In 2001, US First Lady Laura Bush said “the fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women.’’ In practice, because of the subsequent US military strategy to bring warlords into power to replace the Taliban has proved to be a negation of this. Women’s rights are regularly traded for political deals. Afghanistan’s most famous woman and youngest MP, Malalai Joya, remains suspended from parliament because of the government’s effort to please the Northern Alliance. Gulbadin Hikmatyar, notorious since the 1970s for his anti-women barbarities, has been accommodated. Now talks with the Taliban are underway.
On the streets of Kabul burqa-clad women outnumber those without burqa. So much for images flashed in the global media in 2001 of Afghan women happily removing their veils. Those without burqa are subjected to sexual harassment at workplaces and in the streets and are more vulnerable to groping by men on public buses. This is an outcome of Talibanisation, which views a woman without purdah as having questionable character. Hence, many girls who want to study or work prefer burqa to escape sexual harassment. It is the same Kabul where two decades ago girls went to university in skirts with burqa-clad students, without ever inviting trouble.
Though the Karzai administration keeps boasting about millions of girls being registered at schools and colleges, far more women are unable to read and write than men. Eighty percent of woman suffer domestic violence, 60 percent are coerced into forced marriages while half of them are married before reaching the age of 16. Self-immolation has of late become common practice among desperate Afghan women seeking an escape from the harsh Afghan life. True, the situation is not comparable with the Taliban-era nightmare, but women in Kabul have not regained even a fraction of liberties they used to have before the Taliban and their jihadi predecessors after the fall of the secular government.
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4:42 AM
Moderate Islamist here
