Honour and Vengeance

"We will take revenge on Pakistan for the martyrdom of Hakimullah."
Asmatullah Shaheeb Bhitani, shura head

And it most certainly appears through the choice of leader that threat will be carried out. Mullah Maulana Fazlullah was the unanimous choice appointed to the leadership of the Pakistani Taliban after the misfortune that assailed his predecessor Hakimullah Mehsud in the North Waziristan tribal area close to the Afghan border.

With the successfully targeted elimination of one psychopathic mass slaughterer after another there never does seem that the shuras gathered to pronounce their collective decisions encounter too much difficulty in their head-hunting executive search for a successor equally mad for the blood of the enemy. In the selection of Mullah Maulana Fazlullah, a celebrity has been chosen.

"Our goal is very clear -- we want the law of Allah in Allah's land," says Mullah Fazlullah. PHOTO: FILE 

His name is known to the west as the brutish Taliban leader in the northwest Swat Valley who set his fearless warriors to the task of targeting children, girls in fact, chosen for elimination from tribal Pakistani society for their impudent denial of Islamist values characteristic of their determination to attend school and become education.

It was Mullah Fazlullah who had ordered the attack on a school bus for the purpose of destroying the life of a courageous 14-year-old girl who had published parts of her diary expressing her wish to become educated, and aired on the BBC. Her punishment for defying the authority of the Taliban who have no wish for girls to become anything but education-deprived kitchen-and-nursery automatons, unquestioningly garbed in head-to-toe black enveloping garments was death.

Pakistani teen Malala Yousafzai (16) who was targeted by the Taliban because she championed education for girls has inspired the development of a school curriculum encouraging advocacy. Her memoir is "I am Malala." (AP)

Pakistani teen Malala Yousafzai (16) who was targeted by the Taliban because she championed education for girls has inspired the development of a school curriculum encouraging advocacy. Her memoir is "I am Malala." (AP)

 
FILE - In this file photo taken Friday, Sept. 27, 2013, Malala Yousafzai listens as Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust introduces her to reporters at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. 

Pakistani teen Malala Yousafzai (16) who was targeted by the Taliban because she championed education for girls has inspired the development of a school curriculum encouraging advocacy. Her memoir is "I am Malala." (AP)

But just as she defied those orders, she also defied death, and lived to tell her story for an applauding world audience, enthralled by her determination and bravery. The surly men who violently and viciously impress their will upon the fearful and the vulnerable have no use for such unruly tribal members, regardless of age or gender. And Mullah Fazlullah's militia are skilled at punishing such social disturbers.

They soullessly behead those who attempt to oppose them, they blow up schools, kill teachers, throw acid at schoolchildren, force men to look "Islamic" by growing beards, deliver corporal punishment to women who might accidentally reveal a wrist out of their enveloping burqa, stone those accused of adultery or who have been raped, since it is inconceivable that a man would rape a woman other than for the fact that she had led him to that act.

Taliban Thugs Raid Shops, Burn 'Un-Islamic' Clothing In Pakistan

 "Let me tell you a story. A sixteen-year-old girl came with her parents to my clinic. A quick urine test and cursory examination told me she had been raped. The law, according to the extremists, is that a woman who is raped must have four male witnesses to prove that she didn't cause the rape. Naturally, no such witnesses are ever available. Without them, the family is obliged to kill the girl to protect the family honor. This girl had kept her terrible secret until she could hide it no longer. I had to decide what to do. I don't approve of abortions unless there is absolutely no other way. But if I didn't do something for this girl, she would be killed. I chose life. Remember, most people here don't have any education, so I can get away with saying things they may not question. I told them their daughter had a tumor and needed surgery. I said she was too sick to have [the operation] now and she would have to stay at my clinic. I kept that girl for three months. When the baby was due, I did a cesarean section. The family waited outside the operating room because it is the custom here to show them what was found in the surgery. I put the placenta in the surgical basin, showed the so-called tumor to them and told them their daughter would be fine. then I gave the baby to a woman who was also in trouble because she is married and infertile."

Sima Samar, Afghani physician -- from Veiled Threat by Sally Armstrong

As for the late, lamented Hakimullah Mehsud, he was responsible for the deaths of thousands of Pakistan's civilians and its security forces. Despite which, his November 1st killing by an American drone attack had Pakistani authorities foaming with rage, accusing the U.S. of sabotaging their plan to strike a peace deal with the Taliban. While knowing that such a deal with such a man was highly unlikely.

Needless to say, Mullah Bhitani leader of the shura contemptuously ruled out any such possibility taking place. Preferring to accuse Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, a man who in the past, in his previous stint at prime minister, was known to have sympathy with the Islamist cause, of betraying Islam and the Taliban by meeting with President Obama in Washington on October 23.

In celebration of the appointment of their new leader, gunmen fired their AK-47 assault rifles and anti-aircraft guns heavenward in celebration. Practise, as it were, for using those same arms in a horizontal position against the Pakistan military and police in the near future.