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.
Exactly.
If you want to believe in cultural relativism, where can you draw a line?
We're not in Afghanistan to Westernise it. We're there to destroy an enemy who's hiding there. Try to understand the difference.
If we do not destroy the culture that produced that enemy, then it will raise a new crop of enemies for us within a few years. This is what Gen McArthur understood when he set out to transform Japan into a Western country after WW-II.
Our mission is to defeat terrorism. Women in Afghanistan have been terrorized into wearing their burqas by the same mental defectives responsible for 911. Women there were already westernized before Laden and Omar. Arming the women would be a great way to neutralize the fundametalist Muslims responsible for terrorism.
See above, #63.
Who said anything about "have some sort of influence there (ie investing money and the like)"? The goal was, and is, purely and simply to kill certain people there and to dissuade other people there from following in the footsteps of the killed people. I don't know where you got any other impression.
we should insist they become a lot better off.
I don't give a rat's ass whether they become a lot better off, as long as they stop harboring and funding terrorists. The rest is their problem.
For starters there should be women in the new government.
Whatever.
As long as they stop harboring and funding terrorists. That's the goal. (Though, evidently, not yours.)
Well said.
I agree, but our allowing the Afghan culture and their civilization to twist in the wind after we used their thugs and Arab thug friends to defeat the Soviets did lead to the resident terrorist problems. Many of those women were educated professionals before the Taleban took over with their reign of terror in the pursuit of islamic purity.
The United States and the rest of the world now has the burden of bringing civilization (it doesn't have to be western style) to the parts of the world where islamic fundamentalists may use fear and superstition to establish a base and wage jihad against civilization. It's well known how these nut cases like to treat women, and giving women the means to fight back is a good idea.
I'm not sure where I stand in that regard. On one hand, we need some interaction to be able to penetrate and disrupt any anti-US clandestine activities. On the other, you lie down with dogs, you wake up with fleas.
In regard to the "women" issue, I'm sure NOW will be glad to hold diversity classes throughout the Middle East, no?
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