Afghan Women: Stripped of Basic Human Rights

http://www.internationalist.org/afghanwomen1001.html

It's that time of the week again. I performed my usual ritual (going on 2 weeks) of stopping by the Harold B. Lee Library to flip through the pages of Sebastiao Salgado's Migrations wondering what else I could possibly learn about refugees. When I came to this picture, I froze in shock. "What?...But...Why?" I just couldn't understand. I had heard of woman being mistreated in other countries, but this just didn't make sense to me. Why should a woman have to cover her face and the rest of her body with such an uncomfortable and unattractive piece of fabric? What purpose does that serve for anybody? Although another photo of children hanging to the fence of a detention camp also struck at my heart, I just couldn't let go of the mystery of the lives of these women.

From my early research, I discovered that this picture was placed sometime after the Taliban seized Kabul. I learned that the piece of fabric, a state-mandated uniform, was called a chadri, that girls as young sometimes as young as 8 or 9 were forced to wear it, and that women wore the chadri, or burqa, out of fear of being whipped or stoned. I had to learn more. Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan was seized by the Taliban, an extremist militia, on September 27, 1996. A totalitarian dictatorship and gender apartheid changed the lives of these people, especially the women. The strict rules placed against women included:

• banishment from the work force
• closing of all schools to girls and women
• prohibited to leave their home unless accompanied by a close male relative
• publicly visible windows must be painted black
• women forced to wear the chadri which covers the entire body leaving only a small mesh-covered opening in order to see
• women and girls could not see a male physician and females could not work in this occupation or any other 

Punishment for violating any of these restrictions included brutal beatings, public flogging, and even death. I can't imagine the pain of a mother holding her sick child in her arms facing her only two choices: losing her child to the illness or losing her own life trying to save her child. The love of a mother drove many women from their homes seeking mercy, but finding only indifferent cruelty.

But why? The Taliban claimed it was aiming to ensure a safe and dignified role for women in society. They claimed to follow a pure, fundamentalist Islamic ideology. But their ideals held no foundation in the Islamic religion and did they really believe that being threatened and forced into hiding would give women feelings of safety or dignity? My heart aches as I read about the tragedies of these women and I know that I am so blessed to live in America. I am grateful for the soldiers that fight every day to stop this cruelty towards women. Doesn't every girl deserve to know that she is beautiful, that she is intelligent and capable, and that she can make her own choices based on the pursuit of happiness?

Works Cited:

Salgado, Sebastião. "Migrations: Humanity in Transition". New York: Aperture, 2000. Print.

http://books.google.com/books/about/My_Forbidden_Face.html?id=gZIoAQAACAAJ

http://feminist.org/afghan/taliban_women.asp

http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/6185.htm