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Red Jenny on International Women's Day: Afghanistan

derek on International Women's Day: Afghanistan

Ruth Urbina on International Women's Day: Afghanistan


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March 10, 2008

International Women's Day: Afghanistan

Posted by derek at 03:51 PM ET

Nadia Anjuman Poet Picture Portrait.jpg
I am caged in this corner
full of melancholy and sorrow ...
my wings are closed and I cannot fly ...
I am an Afghan woman and so must wail.
- Nadia Anjuman, Afghan poet, murdered by her husband in 2005.

One hundred and sixty-five. That's how many Afghan women set themselves on fire in 2007. It's a desperate act that reflects the desperate lives of women in Afghanistan, whose plight is getting worse.

The outrages make for a long list: Child-selling for marriages is rampant, and many of the new brides haven't even reached their 10th birthday. In prisons and "shelters" women are raped by guards and government officials. Afghan women suffer from one of the world's highest maternal mortality rates: 1 in 9 women die during childbirth. Afghanistan is the only country in the world where the suicide rate is higher for women than for men...and on and on.

Those who speak out, or even raise questions, face harsh punishment. Sayad Kambaksh, 23-year-old journalism student, was recently sentenced to death after a trial that lasted just four minutes. His crime? Downloading an article about women's rights that was deemed blasphemous to Islam by the judges.

All of this is upheld by a government that is defended, funded, and propped up by NATO countries, Canada included.

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Reader comments:

What can be done to help these women and what can I as american women do help them.

Posted by: Ruth Urbina at March 11, 2008 12:49 PM

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Unfortunately, I don't think there's any pat or easy answers to this. A foreign occupation is propping up fundamentalist theocrats who are oppressing women severely, while the most significant opposition to their rule are made of of similarly fundamentalist theocrats who have and will do the same.

An end to the occupation, therefore, will in no way guarantee women's liberation, but I nevertheless see it as a first important step to creating space so that Afghan progressives will be able to step out of darkness and begin building a new society. For, in the society currently, their very existence, as a feminist or an atheist for example, is a crime punishable by death.

The justifications for the occupation - the creation of the warlord/feudal sham "democracy" and the equally preposterous claim that women are benefitting - need to be exposed. And as a start, we need to help give a voice to Afghan's progressives in the emigr� communities and in Afghanistan itself who stand for a comepletely different future: one free of fundamentalism and fundamentalism's foreign backers.

Posted by: derek at March 11, 2008 04:10 PM

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Support RAWA: "RAWA is the oldest political/social organization of Afghan women struggling for peace, freedom, democracy and women's rights in fundamentalism-blighted Afghanistan since 1977." They are amazing courageous women.

Posted by: Red Jenny at March 11, 2008 10:47 PM

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