Alternative title: Women’s rights are totally reinstalled in Afghanistan. Vive la liberation.
The Afghanistan Government looks like reinstating the Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice of the Taliban era. There has been a resounding silence from the UN and the US on the matter.
Women and human rights advocates fear a return to a time when “women were publicly beaten for wearing white shoes or heels that clicked, using lipstick or going outside unaccompanied by a close male relative.”
The repression of women was often cited in the West as a reason to intervene and oust the Taliban. Both the US First Lady and the wife of the British Prime Minister made passionate speeches on the subject.
Laura Bush took over her husband’s weekly radio address in November 2001 to boast that “because of our recent military gains in much of Afghanistan, women are no longer imprisoned in their homes. They can listen to music and teach their daughters without fear of punishment”.
Yet almost five years after the fall of the Taliban, Afghan women are far from achieving these aims. There have already been more attacks in the first half of this year than all of last year and according to a UN official, barely a day goes by without a school being burnt or teacher killed.
With a parliament stacked with warlords and those accused of gross human rights violations, it looks like Afghanistan can only expect more of the same as the international community rolls back its involvement (not that they were doing all that much anyway).
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