printThose vested in the US “mission” in Afghanistan—we don’t have a legitimate one—will spin the execution of an innocent woman by the Taliban in the province of Parwan, as a Taliban-specific atrocity. In that case, the Taliban represents the rest of tribal Afghanistan’s (mostly Pashtun) people quite well.
CNN buried the truth according to Christine Fair, with the Center for Peace and Security Studies at Georgetown University, in a little-watched, Sunday morning segment, which was further pruned for the online article (“Taliban shoot woman 9 times in public execution as men cheer”):
“It’s really important to not see this exclusively in terms of the Taliban, but this is a set of practices that actually have existed and continue to exist throughout Afghanistan.”
Honor killings are as endemic to Afghanistan as the opium trade, only much older. Dare I say that these “customs” are as old as Sharia?
And, as Faire pointed out (and this writer has with respect to honor killings elsewhere), women are active in mediating these killings against other women, daughters included.
Here’s what a “Palestinian” woman, Amira Abu Hanhan Qaoud, did to her child, after the girl – who had been raped and impregnated by her brothers – refused to commit suicide.
Plastic bag, razor, and wooden stick in hand, the mother entered her sleeping daughter’s room. “Tonight you die, Rofayda,” the wicked witch announced, before wrapping the bag tightly around the girl’s head. The murderess Qaoud then spent the next 20 minutes slicing away at Rofayda’s wrists, ignoring pleas of “No, mother, no!” Just to be sure, this alleged mother struck her daughter on the head with the stick after the poor child passed out.
Yet members of Qaoud’s community are nonplussed – they see the woman as driven by devotion to both community and family.
(“THE RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL FEMINIST”)
Presidents Barack Obama—who followed George Bush and the Republicans to Afghanistan—has run out of excuses for this nation-building expedition. A tribal society is never going to apprecaite the joys of gay marriage, the ballot box, and female emancipation.