Afghan schools burning as Taliban change tactics

[deadparrot]

KAMPERAKA, Afghanistan (Reuters) - 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.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/afghan_schools_dc

[mbperrin]

1. Heckuva job, *!

We really got Afghanistan straightened out, right? And now just a few more days, and Iraq will be fixed, too! Yay! On to Syria and Iran!!!! Heckuva job fer sure!!!!!!:sarcasm::sarcasm::sarcasm:

[eccles12]

2. I thought we won the war in Afghanistan? What is this all about?

Why doesn't the meida report these things to the American public?

[LynnTheDem]

4. The media has been reporting the real reality all along.

Sadly only 1/2 of America has bothered to pay attention to the real reality (or too much attention to bullshit crap like Fox "news")...which is the fact we're losing in Afghanistan (which was a bullshit invasion based on a pack of bush's lies) and we're losing in Iraq (which was a bullshit invasion based on a pack of bush's lies) and we're less safe now than ever (thanks to bush & his bullshit invasions) and the vast majority of the entire world detests us (thanks to bush being bush).

[hatrack]

5. They're too busy reporting all the good news from Iraq, and . . . .

Oh, sorry, never mind!

[daleo]

3. Taliban in northern Afghanistan?

I thought they were in the Pashtun south.

Maybe this quote explains it (my money is on warlords in this case):
"The Taliban, local warlords and criminal groups now share the goal of weakening the central government, creating a perfect storm of violence that threatens Afghanistan's recovery and reconstruction," said Sam Zarifi, co-author of the report.

[Igel]

7. It's mostly Pashtun.

But Pashtuns aren't just in the south. It says that the school was about an hour's drive outside Mazar-e-Sharif.

There's a stretch of Pashtun-majority territory that starts a couple of kilometers S of the town and goes south for a ways; and isolated splotches of Pashtun territory about 60 miles east and 40 miles NW.

Konduz, about a 100 miles to the east, is also in Pashtun territory, and Baghlan is adjacent to a patch.

The news articles always insist on couching things in terms that are important to the editors, or in terms that aren't embarrassing to the writers. There has been Taliban reported activity near Konduz and Baghlan in the last year or two, and the newspapers always say "far from the Pashtun south".

[lpbk2713]

6. Seems like every day I can see haunting similarities between this fiasco

and Viet Nam. Shit-for-Brains has succeeded in turning the clock back thirty years.


Main difference is Milhouse was a clever crook who worked on a small scale of personal gain. Shit-for-Brains is a common dumb crook but the way he and his regime plundered the US Treasury will go down in history.