Posted by Wymark on 7/11/2009, 11:17 am
82.23.179.222
' . . the tired claim that one of the chief objectives of the military occupation of Afghanistan is to liberate Afghan women is not only absurd, it is offensive.
Waging war does not lead to the liberation of women anywhere . . .
. . . Here are the facts: After the invasion, Americans received reports that newly liberated women had cast off their burquas and gone back to work. Those reports were mythmaking and propaganda. Aside from a small number of women in Kabul, life for Afghan women since the fall of the Taliban has remained the same or become much worse.
Under the Taliban, women were confined to their homes. They were not allowed to work or attend school. They were poor and without rights. They had no access to clean water or medical care, and they were forced into marriages, often as children.
Today, women in the vast majority of Afghanistan live in precisely the same conditions, with one notable difference: they are surrounded by war. The conflict outside their doorsteps endangers their lives and those of their families. It does not bring them rights in the household or in public, and it confines them even further to the prison of their own homes. Military escalation is just going to bring more tragedy to the women of Afghanistan . . .
. . . The U.S. military may have removed the Taliban, but it installed warlords who are as anti-woman and as criminal as the Taliban. Misogynistic, patriarchal views are now embodied by the Afghan cabinet, they are expressed in the courts, and they are embodied by President Hamid Karzai . . .
. . . In our conversations arguing this point, we are told that the U.S. cannot leave Afghanistan because of what will happen to women if they go. Let us be clear: Women are being gang raped, brutalized and killed in Afghanistan. Forced marriages continue, and more women than ever are being forced into prostitution -- often to meet the demand of foreign troops.
The U.S. presence in Afghanistan is doing nothing to protect Afghan women. The level of self-immolation among women was never as high as it is now. When there is no justice for women, they find no other way out but suicide . . .
. . . Feminists around the world must refuse to allow the good name of feminism to be manipulated to provide political cover for yet another war of aggression'.
Full article here.
And there's simply a mountain of evidence by bodies like the U.N. and human rights NGOs, and the major Afghan feminist organisations like RAWA, to back what they're saying up. The U.S. are supporting brutal, mysognistic warlords who mistreat women every bit as much as the Taliban did. That shows how much priority they really place on women's rights.
There's no military solution to ridding Afghanistan of the deep rooted patriarchy that exists in it's rural, and to a lesser extent urban, areas. It has to be achieved by Afghan feminists and their allies themselves - and according to them, British and American soldiers most certainly aren't their allies, they're their killers and oppressors - by changing attitudes and perceptions in the long run, via education, literature, protest and other forms of activism, as has happened in Europe to an extent.
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