http://www.dallasnews.com/attack_on_america/background/stories/STORY.e983f2b82b.b0.af.0.a4.a309a.html A harsh reality uncovered

War raises awareness of Afghan women's plight under Taliban

10/13/2001

By CAROLYN BARTA / The Dallas Morning News

Their plight used to be invisible.

But a month after inconceivable terrorist attacks on America, the treatment of Afghan women by the Taliban is finally getting the attention feminists have sought for five years.

They say Americans are donating funds, contacting members of Congress and the State Department, and urging more humanitarian aid as awareness grows of the abuse of women in Afghanistan and a mounting refugee crisis.

"People are seeing that the treatment of women was just a symptom of this regime. It's part of the terrorism," said Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority Foundation.

Mavis Leno, head of that group's Campaign to End Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan, said, "We are having overwhelming response from people as the reality of this situation sets in and as people understand that human rights abuses don't stay in the country of origin; they travel."

And the needs increase as more Afghans flee their country under the military strikes. Since Sept. 11, the plight of refugees and displaced persons has become "even more perilous," Ms. Smeal said.

Describing a "near holocaust situation" in the refugee camps, she appealed to Congress this week to increase humanitarian aid from the $320 million that President Bush announced a week ago to the $1 billion proposed by Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del.

Ms. Smeal and Ms. Leno, a free-lance writer and wife of comedian Jay Leno, have been at the forefront of efforts to raise public awareness about the abuse of women in Afghanistan since 1997. But they got little attention in the mainstream press before Sept. 11.

Since then, they have been in demand for national television appearances. In interviews with The Dallas Morning News, both said the documentary by British journalist Saira Shah, "Beneath the Veil," repeatedly broadcast by CNN, has heightened awareness. The film shows women being beaten and executed.

Before, Ms. Leno said, "it was hard to convince people we weren't exaggerating" about the abuse of women, who today are estimated to be 60 to 70 percent of the adult population of Afghanistan.

Before the 1996 Taliban takeover, they were more than 70 percent of the teachers, 40 percent of doctors, half of the university students. They wore Western dress.

Nowhere to go

Today, they see the world through an eye-slit in a required head-to-toe burqua – banned from work and school, and from leaving home unless accompanied by a male relative.

Many have no male relatives, no means of support, and no access to health care, because they are not allowed to disrobe before a male doctor. Most health-care practitioners for women and children previously were female.

More than a year ago, the Feminist Majority Foundation began sending funds to underground schools and clinics in Afghanistan and refugee camps under Taliban patrol.

Life is not much better in the camps. Ms. Smeal described conditions as "horrific," with little food or sanitation, and many families having only plastic sheets for shelters. She cites some estimates that one woman dies in childbirth every 30 minutes and that one in four children die before the age of 5 in the camps in Pakistan.

Millions will need aid

The United Nations estimates the number needing humanitarian assistance will soon reach 7.5 million, including those displaced inside Afghanistan.

Feminist leaders say they will continue to send funds for schools and health care in the refugee camps and will work to ensure the democratic reconstruction of Afghanistan that will restore women's rights and a civil society. More than 200 women's rights and human rights groups are co-sponsoring the campaign chaired by Ms. Leno.

They say their toll-free number and website, www.helpafghanwomen.com, have been inundated since Sept. 11. Action teams – of community and school organizations, Girl Scout troops, and groups of co-workers – are forming at the rate of more than 100 a week. Sales of Afghan crafts to benefit women-led refugee groups have boomed.

"We believe we've been effective, but in terms of food and medical care that the United States can give, it's nothing," Ms. Leno said.

Experts and women who escaped before the Taliban came to power say the plight of Afghan women is not being overstated.

"This is a lifestyle akin to the way women were living in the seventh or eighth centuries," said Thomas Guittierre, who heads the Center for Afghanistan Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

"There's nothing for women in Afghanistan right now. They're like the hidden people," said Mr. Guittierre, who became acquainted with the country as a Peace Corps volunteer, later lived there for 10 years, and was political affairs officer in the U.N. peacekeeping mission there in 1996-97.

Rights taken away

Many Afghan women remember their equal rights from 1964 until 1973, when the country had a constitutional monarchy. Conditions became worse under the Communists and then the mujahedeen. But under the Taliban, women became shrouded creatures with no rights.

Mahnaz Budri, a substitute teacher who lives in Colleyville with her husband and two teenage children, left Afghanistan as a university student in 1979. She remembers going to the movies and gathering in the street with her girlfriends, in Western dress, "without anyone scolding us. We were never afraid of anybody."

Sara Amiryar, associate director of affirmative action at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., left the country in 1973 after the first coup.

Her husband, Quadir Amiryar, now a professor at George Washington University, helped write the 1964 constitution that provided for the universal right to vote, an independent judiciary, and an elected Parliament.

"Afghans are not strangers to democracy," he said.

Ms. Amiryar has been back to Afghanistan and to Pakistan and India to get family members out. Stories about the treatment of women in Afghanistan and conditions in refugee camps don't convey "the entire cruelty," she said.

In 1998, she saw refugees scrambling in the dust to recover pieces of bread thrown from trucks, and grandmothers weeping over whether to eat the bread or give it to starving children.

Afghan women, she said, "are educated – engineers, doctors, teachers, faculty members, lawyers, members of Parliament, judges. Some of them are still there, but they can't speak."

The Taliban, she said, has taken the TVs and radios. "That is not Islamic. They wanted to cut off all their ties with the outside world. They made their homes prisons."

Advocates for Afghan women remain optimistic that the Taliban will collapse.

"I think that now that it's in focus, maybe some of these lives will be saved," Ms. Smeal said. But rebuilding the country could take years.

"The whole infrastructure is destroyed. Skilled and educated people have fled. There has got to be a readmission of people who can contribute skills," Ms. Leno said.

Ms. Amiryar, for one, is willing to return for a time to start schools and help Afghan women regain their confidence.

"They have been emotionally destroyed," she said.

-- Anonymous, October 12, 2001

Answers

How anyone who is any sort of a man can accept this situation for his female relatives is totally beyond me.

-- Anonymous, October 13, 2001

But a month after inconceivable terrorist attacks on America, the treatment of Afghan women by the Taliban is finally getting the attention feminists have sought for five years.

This is why so many were outraged when Bush sent the $43 million to the Taliban a few months ago. After all, aid was going other places without any outcry. But everyone always bitched that complains that were made about things done in this administration was because of "tree hugging liberals" dislike of conservatives. This is not the only ignorant thing that has been done by the people in the administration. There are too many people who had a vested interest in getting Bush elected, and were getting paybacks while so many important things were being ignored in this country and in the world, that it had reached a critical point where the only interests that were being served were thos of the people who paid big money to the republican candidates.

AND any idea or policies Clinton had impliminted and/or tried to get impliminated were struck down.

I think it is time for everyone to stand back, look at the REAL needs of this country, the people of this country, and the world and focus on what needs to be done for them, and STOP playing that stupid little game about "the RIGHT to profit by big gian corporations.

Right now thousands of people have lost their jobs due to Sep 11, and thousands more will be loosing jobs. Yet a parent who gets laid off in a community with thousands of others and will not be able to get what few jobs are left...got turned additional unemployment turned down by congress at the same time the republicans put in for a "bailout" for businesses, even if they are not impacted and make huge profits. What happens to these people in this country when they run out of unemployment and still haven't been able to get a job? They cannot go bankrupt, there is no more welfare, most of the funding for retraining has been cut or stopped, pregnant and nursing women, infants and children will not get supplimental food (WIC) because it has been decimated, health care for working poor doesn't exist, and unemployment compensation will put people above the cutoff for healthcare.

Why was the funding for books for kids cut????? Yet the energy policy give "insentives" to oil companies who have made a fortion in the past year?

There a so many things that are wrong and inhumane in this country. How can the USA demand anything for the women and children and people in need in Afganastan when, by their own actions, they have forced the women, children and people in need here to suffer by their political actions?How can the USA talk about the tolorance and respect the Taliban should give people there, when there has been nothing but intolorance and lack of repsect shown to anyone in this country who didn't follow the republican party line in the past9 years..including the previous President?

Are all the people now jobless because of the crashes and the wives and children now "the scum of the earth, bleeding the tax dollars out of hard the working people of the country?

All of that crap that was spouted since the election about anyone who did not follow the republican party line, now applies to thousands of victims of the crashes. But those who were in the same situation by a personal tragedy, say an illness or death of a spouse before 911 were treated like crap by the loudmouthed republican extremests who literally bullied their views and ideas into the forefront of the media and government.

I hope people will open their eyes now....

-- Anonymous, October 14, 2001

Well Cherri, I’ve opened my eyes and come to understand what a piece of sorry work you are. This post is another one of your selective cut- n-pastes and follows your line of hatred towards the Republican Party. I have two questions for you:

1). Where has YOUR outrage been over the plight of females in the Taliban era? I don’t remember seeing ONE word from you about this.

2). Why are you continually lying about your military background?

-- Anonymous, October 14, 2001

(you may want to note the date)

Well Cherri, I’ve opened my eyes and come to understand what a piece of sorry work you are. This post is another one of your selective cut- n-pastes and follows your line of hatred towards the Republican Party. I have two questions for you:

1). Where has YOUR outrage been over the plight of females in the Taliban era? I don’t remember seeing ONE word from you about this.

I am not responsable for what you do or don't read. But here it is....

UN Accuses Taliban of Selling Drugs to Finance Reign of Terrorism just Days After Bush Contributes $43 Million to Their Cause

greenspun.com : LUSENET : Exposing Rightwing Corruption : One Thread

$43,000,000 of your tax dollars are going to the Taliban, thanks to UnPresident Bush and the clan....please consider visiting this website to see what you are helping to fund, then consider two things:

#1.) Giving to support the RAWA, even if it's just a few dollars.

#2.) WRITING to UnPresident Bush and telling him what you think about YOUR hard earned money funding the Taliban and helping to oppress the Afghan people....particularly women, Buddhists, and Hindus. Bush's e-mail address: president@whitehouse.gov

The website: http://my.rawa.org/index.html

Information on the Taliban from Democrats.com:

UN Accuses Taliban of Selling Drugs to Finance Reign of Terrorism just Days After Bush Contributes $43 Million to Their Cause Shrub really knows how to pick 'em. This past week, he announced a gift of $43 million to Afghanistan's extremist leaders, the Taliban - a group known for its religious intolerance, terrorist tactics, oppression of women and obliteration of a nation's historic heritage. Now it comes to light that the UN has accused the Taliban of selling stockpiled opium and heroin to finance its war and train terrorists. So, Shrub's nice little gift added to the dope money ought to finance plenty of torture deaths, bombs, and misery. Who will you finance next, Shrub? - Neo-Nazi extremists?

Thanks!

Look it's http://www.democrats.com

I thought that what the Chinese Government has done (and is still doing) to Tibet and it's people was bad...they are pussycats compared to the now US Funded (i.e. - your tax dollars) Taliban.

Bush's Faustian Deal with the Taliban

By Robert Scheer

Enslave your girls and women, harbor anti-U.S. terrorists and destroy every vestige of civilization in your homeland, and the Bush administration will embrace you. All that matters is that you line up as an ally in the drug war, the only international cause that this nation still takes seriously. That's the message sent with the recent gift of $43 million to the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, the most virulent anti-American violators of human rights in the world today. The gift, announced last Thursday by Secretary of State Colin Powell, in addition to other recent aid, makes the United States the main sponsor of the Taliban and rewards that "rogue regime" for declaring that opium growing is against the will of God. So, too, by the Taliban's estimation, are most human activities, but it's the ban on drugs that catches this administration's attention.

Never mind that Osama bin Laden still operates the leading anti-American terror operation from his base in Afghanistan, from which, among other crimes, he launched two bloody attacks on American embassies in Africa in 1998. Sadly, the Bush administration is cozying up to the Taliban regime at a time when the United Nations, at U.S. insistence, imposes sanctions on Afghanistan because the Kabul government will not turn over Bin Laden.

The war on drugs has become our own fanatics' obsession and easily trumps all other concerns. How else could we come to reward the Taliban, who has subjected the female half of the Afghan population to a continual reign of terror in a country once considered enlightened in its treatment of women?

At no point in modern history have women and girls been more systematically abused than in Afghanistan, where in the name of madness masquerading as Islam, the government in Kabul obliterates their fundamental human rights.

Women may not appear in public without being covered from head to toe with the oppressive shroud called the burkha, and they may not leave the house without being accompanied by a male family member. They've not been permitted to attend school or be treated by male doctors, yet women have been banned from practicing medicine or any profession for that matter.

The lot of males is better if they blindly accept the laws of an extreme religious theocracy that prescribes strict rules governing all behavior, from a ban on shaving to what crops may be grown. It is this last power that has captured the enthusiasm of the Bush White House. The Taliban fanatics, economically and diplomatically isolated, are at the breaking point, and so, in return for a pittance of legitimacy and cash from the Bush administration, they have been willing to appear to reverse themselves on the growing of opium.

That a totalitarian country can effectively crack down on its farmers is not surprising. But it is grotesque for a U.S. official, James P. Callahan, director of the State Department's Asian anti-drug program, to describe the Taliban's special methods in the language of representative democracy:

"The Taliban used a system of consensus-building," Callahan said after a visit with the Taliban, adding that the Taliban justified the ban on drugs "in very religious terms." Of course, Callahan also reported, those who didn't obey the theocratic edict would be sent to prison.

In a country where those who break minor rules are simply beaten on the spot by religious police and others are stoned to death, it's understandable that the government's "religious" argument might be compelling. Even if it means, as Callahan concedes, that most of the farmers who grew the poppies will now confront starvation. That's because the Afghan economy has been ruined by the religious extremism of the Taliban, making the attraction of opium as a previously tolerated quick cash crop overwhelming. For that reason, the opium ban will not last unless the United States is willing to pour far larger amounts of money into underwriting the Afghan economy. As the Drug Enforcement Administration's Steven Casteel admitted, "The bad side of the ban is that it's bringing their country -- or certain regions of their country -- to economic ruin." Nor did he hold out much hope for Afghan farmers growing other crops such as wheat, which require a vast infrastructure to supply water and fertilizer that no longer exists in that devastated country.

There's little doubt that the Taliban will turn once again to the easily taxed cash crop of opium in order to stay in power. The Taliban may suddenly be the dream regime of our own drug-war zealots, but in the end this alliance will prove a costly failure. Our long sad history of signing up dictators in the war on drugs demonstrates the futility of building a foreign policy on a domestic obsession.

© 2001 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

-- Cherri (jessam5@home.com), May 29, 2001

Answers

Cherri, you REALLY need to stop reading this stuff.

-- Carlos (riffraff@cybertime.net), May 30, 2001.

2). Why are you continually lying about your military background?

ROFLMAO, I do not lie about my military background. It isn't my fault if you do not have the ability to comprehend reality.

-- Just (the@facts.mam), October 14, 2001.

Them's the facts, live with it...or don't, it is no concern of mine what you thing or believe. Realise you are nothing to me, and your opinions or beliefs have absolutly no effect on me or my existance.CHEERS

-- Anonymous, October 14, 2001

What about what I posted in on May 29, 2001 about the Taliban has been shown to be incorrect? Perhaps if people would stop killing the messenger (me) and start READING the things I post with an open mind, they would learn something.

Tell me, what did you know about the Taliban and Afganastan before Sept 11?

I answered you, can you answer me?

-- Anonymous, October 14, 2001

I knew how to spell Afghanistan.

And I’ll give you credit for the cut-n-paste you did on the Taliban in May.

Yes, you are still lying about your military service. You never flew those aircraft and you know it. You may have worked in flight simulators but are you so stupid as to think that is the same as having a ‘ticket’ to fly? Even so, with all of those supposed skills why are you sitting around on your fat ass collecting welfare?

-- Anonymous, October 14, 2001

Yes, you are still lying about your military service. You never flew those aircraft and you know it. You may have worked in flight simulators but are you so stupid as to think that is the same as having a ‘ticket’ to fly? Even so, with all of those supposed skills why are you sitting around on your fat ass collecting welfare?

I have never claimed to having documentation that would allow me to fly the actual aircraft. Although we were allowed to go up with the crews and do so on occasion. I could have gotten a license easily, it wouldn't have taken much to get a license to fly commercial-lots of co-workers chose to. Personally I find flying boring, and unless I were allowed to fly a fighter (which women were not allowed to when I was in) I have no desire to fly, there are too many more interesting things to do.
Read whatever I have written and notice the exact wording I use. Almost everyone on this forum has known for years that I worked in Flight simulators. It is only the ignorant and newbies that would misunderstand what I am talking about when I mention my aircraft flying abilities.

And are you so stupid as to believe that because someone who doesn't agree with my political views has written that my ass is fat and I am sitting on welfare? More to the point, I have stated clearly where I am at in life and why. It takes more guts to do that than to blindly attack me of lying because it beyond your ability to believe what I write.

I guess your educated ability to spell is more important than knowledge of world situations. I would rather be bad at spelling and knowledgeable, than spell well and not know about the world and other things I am knowledgeable about.

I learned a LONG time ago that there was no way I could please everyone who came into contact with me. I chose a set of moral standards (not to lie, cheat or steal, and do the best I could) which I have lived by. I am not working in my field at the moment, although it is through no "fault" on my part. I am not ashamed of what I have done instead, even though it may not have been what I would have chosen to have done, it was important that it got done. In the process I have done what I could to excel in what I have done even though there was no monitory reward. There are other rewards that I believe were more important.

Like I said above, what you think has no importance to me, It appears what I write hold a certain amount of importance to you or you would not let me "control" you in the ways I appear to.

Now for another question to you, how much do you know about Clinton's policies and efforts against terrorism and middle east policy are you aware of? Or did you just swallow the monica-gate news of the same period?

-- Anonymous, October 14, 2001

Working in flight simulators will never qualify you to fly an aircraft. You have repeatedly stated that you have ‘flown’ these airplanes and engaged in clownish deception. I guess a few years on MS Flight Sim would put you in the friendly skies. The years of hard work and high level training required to fly this kind of heavy metal is so far beyond Sim time as to be laughable. Like playing Clue would make you a licensed Private Detective. ROTFLMAO!

-- Anonymous, October 14, 2001

Cherri,

Even assuming that this story is correct -- and it *HAS* been addressed elsewhere; why do you act as if it hasn't? (In fact, several people have pointed out that the story is just flat WRONG, but this guy keeps saying it out of sheer hatred) -- why do you think this even MATTERS?

As I pointed out here elsewhere, just prior to WWII, France was Germany's largest trading partner. Only a few months prior to Pearl Harbor, we were still selling raw materials and oil to Japan.

In fact, many of the tanks and guns that the Germans used to conquer France, and many of the ships that Japan used to sink ours, were built with raw materials supplied by these "trading partners."

Hindsight is 20/20.

You cannot compare pre-war realities with those existing now.

-- Anonymous, October 14, 2001

Or did you just swallow the monica-gate news of the same period?

More importantly, did Monica swallow?

-- Anonymous, October 15, 2001

No, that's why it was on her dress.

-- Anonymous, October 15, 2001