Among other things, the future for girls. The Taliban, which ruled from 1996-2001 places serious constraints on their lives:
Under the Taliban women were barred from access to healthcare and made to wear burqas covering them from head to toe, and only boys were allowed to attend school. Many of those customs are still widespread. Girls have had acid thrown in their faces by hardline Islamists while walking to school and schools have been set on fire. Last year there was a spate of mysterious gas poisonings at girls' schools, including some in Kabul, in which dozens of girls fell ill.
A report by aid groups in February said girls' education was at risk because of poor security, lack of funds and equipment and inadequate teacher training. It said 2.4 million girls were enrolled at school but about 20% of those did not attend classes regularly. Those who did often faced obstacles such as open-air classrooms and journeys of up to three hours. The report noted a shortage of female teachers – as few as one in every 100 educators in the most remote and conservative areas – which limited girls' hopes of receiving anything more than a primary education.
So the presence of the US-led NATO forces has changed the rules, but has a long way to go to changes "hearts and minds."
Taliban gunmen have killed the headteacher of a girls' school near the Afghan capital after he ignored warnings to stop teaching girls, government officials have said.
Khan Mohammad, the head of the Porak girls' school in Logar province, was shot dead near his home on Tuesday, said Deen Mohammad Darwish, a spokesman for the Logar governor.
"He was killed because he wanted to run the school," Darwish said.
Mateen Jafar, the education director in Logar, about an hour's drive from the capital, Kabul, said Mohammad had received several death threats from the Taliban warning him not to teach girls.
Jafar said Mohammad's son was wounded in the attack.
Practically speaking, the current military mission is focused on security and power -- which is to be expected -- rather than culture or human rights. Concerning the latter, one must recognise that cultures like these cannot be convinced, only converted. Only with an authentic Christian worldview will people come to see that everyone is in the image and likeness of God, worthy of respect and sacrifice. Until then, people will continued to be sacrificed for ideology -- and most of them women.
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