Taliban's school pledge

The Taliban have been converted to the virtues of education, according to the Times:

"'From March to July, the Taliban movement will open all the schools in the districts under their control,' a spokesman, Abdul Hai Mutmayn, said. It is believed that the teachers will be brought from schools in Pakistan into the provinces of Helmand Kandahar, Uruzgan, Nimroz, Farah and Zabul.

'In the schools, all the textbooks and subjects which were being taught under the Taliban Government will be taught. This will cost $1 million [£500,000] and the Taliban movement will pay for that,' said Mr Mutmayn."

I say converted because hitherto, they were hardly noted for their commitment to a rounded education.

The regime forbade geography, physics, mathematics, biology and modern history - presumably for their profanely un-Islamic character. Girls, of course, were not educated at all, and since the collapse of the regime, Taliban rebels in the south have destroyed something in the region of two-hundred schools and killed over forty teachers. Such is the progressive nature of the resistance.