Sunday, September 28, 2008

Remembering Malalai Kakar

Women's rights activist Malalai Kakar, a lieutenant-colonel in the Kandahar Police Force, head of the crimes against women unit, is dead. The mother of six was gunned down in front of her home as she left for work this morning.

Some background on Malalai here.

7 Comments:

Blogger The Contentious Centrist said...

What we have here is a failure to communicate. What we need is a robust diplomatic engagement with the Taliban, to re-assure them that Canadians respect them...

7:10 PM  
Blogger RadicalOmnivore said...

That was a Lady with some seriously large balls.
What a twisted tragedy.

8:52 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

A good article by Rosie DiManno on Malalai Kakar:

http://www.thestar.com/News/World/article/507984

1:20 PM  
Blogger SnoopyTheGoon said...

She was more dangerous to Taleban than a motorized brigade. From their point of view this murder definitely makes sense. RIP.

7:58 AM  
Blogger Alec said...

Goodbye, Malalai, you were beautiful and will always be remembered. You were not prepared to defer to an acceptable dictator.

10:30 AM  
Blogger Terry Glavin said...

Good one Alec.

Do bear in mind, all the same, that the Guardian story you link to (which has been since corrected by the Guardian editors) derives from a Times of London story with a screaming headline that wasn't supported by the Times' story's lead paragraph, which itself wasn't supported by any facts reported in the Times story, which slowly unfolds to reveal that the "leaked report" that forms the basis of the story was really just a translation of a story in some obscure French weekly, which published a second-hand account by a French diplomat of something a British diplomat said, which the British have unequivocally denied that he said, and the British further assert that the French weekly's story was a "parody" of what was actually said, deliberately 'exaggerated' so as to tell Paris exactly what it wanted to hear.

I only bring this up to point out an example of the non-journalism that has come to define the mass media's "coverage" of the "war in Afghanistan."

10:56 AM  
Blogger Alec said...

Terry, d'you still think I'm a female pudenda? :)

Now, then. The swirling pit nihilistic despair which certain online resources of the Graun engenders sometimes leaves me, as a fully ordained priest in the Macpherson [1] Church of Eternal Love, sobbing and yearning for beauty in this bleak world, but can you link me to the disownments. Not doubting you, like.

That said, we both know that the bodacious CP Scott would be spinning in his grave were he to see certain online resources of it now.

*I* only bring this up 'coa I - a house cat, if ever there were one - think the Graun reamins a fantastic newspapper, along with the likes of the FT and Economist and, hush!, the Telegraph.

PS Will of Rubbish, love. I loves ya!

[1] Best translated as Son of the Chazan.

1:22 PM  

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