'It was my decision to die. I was getting beaten every day'
Wednesday, June 23, 2010 at 12:04AM 
Brutal stuff from Japan Times via WPR's Media Roundup.
Picture found here, along with the quote above.
No surprise: where you find the Taliban you find one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a woman. An old theme for me: given the choice, most women would prefer living in the Core to the Gap; hence, they welcome globalization's embrace far more than men inside the Gap, because it liberates them disproportionally.
The usual details on the plight of women in Afghanistan, but then this jumps out at you:
It is not surprising, then, that the average life expectancy for a woman in Afghanistan is only 44 years.
Women don't fare any better in education. It is estimated that 87 percent of Afghan women are illiterate. Many girls fear going to school for lack of security. Although some aspects of their lives have improved, women are still at a clear disadvantage with men.
"Women who try to advocate for their rights in public life are subject to violence and physical attacks," said Zia Moballegh, acting country director for the International Center for Human Rights and Democratic Development.
"Violence against women and girls is widespread and deeply rooted in society," Norah Niland, chief U.N. human rights officer in Afghanistan, said last year.
"Our field research finds that rape is under-reported and concealed, a huge problem in Afghanistan," Niland added. "It affects all parts of the country, all communities and all social groups."
It is estimated that one in three Afghan women experience physical, psychological or sexual violence at some point in their lives. Paradoxically, shame is usually associated with the attacks, and the victims often find themselves prosecuted for adultery rather than the perpetrators. While adultery is punishable by jail sentence, no provision in the Afghan penal code criminalizes rape.
A sad result of this oppressive atmosphere is that an increasing number of women in Afghanistan are choosing suicide as a way to escape the violence and abuse in their daily lives, according to a human rights report prepared by Canada's Foreign Affairs Department. "Self-immolation is being carried out by increasing numbers of Afghan women to escape their dire circumstances, and women constitute the majority of Afghan suicides," states a report completed at the end of 2009.
Something to remember as the Long War proceeds.
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Reader Comments (5)
I think of the fine young women in my family. Teachers, engineers, mothers, nurtures. Laughing, caring, and full of life. These men, these Taliban, are murderous psychotics. They are deviants. This is sadism and barbarity masquerading as religion.
If the Afghans can't see it, if they don't want to fight these madmen and drive them out, then to hell with Afghanistan. Let it rot.
To Ted O' Connor,
I fully agreed with letting Afghanistan be until September 11, 2001. We have tried containment and limited airstrikes since 1998. We've done a half-job for 7 years and now want it snapped back together in the last two years. Well, if the concerted effort started in 2008 and the average civil war/insurgency is 7 years, we probably have 5 years left. That is depressing although what would be the point if we left and continued limited strikes where people have 1-1/2 to 2 hours to get out of the way and keep up their rotten activity. Afghanistan is limited and disconnected by geography and this effort was always going to be difficult after being a hole in the map since 1979.
I believe the people want the taliban out, but are terrified and caught in the middle. Popular overthrow of internal repression isn't historical in Afghanistan, only popular resistance to outsiders. The mission has changed from nabbing Osama bin Ladin, Ayman al Zawahiri, and Mullah Omar to putting Afghanistan together with enough security to have the people themselves give up those bad people and habits. Imagine, Afghanistan as an exporter of electricity, supplier of apples/pomegranites (I've seen afghan pomegranites in the store-do you buy them?), all 2 million refugees settled back in Afghanistan and US from Iran and Pakistan, no more security sinkholes in Pakistan/India/Afghanistan and probably cooperation from Iran and Turkey to boot.
We already spent the money and we need some time to see a return. As part of the younger generation saddled with exorbitant interest and taxes to support our older population, we need business relationships in central/south asian and middle east returning to the US and Asiathe right way, not continued spending on a problem that has gone on since I was in kindergarden!
There is an article in the latest foreign policy magazine with pictures of colleges and industry in Afghanistan in the 1950's and 1960's. They were on their way out and up until the Soviets came.
I'll leave with this thought, if the people of Rwanda can get up and do it after nearly 1 million were killed in a month, the Afghans can do it with 1 million killed after 30 years. Think of these girls and kids getting abused, that makes it worth it to me for another 5 years and I have a buddy going there soon as well.
Thanks Ted.
Derek Bergquist
Ted,
Turning your back to these women's plight makes you an accomplice to the crimes.
Women are the key to victory not just in Afghanistan but across central Asia. Educate enough young women on their basic civil rights and you change the culture. Post WWII Japan is a good example.
We should be telling our women to join with others across the world to liberate their sisters from these inhumane conditions. Once they see that others support them the women of Aghanistan will push back hard and deny the Taliban the thing they need the most - young, ignorant men.
How? By demanding the two things all mothers always demand: Better health care and education for their children.
An analogy:
For centuries, the "men" in the international community have been the great powers and the "women" have been the lesser states.
The great powers treated the lesser states as if they were slaves and property -- and did with them (the lesser states) as they liked.
Should a lesser state resist or revolt, then a fate similar to that in the picture above -- except on a state level -- could be expected.
Then came enlightenment (globalization).
If this analogy is correct, then we should expect that globalization would liberate and empower the lesser states, like the women, disproportionally.
This would seem to be the case, as per the recent stellar rise of the New Core versus the more modest rise of the Old Core.
With this in mind, could we say that the parochial interests of a very few (those in power in the Gap States) lies at the heart of the problem re: the Gap; as these parochial interests destroy -- not only the potential of those within the state (for example: the women) -- but also the potential of the state as a whole.
Lacking these parochial interest problems, one would think that the Gap States could, via globalization, achieve benefits like those being experienced by the New Core.
Raise a man out of poverty and violance and you have uplifted a man. Raise a woman out of poverty and violance and you have uplifted an entire family.
My understanding is that very few Taliban soldiers fight because of ideology, but rather because the Taliban pay better than anyone else in the region. We've got to find a superior income source for those soldiers who are not attached to the weak and insecure (but arrogant) ideologies of the Taliban. It's being done in Bangledesh ~ it can be done in Afghanistan.