International Women's Day

International Women's Day in Afghanistan; women still have a long way to go.

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — It's in the voices of the young that hope can be found for women in Afghanistan.

While their mothers and grandmothers wept for their past on International Women's Day, the young girls laughed and sang for the future.

More than 1,000 women gathered at two events in Kandahar on Saturday to celebrate the day devoted to women's rights around the world.

Young women know a different Afghanistan than generations past - they can go to school and find work.
But neither they nor their elders know peace yet, and many said Saturday that is the only thing holding back the full advancement of women in Afghan society.

"When security becomes good, when it becomes safe and we feel we can leave our children outside, no bomb blasts, no kidnapping, nothing, that's when things will be better for women," said Rangina Farescshta, one of the women who attended a rally organized by the provincial women's council in Kandahar.

When the Taliban descended on Afghanistan over a decade ago, the public lives of women effectively came to an end.

The world gasped in horror as thousands of Afghan women were shrouded behind the veil of the burka, losing their jobs, their schools, even their ability to go out in public alone.

Since 2001 and the fall of the Taliban, women are slowly rising back up through the ranks of Afghan society. They sit in government, run hospitals and have regained the right to an education.
"This year is better than last year and the year before last year," said Dr. Farishta Bwar, who works in the department of public health. "Every day the women's life becomes a little better."

But a chilling list of statistics enumerate the hardships still facing the estimated 11 million women in Afghanistan, about half the population.

The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission recorded 2,374 cases of violence against women in 2007, including 165 cases of women setting themselves on fire. But the commission concedes the number doesn't really reflect Afghan society because such violent incidents often go unreported.
According to the United Nations, one woman in Afghanistan dies every 29 minutes due to reproductive health related complications.

Their average life expectancy is 44 years, about half that of a woman in Canada.
Though more than two million girls in Afghanistan are now registered for school, there are no numbers on how many actually attend class.

"There was a girl who was going to school and she was threatened and she left school altogether," said Foozia, 14, who still attend class at her school in Kandahar city where conditions are safe.
Foozia said she was at Saturday's rally because it's important to show support for the women of Afghanistan. "We want a peaceful Afghanistan where every woman will be able to ask for her rights," she said.

It's violence that made the old women cry at Saturday's rally.
One after the other, women who'd lost their sons, husbands and brothers to the fighting in Afghanistan rose, wrapped in white scarves, to share their stories.

Sobbing, they called for peace and for women's rights.

There are an estimated one million widows in Afghanistan, many under the age of 35, who face particular difficulty in society. Without men to provide for them, they must use whatever meagre skills they have to eke out a living, but more than 85 per cent of the women in Afghanistan are illiterate. Canada funds a number of programs aimed specifically at widows in Afghanistan. It also spends millions of dollars through the Canadian International Development Agency on education, health and human rights programs aimed improving the lot of all Afghan women.

But men still have control, said Farescshta. "Husbands, fathers, sons have the power to stop women from going outside to make society beautiful and make society educated," she said.
"Husbands, they (often) don't let their wives and sisters and mothers to do work outside, to get education for their children."

The young girls outside one of Saturday's rallies said their mothers and fathers were supportive of them being in school For Sabeera, 10, it's all she wants to think about.
She and her classmates, dressed in the glittery greens and reds of Afghanistan's national costumes, shook their heads with an emphatic "no" when asked if they want to grow up into a life like their mothers.
They don't wish to marry, nor have children, Sabeera said, they want to be doctors or teachers or police officers. An impish grin broke over her face as she stood to recite a poem she'd written.
"I am going to school of my own choice," she said. "There is competition among the girls in school. I do not want to be behind them. I have to be ahead of everyone. I have to succeed."

Crickets

Media Matters reports that:

The repetitive and dismal headlines from Afghanistan, even if largely tucked away, tell the story of our "other war" -- more U.S. (and NATO) troops, more military aid, more reconstruction funds, more fighting, more casualties, heavier weaponry, more air power, more bad news, and predictions of worse to come -- and under such headlines lie deeper tragedies that seldom make the headlines anywhere. Ann Jones, who has spent much time as a humanitarian aid worker in Afghanistan these last years and has written a moving book, Kabul in Winter, on her experiences, turns to one of those tragedies: the subject that used to be the pride of the Bush administration -- the "liberation" of Afghan women.

She paints a powerful portrait of the actual state of Afghan women, whose "liberation" has proven mostly theoretical. After all, 85 percent of Afghan women are illiterate, about 95 percent are estimated to be routinely subject to violence in the home, where most are confined. ("Public space and public life," Jones writes, "belong almost exclusively to men. President Karzai heads the country while his wife, a qualified gynecologist with needed skills, stays at home.") But above all, Jones considers the fact that women are "by custom and practice, the property of men. They may be traded and sold like any commodity."

For the present fate of women, especially in the southern provinces of Afghanistan, where the Taliban presence is on the rise, she concludes:

I blame George W. Bush, the 'liberator' who looked the other way. In 2001, the United States military claimed responsibility for these provinces, the heart of Taliban country; but diverted to adventures in the oilfields of Iraq, it failed for five years to provide the security international humanitarians needed to do the promised work of reconstruction... It's winter in Afghanistan now. No time to make war. But come spring, the Taliban promise a new offensive to throw out Karzai and foreign invaders. The British commander of NATO forces has already warned: 'We could actually fail here.' He also advised a British reporter that Westerners shouldn't even mention women's rights when more important things are at stake. As if security is not a woman's right. And peace.

You know, if I had a dime for every time women have been told that their rights will have to "wait" while "more important" things are being settled, I'd be a rich old woman.

Back in 2001, when it served the Bush junta's interests, here's what Laura Bush, a woman who'd never before cared a whit for how badly other women were oppressed, as long as she was free to "read, smoke, and admire," had to say about the plight of women in Afghanistan:

Radio Address by Mrs. Bush
Crawford, Texas

Good morning. I'm Laura Bush, and I'm delivering this week's radio address to kick off a world-wide effort to focus on the brutality against women and children by the al-Qaida terrorist network and the regime it supports in Afghanistan, the Taliban. That regime is now in retreat across much of the country, and the people of Afghanistan -- especially women -- are rejoicing. Afghan women know, through hard experience, what the rest of the world is discovering: The brutal oppression of women is a central goal of the terrorists. Long before the current war began, 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 five 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. Muslims around the world have condemned the brutal degradation of women and children by the Taliban regime. The poverty, poor health, and illiteracy that the terrorists and the Taliban have imposed on women in Afghanistan do not conform with the treatment of women in most of the Islamic world, where women make important contributions in their societies. Only the terrorists and the Taliban forbid education to women. Only the terrorists and the Taliban threaten to pull out women's fingernails for wearing nail polish. 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.

Civilized people throughout the world are speaking out in horror -- not only because our hearts break for the women and children in Afghanistan, but also because in Afghanistan we see the world the terrorists would like to impose on the rest of us.

All of us have an obligation to speak out. We may come from different backgrounds and faiths -- but parents the world over love our children. We respect our mothers, our sisters and daughters. Fighting brutality against women and children is not the expression of a specific culture; it is the acceptance of our common humanity -- a commitment shared by people of good will on every continent. Because of our recent military gains in much of Afghanistan, women are no longer imprisoned in their homes. They can listen to music and teach their daughters without fear of punishment. Yet the terrorists who helped rule that country now plot and plan in many countries. And they must be stopped. The fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women.

In America, next week brings Thanksgiving. After the events of the last few months, we'll be holding our families even closer. And we will be especially thankful for all the blessings of American life. I hope Americans will join our family in working to insure that dignity and opportunity will be secured for all the women and children of Afghanistan.

Have a wonderful holiday, and thank you for listening.

What does Laura have to say today? Listen here to her latest remarks on this subject