Why the Taliban should fail--

Tuba Sahaab.

In the US, sure, millions of young girls go to school and write poetry and lots of it sucks. Wow, when I was eleven, I know I wrote things I should cringe at now. The worst thing I ever faced was maybe embarrassment--but what she and other children face from the militants is a real physical threat. They are children--why would their learning, their success, be such a threat?

It isn't about something written in some old book that the zealots revere. It's about control, and the fear that if people are educated, they will want something better. Especially young women who have great potential and are offered nothing--not one thing, in the Islamic "utopia" the Taliban wants to impose. A paradise for the male religious, a hell for everone else. That's why things like this concession to the extremists gives me terrible concerns about the future for her, and other girls like her. From what I can tell, it is an effort to make a temporary peace and spite long-term progress. While I appreciate the idea that part of the reason for adopting Sharia is superficially claimed to be judicial reform to ensure expeditious trials, I am concerned about the degree to which trials may become more expeditious, and yet less fair. Naturally, I don't have a lot of faith in rulings with religious council.

Also, to yield in this respect is to yield in influence in other ways. I dunno. It's easier for me to review a movie or a book than try to put my finger on the best way for another government to best deal with a faith-based insurrection that threatens to undermine it, after all, especially as a citizen of a country that has actually expressed its current foreign policy intention to strike at terrorist cells within those borders (and now that I think about it, probably within this very area we are talking about) because we recognize the ties between the Taliban extremists who harbored Al-Qaeda and their kindred spirits in Pakistan.

I am not a hawkish person by any means. I was opposed to the Iraq war and even have my reservations regarding a "surge", a la the surge in Iraq*, as being necessarily the sppropriate tactic in Afghanistan. While I appreciate the "hearts-and minds" factor in reducing civilian casualties by choosing an alternative to airstrikes, my gut tells me that owing to the geography and the tribal nature of the native population, a "boots-on-the-ground" approach doesn't necessarily translate into a better "peace-keeping" role. On the contrary--you've just provided p-o'd and oppressed people another thing to shoot at. Seriously--I think we should make up our minds about what can be accomplished there, and focus on what we went in for in the first damn place--Al-Qaeda.

(* Footnote: Also I attribute dollops of the success of the Surge in Iraq to factors that didn't even involve the surge. Like, Sadr sitting out. And um, the ethnic cleansing and let's just euphemistically call it "population redistribution" around Baghdad. And the Sunni-originated Awakening. Just saying, there were politics in that country before we got there, and there will be after we leave, and there have been even while we are staying there, and we don't entirely grasp them. Yay, us. Petraeus, I hate to say, is not only comparing apples and oranges in his approach, he isn't really sure why the apples turned out the way they did. Just an opinion from a chick with a English Lit. degree, though, so don't get too bothered. But if Obama is planning an Afghanistan surge just on his advice, I think he needs to really let some old fart diplomats inform him on what the reaction will be.)

And in partnership with the government of President Asif Zardari in our mutual concerns about terrorism in that part of the world, an agreement should be suggested that we will "assist" in any way to fight the extemists that threaten his nation's welfare, as ours was jarred on 9/11. I think it's necessary that Pakistan have stability because they have....nukes. I also think it's necessary because of the memory of Benazir Bhutto and the promise of girls like Tuba Sahaab. Because freedom, education, and progress towards more equality are good things. The Taliban should fail because they oppose freedom, education, and progress. I think Pakistan deserves a lot better.