Gender Equality Comes To The Taliban

Obama and the Surrendercrats are right after all. In fact, we don't even have to wait for a year or two for a near-complete drawdown in Afghanistan. At last, the Taliban have joined the 21st Century and have indicated their readiness to join the world of civilized nations. Taliban women are no longer property or second-class citizens. They're fully mainstream now--officially.

The Taliban announced publicly for the very first time that on two separate occasions in the past week, females were used in attacks on police and military officials in Pakistan near the Afghan border. Now what could be more equal and more enabling than to be able to join the men in blowing themselves to bits in the name of the Prophet? There has been speculation and some evidence that they have used women in the past for suicide bombings, but now it's proudly official.

In one instance, a husband and wife team dressed themselves in burqas in Kolachi, entered a police station, started firing, and after a five-hour standoff, blew themselves up. That resulted in ten deaths, not including the male-female team. It should be interesting to see how this plays out in the future. The duo was able to get into the police station largely because until now, two burqa-clad figures theoretically meant two women, and the Taliban would never use evil, degenerate women to please Allah. The locals are more likely now to take a quick peek under those outfits capable of concealing Fat Man and Little Boy both. You've come a long way, baby.

The other incident has gotten a bit more Taliban propaganda publicity, because the bomber in this case was an eight-year old girl. A child, you say? Don't forget that among the Taliban and other cave-dwelling primitives, the age of consent is somewhere around six, so this girl was nearly middle-aged. This sacrifice for the love of Allah took place in the Char Chino district of the Pakistani province of Uruzgan.

The Taliban are so anxious to get out the good news about gender equality that they didn't actually stage this second attack too well. It remains unclear if the girl actually had any idea what she was about to do. The elders handed her a bag with an improvised explosive device in it and told her to take it to police forces. She did, and blew herself up, but did little damage to the police station and there are no reported deaths other than the gender-equality one.

There is also the problem of the Taliban previously denying the use of willing gender-equal female bombers and attackers. About a year ago, a female suicide bomber wearing a chic burqa blew up a United Nations food distribution center in Pakistan, killing forty-five people. But the Taliban first denied involvement, then simply refused to take credit for the bombing. Today, they are making great progress in bringing women into the forefront of "liberation" as an official policy.

The Taliban didn't want anyone to confuse the current girl-bomber with the one who failed a week earlier. It would ruin the official version of her body parts being sent to the four winds. The earlier incident involved an attack that failed. In that case, a nine-year old girl told a harrowing tale of being kidnapped in Peshawar then sent off to blow up a Pakistani checkpoint. She was told by her handlers that she should walk calmly toward the checkpoint while reciting verses from the Koran until it was time to push the button. And therein lay the failure. It never occurred to the cave boys that a nine-year old kidnap victim might not be in the mood to spread herself over a half-acre of territory guarded by people she didn't know and had no quarrel with. Religious zealotry can go only just so far.

Interestingly, though proudly taking credit for the voluntary self-immolation of an eight-year old girl in Pakistan, the Taliban strongly deny using children at all for attacks inside Afghanistan. Despite the gracious protection given to the Taliban in Pakistan by sympathetic Pakistanis, they don't seem to have the same sensitivities toward child suicide bombing victims there as they do at home.