The Taliban's war on women

By Donna McFadden

"My aunt has no teeth left, due to constant beatings by the Taliban," said one LPC student who asked not to be named. Her aunt, she told me, used to be a professional woman in Afghanistan who supported her seven children after her husband died of cancer. Now she has no way to support her children, and her house (to which she was restricted) has collapsed. She fears for her children, because they are not able to gain employment due to the fact that they are not of the same tribe as the Taliban and do not speak the "accepted" language.

On September 27, 1996, the extreme militia group called the Taliban, seized control of Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. They took over approximately two-thirds of Afghanistan when war-weary citizens placed their faith in the Taliban's promises to restore law and order to the country after an 18-year civil war. The Taliban then initiated steps designed to bring about a state in which women are stripped of their basic human rights.

The Taliban justifies its repression of women with claims that they are protecting women and enforcing Islamic law. An Afghan man now living in the U.S. told me that a woman is well protected from the lust of men and the acts which stem from those lusts by wearing a burqua, an all encompassing outfit which shrouds the body like a tent, as dictated by the Taliban.

The Taliban's edicts for the "protection of women" are enforced by young men, often teenage boys, armed with whips and automatic weapons to ensure the obedience of women. These young men comprise the "religious police," part of the Department for the Propagation of Virtue and the Suppression of Vice.

There is no way to list all of the atrocities committed by the Taliban, but here are a few examples:

• A woman caught trying to flee Afghanistan with a man who was not a relative was stoned to death for adultery.
• A woman who was walking with a man who was not related to her received 100 lashes to the cheers of 30,000 men and boys who filled the Olympic Sports Stadium to watch.
• An elderly woman was beaten with a metal cable until her leg was broken because her ankle was accidentally showing.
• One woman was shot and killed in front of her husband, daughter, and students for defying the Taliban by running a home school for girls.

Who is the Taliban?

Foreign mujahein, known as "Afghans," were recruited from all over the Arab world, trained in Pakistan, and sent to do battle against the communists in Afghanistan. Like the "Afghans," the Taliban forces are Pakistan-trained and Saudi financed. Not surprisingly, there are many similarities between Taliban and Saudi rule.

Most of the Talibs (meaning "religious students") are young zealots, graduates of schools based mostly in Pakistan, where they grow up totally segregated from women, studying the Koran, the holy book written by the prophet, Mohammed. The highest honor they can earn at these schools is that of qari, a Muslim honor given to those who can memorize and recite the entire Koran, and a number of these boys can do that. They learn to do so in Arabic, a language that is not taught to them and that they do not understand. Consequently, they have no idea of the rights given to women in Islam.

Although the Taliban insists that its oppression of women is simply a restoration of Islamic law, authorities on Islamic law state that few of the dictates of the Taliban have any basis in Islam.

In truth, the Taliban follows a harsh Saudi tribal dictate that contradicts the Muslim belief in a merciful and compassionate God, a belief that is reaffirmed with every prayer.

The Koran emphasizes the treatment of women with respect and kindness. Islam gave women the right to vote over 1,500 years ago, along with the right to hold elected office, the right to work, to own property, to obtain divorces, to have an abortion when necessary, to be educated, and to have wealth of their own. A woman may even divorce her husband if he is not sexually satisfying.

Before the Taliban's ban on female employment, 70 percent of the teachers in Kabul were women, as were 50 percent of the civil servants and university students, and 40 percent of the doctors.

Now all such former professional women have been under virtual house arrest.

When the Taliban took control, it did so by saying that their extreme decrees were necessary to protect women from widespread discrimination and violence. The Taliban has maintained that these measures are temporary. However, one Talib, Fazal-rabbi Hayatzadah was quoted as saying "The Taliban will never grant freedom to Afghan women."

According to the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), the Deputy Chief Justice of the Afghanistan Supreme Court said, "The blackest day in the history of Afghanistan was the day on which women were granted freedom."

RAWA has described the Taliban as "fundamentalist miscreants [with a] savage aversion towards every single vestige of humanity, culture, science and human progress."

"A level of terror unimaginable to most Americans has been the rule in most of Afghanistan since the Taliban took powerbut the most consistently soul-crushing cruelties have been reserved for women and girls," reported Bob Herbert in the New York Times.

The Taliban often attacks women at night. Zaynab, a nine-year-old girl, was taken prisoner by Taliban forces as she slept. She was then taken from the area and gang-raped by the militiamen. When questioned, her captor, Bahador Khan, said "Afghanistan is in a state of war, and the Taliban [can] take the women and girls of un-Islamic forces. From among these, Zaynab was given to me, and so whatever I do to her is not a sin."

International Apathy and Complicity

While both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate have passed strong resolutions condemning the violations of human rights of women and girls in Afghanistan, only a small percentage of the U.S. population is even aware of the situation in Afghanistan. To be sure, media coverage of the problem is scant. This may be due, in part, to U.S. corporate interests in Afghanistan, most recognizably, Unocal and Amoco. It may also be due, in part, to the U.S. government's attempts to negotiate with the Taliban to turn over their honored guest, Osama Bin Laden, who is suspected of masterminding the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed over 200 people, including 12 U.S. citizens. The United Nations imposed economic sanctions against Afghanistan when it failed to meet the deadline for turning in the alleged terrorist.

The same U.S. Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, who spoke with Afghan women in refugee camps in Pakistan and denounced the Taliban's treatment of women and girls as "despicable" is now willing to formally recognize the government of the Taliban if they hand Bin Laden over for justice.

Where is our stand on Human Rights?

How can we expect the world to take us seriously when we quote "human rights" as a reason for sanctions, if we are so inconsistent?

"If this was happening to any other class of people around the world, there would be a tremendous outcry," said Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority Foundation. "We must make sure these same standards are applied when it is women and girls who are brutally treated."

We live in a society that recognizes each person's right to contribute to society. In a place where everyone is free to express themselves and set goals for themselves, it is hard to imagine a culture where the power to speak, dress, move, work, receive medical treatment, and so on is limited to one gender.

You may think "this is not my problem; it's on the other side of the world," but the large Muslim community in the U.S. has many Taliban supporters and some Muslim women in the U.S. are choosing to wear the veil to show their support for the Taliban.

TALIBAN DECREES Women must wear the all-encompassing burqua, shrouding the body like a tent, leaving only a heavy gauze mesh covering their faces through which the wearer can breathe and "see." There is no peripheral vision and accidents have occurred because the women were unable to see the vehicle or to move quickly. Women are prohibited from working. Women are not to go out in public without a male relative. Homes where a woman is present must paint their windows black, so that the woman can never be seen. Women must wear silent slippers, without heels, so that they are never heard. When shopping, a woman must have her brother, husband, or father do her speaking for her, so that no man will be excited by the sound of her voice. It is against the law of the Taliban for women who are not related to gather in groups. Education for females over the age of eight is now banned in Afghanistan. It is now illegal for women to wear cosmetics. All songs except songs praising God or the Taliban are strictly prohibited. Picnics, movies, television, wedding parties, New Year celebrations, any kind of mixed-sex gatherings, toys, cameras, photographs, paintings of people and animals, pet parakeets, magazines, newspapers, and most books are all prohibited and violators of these dictates can be beaten (or worse) on the spot. **Sources for the above include: Physicians for Human Rights; Radio Free Europe; CNN; Amnesty International; Afghanistan Online Press; Jan Goodwin, award-winning journalist, human rights activist, and author of The Feminist Majority; The Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan (RAWA); Irish Times; Omaid Weekly; U.S. Department of State; Journal of the American Medical Association; and VOA's Judith Latham.

Copyright © 2000 by Las Positas College Express

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