14-year old Pakistani girl activist shot by Taliban

[Richard Hakluyt]

I'm not saying that Meri's solution is the answer - but simply going oh well, nothing we can do, hardly seems admirable.

In so far as "nothing we can do" means no military intervention can solve the problem (which is what I think RH was saying), then in my view it's just being realistic, even though it is pretty pessimistic and unfortunate.

The UK has intervened militarily, has a large and increasing foreign aid program and, through organisations like the BBC's World service and the British Council, promotes liberal Western values. I support all that but it is sometimes dispiriting how little progress is being made.

I don't think that these problems are caused by a few nasty Afghans or Islamotards. The sex balance in China and India is completely buggered due to the murder of female embryos in utero. The situation for women and children is hardly perfect even in the most advanced countries, all you have to do is take a look at the rough end of town.

The fact is that these liberal Western values are held by a small minority of the world's population. We promote them because we sincerely believe it is the best way to live. I don't think we should delude ourselves about the scale of the task or that it is effectively cultural imperialism.

[CountDeMoney]

This is what the UN was created for, but it's been neutered by its own member nations to the point that it's effectively worthless.

Sorta conflicts with the whole "self-determination" thing the UN is pretty big on, though.

Is the Taliban the governing body of Afghanistan or Pakistan?

Whether we like it or not, they're part of any real discussion of Afghani governance.  They were before 9/11, and they will be after we're gone.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

This is what the UN was created for, but it's been neutered by its own member nations to the point that it's effectively worthless.

Sorta conflicts with the whole "self-determination" thing the UN is pretty big on, though.

Is the Taliban the governing body of Afghanistan or Pakistan?

both and neither, at the same time

[derspiess]

You're joking, right?

I wish I were

A small group of people who have assumed an evil and barbaric form of control - using fear, death, and torture - have taken control of a country, and you're saying that people want to live under them or are willing to go along with it? They don't really have any choice in the matter.

They are a larger group than you think.  They're also pretty fluid.  Someone who is Taliban today may not be tomorrow, and vice-versa.  That makes it a lot harder to fight them.  The people over there who really want western-style human rights are a pitifully small group.

If they voice any opposition, they die, their families die, everyone dies. Or worse, are tortured in front of them, and then they all die.

It's horrible, I know.  One of the biggest faults of the muslim world is that the moderates allow themselves to be cowed by the extremists.  I wish they would fight back.

We've been trying to help Afghanis save themselves from themselves for 10 years.  It was a noble mission, but I'm afraid it's time to pack up & come home.  No use spending more precious American lives and money we don't have. 

[Valmy]

It's horrible, I know.  One of the biggest faults of the muslim world is that the moderates allow themselves to be cowed by the extremists.  I wish they would fight back.

I am sure they would in some countries, the Taliban would never fly in Tunisia or Turkey.  But the area the Taliban lives in is pretty bereft of moderates.

[Richard Hakluyt]

Thank God for Ataturk! Inspirational military leader, politician of genius and colossal piss-artist!

Let's raise a glass of raki to his memory.

[Queequeg]

Or 20. I'd prefer to raise 20.

[merithyn]

Pakistanis Unite in Outrage Over Girl's Shooting by Taliban

KARACHI, Pakistan — Doctors on Wednesday removed a bullet from a Pakistani schoolgirl shot by the Taliban, as Pakistanis from across the political and religious spectrum united in revulsion at the attack on the 14-year-old education rights campaigner.

A Taliban gunman singled out and shot the girl, Malala Yousafzai, on Tuesday, and a spokesman said it was in retaliation for her work in promoting girls' education and children's rights in the northwestern Swat Valley, near the Afghan border.

Ms. Yousafzai was removed from immediate danger after the operation in a military hospital in Peshawar early Wednesday, during which surgeons removed a bullet that had passed through her head and lodged in her shoulder, one hospital official said.

The government kept a Boeing jet from the national carrier, Pakistan International Airlines, on standby at the Peshawar airport to fly Ms. Yousafzai to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, for emergency treatment if necessary, although senior officials said she was too weak to fly.

"She is improving. But she is still unconscious," said Mian Iftikhar Hussain, the provincial information minister, whose only son was shot dead by the Taliban in 2010. He said Ms. Yousafzai remained on a ventilator.

Mr. Hussain announced a government reward of more than $100,000 for information leading to the arrest of her attackers. "Whoever has done it is not a human and does not have a human soul," he said.

Across the rest of the country, Pakistanis reacted with outrage to the attack on the girl, whose eloquent and determined advocacy of girls' education had made her a powerful symbol of resistance to Taliban ideology.

"Malala is our pride. She became an icon for the country," Interior Minister Rehman Malik said.

The army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, visited the Peshawar hospital where Ms. Yousafzai was being treated; in a rare public statement he condemned the "twisted ideology" of the "cowards" who had attacked her. Her parents and a teacher from her school remained at her side in the hospital.

Imran Khan, the cricket star turned opposition politician, offered to pay for her treatment, while officials from his party parried accusations that they were soft on the Taliban.

Last weekend Mr. Khan led a motor cavalcade of supporters to the edge of the tribal belt as part of a demonstration against American drone strikes in the area — a theme that, until now at least, has frequently been a more concentrated focus of public anger than Taliban violence.

Even Jamaat ud Dawa, the charity wing of the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which follows a different strain of Islam from the Taliban, condemned the attack. "Shameful, despicable, barbaric attempt," read a message on the group's official Twitter feed. "Curse b upon assassins and perpetrators."

The anger was amplified by the Taliban's brazen claims of responsibility for the shooting, and by avowals that the group would attack Ms. Yousafzai again if it got a second chance. Reports circulated that the Taliban had also promised to target her father, Ziauddin Yousafzai, who privately appealed to neighbors from Swat not to visit the hospital in case of a second attack.

In the Swat Valley, private schools remained closed in protest over the attack.

Some commentators wondered whether the shooting would galvanize public opinion against the Taliban in the same way as a video that aired in 2009, showing a Taliban fighter flogging a teenage girl in Swat, had primed public opinion for a large military offensive against the militants that summer.

"The time to root out terrorism has come," Bushra Gohar of the Awami National Party, which governs Swat and the surrounding Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, told Parliament.

But no military drive is in the works in Swat for the moment, officials say — in fact, a large army contingent has occupied the picturesque mountain valley since 2009, which contributed to alarm by the prospect of a Taliban resurgence in the area.

Among some commentators, there was a sense that rage was redundant: that unless Pakistan's military and civilian leaders drop all equivocation about Islamist extremism, the country is likely to suffer further such traumas.

"We are infected with the cancer of extremism, and unless it is cut out we will slide ever further into the bestiality that this latest atrocity exemplifies," read an editorial in The News International, a major English-language daily.

[CountDeMoney]

Meri, did you ever see the movie "Osama" (2003)?  And no, it's not about Bin Laden.

[Legbiter]

*shrug*

Islam.

[merithyn]

Meri, did you ever see the movie "Osama" (2003)?  And no, it's not about Bin Laden.

No. I can't. I know what it's about (and how it ends) but I can't watch it.

[Viking]

Pakistanis Unite in Outrage Over Girl's Shooting by Taliban

Mr. Hussain announced a government reward of more than $100,000 for information leading to the arrest of her attackers. "Whoever has done it is not a human and does not have a human soul," he said.

Which is the same amount the Pakistani Minister of Railways personally offered to subborn the murder of the Coptic Filmmaker.

[Sheilbh]

Imran Khan's an interesting figure right now.

[Viking]

Imran Khan's an interesting figure right now.

Imran Khan is always a fascinating figure.

[Legbiter]

Imran Khan's an interesting figure right now.

So was Benazir Bhutto, back in the day.