Thursday, June 10, 2010

Bad Humored



Is what I am, these days. Too much crap like this happening in the world:

The 130-page Amnesty report, As if Hell Fell on Me, was based on nearly 300 interviews with residents of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) and the surrounding areas.

"Nearly four million people are effectively living under the Taliban in north-west Pakistan without rule of law and effectively abandoned by the Pakistani government," said Claudio Cordone, Amnesty's interim secretary-general.
Map

A teacher quoted in the report, who fled the Swat valley with his family in March 2009, described how the Taliban operated.

"[The Taliban] took over my school and started to teach children about how to fight in Afghanistan. They kicked out the girls from school, told the men to grow their beards, threatened anybody they didn't like."

The teacher said the government failed to protect them.

"What's the point of having this huge army if it can't even protect us against a group of brutal fanatics?"

Indeed. And why can't we get rid of the rotting system the Taliban wishes to impose on its innocent victims? South Africa finally got rid of Apartheid. What's the difference?

I feel for all the Pakistanis who suffer under the Taliban and for the poor who suffer even without the Taliban. But what they do to the girls and boys is almost irreversible. It destroys lives. It warps them, in the case of the boys and it stunts them, in the case of the girls.

If there is a god she won't like that. Not at all.