Posted on 11/16/2001 1:17:56 PM PST by BritBulldog
The biggest con of Kabul's new masters is the claim that under "liberation" women are getting a better deal.
For the benefit of the foreign press there are now female announcers on Radio Afghanistan. And for photographers now swarming around the city, a few women will obligingly take off their burqas.
But what the photos don't show is these women putting the burqas back on immediately afterwards. Because the truth is that, Taliban or no Taliban, women here remain strictly second-class.
Almost every woman in Afghanistan continues to wear this burqa, a humiliating and ridiculous robe that forces her to walk with pigeon steps to avoid falling over, and to stare out at the world through a narrow 30-degree field of vision.
True, women are no longer beaten or stoned by the Taliban religious police for showing a flash of ankle. But the new regime has a different mechanism for ensuring compliance: shame.
Officially, no woman needs to wear the burqa. But each will bring disgrace on her family by not wearing one. For the secret of this society is a tightly observed conspiracy that goes way beyond any laws and needs no enforcement.
"Liberation" means that men are the only ones actually doing things: those cheering crowds who welcomed the foreign journalists were all men or boys.
The translators now working for us are all men. The drivers, shopkeepers, hotel receptionists and computer operators are exclusively men. Women, when seen at all, scurry from one doorway to another.
Only a few years ago women in Afghan cities wore flashy clothes and went to university. But those women have long since emigrated.
The best insight into the attitude to women here came today as I rattled through the streets in a our white and yellow taxi. A woman of indeterminate age - how can you tell, when they are all forced to wear tents for clothes? - stepped out to cross the road.
Our car was going fast, as fast as is usual in the traffic madhouse that has descended on Kabul since Liberation on Tuesday. I expected the driver to stop. However, he pumped not the brake but the horn as the car bore down on her. The woman, her light blue burqa now flapping in the wind, had to scurry out of the way, stumbling and nearly falling as she did so, her steps limited by the width of the dress.
We missed her by a couple of feet and the taxi sped past, the driver shaking his head.
The Northern Alliance officials now in the capital mutter privately about not wanting women to vote. Education for girls is fine, education for women is pointless. Their role is to serve men - no more, no less.
Tony Blair can talk all he likes about supporting a broad-based, rights-respecting government for Kabul but the truth is that the next regime - whomever it includes - will treat women in a way that, were it done to men, would be a breach of the world slavery convention.
For the women of Kabul, "liberation" is a relative concept.
We're not in Afghanistan to Westernise it. We're there to destroy an enemy who's hiding there. Try to understand the difference.
I find measurements of the relative size of the Mercies in question to be more reliable when coming from the people directly affected themselves - namely, Afghanis and Afghan women in particular - than when they come from dispassionate skeptical Western observers trying their darnedest to rain on a parade.
But, maybe that's just me.
The "some" are those in the media that treated the Northern Alliance advancing into Kabul as though they were akin to the Allies liberating Paris during WW2.
Yes, it would be nice to hear from Afghan women on their liberation, but haven't seen too much of that on my TV screen for some reason
Thank god for some sanity around here. Was starting to think I was going mad.
I've been waiting for this. According to an NPR journalist on the scene, reporting by satphone on the day Kabul was liberated, it was the townspeople who committed those atrocities and the NA moved in to restore order and stop the slaughter and looting. Which is why they moved in at all, despite promising they wouldn't.
Assuming you are a Brit writing from Britain, you should know that NPR is our public radio and about the leftiest of the lefty, knee-jerk anti-war media outlets. I'm sure somebody got hold of the reporter later and gave him the appropriate liberal spin, but I was listening to his story at the same time I was reading a Guardian article blaming all the gore on the NA.
The NA are not nice guys - they were bad enough that Afghanis invited the Taliban to push them out. But, then, the Guardian aren't nice guys, either.
Thank you for that reminder. That needed saying.
Guess I missed that. I saw members of the media reporting it as good news - and being somewhat surprised about it - but nothing with the implications you mention.
I must be watching the wrong channel(s).
Yes, it would be nice to hear from Afghan women on their liberation, but haven't seen too much of that on my TV screen for some reason
Surely it must be because it's all a pack of lies, and the women would just as well have the Talibs back, because being "shamed" is no better than being slaughtered. Surely.
I feel so horrible now. Stupid, stupid Westerner that I am.
Assuming you are a Brit writing from Britain, you should know that NPR is our public radio and about the leftiest of the lefty, knee-jerk anti-war media outlets. I'm sure somebody got hold of the reporter later and gave him the appropriate liberal spin, but I was listening to his story at the same time I was reading a Guardian article blaming all the gore on the NA.
The NA are not nice guys - they were bad enough that Afghanis invited the Taliban to push them out. But, then, the Guardian aren't nice guys, either.
Looks like were agreed on the NA and the Guardian then.
You'll have to enlighten me on that one. Ie 2nd Amendment.
Our founding fathers who wrote and ratified our constitution wouldn't give women the right to vote. That right was granted much later by another group in this country, who amended the Constitution.
We can't expect rapid democratic changes in Afghanistan. We didn't have those changes in our own country for many years after it was founded. - Tom
No it's not lies. Women are slightly better off. But if were going to have some sort of influence there (ie investing money and the like) we should insist they become a lot better off. For starters there should be women in the new government.
BTW, the term "atrocity," at least as applied to the killing of surrendered or captured enemies, is a classic example of cultural imperialism. Who are we to say that our values are better than theirs? Killing your enemies is probably the oldest and most valued Afghan tradition. We should learn to value this diversity.
Who is to say that our values are better than those of Apartheid South Africa.
How fortunate that Tony Blair doesn't care what these idiots think.
Try to restrain your historical ignorance. No Western/Christian society ever had an institution remotely similar to purdah or the burqua, much less the hareem. Perhaps the closest were traditional societies of Spain and Sicily, which were heavily influenced by Arab/Moslem attitudes due to long periods of occupation by them.
Most traditional Western/Christian societies, although quite variable, had a rough and ready equality in many respects between the sexes, when compared to historical norms.
A great many of the feminist stories of oppression are either just untrue, like the famous "rule of thumb" myth, or give only one side of what was invariably a complex issue.
I am glad women have finally achieved full legal equality in this society, but the demonization of our Christian past serves nobody but those who want to tear down the few remaining vestiges of traditional morality. It is not difficult to make a case that women and children were better protected in many ways 50 or 100 years ago than they are today. Not all "progress" is really progress.
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