Posted on 09/20/2001 4:29:42 PM PDT by Diogenesis
On the Situation of Afghan Women
There never has been any reliable demographic
statistics on Afghanistan for the past two decades.
Of the estimated 16 million Afghans at the end of the
70s, over two million have
been killed in the war of resistance against Soviet
occupiers and later on in the civil war unleashed by
fundamentalist groupings enjoying the support of
foreign powers. Another one and half million have
been maimed by the war fallout, while nearly five
million have been forced into refugee camps in Iran
and Pakistan. The majority of the population left
inside the country have been internally displaced as a
result of the unending war of the past two decades
and in particular of the fundamentalist in-fighting of
the past eight years. At the best of times the overall
literacy rate was less than 20% amongst males and less
than 5% amongst females. (These figures are
considered by some as very optimistic.) Against such
a backdrop, the country slid into the hands of Islamic
fundamentalists in 1992.
Islamic fundamentalism in essence looks upon
women as sub-humans, fit only for household slavery
and as a means of procreation. Such an outrageous
view has incredibly been elevated to the status of
official policy with the coming to power of the
ignorant Taliban who are still in control of 90% of
Afghanistan including the capital Kabul. Not only the
Jehadis and Taliban but all Islamists (advocates of an
Islamic political system) target womens rights as a
first priority, citing mediaeval Sharia (Islamic law) as
their authority. With the coming to power of Islamic
fundamentalists in 1992, womens right to full
participation in social, economic, cultural and political
life of the country was drastically curtailed and later
on summarily denied them by the Taliban. Under the
latter (who are the predominant political power in
Afghanistan today), women are totally deprived of the
right to education (all girls school have been closed
down), of the right to work (all women have been
ordered to remain in their houses and employers have
been threatened with dire consequences for taking up
female employees), of the right to travel (no woman
can venture out of the house alone and
unaccompanied by a prescribed male member of the
womans immediate family), of the right to health (no
woman can see a male doctor, family planning is
outlawed, women cannot be operated upon by a
surgical team containing a male member), of the right
to legal recourse (a womans testimony is worth half a
mans testimony; a woman cannot petition the court
directly this has to be done through a prescribed
male member of her immediate family), of the right to
recreation (all womens recreational and sporting
facilities have been banned, women singers cannot
sing least their female voices corrupt males, etc.),
and of the right to being human (they cannot show
their faces in public to male strangers, they cannot
wear bright coloured clothing, they cannot wear make
up, they can only appear outside their houses clad
head to foot in shapeless bags called burqas, they
cannot wear shoes with heels that click [least the
clicking sound of their feet corrupt males], they
cannot travel in private vehicles with male passengers,
they do not have the right to raise their voices when
talking in public, they cannot laugh loud as it lures
males into corruption, etc. etc.)
Beware --- some of the films show killings by the Taliban.
or a Mandela
And it will upset the Taliban so bad, it dont much matter.
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