Posted on 10/31/2013 5:53:25 AM PDT by Kaslin
When the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan is completed next year what will happen to Afghan women? Will a resurgent Taliban return them to wearing burqas, withdraw them from schools and force them to live behind painted glass in their homes, permitting them to leave the house only when accompanied by a blood relative?
The Afghan constitution contains language that supposedly protects women's rights and Afghanistan has signed several international human rights treaties that guarantee protection for women. Article 22 of the Afghan constitution reads, "Any kind of discrimination and privilege between the citizens of Afghanistan are prohibited. The citizens of Afghanistan, whether man or woman, has equal rights and duties before the law."
To Westerners, this sounds good, but in Afghanistan, as in much of the rest of the Islamic world, religion can trump any constitution.
Mavis Leno (wife of "The Tonight show's" Jay Leno) chairs a committee of the Feminist Majority Foundation (FMF) on Afghan women and girls. In a telephone interview, she tells me she is "worried sick" about diplomatic negotiations with the Afghan government and fears the Taliban could again leave women at a disadvantage: "Women are last in and first out. For years we have been the throwaways in any agreement."
Leno doesn't trust any agreement involving the Taliban: "I don't believe they would consider themselves contractually, morally or in any other fashion bound by any agreements they made with us, or any of our allies. That is not their history and I don't believe for one minute they are going to change because it's their belief system."
It's another reason to leave a formidable contingent of U.S. forces in the country, as long as they can defend themselves and promote democracy and human rights for all Afghan citizens.
Leno and the FMF are offering college scholarships and training to the women and girls they bring to America. Currently, she says, between 20 and 30 are receiving help. Women from rural areas in Afghanistan are taught to be midwives, which not only saves lives, but gives the midwives "status" in their communities because they have acquired a useful skill.
While education for Afghan females has improved since U.S. troops removed the Taliban from power, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women reports: "Only 26 percent of Afghanistan's population is literate, and among women the rate is only 12 percent. Among school-age children, 38 percent (4.2 million in real numbers) do not have access to schools, most of which are girls."
Add to this the scarcity of buildings and other necessities, and adds Leno, "the dearth of textbooks, teaching materials and equipped laboratories" and the challenge would be great even without the threat of a Taliban return.
The Afghan parliament failed to pass a law prohibiting violence against women, which Leno sees as an ominous warning. The government, she says, has also "eliminated domestic violence centers, such as those run by Women for Afghan Women."
The United States has invested billions of dollars and the lives of nearly 2,100 service members in Afghanistan. To allow Afghan women to be forced to return to subservience to a male-dominated religious fundamentalism would mean they died in vain.
This should not be an issue limited to a feminist organization. It should be something about which all Americans must care. Google "help for Afghan women" and contribute to an organization with which you are comfortable. We owe it to those who have died and were wounded. It can be our continuing gift, not only to Afghan women, but to all of humanity.
Maybe we can help them get resettled in America?
“what will happen to Afghan women”
The same that is happening in Iraq and Iran. Thank you Obama and company. Egypt saw the incompetence early, up-close and first hand.
These women will remember voting, some now can read. Hopefully they will tell their daughters and granddaughters and someday they will fight back.
The same things that happened to them the last time the taliban controlled Afghanistan.
Any female showing her face, like the young lady in this pic, will have acid thrown onto it, marched to the stadium and shot through the back of the head. The age will matter nothing to those knuckledraggers. They’d just as soon do it to a cowering, shivering, crying 6-month-old baby as they would a terrified grandmother.
Humanity is abjectly absent in islam.
A simple view of history and culture should tell you without writing an article
Chop chop- heads and hands.
Daily public lashings.
More women will be sold in the town squares- already happening now.
The sale of burquas will go through the roof.
>When the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan is completed next year what will happen to Afghan women?<
They will be the convenient punching bags, as they have been since their religion was founded, and eons before that. It’s my fear they will suffer far more, due to the male rage that has been building up, than had the West not come in and “liberated” them.
May God have mercy on them.
See Iraq as what will gradually happen. It is THEIR country so maybe THEY should do something about it. Suggestion: resist, fight, kill, die. You know...that sort of thing. Unless,of course, they don’t care enough to sacrifice. Ho hum.
Round up every last woman in that hole and bring them here. Taliban gone in a single generation.
I don’t believe that would happen. They will bring some of their culture with them and we’d be Muslim nation in 20 years. Oh wait, we will be anyway with the woman we have in the presidency now.
We are delusional if we think we can force a change there. The women will be sold, beaten, raped, and otherwise dehumanized. Just as they have been since Muhammad set down his rules.
In a sense, I wonder why anyone is surprised. The “outrage” is either contrived, or naive.
Inbreeding, starvation, lack of education and brainwashing.
This is what it breeds. Need to turn that whole region into a sheet of glass and start over.
America can't keep riding to the rescue of others when we are in deep trouble here at home.
In hindsight its pretty clear the campaign in Afghanistan should have been over for us when the Northern Alliance prevailed over the Taliban in 2002.
The United States makes its greatest contribution to the rest of the world when it leads by example. The achievements of a free people under our Constitution and free enterprise speak for itself. As far as Afghanistan is concerned, we should have left when we defeated the Taliban leaving only the promise that we will be back if you ever dare to strike the United States again.
Those that learned to read will have their eyes poked out. They will be abandoned. The democrat party’s war on women.
The women will be hitched to wagons and the Taliban will marry their donkeys.
Let the tali's have it back. Watch the US go up in the average Afghani's estimation within 30 days.
Let's see their army start attacking the Tali's now instead of the US troops.
I got little sympathy for em.
Under the Taliban:
Complicated childbirth? Husband can describe it to a male doctor, because female doctors won’t be allowed to work.
Widow needs to earn money to feed her children? She won’t be allowed to work - but she will be allowed to run the risk of prostitution, with her young son to escort her. Sometimes the young son will take the fancy of the corrupt, connected, Taliban john.
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