Afghanistan Stomps On Women's Rights

[Saya]

(Reuters) - Afghanistan's government is considering taking over the running of women's shelters, subjecting victims of domestic abuse to medical examinations and near-incarceration under a proposal rights groups say is a concession to the Taliban.

Critics said the draft regulation by the Ministry of Justice would hurt the limited progress made on women's rights since the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001, and appeared to be an overture to the Islamist insurgents waging war against NATO and Afghan forces.

The proposal, obtained by Reuters, would place all shelters under the control of the Ministry of Women's Affairs.

It would require women to undergo a medical examination before being admitted, oblige them to wear a headscarf at all times and bar them from leaving the grounds of the safe house except with ministry permission to visit relatives.

Medical examinations would be carried out monthly, and women would be ejected if their families say they will take them back or for marriage, the guidelines said, without clarifying if this included abusive families they had fled or forced marriages they were trying to avoid.

"It puts the safety of women in shelters into question," warned Humi Safi of Afghan rights group Women for Afghan Women.

The regulation follows a government investigation ordered by Afghan President Hamid Karzai into the running of the mainly foreign-funded shelters, which some government officials have been quoted as saying are involved in prostitution and drug use.

The accusations reflect widespread suspicion within Afghanistan's deeply conservative society over the influence of Westerners, particularly on women.

New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said the draft illustrated the growing strength of conservative factions within Karzai's government and was an effort to burnish its Islamic credentials.

HRW warned some of the 14 shelters currently working in Afghanistan faced closure because the government lacks the capacity to run them.

"It could be devastating," HRW's Afghanistan researcher Rachel Reid said of the regulation, which requires approval by Karzai and his Council of Ministers to become law.

The government, Reid told Reuters, is trying "to position itself as something the Taliban can do business with."

The Taliban barred women from education and most jobs and ordered them to wear burqas outside the home. Almost a decade since its overthrow, the United Nations said in a report last year that child marriage and "honor" killings remained widespread and the authorities were failing to enforce laws to protect women and girls.

Afghan women still face imprisonment for so-called "moral crimes" such as adultery or running away from home. The guidelines also said women suspected or accused of crimes would not be admitted to shelters, raising fears that women fleeing abusive situations could be barred on the grounds they were suspected of these "moral crimes."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/...7193NB20110210

This is particularly infuriating to me, last week in one of my courses we had a discussion about this article: http://www.smi.uib.no/seminars/Pensum/Abu-Lughod.pdf

The long and short of that was that part of the justification for the Afghanistan war was colonial feminism, the idea that white men need to invade and save brown women from brown men. I mean, yes we did fund the Taliban when Afghanistan was under Soviet rule, but NOW we have to go save ze wimmins and fight terror. So what happened since Laura Bush bemoaned the fact that Afghan women can't wear nail polish? What happened to our insistence that we'd be greeted as liberators, women would throw off their burkas and all would be well? Why is it okay for Karzai to be a dictator when it was hella not okay for Saddam or the Taliban?

Why don't we care about the Afghan women anymore?

[CptSternn]

Democracy happened.

As I have said before, democracy could me a sheep and two wolves deciding on what's for dinner.

The people of Afghanistan now have the right to do whatever they want, granted they all agree on it. Turns out, they all think beating women and treating them like a second class citizen is a good idea.

That's democracy in action.

[Saya]

It isn't democracy if half the population doesn't vote. And they can't do whatever they want if the Taliban blows them up for doing it.

[Versus]

I don't think it's a matter of Taliban remnant influence, and certainly has nothing to do with Islam. I'm sure their mention was just to incite some kind of emotional response.

Really, the Afghan government is extremely disconnected from it's people. Both ideoligically and geographically. Most of the citizens live in rural villages and don't directly interact with the government. Hell, only two percent of them can even read. It's more of a matter of what each individual village wants to do. If they want to support Talliban ideas, they will, regardless of what the government says.

I think people only mentioned women's rights there because it was another attempt to legitimize involvement.

[Saya]

Unicef says the literacy rate is 28%, but its still abysmal and its a good point.

I know women's rights was used to legitimize the invasion, it just that I'm a bit of a feminist, if that's never come across before XD It just slays me that people were that naive, and while it was propaganda I do think they thought life would be so much better if the Taliban was toppled, they didn't think it through. Its going to take a long, long time to get Afghanistan on its feet, and its been ten years and Afghanistan still has one of the worst child mortality rates in the world. 20% of children die before age 5. Its gotten better, but seriously, we've had ten years. Blows my mind.

And it wasn't just the government, to be fair, I was 14 when the war started but I don't remember much dissent about going to Afghanistan, and the article mentions too that RAWA was showcased on Oprah and Time magazine, although their criticisms of Karzai and the US governments were censored. Apparently 90% of Americans felt good about it (http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_1...77-503544.html) and now they don't now that its quite evident that we couldn't change it into a Shangri-La quick enough. For fuck's sake.

[CptSternn]

The same thing is happening in Iraq. In fact, prior to the invasion Iraq led the Middle East in womens rights. Today they are no different than their neighbours, womens rights have been rolled back a century under the new government.

[Corpsey]

Originally Posted by Versus

I don't think it's a matter of Taliban remnant influence, and certainly has nothing to do with Islam. I'm sure their mention was just to incite some kind of emotional response.

Really, the Afghan government is extremely disconnected from it's people. Both ideoligically and geographically. Most of the citizens live in rural villages and don't directly interact with the government. Hell, only two percent of them can even read. It's more of a matter of what each individual village wants to do. If they want to support Talliban ideas, they will, regardless of what the government says.

I think people only mentioned women's rights there because it was another attempt to legitimize involvement.

This. It's pretty much what I got from the people my Father had contact with over there when things started. Worse still is that they thoroughly enjoy fighting, so they will be more preoccupied about said things than desiring to learn how to read let alone improve the standing of women.

[Versus]

Originally Posted by Saya

Unicef says the literacy rate is 28%, but its still abysmal and its a good point.

I'm taking a language course for Pashto right now. I just found out that in their alphabet, the letters look differently depending on where they are in a word.

No wonder nobody in Afghanistan can read! Their alphabet is fucking stupid! It makes me want to pull my hair out.

[Saya]

Lots of languages are complicated! The Japanese use three alphabets, and the Chinese alphabet...For my Mandarin course in the fall, to pass I'll need to know 100 characters by heart and how to draw them properly after the first semester. They still have a much higher literacy rate.

[Versus]

Asian kids don't count.

[Saya]

Racist.

I feel a bit racist because I just assumed Afghanis spoke Arabic. I'm god awful. And interesting.

[Versus]

Hello, Interesting. I'm Racist. Nice to meet you. :3

It's okay. I thought they did, too. The squigly lines all look the same to me.