Goat Rapists Contra Reality Update.

San Jose Mercury News: Afghanistan's schools in peril
TALIBAN SEES EDUCATION AS THREAT TO ISLAM

Zarghon, Afghanistan - The teacher had been warned.

Mohammed Aref was on duty near the front gate of his school. The children were at recess, playing volleyball without a net.

The throaty rumble of a motorcycle broke through their playful shrieks and laughter. The lone rider, a man wearing a traditional shalwar kameez with his face obscured by the long tail of his turban, called Aref over to talk. Then he pulled an AK-47 from under his baggy shirt and fired six bullets into the teacher.

Aref had no way to defend himself. His only weapons were his faith in knowledge, some tattered books and a piece of chalk. He died in the dirt in front of horrified pupils.

May God have mercy on his brave soul.

Fifteen days earlier, Taliban guerrillas had come in the darkness and posted a ``night letter'' on the door of his farmhouse, telling the 50-year-old teacher to stay away from the school if he wanted to stay alive.

Aref, who earned just $50 a month, stood his ground. One of the first victims in the resurgent Taliban's dirty war on education, he gave his life trying to teach Afghan children that there is more to theirs than endless war.

After the United States joined with anti-Taliban militias five years ago to bring down the Islamist government, one of the biggest changes was in education. The Taliban, whose name means ``students,'' regard Western-style education as a direct threat to the vision of a pure Islamic state. Its followers regard modern education as a morally toxic force of Western colonialism.

The Taliban's founders learned their disdain for most things modern in radical religious schools in Pakistan, where the only legitimate subject is study of the Koran. Extremist mullahs teach a harsh version of Islam that professes to be a return to traditions established by the Prophet Muhammad.

A decade ago, when the Taliban swept across southern Afghanistan to seize the capital, Kabul, the mullahs issued edicts closing the women's university and most girls' schools. A collapsing infrastructure made it difficult for many boys to attend school as well.

When schools reopened in 2002 after the ouster of the Taliban regime, only about one-third of Afghanistan's school-age children were in class. Today, the World Bank says, the figure is 87 percent, about 6.5 million pupils, a reflection of the hope of Afghan parents that the U.S.-backed government will be able to bring their country into the modern world. Some aid workers estimate the figure is much lower.

The United States has distributed textbooks and supplies, trained 50,000 teachers and rebuilt 672 schools.

Isn't that supposed to read "the evil, imperialistic United States"?

But once again, education is under pressure from the Taliban.

The militants are active once more across at least half of the country, including the southern province of Helmand, where Aref died in December 2005. Afghanistan's corrupt police and weak army are unable to provide much security.

Over the past year, insurgents have burned at least 146 schools, and security concerns have forced 215 others to close, the Afghan Education Ministry says. Zuhoor Afghan, an adviser to Education Minister Mohammed Hanif Atmar, says about 220,000 students have quit school because they fear for their lives...