Afghan Women and the Return of the Taliban

Dear Friends:

As many of you know, I sometimes circulate articles pertaining to women's human rights on this list. Accordingly, below are brief excerpts from a Time Magazine article discussing women's perilous situation in Afghanistan. I strongly encourage you to read the full article, and view the photographs. Be forewarned: some of the images are brutal and haunting.

For those of us reading this article in the West, let's not take our right's for granted. Let's also not forget that the raw misogyny that produces disfigured faces like that of Aisha's is the expressed throughout the world -- in ways like sex trafficking, commercial sexual exploitation, domestic violence, and rape as a weapon of war.

Please keep Aisha and the women of Afghanistan in your prayers.

Abolition!

Lisa

video link: http://www.time.com/time/video/player/0,32068,308943282001_2007270,00.html

Afghan Women and the Return of the Taliban

The Taliban pounded on the door just before midnight, demanding that Aisha, 18, be punished for running away from her husband's house. They dragged her to a mountain clearing near her village in the southern Afghan province of Uruzgan, ignoring her protests that her in-laws had been abusive, that she had no choice but to escape. Shivering in the cold air and blinded by the flashlights trained on her by her husband's family, she faced her spouse and accuser. Her in-laws treated her like a slave, Aisha pleaded. They beat her. If she hadn't run away, she would have died. Her judge, a local Taliban commander, was unmoved. Later, he would tell Aisha's uncle that she had to be made an example of lest other girls in the village try to do the same thing. The commander gave his verdict, and men moved in to deliver the punishment. Aisha's brother-in-law held her down while her husband pulled out a knife. First he sliced off her ears. Then he started on her nose. Aisha passed out from the pain but awoke soon after, choking on her own blood. The men had left her on the mountainside to die. . . .

Traditional ways, however, do little for women. Aisha's family did nothing to protect her from the Taliban. That might have been out of fear, but more likely it was out of shame. A girl who runs away is automatically considered a prostitute in deeply traditional societies, and families that allow them back home would be subject to widespread ridicule. A few months after Aisha arrived at the shelter, her father tried to bring her home with promises that he would find her a new husband. Aisha refused to leave. In rural areas, a family that finds itself shamed by a daughter sometimes sells her into slavery, or worse, subjects her to a so-called honor killing — murder under the guise of saving the family's name.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2007238-1,00.html