Chaleston Gaz
Belated
Helping Afghan women
Wednesday November 21, 2001
FOR FIVE years, human rights and feminist groups around the
world have clamored to save Afghan women from the barbaric
cruelty imposed on them by the puritanical Taliban theocracy.
Now that the hidebound regime has been shattered and driven into
retreat, happy Afghan women are shedding their shrouds and
coming out of the prisonlike strictures that had hobbled them.
Strangely, after the problem seemed mostly cured, first lady Laura
Bush announced a worldwide effort against the "brutal
oppression'' of women in Afghanistan. She delivered the weekly
presidential radio address in behalf of her husband.
What an odd development - to jump belatedly on a crusade that
others had been waging for years. However, if her address was
designed to guarantee that the next Afghan government liberates
women, it's a commendable stand.
This situation presents a bizarre irony: During the Soviet
occupation of Afghanistan, women were freed to wear modern
clothes, attend college and hold many professional jobs. But Cold
War "hawks" in Washington secretly armed that nation's
fundamentalists who were horrified that the Russians allowed
women to be educated. Republican President Reagan called the
fanatics "freedom fighters." With U.S. help, they drove out the
Russians and imprisoned women.
Laura Bush's stand is a refreshing reversal of Washington's pattern
in the 1980s.
-- Anonymous, November 21, 2001
WashTimes
Afghan women celebrate
freedom from tyranny
''Long before the current war began,"
first lady Laura
Bush said the other day, "the Taliban and its
terrorist allies
were making the lives of children and women in
Afghanistan
miserable. Seventy percent of the Afghan
people are
malnourished. One in every four children won't
live past the
age of 5, because health care is not
available. Women have
been denied access to doctors when they're
sick. Life under
the Taliban is so hard and repressive, even
small displays of
joy are outlawed — children aren't allowed to
fly kites; their
mothers face beatings for laughing out loud.
Women cannot
work outside the home, or even leave their
homes by
themselves. The severe repression and
brutality against
women in Afghanistan is not a matter of
legitimate religious
practice. . . . The plight of women and
children in Afghanistan
is a matter of deliberate human cruelty,
carried out by those
who seek to intimidate and control."
Indeed, what we witnessed in recent days,
such as
women shedding their stifling burqas, is far
more significant
than the symbolic gestures displayed during
America's sexual
revolution, when women called men
"chauvinists" and burned
their bras during brazen public denouncements.
Ever since the
Taliban took control of Afghanistan in the
mid-1990s, women
were smothered in more than the floor-length
shrouds that
they were compelled to wear; they were
considered persona
non grata.
In Kabul last week, they laughed out
loud, freely walked
without benefit of male escorts, and snatched
off their burqas
and washed in the river. Many merely stepped
out of doors,
or let the sunlight pour over their uncovered
faces — small
pleasures that women elsewhere take for
granted.
For those and many other reasons —
including the fact
that Afghanistan ranks No. 1 in the world in
maternal
mortality — it is imperative to follow Mrs.
Bush's lead. To be
sure, the post-Taliban government must
preserve basic
human rights for women and children, millions
of whom have
suffered from years of drought and civil war.
"All of us have
an obligation to speak out," Mrs. Bush said in
a radio address
on Saturday, when she substituted for the
president. "The
terrorists who helped rule that country now
plot and plan in
many countries. And they must be stopped."
Those are pretty tough words for a lady,
and we are
proud that she didn't hesitate to articulate
them. This is
because, as Mrs. Bush said, "The fight against
terrorism is
also a fight for the rights and dignity of
women."
-- Anonymous, November 21, 2001
Afghan teachers and
social workers remove their
burqas as they leave
a meeting Tuesday called by
Ismail Khan, the
liberal warlord who took over
Herat after the fall
of the Taliban, at the former
royal palace of Zaher
Shah in Herat, Afghanistan.
The meeting was held
to discuss education
-- Anonymous, November 21, 2001