The Insidious Evil of the Taliban

Many of us saw this photo above of Tarana Akbari, a young Afghan girl just moments after the Taliban attacked a Shia shrine in Kabul with a suicide bomber...what we didn't know at the time the photo was first released is that Tarana lost seven members of her family and extended family in that bombing and that 8 others were wounded. Imagine for a moment that you and your family of 16 go to church on Christmas eve...and a bomb goes off and 15 of your family members are killed or wounded.

And now we know the anguish, the horror, the shock on this little girl's face.

And her pain is due to the evil of the Taliban. In my view, the most evil entity on the planet as they have let nothing stop them in their desire for world dominance - they have beheaded innocents, they have bombed schools with children in them, they have set off IEDs on civilian buses, and they have executed countless Afghan civilians in cold blood.

From the article at The Telegraph:

The schoolgirl was photographed in hysterics with bodies lying at her feet moments after a bomber had killed more than 70 Shia worshippers gathered outside a shrine to mark a holy day.

The 12-year-old lost seven relatives and had another eight wounded as the attacker's suicide vest tore through the festival crowd, her family has now disclosed.

Among the dead was her 11-year-old brother, Shoaib, and both her other siblings were grievously wounded, her father told the Daily Telegraph as she was released from hospital.

Fifteen members of her extended family attended the festival in the Murad Khane area of the Afghan capital and all were killed or wounded.

"I have lost my brother, I have lost my cousins, I have lost my aunt," Tarana said, leaving the city's Wazir Akbar Khan hospital where she had been treated with scores of other casualties.

In her first interview, Tarana said she thought she had seen the suicide bomber work his way through the crowd towards the shrine gates and try to get inside before he detonated.

"There was a young man who asked an elder at the shrine to open the gates," she said. "Soon after I saw him explode. Then I just saw lots of dead people."

I mentioned the other day that this attack by the Taliban was inspired by al Qaeda and I'm positive it was but the fact of the matter is this - al Qaeda has shared their recipe for chaos and fear with the Taliban but it has been the Taliban that has taken to it full out like a new heroin addict to his drug. The Taliban simply cannot get enough blood on their hands to satisfy their lust for death.

This is a group that transcends terror - they go beyond that. And as I've mentioned before, it's simply not good enough to defeat the Taliban in the War in Afghanistan...it's not enough to defeat the Taliban in Pakistan. They simply must be eradicated. We need to unleash every weapon known to the West upon these minions and when the smoke has cleared, we need to send in the death squads to hunt them down and exterminate them. If there is even only one Taliban limping his way out of Afghanistan...if he's passing over that last mountain peak trying to make it into Uzbekistan....he needs a squad of American executioners behind him....tracking him...finding him ...and killing him. And when that last one is finally dead and the Taliban are extinct from this planet. Then and only then can we return to a normal life.

The Afghanistan schoolgirl who became a symbol of Kabul's suicide bombing


The schoolgirl was photographed in hysterics with bodies lying at her feet moments after a bomber had killed more than 70 Shia worshippers gathered outside a shrine to mark a holy day.

The 12-year-old lost seven relatives and had another eight wounded as the attacker's suicide vest tore through the festival crowd, her family has now disclosed.

Among the dead was her 11-year-old brother, Shoaib, and both her other siblings were grievously wounded, her father told the Daily Telegraph as she was released from hospital.

Fifteen members of her extended family attended the festival in the Murad Khane area of the Afghan capital and all were killed or wounded.

"I have lost my brother, I have lost my cousins, I have lost my aunt," Tarana said, leaving the city's Wazir Akbar Khan hospital where she had been treated with scores of other casualties.

In her first interview, Tarana said she thought she had seen the suicide bomber work his way through the crowd towards the shrine gates and try to get inside before he detonated.

"There was a young man who asked an elder at the shrine to open the gates," she said. "Soon after I saw him explode. Then I just saw lots of dead people."

Images of her amid the carnage, dressed in vivid green to mark the martyrdom of the Prophet's grandson, appeared in the Daily Telegraph and made the front pages of the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal.

She suffered shrapnel wounds to her shins, arm and stomach in the blast and was only told on Saturday that her brother had died.

Her father, Ahmad Shah Akbari, now keeps one photograph of the devastation in his jacket pocket and said many of those pictured lying slumped and bloodied at his daughter's feet were their relatives.

"I have lost a son and I still have two other children in hospital. I was across town when it happened. They called me on my mobile and told me there had been an explosion. When I arrived, all I could see was injured and dead."

"Tarana is still in a lot of pain and my other children are lying in bed with tubes in them," he said.

Hamid Karzai, the Afghanistan president, said the suicide attack at the Abul Fazl shrine on the holy day of Ashura was unprecedented and it raised fears of a new sectarian dimension to the violence in Afghanistan.

The attack has been claimed by Lashkar-e-Jhangvi Al-Alami, an obscure Pakistan-based militant group with a history of targeting Shia Muslims.

The Afghan president heightened tensions with neighbouring Pakistan by threatening to pursue the attack with Islamabad.

Mr Akbari, a 37-year-old market porter, said: "Everyone says it was Pakistan – some party or organisation there.

"We don't know why they did this. They were poor people, what was their crime?"

The death toll from the December 6 blasts was still rising, a spokesman for the Ministry of Public health said. Victims had been taken to hospitals across the city and some had died at home without reaching medical treatment. At least five children and 10 women were among the dead and more than 100 people were wounded. Mr Karzai said on Sunday that the death toll from both attacks was now at least 80.

Since the fall of the Taliban, Afghanistan has been largely spared the Sunni-Shia targeted sectarian killing which has blighted Pakistan and Iraq.

Shia leaders have appealed for calm since last week's blast amid fears the attack was a deliberate provocation to open a rift between the groups and further destabilise the country.

Ryan Crocker, American ambassador, said at the weekend: "I do not see this turning into a sectarian conflict just looking at the reactions on the part of the Shia leadership, calling for calm."

"I am struck by the reaction – the Afghan reaction – which is what makes me think that whoever the architects were – they don't have much Afghan support," he said.

Meanwhile, Mr Karzai blamed foreign donors who have poured billions of pounds into his country for some of the rampant corruption which is hobbling international attempts at reconstruction.

He told an anti-corruption conference that "our foreigner colleagues have not only been uncooperative but sometimes they have created obstacles".

"One urgent way to avoid corruption in Afghanistan is for our foreign friends and co-workers to stop giving contracts to government officials and their family members," he continued.

The chronic graft found at all levels of the Afghan state has been blamed for siphoning off billions and also driving Afghans away from the government and toward the Taliban-led insurgency.

Mr Karzai has consistently refused to prosecute power brokers and members of his inner circle accused of corruption.