Taliban Shoots 14-Year-Old Rights Activist In Head

Young 14-year-old rights activist Malala Yousafzai is struggling to stay alive in a Peshawar hospital after the Pakistani Taliban shot her, point blank, in the head. All Malala wanted to do was go to school, while the Taliban want to keep their women barefoot, pregnant and ignorant- the better to control them. She is now suffering the consequences.

A team of senior doctors late Tuesday completed her medical examination in a combined military hospital (CMH) and described her condition as critical.

“We have thoroughly examined her, she is in critical condition. The bullet travelled from her head and then lodged in the back shoulder, near the neck,” a doctor in the CMH told AFP, requesting anonymity as he was not authorized to talk to the media.

“She is in the intensive care unit and semi-conscious, although not on the ventilator,” he said, adding that the next three to four days would be crucial.

Earlier another doctor in Saidu Sharif Medical Complex in Swat’s main town of Mingora had said the bullet penetrated her skull but missed her brain, leaving her out of danger.

Seeking revenge for her activism, Taliban militants targeted her while on her school bus. Two other girls were also wounded, though not critically. And they threatened anyone who might dare to criticize their actions.

I don't recall Malala's story, but apparently three years ago she partnered with the BBC to write a blog about the horrific things the Taliban were doing in the Swat region of Pakistan. That was when girls' schools were being torched at the behest of cleric Maulana Fazlullah.

In 2011 she received several accolades including the

.. first-ever national peace award from the Pakistani government last year, and was nominated for the International Children's Peace Prize by advocacy group KidsRights Foundation in 2011.

What shocks and frightens many Pakistanis is that this happened during the day in an area where the army was supposed to have flushed out the Taliban- three years ago.

As happens, stories regarding the attack on Malala changed over the course of the day.

Initially, an officer told AFP Malala was shot as she was getting on the bus, then later that a gunman had flagged down the vehicle some distance away.

“One of them, who had a small beard, went inside and asked the children which was Malala,” Shah told AFP.

“He fired three shots. One bullet hit Malala’s head. The second hit the shoulder of her school friend and the third inflicted a minor leg injury to another girl on the bus,” the policeman added.

Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan told AFP the Islamist group carried out the attack after repeatedly warning Malala to stop speaking out against them.
“She is a Western-minded girl. She always speaks against us. We will target anyone who speaks against the Taliban,” he said by telephone from an undisclosed location.

“We warned her several times to stop speaking against the Taliban and to stop supporting Western NGOs, and to come to the path of Islam.”

Yes, that's the way civilized people deal with opposition and criticism- just shoot 'em dead. Even children.

Of course there were the useless and obligatory condemnations from the usual suspects including Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardaro, who said they would continue to fight Islamist militants. Right, this from a country that harbored (knowingly or not) the world's most wanted man (Bin Laden) for so many years. Then the U.S. State Department's Victoria Nuland said:

“Directing violence at children is barbaric, it’s cowardly, and our hearts go out to her and the others who were wounded, as well as their families.” 

You think?

Amnesty International piped in with:

“This attack highlights the extremely dangerous climate human rights activists face in northwestern Pakistan, where particularly female activists live under constant threats from the Taliban and other militant groups.” 

As though any of that will make one iota of difference in how the Taliban militants deal with what they consider infidels.  And everyone thinks they are becoming a more moderate, gentler, kinder Taliban, as Lara Logan put it.  What a joke. They're as vicious and stronger as ever.

Reporter Lara Logan Says Taliban and Al Qaeda Stronger Than Ever

Lara Logan was the South African CBS news journalist who was beaten and sexually assaulted in Cairo's Tahrir Square during the post Arab Spring celebrations after Hosni Mubarak's resignation.  A top notch war correspondent who has reported from most of the major hotspots in the Middle East and Africa, including Iraq and the battlefields of Afghanistan, she knows whereof she speaks.

Logan was the keynote speaker at the Better Government Association annual luncheon, and she had some sobering words for the 1,100 movers and shakers in politics, government, the legal and corporate world in attendance, including Laura Washington from the Chicago Sun-Times.  Our enemies are as strong as ever, and we're being lied to by our government.

Washington felt a little "queasy" that as a journalist Logan was stepping out from telling the story to being the story, but the speech frightened her "as an American."

According to Ms. Washington, Logan told the captive audience that:

Eleven years later, “they” still hate us, now more than ever, Logan told the crowd. The Taliban and al-Qaida have not been vanquished, she added. They’re coming back.

“I chose this subject because, one, I can’t stand, that there is a major lie being propagated . . .” Logan declared in her native South African accent.

The lie is that America’s military might has tamed the Taliban.

“There is this narrative coming out of Washington for the last two years,” Logan said. It is driven in part by “Taliban apologists,” who claim “they are just the poor moderate, gentler, kinder Taliban,” she added sarcastically. “It’s such nonsense!”

Logan stepped way out of the “objective,” journalistic role. The audience was riveted as she told of plowing through reams of documents, and interviewing John Allen, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan; Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and a Taliban commander trained by al-Qaida. The Taliban and al-Qaida are teaming up and recruiting new terrorists to do us deadly harm, she reports.

She also blasted the U.S. government for

.... downplaying the strength of our enemies in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as a rationale of getting us out of the longest war. We have been lulled into believing that the perils are in the past: “You’re not listening to what the people who are fighting you say about this fight. In your arrogance, you think you write the script.”

Our enemies are writing the story, she suggests, and there’s no happy ending for us.

Logan also wants the U.S. to "exact revenge"  for the murders of Ambassador Christopher Stevens, and the three other US. officials in Libya, in order to

".. let the world know that the United States will not be attacked on its own soil. That its ambassadors will not be murdered, and that the United States will not stand by and do nothing about it.”

Good luck with that.

Although Ms. Washington mentions that "in the good old days, reporters did not advocate, crusade or call for revenge",  she also gives kudos to Logan for breaking those journalistic rules in a post-9/11 world.

I would venture to say that to most of us non-liberals, Logan's words are nothing new. Those of us who don't have our heads buried in the proverbial sand know that our enemies have not slipped off into the sunset to commune with their camels and six wives. It doesn't take a genius to see that the Taliban have no intention of integrating into Afghan society, so have no desire for  peace. For some reason Obama and his minions are in denial about the war on terror, which makes it doubly important that he does not get a second term.