Violence Against Women Rising in Afghanistan

Dec. 12, 2006— -- Afghan police have nabbed six Taliban insurgents suspected of killing two women teachers along with three other relatives, Afghan and NATO officials said Tuesday.

Friday night's brutal killings brought to 20 the number of teachers killed in Taliban attacks this year, according to Zuhur Afghan, a spokesman for the education ministry.

He said 198 schools have been burned down in 2006, in a viciously effective campaign that has terrorized the Afghan countryside.

Under the Taliban's harsh version of Islam, women were banned from working and schools for girls were shuttered.

Getting millions of Afghan girls back in the classroom was one of the few visible achievements of the U.S.-backed government, installed in late 2001.

Now that triumph is under threat, said women activists.

"Many villagers have stopped letting their girls go to school, fearing they will be targeted by the Taliban," said lawmaker Shinkai Kharokhail. "That campaign has had a very negative impact on the people."

School burnings and attacks on teachers have mainly targeted conservative rural areas, where persuading fathers to educate their daughters was already an uphill battle. Female literacy in Afghanistan is a dismal 13 percent.

But Friday's killing in a remote part of mountainous Kunar Province was especially bloody. It sparked condemnations from top NATO officials and the angry Kunar governor, who immediately fired his police chief. President Hamid Karzai, meanwhile, burst into tears during an emotional press conference about the rising violence across Afghanistan.

Family members in the Narang district said gunmen scaled their home's outer wall, burst into the residence and opened fire.

They killed the two young women who worked as teachers, along with their mother, grandmother and a 20-year-old brother, said Ghaleb, a relative who gave only one name.

Earlier, the two sisters received a warning letter from the Taliban ordering them to quit teaching, said Gulam Ullah Wekar, the provincial education director.