Mick Hartley

A reminder of what's at stake in Afghanistan:

Taliban gunmen have killed the headteacher of a girls' school near the Afghan capital after he ignored warnings to stop teaching girls, government officials have said.

Khan Mohammad, the head of the Porak girls' school in Logar province, was shot dead near his home on Tuesday, said Deen Mohammad Darwish, a spokesman for the Logar governor.

"He was killed because he wanted to run the school," Darwish said.

Mateen Jafar, the education director in Logar, about an hour's drive from the capital, Kabul, said Mohammad had received several death threats from the Taliban warning him not to teach girls….

Education for women was banned by the Taliban government from 1996 to2001 as un-Islamic. There are periodic attacks against schoolgirls, their teachers and school buildings….

Girls have had acid thrown in their faces by hardline Islamists while walking to school and schools have been set on fire. Last year there was a spate of mysterious gas poisonings at girls' schools, including some in Kabul, in which dozens of girls fell ill.