The Muslim Woman

The statements of an international women’s rights group seem true; the condition of Afghani women is not satisfactory even after the fall of Taliban. In 2001 when Taliban trembled, the women were hoping of an independent and pleasant life, but it is still a dream for them. The Afghani women is still hiding their terror filled eyes behind veil, there is not much change in there lives. For them Taliban is still there in the form of discrimination, violence and harassment. The reports clear that laws are only on the papers, but in real life there rights does not mean anything for them. Still the Afghani women are not safe, there is no feeling of safety, self respect and dignity, therefore the issue like political rights and equality are too far. Since two years, the graph of self-immolation and suicides had increased. Child marriages are common amongst them. About 60% of girls are forced to get married before the legal age of 16. In Afghanistan’s assembly, women are � in number, though they have to face harassment even in parliament. The originations or individual standing to safeguard the rights of women are not even safe. To overcome the critical condition of Afghani women, the basic changes have to be made, the stiffness have to be provided, especially in the field of education. Secondly, the extremists should not be allowed to harass woman on the basis of Islam. The rights mentioned by the Constitution of Afghanistan should be applied. It is definite that, there should be change in society; otherwise it is difficult to upgrade the condition of women. The religious leaders have to understand the real meaning of Islam. They should try to understand that Islam teaches mercy and forgiveness and not violence. Via: BBC

Women for Women International (WFWI) is an organization, which a young Iraqi American woman, Zainab Salbi, started in 1992 to help women in conflict zones, recover their lives. It played an active role in serving the women victims of war in Croatia and Bosnia Herzegovina. Presently, it’s pulsating in nine countries by working as a panacea for women and their families especially in the war prone regions. From the time of 2002, the WFWI has trained round about 9,000 women in job skills in Afghanistan. According to Salbi, the women require some financial stability, which’ll make them independent, ‘decision maker of their families and community and voting’ and mend their fractured families. For instance, Pashtoon, who lost her husband in 1992, had nothing to rely on with but then WFWI stepped forward and trained her as a beautician. Now she is looking after her family independently, bearing her orphaned grandson not only this, she’s also counted among the entrepreneurs of Afghanistan. The WFWI program director, Pat Morris, who lately tripped to Afghanistan, said that Afghan women see optimistic changes. The inclusion of men into the program is one of the major approaches of the WFWI as Morris admits that positive changes come when women and men would perform certain duties in ‘partnership’. The WFWI imparts training to its women folk in the field of beautician, jewelry making and tailoring. They also happen to open bakeries and make shoes and purses at home. Salbi revealed that working in Taliban is a bit tough job as some provinces has negative impact on women like drug trafficking. The U.S. government is worried as regards to the increase in drug trafficking, and addresses it through a USAID program that assists Afghan women through micro financing. Image Read

The Taliban Movement was a Sunni Islamist fundamentalist movement that successfully ruled most of Afghanistan from 1996 until 2001. The Taliban government has been severely condemned for violating the human rights of women. They were compelled to wear ‘burqa’ of specific length and slight variation could result in public punishment, as women were beaten with thin sticks at the ankles for wearing burqas that were ‘too short’. Moreover, the women were deprived of elementary education and voting as well. Today, there is no such regime in Afghanistan so the rhetoric situation should be… woman and man working together in all the walks of life. However, this is not the actual picture. The living condition of women folk in Afghanistan is so bleak that they prefer self- immolation since they consider it to be the only way out to escape the harshness of life in this conservative and violence-plagued country. A case like the previous one has come up again and this time, a sixteen-year-old girl has become the victim of this pernicious trend… a trend of detesting life and giving oneself to immolation. After marrying a forty-year-old man, Gulsum, a sixteen-year-old girl’s life became miserable. It started to deteriorate further as her husband, became accustomed to heroin, alcohol and started manhandling her. The abuse became worse when she confronted him about his addictions, unable to bear any longer, she took the extreme step of self-immolation by dousing herself with gas and letting herself to ablaze. This is one such case, which has become known, but there are lots of them that are still covered in the name of religion or some ‘psychological problem’. Present scenario: Statistically, there were 93 such cases last year and 54 so far this year and more than 70 percent of these women have passed away. Womankind Worldwide says millions of Afghan women and girls continue to face systematic discrimination and violence in their households and communities. However, guarantees given to Afghan women after the fall of the Taliban in 2001 have not translated into real change. These abuses including rapes, assaults and other such crimes are being committed with total impunity by government forces and armed political groups who are prepared to terrorize the civilian population in order to secure and reinforce their power bases. Who could be the culprits: While frequently claiming that they wish to ‘restore’ religious, ethnic and humane standards, those engaged in the fighting have persistently indulged in widespread human rights abuses and looting of property. Even non-violent groups such as women’s organizations have been systematically targeted for attacks. Consequent upon which, women find no shelter to shed their grievances. What could be done: 1. Issuing a clear warning to the military factions in Afghanistan that the world’s governments will not ignore abuses of human rights against women and other civilians. 2. Ensuring that standards set out in international humanitarian and human rights law designed to protect women’s rights are upheld in Afghanistan. At present, women who are working to promote development, equality and peace in Afghanistan risk imprisonment, torture and other human rights violations and abuses. 3. Publicly state their commitment, ensuring that the intergovernmental bodies which monitor human rights violations against women, including the UN Commission on Human Rights and its Special Reporter on violence against women , the UN Commission of the Status of Women and the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, have adequate resources to carry out their tasks effectively. 4. Support education and training programs in Afghanistan designed to promote awareness of women’s rights as human rights. 5. All governments, particularly those in Pakistan and Iran, to respect fully the rights of Afghan refugees and offer them adequate protection, both at border-posts and in refugee camps. Image Read

Afghan police have seized six Taliban insurgents suspected of killing two women teachers along with three other relatives. Friday, that is eighth of December night’s atrocious killings brought to 20 the number of teachers killed in Taliban attacks this year. Shinkai Kharokhail, a lawmaker said, ‘Many villagers have stopped letting their girls go to school, fearing they will be targeted by the Taliban. That campaign has had a very negative impact on the people.’ President Hamid Karzai, in the meantime, burst into tears during an emotional press conference regarding the growing violence across Afghanistan. Read

Women in the southern Helmand province have complained that their brothers are not giving them inheritance right in father’s property. According to Shariat, women also have due share in father’s property, but now brothers are depriving them of their right. Makay, a resident of Tor Tang area of Lashkargah, said that ‘after father death, my brothers divided the land among themselves and deprived us of our due inheritance right.’ Similarly, Bibi Shafia, 50, a resident of Zarghon village said that ‘My brothers say we don’t give you right, because now you are no more a member of our family.’ However, there are some cases where the women have themselves submitted their right to brothers because of poor economic conditions. Fouzia Uloomi, head of the Women Affairs, said quite many women were registering complaint against her brothers in her office regularly. She further said that the problem is not limited to Helmand, but is engulfing the entire country. Nevertheless, Mohammad Jamil, a resident of Lashkargah and a shopkeeper, said after marriage, sisters became members of others family and no brother would want to hand over his property to someone else. Image Read

Are women in Islamic culture a property than a mere human being? A married woman can leave her husband only in a coffin- is a famous epitaph in most of the chauvinistic driven Islamic countries. The tornado of self-destruction in form of self-immolation in Afghanistan have now moved towards Turkey where the women in order to escape from the suffocating shroud of chauvinism prefers to give way to suicide. In Diyarbakir, a small village, a 21-year-old woman, Sahe Fidan, unable to bear the hardships in her husband’s house decides to go to her parents’ place but was unable to find solace even there and finally ends up in committing suicide. This is not the only case hovering around the region instead there are numerous such instances where the girls or the woman are victimized in the name of ‘honor killings’. Some of them are: 1. at least 200 girls and women are murdered each year by their families 2. a woman was stoned to death because she was unmarried and pregnant 3. of the total, 40% support for the practice of ‘honor killing’ 4. 70 women are murdered annually in honor killings in southeast region Thousands of women have died, been attacked or compelled to commit suicide by male relatives who think the females have brought shame to the family’s honor, Continue reading “‘Honor killings’, a deep-seated tradition in Turkey” »

Zangabad region of Afghanistan is experiencing a ray of hope, especially in the arena of the natives’ health and well-being. Lately Canadian military has set up a clinic, Civil Military Co-operation Centre for people of the region. At first, the locals believed that the foreigners would be handling out bad medicine but then they did not pay heed to the rumors and unlike previously, when they burnt the clinic, this time they were seen willingly coming up for medical assistance. One woman covered in a burka said she and her children deserved the same medical attention currently only afforded to those with transportation and the necessary funds to see private doctors in the city. Sgt. Nicky Bascon, a reservist with Toronto’s Queen’s York Rangers and Civil Military Co-operation Centre operator explained that they are aware of their culture but in order to give mediation to the women folk, they would have to see her first. Although, initially, a few consented but an initial trickle of local burqa-clad women seeking help quickly turned into a stream. The doctors sorted out the patients into groups based on their need for or likely benefit from immediate medical treatment. They offered medications to the children suffering from ‘mosquito-borne disease’ or ‘burns from a spilt kettle of tea’. And women were treated according to their medical requirement. Immage Read

Throughout the world, women are victims of violence on a daily basis whether in the context of peace or in conflict. Perpetrators may be officials of the state, armed opposition groups or individuals – including family members. Here, in Afghanistan, women are traded for debts. It forces me to ask a question, can women in Muslim countries ever expect to breathe in the air of self- approbation? In Helmand, southern Afghanistan, a man who was not in a position to pay his debt, married off his daughter to an opium dealer, who already had a wife and four children. What’s more worse was yet to come. Unable to withstand the callousness of life in her husband’s home, she ‘grabbed the AK-47 from the policeman guarding the council meeting in the Grishk district of southern Helmand province and killed herself.’ This is just a single incident but the province is saturated with these kinds of cases, many of those go unreported. Afghanistan produces more than 90% of the opium available in the world today. Local drug dealers pay in advance to farmers for their poppy yield but they often end up giving their daughters to the drug traffickers when they fail to harvest the expected yield. Staggering figures shows 1. In 2006 alone, 69 cases of self-immolation and murders from Helmand and Kandahar provinces were related to marriages in exchange for drugs. 2. More than 20 women and girls had committed suicide over the past 10 months most of them had been handed over to dealers instead of drugs. 3. Women as old as 32 and girls as young as three being given to another family in exchange for debts. 4. 60% to 80% of all marriages in Afghanistan were forced. Afghanistan is still facing an internal armed conflict and is ruled by a fragile government. Condition of women has hardly improved even after the fall of Taliban regime. Cases of violence are generally kept secret in rural areas but if the victim or family chooses to complain, tribal Jirgas or local councils are convened to resolve it. There is a huge gap between the reality on the ground and the ‘remarkable progress’ claimed by western diplomats who sit in fortified compounds behind guards and concrete blocks and who never leave Kabul. The only area in which the country could really be said to have made remarkable progress is in growing the poppy. End of the Taliban was meant to be like this? Image Read

After the dilapidated condition of Afghanistan, which was the aftermath of war the province was left with a barren land where all hopes and aspirations of the people were buried deep into the gravel. Native women in drought hit Zabul province have tried to infuse life in the dead, desolate land. They are planting rows of saplings, weeding and watering them at the cost of their personal safety. Some 90 women who raise them are getting 61 kilograms of oil, wheat, pulses, and salt a month as part of a food for work program, on which most of the families depend. For some, lessons in reading, writing, nutrition, and health care are offered in lieu of labor. It has been a struggle to get these women here. Zabul, like all of southern Afghanistan, is deeply conservative and influenced by the extremist Taliban religious movement, whose insurgency keeps the nation unstable. Although it was, a difficult step since women are still not allowed that much freedom. The women of Zabul are completely illiterate – the educated ones come from other provinces. Still some 100 women have dropped the idea of joining the scheme because of security reasons but there are others who are ready to take risk for the sake of their independency. Image Read

A proposal of giving financial assistance of more than one billion USD for the emancipation of women in Afghanistan has been put forward by some policymakers in the chambers of US Congress. The Democrat Congresswoman from New York, Carolyn B. Maloney, has listed the Afghan Women Empowerment Act of 2007 bill in the House of Representative along with 14 supporters, while in the Senate it has been favored by leading Democrat Senator Barbara Boxer and shored up by four others. Supporters of the Afghan Women Empowerment Act of 2007 advocated that safeguarding the rights of women and girls along with their participation is vital for the setting up of democracy in the province. Image Read