Beaten Afghan Brides -Kristof

KABUL, Afghanistan

I had an inspiration about where Osama bin Laden might be hiding. But when I visited the women's detention center in Kabul, there was no sign of him.

I did meet Ellaha, a bold 19-year-old prisoner who startled me by greeting me in English. (Like many Afghans, she uses only one name.) She had been attending college as a refugee in Iran when her family pulled her out, alarmed that education might corrupt a young lady's morals.

Her family returned to Afghanistan, and she found work in a U.S. construction company, where her bosses were so impressed that they began arranging a scholarship for her to go to Canada to study.

That horrified her family because the patriarchs had decided that she would marry her cousin. "I didn't agree to marry him," she told me through an interpreter, "because he is not educated and I don't like his job - he is a butcher. Plus, he's three years younger than me." .....more more more......

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/06/opinion/06kris.html?oref=login

women in Pakistan getting killed by their male relatives (brothers and fathers) if they leave an abusive husband.

over 300 women murdered last year for "shaming" their family by leaving a wife beater.

This is the new "women's rights" struggle and will get a lot of my time after November.