Afghan girl shot dead Taliban fighters who killed her parents, say officials

[Kailash Kumar]

Afghan girl shot dead Taliban fighters who killed her parents, say officials

Akhtar Mohammad Makoii

21 Jul 2020

An Afghan girl shot dead three Taliban fighters after they killed her parents because they supported the government, local officials have said.

The incident happened last week when a group of 40 insurgents stormed the village of Geriveh, in central Ghor province, where 16-year-old Qamar Gul was living with her parents and brother.

Officials said the fighters, who were looking for Gul’s father, knocked on the door at 1am on 17 July.

“The insurgents came to their doorstep and her mother went to see who was knocking,” said Mohamed Aref Aber, a spokesman for the provincial governor. “When she saw that they were armed, she refused to open the door.”

Aber said Gul’s mother was immediately shot dead by the attackers, who then entered the house and shot at her father.

According to Aber, Qamar Gul witnessed the death of her parents, picked up her father’s rifle and shot and killed three insurgents. She then started a one-hour battle with the Taliban alongside her 12-year-old brother, Habibullah, he added.

Several other Taliban fighters reportedly joined the attack, but some villagers and pro-government militia men expelled them after a gunfight.

Afghan officials have taken Qamar Gul and her younger brother to a safe place in the provincial capital.

“They were in shock in the first two days and could not talk too much, but are in a good condition now,” Aber said. “They are saying: ‘This was our right, because we did not need to live without our parents.’ They don’t have many relatives other than a half-brother who lives in the same village.”

The Afghan government praised Qamar’s bravery at a cabinet meeting, and the president, Ashraf Ghani, has invited the children to the presidential palace.

“When I saw them that night, they were shocked but were feeling honoured,” said Mohammad Rafiq Alam, the district governor.

Since the incident, a photograph of Qamar Gul wearing a headscarf and holding a machine gun across her lap has gone viral on social media.

“We know parents are irreplaceable, but your revenge will give you relative peace,” one user wrote in a Facebook post. “They received two titles at one night: heroes and orphans,” another posted. “She is a symbol of bravery and resistance,” said another.

At least 100,000 Afghans are estimated to have died in conflict since 2001 when the US ousted the Taliban from power.

The Taliban regularly kill villagers whom they suspect of being informers for the government or security forces. In recent months the militants have also stepped up their attacks against security forces, despite having agreed to peace talks with Kabul.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...ho-killed-her-parents-say-officials-qamar-gul

 

[YeBeWarned]

 

[jamahir]

 

[tman786]

Seems like afghan govt are spewing outlandish stories like their Indian fathers

 

[masterchief_mirza]

Sounds impossible. The insurgents would have chucked a grenade and be done with it. I call bullcrap.

However, IF true, well played to this girl!

 

[I S I]

 

[Trango Towers]

Afghan government has finally hired indians for drama and tamasha

 

[Kailash Kumar]

Afghan girl who killed Taliban gunmen ‘ready to fight again’

July 22, 2020

Qamar Gul, 16, right, and her brother Habibullah, 12, pose for photograph in the governor's office in Feroz Koh, the provincial capital of Ghor province, in western Afghanistan, Tuesday, July 21, 2020.

GHAZNI: An Afghan girl who shot dead two Taliban fighters after they gunned down her parents said Wednesday she was ready to confront any other insurgents who might try to attack her.

Qamar Gul, 16, killed the militants when they stormed her home last week in a village in the Taywara district of the central province of Ghor.

“I no longer fear them and I’m ready to fight them again,” Gul told AFP by telephone from a relative’s home.

It was about midnight when the Taliban arrived, Gul said, recounting the events of that night.

She was asleep in her room with her 12-year-old brother when she heard the sound of men pushing at the door of their home.

“My mother ran to stop them but by then they had already broken the door,” Gul said.

“They took my father and mother outside and shot them several times. I was terrified.”

But moments later, “anger took over,” she said.

“I picked up the gun we had at home, went to the door and shot them.”

Gul said her brother helped when one of the insurgents, who appeared to be the group’s leader, tried to return fire.

“My brother took the gun from me and hit (shot) him. The fighter ran away injured, only to return later,” Gul said.

By then, several villagers and pro-government militiamen had arrived at the house. The Taliban eventually fled following a lengthy firefight.

Officials said the Taliban had come to kill Gul’s father, who was the village chief, because he supported the government.

The insurgents regularly kill villagers they suspect of being informers for the government or security forces.

Taywara district, where Gul’s village is located, is a remote area with sporadic communication and the scene of near-daily clashes between government forces and the Taliban.

Gul said her father had taught her how to shoot an AK-47 assault rifle.

“I am proud I killed my parents’ murderers,” she said.

“I killed them because they killed my parents, and also because I knew they would come for me and my little brother.”

Gul regrets she was unable to say goodbye to her mother and father.

“After I killed the two Taliban, I went to talk to my parents, but they were not breathing,” she said.

“I feel sad, I could not talk to them one last time.”

Afghans have flooded social media to praise Gul, and a photo of her wearing a headscarf and holding an AK-47 has been shared widely.

Hundreds of people have called on the government to protect Gul and her family.

“I demand that the president help transfer her to a safe place as her and her family’s security is at risk,” prominent women’s rights activist and former lawmaker Fawzia Koofi wrote on Facebook.

President Ashraf Ghani also praised Gul for “defending her family against a ruthless enemy,” his spokesman Sediq Sediqqi told AFP.

A Taliban spokesman has confirmed an operation took place in the area of the attack, but denied any of the group’s fighters had been killed by a woman.

https://www.arabnews.com/node/1708506/world

 

[Samlee]

Great Job Young Lady

 

[Sharma Ji]

 

[Kailash Kumar]

A Girl’s Heroic Battle Against the Taliban Was Also a Family Feud

July 22, 2020

A teenage Afghan girl was celebrated for killing Taliban who attacked her home. But the story of her heroism is steeped in pain, and reveals the complicated crosscurrents of the Afghan War.

Qamar Gul, 15, fought to her last bullet, gunning down Taliban attackers who raided the house and killed her father and mother.

One of the attackers she killed was her own husband, who was fighting on the Taliban’s side and apparently seeking her forcible return after a falling out with Ms. Gul’s family, according to relatives and local officials.

Source and full story:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/22/world/asia/afghan-hero-woman-taliban.html?auth=login-facebook

 

[nahtanbob]

Considering what the Taliban can do more Afghans should shoot back. Otherwise it is dark times in Afghanistan

Sunday, March 18, 2001

An Ethnic Mosaic Implodes


By CHARLES SANTOS


NEW YORK--The Taliban has completed its destruction of the magnificent Buddha statutes of Bamian despite international pleas to preserve them. There has been no shortage of explanations--hard-liner appeasement, Islamic fanaticism, reprisals against former U.S policy--for the Taliban's misguided behavior, but they all miss the point.



During the 1990s, I made six trips to Bamian in central Afghanistan. It is where the Hazara people live. The Hazaras are ethnically distinct; unlike most Afghan ethnic groups, they practice Shiite Islam.


Flying into central Afghanistan on board an old Soviet helicopter that strained to clear mountaintops was a breathtaking experience in itself. But it paled in comparison to the sight of two giant, massive Buddhas gazing over a town nestled in a small green valley.


When in Bamian, I often stayed in the guest house of the leader of the Hazara, Karim Khalili, a soft-spoken Shiite religious scholar. The simple house had a stunning view of the valley and the Buddhas carved into the mountainside, the largest soaring 175 feet above Bamian.


The Hazara are poor even by Afghan standards. Previous rulers of Afghanistan have generally mistreated them. But in Bamian, I felt as if I was standing on the roof of the world, in a mystical place far from the troubles of civilization. The people of Bamian have lived with the Buddha statutes for hundreds of years. They have watched over the Buddhas, and the Buddhas have watched over them. Although the Hazaras are not Buddhists, the statutes are more than a part of their cultural heritage and history. They are also part of their identity as a people. The Hazara connection to the Buddhas is like the Egyptian's to the pyramids.


The Taliban--ethnically Pashtun and fundamentalist Sunni Muslim--first captured Bamian more than two years ago following fierce fighting with the Hazaras.


Thousands of Hazaras were slaughtered soon after. Then, several weeks ago, Karim Khalili and his forces recaptured Bamian for a second time since the Talibs entered the valley, a great embarrassment to the Taliban overlords. The Hazaras discovered mass graves containing the bodies of hundreds of their boys and men before they were driven out by a Taliban counteroffensive.


Because news reports have focused on the Taliban's religious fanaticism, they have missed its extreme ethnic-nationalist nature. Many of the harsh religious strictures imposed by the Taliban, such as the punitive treatment of women and the prohibition against the trimming of beards, have their roots in rural Pashtun tribal norms, not in Islam. These norms are not accepted by Afghanistan's other ethnic groups. In the Taliban, Pashtun nationalism has fused with religious fundamentalism.


Standing in its way are the Hazaras and other ethnic groups such as the Afghan Uzbeks, Turkmens and Tajiks.


Contrary to much of the reporting about the Taliban, its leaders are not simply uneducated religious zealots whose eccentric notions about Islam might be corrected. Quite the contrary. They are clear-thinking fundamentalists with an extreme Pashtun nationalist identity. As such, they understand symbols. When they destroyed the giant Buddhas in Bamian, they did it for the same reason they massacred hundreds of Hazara boys and men: to punish a people and to send the message that Pashtun religious and ethnic hegemony is Afghanistan.


In the United States, we vacillate between nostalgia over our past support of the heroic anti-Soviet moujahedeen and indifference to our culpability in today's fighting. We want to believe we can play realpolitik and influence events without really understanding them. We cheer the extraordinary request of the New York Metropolitan Museum to remove the statutes from Bamian to protect them. But when I think back to the Hazaras of Bamian, who rescued them when they were being slaughtered by the Taliban? Who will rescue the other pieces of the broken mosaic of ethnic communities that once was Afghanistan when the Taliban turn to smash them? Not the Metropolitan Museum. Not the United States. Not the European Union. Not the United Nations Security Council. Not our former moujahedeen friends.


Maybe it's time for the international community to consider something more drastic. We have to realize that our realpolitik and romantic notions have nothing to do with what Afghanistan has become. As the Taliban destroys Afghanistan's Buddhist history, further eliminating the possibility of an Afghanistan based on goodwill and trust among its many different peoples, the international community should no longer view the country as a single central state. Instead, we should recognize that



Afghanistan's ethnic communities are fully autonomous entities with political, economic and cultural rights. As such, we should assist them in their struggle to defend themselves from the hypernationalist and fundamentalist Taliban. Failing this, we should consider the possibility of supporting the formation of a new state or states in the north and central parts of Afghanistan where these beleaguered peoples can live. *



- - -


Charles Santos, an Energy Consultant, Was Special Assistant to the U.n. Undersecretary General for Special Political Affairs and Political Advisor to the United Nations Special Mission to Afghanistan in 1994 and 1995

 

[lastofthepatriots]

She put up a better fight than the bharti army did against the Chinese.


Dhoob ke marjao bihar regiment! Oh wait, you were drowned in the rivers by the Chinese!

bwhahahahahahahahahahahaha

 

[KaiserX]

Brave women. Fought better than the Baniyas in Ghalwan.