Afghan Library

Qandahari Anar.

U.S. airstrike on Doctors Without Borders hospital not a war crime, says ruling

په پردۍ ژبه زدکړې نه منو / Pa praday zheba zdakre na mano / We don’t accept education in a foreign language

December 17, 2015. Children in Peshawar demand that their schools teach them in Pashto instead of English and Urdu. My favorite part is the little girl’s powerful speech. 

Once again, Kabul bleeds. This morning, a suicide attack on an NDS compound in the Pul-e Mahmood Khan neighborhood of Kabul killed at least 28 people and wounded 327 others. After the bombing, other armed terrorists started shooting. The target was the Secret Service Unit tasked with protecting VIPs. Despite the target, most of the victims were civilians, (the rest being Afghan Security Forces) according to Interior Ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqi. A Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility for the attack, which was timed to coincide with the launch last week of the Talibans spring offensive.

Qandar Ustad, a mechanic whose shop is nearby the targeted area, said: “It was a very loud bang. Dust and shrapnel started falling through the roof of my shop and I even saw body parts of people flying and dropping on the ground. I rushed home and thank God my kids and myself are safe.”

Part of the corporate media’s job is to make sure real political grievances are mostly kept out of the discussion. It’s a lot easier to talk about angry mobs and their peculiar religion than it is to acknowledge that maybe some of the anger has little to do with religion at all.

Take the news out of Afghanistan yesterday: A NATO airstrike killed eight women in the eastern province of Laghman who were out collecting firewood. This has happened before. And attacks that kill a lot of Afghans–whether accidental or not–tend to be covered the same way–quietly, and with a focus not on the killing but on the ramifications.

So yesterday if you logged intoCommonDreams, you may have seen this headline:

NATO Airstrike in Afghanistan Kills 8 Women

Now look for the same news in the New York Times today (9/17/12). It’s there–but the headline is this:

Karzai Denounces Coalition Over Airstrikes

The Times gave a clear sense of what was important: “Mr. Karzai’s condemnation was likely to rankle some Western officials…” the paper’s Matthew Rosenberg explained, who went on to explain that

the confrontational tone of the statement was a sharp reminder of the acrimony that has often characterized relations between Mr. Karzai and his American benefactors.

In the Washington Post, the NATO airstrikes made the front page–sort of. Readers saw this headline at the website:

4 troops killed in southern Afghanistan insider attack

As you might have already guessed, the killings of Afghan women are a secondary news event:

Four U.S. troops were killed Sunday at a remote checkpoint in southern Afghanistan when a member of the Afghan security forces opened fire on them, military officials said. The attack brought to 51 the number of international troops shot dead by their Afghan partners this year. The insider attack came on the same day that NATO warplanes killed nine women gathering firewood in the mountains outside their village in an eastern province, according to local officials.

One has to wonder whether, absent the deaths of U.S. troops, the airstrike would have made the news at all.

For #InternationalWomensDay, a story from our archives about some impressive Afghan women mountaineers:

The first football kit featuring a hijab: Afghanistan Football Federation and Hummel

In addition to creating a gorgeous shirt reflective of a diverse set of artistic styles and national symbols of Afghanistan, Hummel has designed the new women’s kit with an integrated hijab for female footballers.

‘We don’t sponsor the biggest teams in the world, but we make partnerships with teams and clubs with a story to tell, like Afghanistan,’ Hummel owner Christian Stadil said. Hummel’s mission statement is ‘Change the World through Sport’.

‘We try to meet the Afghan people where they are, and right now that is by helping the women play football with or without a hijab’.

Through official bans on women’s sports instituted before the fall of the Taliban, prejudice that has endured long since, and a lack of institutional support from both domestic and global sporting authorities—including the International Football Association Board (IFAB), who outlawed hijabs and religious head coverings until 2012—women’s football in Afghanistan has grown against all odds.