Not Just Killed

I reported recently on the attacks on Afghani girls’ schools, but now their teachers are being killed – and in brutal ways.

Mohammed Halim, a 46 year-old man from Ghazni, was taken from his home and partly disemboweled before his limbs were tied to motorcycles and torn off, according to the New Zealand Herald. Halim is the fourth teacher to be murdered by Taliban extremists in Ghazni, a center of violence among the Taliban, US, and Afghan militaries, reports The Independent.

He’s the fourth teacher who was killed for disobeying the Taliban’s orders because he continued to keep teaching girls, and the other teachers are fully aware of what they’re being told:

Fatima Mustaq, the director of education in Ghazni, says she has received many death threats, due to her gender and her unwillingness to stop educating girls, The Independent reports. “I think they killed him that way to frighten us, otherwise why make a man suffer so much?”

This kind of violence echoes the kind of violence used against trans people, and goes to show how deeply gender infractions upset jerks. In Afghanistan, a girl learing how to read is apparently at least as threatening as someone born male wearing a dress is here.

If the US could guarantee that I could work guard duty protecting these teachers’ lives, I’d sign up. Fatima Mustaq and Mohammed Halim are my new heros; I wish there were a way to let the Taliban know that every person killed for disregarding their orders would become a folk hero – maybe then they would quit creating more.