May 26, 2009

Jihad Watch

I promise not to be. But many of the learned analysts will be -- after all, why doesn't Obama's Moderate Taliban rise up and put a stop to this sort of thing?

"'If We Now Kill Schoolgirls, You Shouldn't Be Surprised,'" by Matthias Gebauer and Shoib Najafizada in Spiegel, May 26 (thanks to C. Cantoni): Responding to threats from the Taliban, at least 10 girls' schools have shut down near Kunduz in northern Afghanistan. Visiting the schools is a dangerous proposition -- a trip leading directly into the heart of Islamist territory.

When the deputy director of Aqtash High School talks of the government, he isn't referring to Hamid Karzai's central government in Kabul. Nor does he refer to the provincial administration in Kunduz. "The Taliban are our government," Bashir says. "They have taken over our region, their commanders give the orders here."

Bashir is standing in a dusty classroom on the ground floor of his modern school, roughly half an hour from Kunduz by car. As recently as just one month ago, he says, some 400 girls were still coming to the school in three daily shifts to learn reading, writing and arithmetic. Figures and formula are still scrawled across the blackboard.

But now, the girls' classrooms have been left to deteriorate. The desks and chairs are still laid out in neat rows, but a film of dust has collected, and Bashir stands helplessly in the middle of the room. "Parents in Aqtash are afraid to send their girls to school anymore, after the death threats," he explains. The school director speaks quietly and carefully. He too is afraid, and several of his teachers double as informants for the Taliban. The bearded fighters, he says, would certainly not like it if they knew a reporter was at the school in Aqtash. "You should leave quickly if you want to get out of Aqtash alive," he whispers.

'Apprehended and Killed'

Bashir's warning is hardly an exaggeration. Not 30 minutes after our arrival in Aqtash, located 15 kilometers northeast of Kunduz just off the main north-south arterial, a group of a dozen Taliban fighters, armed with AK-47s, gathers in front of the blue arch at the entrance to the school. "What do you want here?" one of the fighters calls. "This is our region, the Islamic Emirate of North Afghanistan."

Memo to Honest Ibe Hooper of CAIR: Shouldn't that be the Misunderstanders of Islam Emirate of Afghanistan?

The trip to the Aqtash school is a trip into the heart of the empire of the Taliban, which controls large areas around Kunduz. Minutes pass before the fighters clear out of the way, allowing us to leave.

The trip out of Aqtash is hardly any less dangerous and provides a look at the situation not 15 kilometers from the German military camp in Kunduz. There are Taliban checkpoints all over the roads, and they are well armed. The Taliban commander in the region is a man named Khalid Salim. He is young and has a reputation for brutality. Salim is on the most wanted list for the region surrounding Kunduz. "Those who work for the government or for the Western soldiers," says one of his men at a checkpoint, "are immediately apprehended and killed."

The fate of the school in Aqtash, which received a new roof just one year ago, paid for out of German development funds, is hardly unique. At least 10 girls' sections of schools located near Kunduz have been closed down in the last three weeks after receiving threats from the Taliban. Parents simply stopped sending their children to school because of the danger. And the closures haven't just been in the region of Char Dara southwest of Kunduz, a well known Taliban hotspot. Schools in three other districts have likewise ceased operation.

No German Soldiers

It didn't take long for news of the school closures to reach the highest echelons of government in both Kabul and Berlin. Stories about schools buckling to the Taliban are exactly what they hoped to avoid. On the one hand, it shows that the Taliban is increasingly gaining the upper hand right outside the front gates of the German military camp in Kunduz. Neither the German army, the Bundeswehr, nor the local police force are effective against the Islamist extremists. At the most, they can temporarily dislodge the Taliban, but they then move on to terrorize other areas where there are no German soldiers.