generalspeaking

Women's Basic Human Rights

The horrible plight of the women of Afghanistan under the straitjacketed, grim administration of the Taliban brought the world up short in sudden attention. Women's magazines featured the dreadful circumstances in which women were forced in live under that rigidly fanatical rule of Islamism. In Canada over a decade ago, the then-editor of Homemaker's magazine, Sally Armstrong, began to write articles about the Taliban regime, informing Canadian women of the horrors of daily life there.

Since the invasion of Afghanistan, led by the United States in the wake of 9-11, with the blessing of the United Nations and the participation of NATO countries - not to liberate the women and the children, and even the ordinary male citizen who had no love for the Taliban but to route out that regime because they harboured and sheltered and made common cause with al-Qaeda, women's fortunes improved. In the urban areas, marginally, that is.

But in Afghanistan roughly 70% of the population is not urban. And it is in the largely rural areas, and in the tribal highlands that improvement of women's condition has been far, far slower to non-existent. True, schools have been built to allow girls to attend school, forbidden under the Taliban. And occasionally as speedily destroyed. And medical centres and civil infrastructure under the guidance of NGOs and foreign military and volunteers have proceeded, enhancing life to a degree.

But the current government of Hamid Karzai reflects that of an medieval Islamist society, as well as a poverty-stricken one, a socially backward one, and a tribally-entitled one. It is also severely misogynistic, and cruel to both young boys and girls, exploiting them sexually and degrading their lives irremediably. Afghanistan's government is corrupt and partially led by war lords whose human rights abuses pre-dated even the Taliban's.

United Nations, NATO and chiefly American armed service people are in the country attempting to stem the increasing, rather than decreasing tide of Taliban insurgency. Great Britain, Canada and the Netherlands hang in there, trying to stem the rising tide of insurgencies. Hoping to win over the 'hearts and minds' of a repressed, fearful and hard-pressed population, resentful of foreign intervention, yet grateful for assistance.

Hedged in by foreign armies and on the other side by vengeful Taliban recruiting their young men to battle the infidels, they hardly know whom to trust. And the fields that once grew food, now have hurtled the country into a narco-state. But if it's a toss-up between despised and feared foreigners whose armed responses occasionally take their toll in civilian deaths, and the fanatical Islamists who are Afghans, it isn't difficult to see where the choice will lie.

President Karzai is anxious to ensure that foreign troops remain in the country to ensure the longevity of his reign and his government, and to forestall the overtaking of the country once again by the Taliban. Even while he rages against the clumsiness of foreign troops in mistakenly targeting civilians. He pledges himself to good governance, yet does nothing to eradicate rampant corruption.

And now, he has taken the final step, returning full circle to victimize the women and the children of Afghanistan all over again. Not that, in any event, the women and children living in the broad and high hinterlands of the country's many provinces saw much relief from their impoverished and misogynist position as inferiors to men in every conceivable way.

A position that has now been enshrined in law, as President Karzai submitted to the demands of the fundamental Islamists within the country and his government to deny women basic human rights. Lawfully, a man may now rape his wife without consequences. Women will, under the law, have no property rights, no right to custody of their children in the event of separation or divorce.

Simply putting into law practises that already exist. So we should remind ourselves again why we're there, offering the lives of our soldiers in exchange for stability in a country that is incapable of governing itself, of protecting itself, of caring for its most vulnerable. Or indeed caring that they do not.

Labels: Political Realities, Traditions, World Crises

posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, April 01, 2009