generalspeaking

Can Afghanistan Be Saved? From Itself?

 Love of Country

"He came to see me brandishing his pistol trying to order me not to do it, though he didn't actually open fire. The government eventually had to take his pistol away.
"Firstly, I needed the money. But, secondly, I love my country. I feel proud wearing the uniform and I want to try to make Afghanistan a better and stronger country."
Police Lt. Islam Bibi -- April 2013

Lieutenant Islam Bibi died after being shot on Thursday morning    Police Lt. Islam Bibi has been eliminated, shot dead, no longer available to exert herself as a credit to the women of Afghanistan, determined to be mothers as nature intended and at the same time, involve themselves in the civil life of their country. Like other Afghan women who felt they had the potential to be professionals in the police, in politics, and who were disabused of that insulting-to-Islam notion, Islam Bibi's voice has been silenced forever.

Where once she was a proud symbol of what Afghan women could attain to as proof of their love of country, of their courage, of their determination, symbolic of women's human rights opening up opportunities even in socially-backward countries like her own, as a mentor to young women, she is now a mourned experiment. Under the Taliban, women were denied opportunities of any kind, other than that of being in the home, bearing children, shut out of an education.

She was the most senior female police officer in Helmand province, a role model to other aspiring young women who saw public service as appealing to their sense of self-worth. A mother of three, she was 37 years of age. She wore a police uniform where most other women she might come across in the normal course of a working day would be wearing burkas on the streets of her country, even after liberation from Taliban rule.

She was riding a motorcycle alongside her son-in-law in the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah, as she left her home. "She was seriously injured and died of injuries later in the emergency ward in hospital", explained Ummar Zawaq, spokesman for the governor of Helmand. While she is now gone, there are 32 other women serving with the Afghan police. Representing less than half of one percent of the 7,000-member police force in the province.

Under Taliban rule women were not even permitted to seek medical attention in hospitals since male doctors were not permitted to tend to the needs of females. As NATO members and particularly the United States withdraw from Afghanistan, leaving the country to finally manage its own affairs, albeit consulting with Western allies, there will eventually be a return of the Taliban.

President Karzai has visions of a shared government. The Taliban leadership are under no such illusions.

They envision a return to the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, under the Taliban flag, and a restoration of Taliban rule, under Sharia law. Under those circumstances the women of Afghanistan can foresee a future that will take them back to the past where girls were constrained from the education system, and women denied employment.

Among many other unsavoury restraints on civilized life.

Labels: Afghanistan, Crime, Human Relations, Security, Social-Cultural Deviations, Taliban

posted by Pieface @ Saturday, July 06, 2013