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Targeted Killing of Women's Rights Activist Shocks Afghans
KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN - In the hour before her killers pulled up beside the rickshaw and shot her at close range, Sitara Achakzai turned to a female politician riding beside her with a strange look.
"I'm not afraid of death," said Ms. Achakzai, a well-known women's rights advocate and one of three elected women sitting on Kandahar's provincial council. "I can go and get killed and it's no big deal."
Ms. Achakzai's friend, a provincial councillor who narrowly escaped death in a bombing at council headquarters less than two weeks ago, was so stunned by the comment, made just before the rickshaw pulled up to her stop, she got out without asking what prompted the revelation. Not long after, news came yesterday that she would never have another chance.
Ms. Achakzai, a dual Afghan and German citizen who returned to help rebuild her country in 2004, was shot at close range by gunmen on motorbikes before her rickshaw could finish the slow crawl back to her home.
Within minutes of the killing, news of Ms. Achakzai's death had spread like wildfire across Kandahar. The killing has both horrified and terrified many educated women in the city, who looked up to the councillor as a role model.
"She is someone who was very well educated and understood what she was doing," said a prominent businesswoman in Kandahar who has known Ms. Achakzai since her childhood.
"As a woman, I was proud to see someone who was so proud of herself. In many meetings, even when there were men around, she just put her head up so high with such pride it made me proud to be around her," the businesswoman said.
Although outspoken about women's rights in the past, Ms. Achakzai's friend asked last night that her name not be published for fear publicity would increase threats to her own life. Gulping for air at times and choking back tears, the woman was audibly struggling with disbelief over Ms. Achakzai's death, which has already renewed fears among the burgeoning class of progressive women in this ultra-conservative city. "I want the world to understand how every person in this crazy place is feeling because this is a wake-up call to all of us that we could be next," the woman said, sobbing. "The sad thing is nobody cares, it seems."
In recent months, security in Kandahar has markedly deteriorated - even international forces working to secure the province have admitted the city is experiencing a low point. In addition to regular kidnappings of locals and foreign contractors, the downward spiral in the city has had a particular impact on women. In recent months, many prominent women, including famous policewoman Malalai Kakar, have been brutally murdered in public by assassins on behalf of the Taliban. Shortly after Ms. Achakzai's killing, Qari Yousef Ahmedi, a spokesman for the Taliban, claimed responsibility for the attack. Ms. Achakzai's husband, a German chemistry professor who has been teaching at Kandahar University, confirmed his wife's death to friends and fellow councillors.
In a sad twist of fate, the couple, growing weary of dangers in Kandahar, had just purchased tickets for a May 1 trip to Toronto, where Ms. Achakzai's ailing mother lives.
"They both said they were tired of this place because it's so violent and so messed up. They were just taking a trip to get away, but they were going to see after the elections if things were going to get better," Ms. Achakzai's friend said. "Now she's gone forever."
In her short absence, hope for a renaissance in Kandahar has severely dimmed. "Obviously, we've had a brain drain. ... Now when we're slowly trying to think for the future of the country ...this is how our country repays people," Ms. Achakzai's friend said. "I have no faith in my government. I have no faith in the Taliban. I have no faith in the international community."
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15 Comments so far
Show AllViolence by anyone is always a tragedy. War is not the answer.
Violence only begets violence. And indeed War is never the answer.
We need to pull all our military troops out and end the bombing and rocket attacks by unmanned aircraft.
We need to stop the flow and sale of firearms and weapons to terrorist factions.
Not all Taliban are terrorist fighters and women abusers.
It will take time, but if we stop fighting the Taliban, they will sooner or later lose their control by force and violence, and realize that women have equal rights, and that women are needed to bring peace and stability to the Country.
A tall order, but it will happen.
Peace.
There is no greater failure of courage by and no more greatly deserved shame for the male of our species than our treatment of women.
As I and others have pointed out in the past, the primary characteristic of religious fundamentalism is the desire to suppress the rights of women everywhere.
Although relatively limited female populations on the globe have enjoyed historic levels of freedom, the plight of the vast majority of women around the world is one of subordination to the whims of the male ego and generalized misery and hopelessness.
No one call call himself a man when he is driven by fear to abuse women.
q
Agreed. I would only add that it isn't just a characteristic of fundamentalist religious interpretation, unless your definition of fundamentalism is very broad indeed.
Ditto, Eddie! And thanks for speaking the truth....
If you know the bible at all, you know how little women are worth. We're basically supposed to be the mute tools of our husbands, to be used as he sees fit; to have no more purpose than to crank out his babies, obey and take care of his needs and his home, with no thought to our own needs or wishes (which we aren't supposed to have anyway), and are his property, to be given away or otherwise disposed of. We're supposed to be silent in church, with our heads covered - or shorn. Otherwise, we're supposed to be silently in the shadows. Modern women in the workplace, in politics, in the media, etc., go against everything in this "sacred" book.
Women in the early years of this country were subjected to much of this way of life. It wasn't that long ago that a woman with ten children, with a twenty year span between the first and last, wasn't even allowed the responsibility of taking care of her home and children if her husband died. That task was assigned to an adult male son, or other male family member. If those weren't available, an outside male was appointed.
If the religious fanatics ever manage to reach their goal - of replacing the Constitution with the bible, the women in America will find themselves in what will seem to them as bad as what the women in these foreign countries now endure.
The question is, which Bible? The one where 40+ books have been deleted? Or the one considered the current "True Word of God?" Don't get me wrong: I love the Bible !!! But if you stood Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Lao Tzu, Confucius - and, for that matter, any of the great spiritual leaders the world has ever known, all in a row and spoke to them - do you really think they would disagree?(And, please study up before you answer this question). Pause for a second, take out the semantics, the politics and religious dogma. Why do we fight over this? How in God's name, with all respect and sincerity, how does the world justify this in the name of "whatever" religion? Is this what Christ taught? Is this what Mohammed taught? Why do we kill and mame, and cause so much pain and death over something that is just one ego against another, one political system over another; and it simply has no bearing, and is such the total antithesis of what our spiritual leaders, regardless of what religion, have taught us. If we don't answer these questions, the world will be beyond anyone's help!
http://rethinkafghanistan.com/troop_full.php
How does this happen? Don't these men have mothers? Violence against women is self hate. What in hell is going on in Afghanistan? Are US soldiers going to make things better for women? US military buries the rape cases of their own female soldiers. Sounds like a rock and a hard place. How do we really help these women? How can Afghanistan be transformed into a Woman run democracy?
Any male who resorts to abuse and violence towards women is a complete coward. These "men" who killed Ms Achakzai are cowards of the worst kind. They offer NOTHING to the women of their country, they have no respect for them and their needs, and kill them when they dare to speak up. There is nothing as foolish and despicable as those who kill in such a low manner. If they were truly MEN, they would at least give he a chance to defend herslf, and look her straight in the eye before they pulled the trigger. BUt they aren't even brave enough to do that.
Cowards, complete cowards. May they rot in hell.
It is interesting but on another blog it stated that the Catholic Church is about to excommunicate a priest for making women priests. I know a priest can't do that only someone much higher. The talk was on how many priests and ministers have abused children and members of their congregations. It is interesting that the oldest Christian Church is still mired in the 11th century or before and the others (Quiver Full anyone?)are still telling women what they can do with THEIR bodies. Interesting isn't it? The fundamentalists of any dogma or religion are mired in the past when it suits them and then they trot out the Bible or anyother good book and take out of context what is said to fortify their beliefs of killing, maiming, raping, imperialism (U.S.), or any other hair brained idea that they may come up with. I am leaning more and more to the Secular Humanists (read their beliefs) because it is more Christian than anything I hear coming out of churches today. The compassion and caring and interest in others is astounding. The churches (some I hope not all) have lost their way and this business of telling women what they can and cannot do has got to stop.
The women give life and that pisses most puny little men (look down charlie brown) and the men must have controil over that. Oops my precious DNA got lost in all that. Sorry. I am not making light of the seriousness of this just the men who don't have a clue what a wonderful person they could have in their wife. I do and I am so lucky.
Yo! Wint - takes one of their Bishop-things to make a priest-thing but a Bishop-thing can make another Bishop-thing. Now remember, for centuries these positions have been bought and sold like Captaincies in the British Army. That's how they got the Medici Popes. Anyway, what can you say about a flat-earth, fixed creation, Absolute Authoritarian patriarchal religion that borrowed the genocidal blood god of a pastoralist tribe of genocidal killer nomads from the ME?
Gimmeabreak. Remember, this is the same make believe space giant that supposedly tells its the worshipers under pain of "hell fire and eternal damnation" that they should kill homosexuals and fuck their children, and kill'em of course if they piss you off. Oh yeah. They call it arrested infantile development. You can always work with individuals and gradually, over the course of a lifetime help them to realize themselves as Full Spectrum Humans. We just haven't managed to work out the pedagogy for entire peoples, like white america.
As a sign my words are (more or less) true: Without male supremacy and gender slavery the entire religion dies in a week (actually, ALL the religions of the genocidal blood god die in a week).
And as a sign THOSE words are true - just as the (loss for words) monsters skinned Hypatia alive with sea shells for the crime of being "smarter" and more brilliant than the weasel dicks of her time, Sitara Achakzai was executed for being an "uppity female" and now you can prepare yourself for the horror,
Within a decade males in this country will pull female professors from the Universities and cut off their heads in the full view of the police. There will be no prosecutions. After that they do all the women who wear glasses because that means they can read.
We started as a Patriarchal Authoritarian Slave Society modeled on the Roman Slave Republic before Sulla, a Republic ruled by feral, kiddie raping, slave holding richfilth patrician clans, just like our founding daddies, just like the animals who own America today. Their model of life peaked in the 12th century and that's where they want the world to be: corporate techno-feudalism - with a 12th century global population. Just ask Larry Summers.
Patriarchy - Oligarchy - Feral Elites - all the same, not human.
Peace
History has clearly shown that in any society where women are severely repressed, the men get long term equal suffering to go with it. Hurt one and you hurt the other. While I generally do not support the death penalty, I'm prepared to make an exception for the gunman who killed Achakzai. The more women are degraded, the poorer everyone gets until society collapses. Without women getting equal rights as men in this country alone, the Great Depression would have come sooner again than most folks realize.
Hi Jennifer: that's right. Any society that denies the personage and individuality of a woman is a society that is doomed to fail.
Being a Muslim I am shocked and outraged by this brutal, unlawful murder that, search as you may, has not even a hint of a foundation in Islam. God will punish the perpetrator of this senseless slaying because, I doubt, the Afghan authorities will bother to lift, even, their little fingers in defence of the rights of women.
Asalamalaikum. Thank you for your thoughtful post on Islam and women's rights.