America heard much about the “enlightenment” of Hamid Zarzai, the poetic leader of Afghanistan, especially regarding the realm of women’s rights, which, while under the Taliban, were nonexistent. Of course it was all nonsense, especially after Karzai refused to publicly denounce the incarceration of a Muslim man who had converted to Christianity and who faced the possibility of execution:

A prison official told AP that Rahman had been moved to a new prison Friday because of threats from inmates at his first jail.

Rahman was being prosecuted for converting 16 years ago while working as a medical aid worker for an international Christian group helping Afghan refugees in Pakistan. He was arrested last month after police discovered him with a Bible.

In an interview published Sunday by an Italian newspaper, Rahman said his family, including his former wife and two teenage daughters, reported him to authorities.

He stressed that he was fully aware of his choice to convert.

“If I must die, I will die,” Rahman told the Rome daily La Repubblica, which did not interview him directly but channeled questions through a human rights worker who visited him in prison.
–FOX News

The Afghan courts eventually dismissed the charges against Rahman, yet the man did spend time in a prison while awaiting the possibility of execution for the crime of converting to Christianity. And yet, a new bill regarding women’s rights, that was “rushed through debate”, then swiftly signed by Karzai, paves the way for the Afghan government and courts to treat women based on some of the same “tenets” upheld by the Taliban. Tenets based on Sharia, or Islam law, where women will once again be regarded as “property of men”, where wives cannot refuse “sex” from their husbands, cannot leave their homes, seek a job, go to a doctor, or go to school, without their husband’s permission.

One can’t help but wonder, with the current government, a government whose way was paved by the United States and NATO countries, who now echoes the very same “philosophy” as the Taliban towards women, what a woman who converted to Christianity’s fate would have been?

Hamid Karzai, President of Afghanistan

From The Telegraph:

Hamid Karzai signs law ‘legalising rape in marriage’

“The law, which has not been publicly released, is believed to state women can only seek work, education or doctor’s appointments with their husband’s permission.

Only fathers and grandfathers are granted custody of children under the law, according to the United Nations Development Fund for Women.

Opponents of the legislation governing the personal lives of Afghanistan’s Shia minority have said it is “worse than during the Taliban”.

Mr Karzai has been accused of electioneering at the expense of women’s rights by signing the law to appeal to crucial Shia swing voters in this year’s presidential poll.

While the Afghan constitution guarantees equal rights for women, it also allows the Shia community, thought to represent 10 per cent of the population, the right to settle family law cases according to Shia law.

The Shiite Personal Status Law contains provisions on marriage, divorce, inheritance, rights of movement and bankruptcy.”

—

“The bill passed both houses of the Afghan parliament, but was so contentious that the United Nations and women’s rights campaigners have so far been unable to see a copy of the approved bill.

Shinkai Zahine Karokhail, a female MP, said the law had been rushed through with little debate.

She told the Guardian newspaper: “They wanted to pass it almost like a secret negotiation, “There were lots of things that we wanted to change, but they didn’t want to discuss it because Karzai wants to please the Shia before the election.”

The Afghan justice ministry confirmed the law had been signed, but said it would not be published until technical difficulties had been overcome.

A spokesman for President Hamid Karzai would not comment.”

This story breaks as Hillary Clinton, Obama’s Secretary of State, along with Karzai, recently “held out an olive branch” to Taliban “moderates” during a one day conference recently held at the Hague:

“AFGHAN PRESIDENT Hamid Karzai and US secretary of state Hillary Clinton yesterday said that Taliban fighters willing to reject al-Qaeda should be brought in from the cold. They also called on delegates attending an international conference on Afghanistan to help strengthen the country’s security forces.

More than 80 of Afghanistan’s neighbouring states and donors attended the one-day conference in The Hague to discuss efforts to bring greater stability to the country. Mrs Clinton argued that most Taliban fighters had joined the insurgency “out of desperation” because of poverty, rather than ideological commitment. “They should be offered an honourable form of reconciliation and reintegration into a peaceful society if they are willing to abandon violence, break with al-Qaeda, and support the constitution,” she added.”
–Irish Times

Clinton’s statement, that “moderate” Taliban fighters should be offered an “honorable” form of reconciliation who then must “support” the Constitution, is ironic, as the new law signed by Karzai, places Afghan women’s rights back to the Dark Ages of the Taliban rule of Afghanistan, while Clinton, as the diplomat, is a woman.

The “Silence of the West”

Soraya Sobhrang, the head of women’s affairs at the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, said western silence had been “disastrous for women’s rights in Afghanistan”.

“What the international community has done is really shameful. If they had got more involved in the process when it was discussed in parliament we could have stopped it. Because of the election I am not sure we can change it now. It’s too late for that.”
--The Guardian

While Clinton holds out an olive branch to Taliban moderates, the leader of the Pakistan Taliban has issued a new threat, one that is squarely aimed at Washington, D.C.:

We are learning about a frightening warning from the leader of the Pakistani Taliban. Baitullah Mehsud, who has claimed responsibility for the deadly siege at Pakistan’s police academy this past weekend, now says the group is setting its sights on a new target: Washington, D.C.

In a phone call with the Associated Press, Mehsud said, “Soon we will launch an attack in Washington that will amaze everyone in the world.”

Mehsud is believed to be the mastermind behind the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and the United States is currently offering a $5 million reward for information leading to his capture.
-FOX News

It was less than 5 years ago that women were first allowed to vote in Afghanistan, an occasion which was much ballyhooed by our Federal government and this press release from the U.S. Dept. of State:

“On October 9, 2004 millions of Afghan women, and men, exercised their right to vote for their President in Afghanistan’s first-ever presidential election. Women comprised some 41% of the more than 8.2 million voters. A woman ran for President! This remarkable milestone, only two and a half years after liberation from decades of oppression, speaks to Afghan enthusiasm for democracy.

Women from all over the country, from Herat, Bamyan, Gardez, Ghazni, Paktia, Jalalabad, Khost–everywhere–voted. One Afghan housewife said, “These elections are very good for women. For the first time, women are having a say in the future of Afghanistan. We are fed up with war.” And the men cooperated. At the same polling station, official election observers saw many men in minivans and cars delivering women to the polling center. An elder from Shwak, south-east of Gardez, exclaimed, “I’ve brought every woman I could fit into this car.”

I found this interesting tidbit further down in the same article at the U.S Dept. of State’s Afghan Women’s Council:

“Afghan women are unstoppable. As First Lady Laura Bush said on October 6, 2004 at the 2004 Fortune Most Powerful Women’s Summit in California, “The struggle for women’s rights is a story of ordinary women doing extraordinary things. And today the women of Afghanistan are writing a new chapter in their history.” On nearly every front, they are breaking new ground.”

Apparently, Afghan women aren’t as “unstoppable” as First Lady Laura Bush, at the time, believed. Women did do “extraordinary things” after the election, gaining a foothold in the political process and obtaining jobs. Yet they were unaware that the man who gained the Presidency, Karzai, via their votes, may have written a “final” chapter in women’s rights with the signing of the new law.

More from the U.S. Dept. of State’s press release:

Beyond securing their rights, Afghan women are demanding jobs and access to the commercial sector. They will never be locked up and starving again. With help from the U.S. and other coalition countries, they are now engaged in all kinds of work, from constructing concrete blocks to making delicate knots on exquisite export-quality rugs in an employee-owned cooperative. Afghan women are studying business, working as journalists and judges, and running for President and the Parliament.

An equally important need is access to health care. Every 20 minutes an Afghan woman dies in childbirth. Reducing maternal mortality is a priority, along with education for women, and is key to improving women’s lives. For this reason, Under Secretary Paula Dobriansky initiated a Health Advisory Committee on June 15, 2004 at the White House on the occasion of the fifth meeting of the U.S.-Afghan Women’s Council. The Council discussed several issues, but health care and jobs were top of the list.”

I found this phrase very poignant: “They will never be locked up and starving again.” I assume this phrase was assigned to the conditions women were forced to endure during the Taliban regime. Yet the new law, where women have to have their husband’s “permission”, or in the case of single women, their father’s “permission”, to leave their homes, get an education, or obtain health care, leaves the women’s rights and decisions about their lives, assigned to men.

If a man decides his wife or daughter is not allowed to leave the home, then there are no adequate safeguards to ensure the woman isn’t being mistreated, by lack of seeing a doctor, or being beaten, or even starved. Women are no longer allowed to refuse “sex” with their husbands, while they will be forced to ask “permission” to seek employment outside of the home.

And yet, the new law may only be a “formalization” of what is already occurring in Afghanistan to women who live in areas not under the demonic thumb of the Taliban. In an article published by RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, doctors are seeing an “enormous” number of Afghan women who attempt suicide due to “violence in their homes”:

Afghan hospital records 600 suicide attempts within a year

This is an enormous number of Afghans, mainly women, trying to commit suicide to flee violence in life.

Based on the figures given by the Ibn-e Sina Emergency Hospital in Kabul more than 600 incidents of suicide attempts have been referred to this hospital during the past 12 months.”

Further in the article, a spokesman for the Ministry of Public Health attempted to explain the reasons behind the suicide attempts:

“Dr. Abdullah Fahim, the spokesman for the ministry said most of the victims have survived from their attempts.

Famliy violence, poverty, mental ailment and weak religious beliefs provoke self-murder in Afghanistan,” said Abdullah Fahim.”

Even more disturbing, and evidence that the Karzai government, before signing the new law, had turned a blind eye to women’s rights in Afghanistan, is the spate of women setting themselves on fire in order to escape their plight:

From RAWA:

“Over the past six months, at least 47 self-immolation cases have been recorded by Herat city hospital alone, of whom seven were saved but 40 died.

“Ninety percent of the women who commit self-immolation die at hospital due to deep burns and fatal injuries,” said Arif Jalai, a dermatologist at the Herat hospital.

Almost all the women had doused themselves with petrol and set themselves alight, according to the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC).”

Called a “growing phenomenon”, the reasons behind these women’s decision to set themselves on fire:

“More than six years after the ousting of the Taliban regime in 2001 when all women were denied the right to work and education, many women suffer domestic and social violence, discrimination and lack of access to unbiased justice and other services, women’s rights activists say.”

And the role of the Karzai government and the courts in investigating the cause of the suicide by fire:

“The police and judiciary do not launch any formal investigations to determine the causes and motivations of suicide and self-burning by women, according to the AIHRC.

As a result, men who force and provoke women to self-immolation and other forms of suicide remain immune from all legal and penal repercussions.

“The government must ensure proper investigations into cases of suicide among women and where needed bring those responsible to justice,” said Sultani of the AIHRC.

In Afghanistan’s patriarchal culture, however, it will be difficult to indict the men who force women to commit suicide, specialists say.

“There is a culture of impunity for those who push women to self-immolation and suicide,” Sultani said.”

As I noted earlier, Karzai’s signing of the new bill regarding women’s “rights” is merely a formalization of the current “culture of impunity”.

While the women who live in Afghanistan are about to learn firsthand that their newly won “rights” have been “rewritten” and will now be more “in tune” with those of the “laws” of the Taliban, “justice” is still being “doled out” by the Taliban inside Afghanistan.

July 12, 2008 – Two Afghan women just prior to being executed by members of the Taliban in Central Afghanistan. The women were accused of running a prostitution ring near a U.S Army base.

Associated Press photo of women, the day after they were shot by the Taliban

While the new law is seen by some as being “worse than the Taliban”, it more of a “two degrees of separation”. Here are some of the Taliban’s “current” restrictions:

– Complete ban on women’s work outside the home, which also applies to female teachers, engineers and most professionals. Only a few female doctors and nurses are allowed to work in some hospitals in Kabul.

–Complete ban on women’s activity outside the home unless accompanied by a mahram (close male relative such as a father, brother or husband).

–Ban on women dealing with male shopkeepers.

–Ban on women being treated by male doctors.

–Ban on women studying at schools, universities or any other educational institution. (Taliban have converted girls’ schools into religious seminaries.)

–Requirement that women wear a long veil (Burqa), which covers them from head to toe.

–Whipping, beating and verbal abuse of women not clothed in accordance with Taliban rules, or of women unaccompanied by a mahram.

–Public stoning of women accused of having sex outside marriage. (A number of lovers are stoned to death under this rule).

–Ban on the use of cosmetics. (Many women with painted nails have had fingers cut off).

–Ban on women laughing loudly. (No stranger should hear a woman’s voice).

–Ban on women wearing high heel shoes, which would produce sound while walking. (A man must not hear a woman’s footsteps.)

The difference between the new law signed by Karzai and the Taliban “restrictions”: according to the government, women have to have permission from their husbands or fathers if they want to seek education, see a doctor, or want to leave their homes. If they do not get permission, then, they will be subject to the courts and punishment.

Is this the “final chapter” on Afghan’s women’s rights after the short-lived “journey” of “freedom” undertaken by millions of women who voted for Karzai? Time, and the current government, will tell. After all, since a man now has the right to deny a woman permission to leave her home, he can effectively bar her from voting in the next Presidential election or in any election.

It’s also a “lesson” to be learned by the United States. We brought “democracy” at a significant cost to American taxpayers to Afghanistan, yet we’re now seeing within a short span, a “reversal of fortune” regarding the rights of Afghan women. Unless our government is willing to publicly object to the current trend of the Afghan government’s stripping away women’s rights, it might be time to reevaluate whether democracy can truly survive in countries whose cultures embrace Islam’s Sharia laws.

by LBG and pat

Image - Hamid Karzai
Image – Afghan women
Source and Images – Rawa.org -Two Afghan women executed by Taliban