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Watchdog Fears Afghan Women's Rights to Be Traded for Peace
KABUL - An international rights group has called on the Afghan government and its Western backers to ensure gains made by women in the country are not sacrificed in any peace talks with the Taliban.
A burqa-clad Afghan woman holds a child as she walks with other women in Kabul, Afghanistan on July 7. (File photo by: Shah Marai, AFP/Getty Images)
A week ahead of a major international conference in Kabul to discuss the future of Afghanistan, New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) also called for current leaders to be made accountable for past crimes.
In a report released Tuesday, the organization said moves towards talking peace with the Islamist Taliban to end the war have the potential to roll back rights hard-won by Afghan women.
It cites the way women and girls are treated in areas under Taliban control, denied constitutional rights to be educated and work outside their homes, under threat of violence or death.
The 70-page report, "The Ten-Dollar Talib and Women's Rights," warns that President Hamid Karzai's government may be willing to compromise on these rights as part of any deal with the insurgents.
"Afghan women want an end to the conflict. But as the prospect of negotiations with the Taliban draws closer, many women fear that they may also pay a heavy price for peace," the report says.
"Reconciliation with the Taliban, a group synonymous with misogynous policies and the violent repression of women, raises serious concerns about the possible erosion of recently gained rights and freedoms," it says.
Rhetoric about embracing Taliban loyalists who fight from economic need rather than ideological sympathy "ignores the experiences of women living in Taliban-controlled areas".
The Taliban's five-year rule, which ended with a U.S.-led invasion in 2001, was marked by general repression that was particularly brutal towards women.
Girls were not permitted to go to school — and even now are sometimes attacked and their schools destroyed by extremists.
Women were not allowed out unless accompanied by a male relative and wearing a burqa. They were attacked in the street for such perceived crimes as wearing white shoes and rape victims were publicly executed as adulterers.
Even today, women who become politically active often face death threats and some have been murdered or forced into exile abroad.
After nine years of insurgency, the Taliban hold sway over large parts of the south, with a presence across most of Afghanistan.
Karzai has proposed negotiating with the Taliban leadership, based in Pakistan and supported by its military and intelligence organisations.
Pressure for solutions is building as the war is unpopular in the United States and NATO countries, which have 140,000 troops in Afghanistan, and another 10,000 on the way as part of a counter-insurgency "surge".
The allies are funding a program of reintegration that aims to encourage low-level fighters — "10-dollar Talibs" — to go home and get jobs.
A much more complex reconciliation effort is aimed at the leadership and must address such issues as removing groups from terror lists, cutting ties to al-Qaida, exile in third countries, and possible inclusion in government.
The Taliban have said they will not start negotiations until all foreign forces have left Afghanistan.
HRW says Afghan women fear that if Taliban commanders are granted political power in a reconciliation process without restrictions or involvement of women, "the result is likely to be the denial of the rights of women and girls".
Samira Hamidi, head of the Afghan Women's Network, told HRW constitutional guarantees are not specific enough to ensure women are protected in the case of a Taliban role in government.
Bringing Taliban commanders into government also risked further alienating Afghans dismayed that parliament is stuffed with former warlords yet to be held to account for past misdeeds, including mass murder, HRW said.
Many are protected by an amnesty law granting immunity to anyone engaged in armed conflict before December 2001, and extending it to those engaged in current hostilities if they agree to reconciliation with the government.
What HRW called an "enduring climate of impunity" further undermined progress for women, underpinning violence, and limiting access to justice, political office and influence.
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22 Comments so far
Show AllI dearly wish the status of women improves in Afghanistan, but I hope that Human Rights Watch is aware that forcing sexual equality from a barrel of a gun pointing from the west absolutely will not work.
HRW lost all credibility with me when they issued reports condemning Aristide in Haiti and Chavez in Venezulea - the latter case being charges of "persecution of journalists" becasue of his efforts to reign in the corporate media that has participated in the coup.
HRW is largely a tool of the mainstream foreign policy establishment.
Women and men's rights have already gone as a sacrifice to war.
Where was Human Rights Watch when Afghanistan had a government in 1979 supporting women's rights, land reform, and democracy which simply happened to be friendly to Moscow?
The Cold War cost everybody's rights and a peace dividend as well!
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SaboCat, you are so right about Human Rights Watch.
And sadly, the U.S. government/military doesn't give a rats arse about women's rights and have said so in circles where they did not think their comments would go anywhere. Hell, Bush actually wanted to blow up something and blame terrorists just to get the wars going -- wasn't that in a recent article by John Pilger, the world renowned independent British journalist? Information that is not published by MSM in the USA -- and in his articles he mentions just that -- if the US has to sacrifice women's rights, so be it.
But back to HRW -- yes, they sold out to MSM as a megaphone for government PR on foreign policy. Many have.
John Pilger is an Australian journalist
Think outside the box. Revive the Berlin Airlift. Airlift to Berlin any Afghani female who wants to leave her country, and burqa, behind her permanently, like awaking from a bad dream. From there, these refugees could earn their keep by working for the international effort to save whales. Sound like a plan?
Trylon, sorry, it doesn't "sound like a plan". While lots of Afghan people have left the country (though many of them would like to go back), there are far too many people, and airlifting Afghan women selectively is never going to work. You probably don't understand psychology, either. I'm pretty sure that these women would want to stay right there and see their conditions improve - even if it's only a distant dream for now.
The Berlin Airlift might have been a "noble" operation, but there were complex motivations behind it, and not just humanitarian considerations. The communist challenge had to be met head on, of course. Plus there's this minor factor that the Germans are white Europeans. The nuclear bombs were dropped far from any European or white settlements, the number of uncleared landmines from the various wars in Asia far, far outnumber those in Europe, and so on. There is the unfortunate reality that racial and ethnic considerations do come into play in situations.
Sure- thinking outside the box is always anathema to =reality= because sometimes it can alter it. As a retired clinical psychologist who treated immigrants to Canada from all over the world, I have to laugh. None wore a burqa to my office.
Refugees always wish their country of expatriation were different. I've experienced that. As a war husband I came to a place where two dollar bills were used in everyday commerce. Far out. I wrote letters home: "For crying out LOUD, use your two dollar bills"! But, as the result of my entreaties, did they use them? No. They're bad luck.
No Trylon, I wanted to point out your misplaced optimism - possibly based on an overestimation of western countries' willingness to take in refugees. Even at the height of the Nazi atrocities, western countries were not all that keen on taking in Jewish refugees. And that includes Canada. Whereas British civilians, including children, found ready homes in Canada, USA, etc. around the same time.
Fast forward to the 21st century. The Swedish town of Södertälje had taken in more Iraqi refugees than all of the USA - the country that was responsible for the refugees fleeing in the first place (this was 2 years ago - don't have the numbers for now).
I never said anything about the burqa nor even implied that the Afghan women want to wear that thing.
The Americans were never really interested in women's rights and just used this line to get liberal support for their war. Within American there is a broad based theocratic women hating culture that is gaining strength in both parties as moronic religion gains more and more adherents.
Propaganda war is certainly heating up:
rawa.org/temp/runews/2010/03/26/recruit-afghan-women-to-sell-war-to-europeans-cia-report.html
Here's a recent interview of the brave Malalai Joya:
rawa.org/temp/runews/2010/01/31/malalai-joya-talks-about-her-hopes-for-her-country-her-heroes-and-the-london-conference.html
Bullshit!!!!
Just this week on msnbc Rachel Madow interviewed our troops while training Afghan women to be police.
If there is a peace, it wont be perfect, but,at a cost of 200 million a day, what the hell are these aholes doing.
Everyone wants to come to the negotiation table, and not every war ends with a victory for one side.
If you put a dollar value to these wars , Americans lost 2 trillion dollars ago, where the money went , I dont know.
But I can tell you this, I did not get a dime, I lost my 4th amendment rights, and I think our government and supreme court our a bunch of unconstitutional bums.
So the record of Human Rights Watch (HRW) has not been perfect. So what? That does not change the dismal situation and an even more dismal future faced by the Afghan women.
The sentence "The Taliban's five-year rule, which ended with a U.S.-led invasion in 2001, was marked by general repression that was particularly brutal towards women" is such an understatement. Especially since that five-year period was also a time when Afghanistan was NOT on the radar of MOST westerners. That was a time when the Soviet Union no longer existed, there was no threat to the western supremacy, and the biggest "problem" for many Americans was the bugs in Windows-95, and the biggest excitement for the "news" media were provided by a stained blue dress, the millennium and the Y2K scare. Not many even noticed that a hijacked Indian Airlines aircraft was taken by Pakistani militants to the Kandahar airport during the last week of 1999, and was released in exchange for more militants in Indian jail. I repeat these because of the way the news media works and their phenomenal power to influence people's perception of reality. They can magically make a whole country disappear, so to speak, simply by neglecting to cover it.
Irrespective of who raises the issue - whether it's the HRW, the Afghan Women's Network or RAWA (Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan), the fact remains that Afghan women have suffered and continue to suffer and deserve our sympathy (at the very least) and our prayers (if you are into praying, that is). Beyond that, whatever **legitimate** influence can be brought on the Afghan government to ensure the safety and freedom of the Afghan women should be encouraged. And any outside meddling that seeks to perpetuate the misery of the Afghan women - such as the Pakistani military's support to the Taliban - should be discouraged, or, at the very least, exposed.
How 'bout we threaten the Pashtuns/Taliban AND the Karzai government with international embargoes on their opium exports unless they start treating the women-folk nice?
Women's rights has NOTHING to do with the current Afghanistan war. Never has. Never will.
Discussion of the two subjects together just confuses things.
THAT'S why who and what Human Rights Watch really is and is about is relevant.
Because they are trying to confuse good people like you into mixing up an Imperial War and the global struggle for women's equality (which is harmed by Imperial Wars in general, and this one in specific -I remember multiple articles here on CD showing that women's equality had seen REVERSALS since the U.S. occupation!).
-matti.
'Human Rights Watch (HRW) also called for current leaders to be made accountable for past crimes.'
Absolutely!!! Make it current and past leaders and do so in the USA. You have the death penalty in the USA. Use it well. There are thousands of leaders and good profits be made if you privatise the industry. Turn your legendary US innovation into an asset.
Go get'm Lassie!
Some, it seems are in HRW. Sniff'm out gal!
bligh4
Empire- you go boy! Who the hell do these uppity women think they are wanting rights? Men? Tell them to forget about rights and get their asses into the kitchen to make you a sandwich!
bligh4, you have to "admire" his chutzpah though - for sticking to his "message". Although the thought that there could be many more like him is a bit scary. Thanks for the laugh though.
Primarily Afghan women want Peace.
Their rights are already compromised under Karzai.
Their rights are no worse than Saudi Arabia.
The Taliban stopped the rape and murder of everyone.
The Taliban summarily executed rapists.
The USA armed the forces oppossing the 1979 government implementing womens rights.
Rural Afghan women adopted the Burqa for privacy in the cities.
Should another country invade the USA to insure economic or civil rihts?
Iraq had some the best conditions for everyone before the USA sanctions and invasion.
Now it is listed as one of the worst places for anyone to live in the world.
John Pilger may well be British and Australian. I'm pretty sure he was born before Austratian citizenship came into being, if so he would as a result of that been a British national by being an Australian native, but once Australian citizenship came in he would have also been Australian. In much of the British Commonwealth this is the case with people over a certain age having dual nationality as a result.
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