The blessed freedom of Afghanistan's women

I wish Kerry or Edwards would comment on stuff like this. Cheney last night mentioned the wonderful freedoms of women in Afghanistan and Bush brings it up, too. I wish our guys would talk about things like this -

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/06/opinion/06kris.html?oref=login&n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fColumnists%2fNicholas%



Beaten Afghan Brides
By NICHOLAS D. 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."

<snip> much more, very grim

I can't believe no one has anything to say about this stuff. I find it so sad that women are being used as pawns in this election. The women of Afghanistan are held up to us as this great victory yet they are still oppressed and treated as the property of the men in their life, even feeling the need to ask permission to vote. Many American women, portrayed as so smart and independent, are inexplicably supporting the Bush administration and their agenda of rolling back the rights we've worked so hard to gain. And no one has a comment?

I have no idea why not. I think maybe both sides don't want to touch that abortion issue. It it rather annoying that issues relating to half of this population are so under discussed by the candidates. Maybe they'll be forced to talk about these things on Friday's debate. I heard it was supposed to be over domestic issues.

i am sickened and appalled, not only by this story, but also by the lack of response to it.

Nothing new.

Nothing arguable.

This has been going on before, during, and after the American "liberation."

Frankly, I'd be sick and appalled if anybody were surprised by this.

i am certain that some people have no idea about this at all. i am certain that some of them are right here. i am certain some right here believe cheney's bs about freedom. i am positive of it, in fact.

And the quasifreepers. But they're the moral equivalent of the Taliban.

Anybody worth an ounce of respect and hasn't been living out in the woods for the last three years should be aware of it.

unlike me.

The decade was the 1940s, this is during the lifetime of many of us or our parents and grandparents.

Women in some parts of the country (see Bible Belt), though they had the right to vote, couldn't because their husbands didn't let them.

How did their husbands not let them? By going out with the boys on election night and leaving mom with the kids and no babysitter. He also took the car.

This was told to me by a woman who lived in one of these areas during the 40s who thought she was lucky because her husband did allow her to vote. He generously watched the kids while she went to the polls.

I asked her why didn't the women in the neighborhod get together to have a babysitting arrangement where half would vote and half would stay home and watch the neighborhood kids and then they'd switch. She told me it wasn't that easy. Women were often told not to vote.

She also told me that the mindset was different back then and that I don't understand.

She's right. I don't. People tell me I can't excercise a right, I will find some way to exercise it.

Perhaps the Afghan women and now the Iraqi women who remember being considered people in their own lands will do the same. They've tasted freedom to be who they are and they won't go back.

Remember that under the Taliban, the women were educating the girls on the sly.

It's a sad commentary that "Women's Rights are Human Rights" even has to be a slogan for a bumper sticker.

as a result of this macho control freak bible-thumping regime. But deeply entrenched sexism is why it gets no mention by Democrats. Other issues are always deemed more immediate, more important than what is happening to women. Women's concerns are always back burnered until "things settle down". Now if what hurts and represses 51% of the population were given priority, if that majority held a proportionate number of power positions in society, we might actually see some REAL social change for the better (and when I talk about women holding political positions, I exclude female reThug mouthpieces who actually have no concern for women needs or social needs for that matter---just enforcing the SmirkCo agenda.)

Like Bush's refusal to fund the international group CEDAW (Convention for Ending Discrimmination Against Women)--result? no help for programs against barring girls from education, programs to help end violence against women (that makes me think of the epidemic of men perpetrating acid attacks on women in rural India.) No help for women needing health care, or birth control or even sexual information to protect themselves against disease or deepening their poverty and endagering their lives by continuous childbearing. Forced marriage, forced childbearing, Female Genital Mutilation, etc etc etc. Or the global gag rule...result, hundreds of thousands of cases of horrific physical damage and suffering and deaths to women due to the closing of women's clinics. The only place you're gonna get to read about this though is in the feminist press like at PlannedParenthood.com.

Planned Parenthood has coined the phrase, "to look at the world as if women mattered."

"Women's suffering doesn't matter"--a quote from... Alice Walker? I can't remember who

and it won't be because the ugly men in black hoods give us that.

we will take it. bout fucking time is up.

have made things WORSE for the women there.

In the first Gulf War, female American troops stationed in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait couldn't drive, had to keep their hair covered, etc. Once they crossed the border into hostile Iraqi territory, that wasn't the case. Iraqi women under Saddam had MUCH more freedom than women in your average Muslim country - they could drive, go to school, hold jobs, no burqas (sp?), etc. Now, the only people who claim Iraqi women are better off are RW whores like Fox News:

Fox: "Iraqi Women Brutalized by Saddam"
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0%2C2933%2C78126%2C00.html

San Francisco Chronicle: "Women losing freedoms in chaos of postwar Iraq"
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/05/24/MN135276.DTL

The Guardian: "An Empty Sort of Freedom"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0%2C3858%2C4874743-103677%2C00.html

Kerry and Edwards NEED to be talking about this.

It sucks for those people. There is no electricity. The lady being interviewed said many women are too scared to go outside of their homes. They carry weapons and are worried about getting killed everyday. They hear gun fighting frequently. The lady was talking about how a lot of people are addicted to drugs/alcohol now. She used to take Valium to feel better, but stopped because it wasn't doing anything for her. Essentially, they didn't like Saddam, but they hate what's happening now even more because they are living in absolute chaos. How depressing. They need to show more of toll this war is taking on Iraqis. I don't believe most Americans understand the hell that these people are living in.

he just calls it "freedom." :grr: god this is infuriating! yeah...our side needs to start talking about this HUGE REALITY GAP.
and of course...the same thing is happening in iraq.

After I posted it, I had to leave to go volunteer at the Dem HQ for a couple of hours so it faded and died.

I disagree with the poster who said that "everybody already knows this." I don't think everybody does and besides, even if they do, why isn't there more outrage about it? This is a good argument against the Bush administration if nothing else - they keep using the women of Afghanistan as an example of how they've made the world better - well, the women of Afghanistan don't seem to have it any better than they did before.

Laura Bush was supposed to lead some great panel or somehting looking into women's issues there - never happened.

Prior to the Taliban, women in Afghanistan were educated, many in the professions. Now they have to beg their husbands for permission to vote, they are afraid to walk in the street without being covered from head to toe. Their daughters can be forcibly examined for "purity" and if they are not found to be virgin, are subject to imprisonment.

Yet the administration touts Afghanistan as a success story. I ask again, why are WE not talking about this and why is Kerry not talking about it?

The plight of the women in Afghanistan barely gets into print, let alone air time. Here's a good site re: Afghanistan issues:

http://topics.developmentgateway.org/afghanistan?goo=1848

Here's the organization that Mavis Leno(Jay's wife) was involved with:

http://www.feminist.org/afghan/

My daughter, who is stationed in Afghanistan, says one of her duties is female point checks. In other words, she, as a female soldier, searches the women at wherever it is they search them. For weapons, bombs, contraband. She told me that women, who have a hard time believing that she is female, and will actually feel her breasts to reassure themselves. It's evidently a two-point issue. First, no male can touch them--not a bad thing of itself, but the second, that she is a soldier, carries a big gun and all that, and female, is hard for them to comprehend. Of course I wish a world where Women's equality didn't have to include acceptance to participate in war. But I wish that for all, men, women and children.