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Women are raped, murdered and abused with impunity all over Afghanistan despite the overthrow of the Taliban that was supposed to have ushered in a new era of women rights, Amnesty International said on Monday, May 30.

"Hundreds of women and girls continue to suffer abuse at the hands of their husbands, fathers, brothers, armed individuals, parallel justice systems, and institutions of the state itself such as the police and the justice system," said the London-based rights group on its Web site.

“Violence against women and girls in Afghanistan is pervasive,” it said.

“Throughout the country, few women are exempt from violence or safe from the threat of it.”

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Although it is an important distinction to note that rapists, murderers and abusers who are "allies" aren't really rapists, murderers and abusers but "new democracies in the process of reform" while rapists, murderers and abusers who are not allies and thus are "anti-American" are "undemocratic, tyranical regimes".

Any person or group that criticizes US policy with regard for support of "new democracies in the process of reform" are anti-American and therefore discredited and irrelevant.

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Six years after the US and Britain "freed" Afghan women from the oppressive Taliban regime, a new report proves that life is just as bad for most, and worse in some cases.

Projects started in the optimistic days of 2002 have begun to wane as the UK and its Nato allies fail to treat women's rights as a priority, workers in the country insist.

The statistics in the report from Womankind, Afghan Women and Girls Seven Years On, (68 pp., .pdf format) make shocking reading. Violent attacks against females, usually domestic, are at epidemic proportions with 87 per cent of females complaining of such abuse – half of it sexual. More than 60 per cent of marriages are forced.

Despite a new law banning the practice, 57 per cent of brides are under the age of 16. The illiteracy rate among women is 88 per cent with just 5 per cent of girls attending secondary school.

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Some of the report's findings:

• Violent attacks against females, usually domestic, are at epidemic proportions with 87 per cent of females complaining of such abuse – half of it sexual.
• More than 60 per cent of marriages are forced.
• Despite a new law banning the practice, 57 per cent of brides are under the age of 16.
• The illiteracy rate among women is 88 per cent with just 5 per cent of girls attending secondary school.
• Maternal mortality rates – one in nine women dies in childbirth – are the highest in the world alongside Sierra Leone.
• And 30 years of conflict have left more than one million widows with no enforceable rights, left to beg on the streets alongside an increasing number of orphans.
• Afghanistan is the only country in the world with a higher suicide rate among women than men.

[ 02 March 2008: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

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One Good Reason Why Dogs Miss the Taliban...

Say what you will about the freshly-ousted Taliban regime in Afghanistan; we've all heard how their strict, totalitarian form of government forbade kite-flying, beard-cutting and Arnold Schwarzenegger films. But one restriction will be sorely missed by many four-footed Afghans: the prohibition of dog-fighting.

http://tinyurl.com/24frnx

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[ 26 February 2008: Message edited by: adam stratton ]

The PDPA regime promoted education for girls, gave women the right to divorce and own property, and reduced the bride price to a nominal fee. It also distributed land to the impoverished peasants and restrained the power of the mullahs, the Muslim clergy.

In response, the mullahs told the peasants that Allah would hang them upside down in the sky for all eternity if they accepted the government land grants and allowed women to be unveiled and to go to school. Soon rural Afghanistan had exploded in a rebellion which threatened to topple the PDPA--perhaps the only war in modern history begun largely over women's rights.[/quote]

How U.S. destroyed progressive secular forces in Afghanistan

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What authority bears witness to this? None other than the U.S. Department of the Army itself.

The Pentagon puts out what it calls country study books on almost every country in the world. They are updated every few years. These books contain basic information for the use of U.S. personnel traveling or working abroad.

There's nothing classified in them. They're available in most libraries.

Afghanistan—a Country Study for 1986 has of course the anti-communist line expected of a Pentagon publication. But it also contains much useful information about the changes instituted by the Afghani Revolution of 1978.

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I doubt that the "National Need" party for women's rights and issues would have existed under Taliban rule. -scooter

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[ 27 February 2008: Message edited by: martin dufresne ]

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Originally posted by Ibelongtonoone:
I'm not sure how the behaviour of Afghan men toward Afghan women can be blamed on coalition forces...

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