Guess that’s not the problem, on this link anyway.

        Unfortunately, the UN and other organizations only care about human rights for man children. For some reason, they don’t want to protect women if the culture doesn’t regard them highly.

        • Zee

          Exactly. Women are a non-issue.

    • AF catfish

      Agreed.

    • noproblama

      Unfortunately, what is there to say?

      We can’t get fair treatment for women trying to break down barriers here so even the most profound statements addressing this on-going horror are probably futile.

      The fact that it’s posted is bearing testament and hopefully enough to disconcert even the most misogynistic readers.

  • http://www.wewillnotbesilenced2008.com OBAMA IS A FRAUD

    This stuff drives me nuts. Especially considering the beast we just put in the White House. And knowing how he feels about women.

    • AF catfish

      It’s why I think the Repubs should grab it from under his nose. Use it for 2012.

  • La Compania Volante

    “We will go to school and fight,” she said. What a fine young woman—in the face of bombs and acid, despite her pain and heartache, she refuses to be intimidated.

    There’s only one way to handle men who would use acid to attack a group of innocent schoolgirls. Well, a good many ways, actually, but all of them result in the miscreants assuming room temperature in short order. The Afghan police should catch these subhumans, they should be promptly sentenced to death, then immediately and publicly hanged.

    As for how women should deal with this or any other kind of attack … well, I’ll probably get hammered for posting this in this forum, but here goes:

    1) Teach your daughters how to defend themselves—mentally and emotionally as well as physically—against those who seek to intimidate them with words or threats and those who would physically attack them.

    2) Train them to respect themselves. Train them how to win in a contest of mental/emotional intimidation with wit and word and unassailable self-confidence. Make certain that they know they can and may do this without becoming “less female.”

    3) Teach them to distinguish between simple teasing or foolish or inappropriate behavior and actual harassment or physical threats, this so they do not overreact.

    4) Don’t teach them to hate, but teach them instead how to understand what hate is, where it comes from, and how to turn that weapon back against those who hate. Teach them how to be strong without misusing that strength, without becoming bullies themselves

    5) Train them how to fight, and train them to be absolutely ruthless when they are physically attacked. Include in that training the caveat that there is no such thing as a fair fight when winning means the difference between life and liberty or death—you may lose or you may win, but in that situation, it doesn’t matter howyou win.

    6) When your daughters are born, start putting together a legal defense fund, in case they ever have to use this training. You can always fold it into a college fund or a down payment on medical school if you don’t have to use it.

    7) Do this for your sons, too, even as you teach them to respect women.

    Sound’s pretty harsh, I know. After all, we live in a civilized world, don’t we? No, we don’t. We live in what’s supposed to be a civilized society, but a true civilization doesn’t coddle savages like this one does. Savages are always among us, but it seems to me that more of them appear in this society, right here in this “civilized” nation, each day (why is a discussion for another day). Indeed, the semi-civilized man, or the civilized man who has discovered the savage within himself and likes it, can be far more savage than any primitive tribesman ever thought about being.

    I’m a man, but I was reared by and grew up around women who could take care of themselves—frankly, women who, like Sarah Palin, could shoot. In Texas, we still remember a time (OK, my elders remember it) when a woman could simply claim that a man “needed killing” and get no billed for it. Funny thing—pretty much all of the men in my family on both sides were careful to treat women, especially those women, with a certain amount of respect.

    I read an inspiring story on the boards back when the coalition invaded Afghanistan, don’t know if it’s true or not, but it was reported as such by some of the first news organizations to reach Kabul. I can’t find the original report and Snopes has nothing on the subject. Here’s how I remember what I read in the report:

    The Taliban hadn’t yet started to retreat from the city, but some of the Afghani women got word that the coalition forces and their Afghan allies were coming. A few of them became “careless” about strict adherence to Taliban rules regarding dress and curfew. Like the Nazis involved in their insane “Final Solution,” the bloody Taliban morality police stuck to their mission even as their regime was being brought down around their ears. They redoubled their efforts, went out into the streets and caned/arrested any woman they felt deserved it.

    A squad of four of these sons of dogs approached one woman who was a little late getting home from the market, started harassing her, then striking her with their canes.

    She’d had enough. From beneath the folds of her burka, she drew a Soviet-era Baikal IJ-70 Makarov .380 semi-automatic pistol—probably a relic of the Soviet occupation (not exactly the most powerful of sidearms)—and shot the entire squad of TMPs to rags. She dropped the empty weapon and disappeared into the market crowd before anyone could react. No one knows what happened to her, but the Taliban MP pukes never caught her. Two days later, the Taliban fled as the Western Alliance and coalition forces entered the outskirts of Kabul.

    Maybe this story is apocryphal. Maybe not. I just know that it if it is, it shouldn’t be.

    If we want to “win” in Afghanistan, to defeat the Taliban, we should give the Afghan women guns and teach them how to use them. Better yet, we should set up our own schools, teach the girls and young women the points I outlined above, train them in martial arts and military/police tactics, give them guns, train them how to use them, and create an all-female Afghan defense force. Then, we should not question them when a man “needed killing.”

    It’s not a civilized solution. But then, this is not a civilized world.

    • BlueTopaz

      Good suggestions, self defense is not a bad thing at all.

      That was one example of how a burka actually was beneficial. I don’t mean to be flip about it. I’m so glad she got away. I hope that inspired other women to fight back, especially with weapons.

  • BJ

    I saw an article about this story on CNN earlier today. Despicable the mentality and once again religion stepping in to try and keep females down.

    Things like this go on in many countries. The treatment of females in many African countries is horrifying.

    • Zee

      Beyond horrifying.

      Read it and weep….and it is still going on:

      http://www.glamour.com/magazine/2007/08/rape-in-the-congo

      • JustMe

        OMG the write up is horrific…….
        it is times like these I wish i was able to jump on a plane and go help…..

        as the Dr says when he sees the women and girls is no time to tell them about God or that he will help them but I hope a few prayers for us may bring them strength!!
        What can one say…..

        Words escape me

      • BJ

        I’m one who’s been well aware of atrocities against females around the world, for many years. I’ve known about the women in africa who reach puberty and are forced down by family to have their clit cut off.. this is a common practice… I’m aware of the problems in India where women are married off with a dowry. The men marry the women for the dowry then when they are done with them, or pissed at them, they throw gasoline on them and set them ablaze.. often with the man’s family’s help.. and they go unprosecuted.

        this kind of stuff is nothing new-

        • BJ

          oh, and i didn’t click the link but glamour magazine? I didn’t know they were still around- it’s been _____ many years since i’ve picked one up and read it :) (wayyy lonnnggg agoooo)

  • Ani

    As Hillary said in Beijing, women’s rights are human rights. I wonder how those who committed this atrocity can consider themselves members of the human race.

    In so many societies around the world, to differing degrees (yes, even in this one as we clearly saw this election year, and as we constantly see in the violence continually perpetrated against women), we need to address why the idea of an educated, empowered woman is so intimidating as to inspire such violence.

    I am both depressed and mortified that this kind of hatred seems endemic.

    • Pennsylvania Red

      Laura Bush was a strong advocate for Afghani women, but I doubt anyone knows it unless they watch C-Span:

      From her remarks at an international conference held in Paris:

      Earlier this year at the White House, I met with some Afghan women whose report has weighed on my mind ever since. These government officials and professional women told me that they live in daily fear that the Taliban’s violence will reverse Afghanistan’s progress toward freedom. Their message was that we must take advantage of this time, or as one woman put it: “This is our only chance.”

      When the Taliban was driven from power in 2001, they left the Afghan people to build a society from nothing. Amid the wreckage of three decades of war, the people of Afghanistan remain determined. After only seven years, girls are participating in classrooms, new roads are being built, and women are assuming government leadership, including my host in Bamiyan, Afghanistan’s first female governor, Habiba Sarabi

      .

      In Bamiyan province, I saw how these new developments are offering Afghans hope. Yet many hurdles lie ahead, and my trip was a reminder of these, too. The new schools and roads I visited stood in the shadow of Bamiyan’s sandstone cliffs where the hollow caves are all that remain of Afghanistan’s ancient Buddhas, blown up by the Taliban in 2001.

      Those scars in the cliffside are a remainder of the danger lurking in the Afghan hills. Female elected officials remain targets for attack. Women training to be police officers are afraid to tell their families. And teachers and students at new schools are faced with the violence that has devastated their country.

  • NetherLands

    Acid-attacks on women are a general problem in the region, including India and Pakistan. Often when a ‘lover’ gets turned down or smth they attack the woman in this vicious way. One of the reasons is that battery-acid is very cheap to get.
    If women-rights groups would concentrate on stopping this kind of voilence iso flashier ones this problem would be much easier to deal with. In most countries with a muslim majority education for girls isn’t seen as something ‘vile’ for example.

    Obama Bought The Presidency

  • http://asifkhanvip@yahoo.com zafar

    my sweet heart kahaan ho .please aa jaoo zafar miss you .bhooat bhooat yaad aatay ho

  • http://asifkhanvip@yahoo.com zafar

    hasina khan zafar missing you

  • zafar italy

    hasina khan where are you my lost love ..i miss you so much ..please come back zafar waiting for you .every day ..where are you in this world ,,please come back zafar missing you and love you