Taliban To Build "Schools"; Ivy League Admissions Officers Salivate

Newsweek:

Abdul Hai Muthmahien, the purported chief spokesman for the militants, said the group will begin providing Islamic education to students in March in at least six southern provinces, funded by $1 million allotted by the Taliban's ruling council. He said textbooks would be the same ones used during Taliban rule.

He also said education would be available to boys first and later to girls, but he did not explain if there had been a change in Taliban thinking about schooling girls.

Rhetorically, it's brilliant. One of the West's great talking points in the war for Afghan hearts and minds is the numbers of students--girls and boys-- now attending school which they couldn't do under the Taliban's tyranny. So to counter that, now the Taliban claims they'll build some madrassas themselves.

Of course it will be pretty hard to take them seriously after stories like this. Or this. Or dozens more like them. According to Newsweek, even the U.N. isn't buying it.

But can you imagine the propaganda value of these Taliban schools? They can use them as an operating base and weapons depot and then if the Americans blow one up, you get on the six o'clock news with a big dose of moral equivalence: Americans attack schools too. And if some of their schoolkids end up as collateral damage, well, to their way of thinking it'll serve the turkeys right for getting all uppity and learning to read.