Another Reason Why

Canadians, along with other westernized countries of the world that have agreed to join the UN- and NATO-led forces attempting to establish normalcy in Afghanistan - that part of the world where what we think of as 'normal' has eluded the country from time immemorial - now have yet another reason to cite, as requiring our presence, our own sacrifices.

It's been said that to kill off the Taliban, or the ambitions of the Taliban, that resurgent, determined, element of fundamentalist Islamists, fifty percent of the population of Afghanistan would have to be eliminated. The Taliban are legion; there are their mullahs, utterly devoted to rigid theocratic rule, their battle-hardened mujahadeen, and countless rural peasants who have been pressed into service.

There are those who inspire them to action through their common goal, to bring fundamentalist Islam under shariah law to as wide a geographic spectrum throughout the world as possible, through global jihad. Central to the belief of inspired domination is the certainty that there are no other religions, simply those that pose to represent the will of false gods.

All of which are degraded, and whose worshippers simply devote themselves to false and misleading deities, and whose customs and values, moreover, are degenerate and highly unworthy of retention. Those who are not done away with in the larger sweep to Islamic power, must be forced to swear fealty to Islam. Al-Qaeda is the leading exponent, admired and sheltered by the Taliban.

Those who resist their cause are justly scheduled for obliteration. And that includes teachers of children, if not the children themselves; girls who aspire to become educated and become in turn, leaders of their communities. When education is denied boys and girls, and boys are taught within the confines of a madrassa in a language not their own, to worship Allah and reject worldly values, the Taliban win.

Women, since the fall of the Taliban regime, are now able to fend for themselves in the workplace; where before they were consigned to a life of poverty and gradual starvation. Their resistance against which earned them torture and death. The country's governing body now has among its legislators, a good proportion of women, determined to represent the best interests of the country at large, and women and children in particular.

Greed and corruption remain rife, and possibly always will, but perhaps to a more graduated, lesser degree, as Afghan-style democracy takes hold. The Taliban know this and they will never agree to forego their aspirations to take back the country and rule it once again as they did before, availing themselves of the opportunity to impoverish the people and dominate women and children.

As symbols go, apart from the presence of female Afghan legislators, what could be more powerfully offensive to the Taliban and their interests than a senior female police officer, accomplished and highly respected? A career that Lt.-Col. Malalai Kakar began years earlier, interrupted by the ascendancy of the Taliban, then resurrected when they were ousted by international forces.

"We killed Malalai Kakar. She was our target, and we successfully eliminated our target." Militant Islam respects only those women who remain vulnerable and as such complicit in their own misery, for they have no other choice.