DMB
31 Jul 2010, 09:52 AM
Military intervention in Afghanistan did break the Taleban's almost complete control, but they still have power. In any case the normal treatment of women is abysmal.
http://www.france24.com/en/20100727-worst-thing-be-afghan-woman
Despite the despair in her voice and the obvious emotional trauma she is struggling to cope with, Shabnam would be considered lucky by many women in Afghanistan.
She has found a refuge where she is safe from the physical and mental abuse millions of Afghan women endure, simply because they were born female.
The shelter offers counselling and legal advice to ensure her constitutional rights are respected. She can stay as long as she wants.
Few women make it this far. . .
. . . In reality, however, despite their constitutional rights, women continue to be treated as chattels and slaves in the name of religion and tradition.
Anecdotal examples abound of young women betrothed as toddlers, exchanged for fighting dogs or to pay debts, beaten and raped by their husbands, jailed by their families for refusing arranged marriages, murdered for the family's "honour," becoming mothers as soon as their bodies are ready, barred from leaving their homes. . .
. . . "Running away is seen as a sign of guilt, of adultery. Many women who run away, when they are picked up by the police, are sent straight to prison," Hagan said.
Gul Andam, a Pashtun woman of 24 with a distinctive nomadic tattoo between her waxed eyebrows, spent a year in prison, accused of 'zina', the crime of having sex outside marriage.
Her brothers sent her to prison, she said, after she had a religious wedding ceremony with the man she loved and refused to marry a man they had chosen for her.
Both she and her husband, an ethnic Hazara, were sentenced to two years in prison after her brothers convinced a court they were not legally married, she said.
When she was released after serving half the sentence, her brothers continued to insist that she marry the man they had chosen for her.
"They told me that if I did not marry that man, they would kill me," she said.
http://www.france24.com/en/20100727-worst-thing-be-afghan-woman
Despite the despair in her voice and the obvious emotional trauma she is struggling to cope with, Shabnam would be considered lucky by many women in Afghanistan.
She has found a refuge where she is safe from the physical and mental abuse millions of Afghan women endure, simply because they were born female.
The shelter offers counselling and legal advice to ensure her constitutional rights are respected. She can stay as long as she wants.
Few women make it this far. . .
. . . In reality, however, despite their constitutional rights, women continue to be treated as chattels and slaves in the name of religion and tradition.
Anecdotal examples abound of young women betrothed as toddlers, exchanged for fighting dogs or to pay debts, beaten and raped by their husbands, jailed by their families for refusing arranged marriages, murdered for the family's "honour," becoming mothers as soon as their bodies are ready, barred from leaving their homes. . .
. . . "Running away is seen as a sign of guilt, of adultery. Many women who run away, when they are picked up by the police, are sent straight to prison," Hagan said.
Gul Andam, a Pashtun woman of 24 with a distinctive nomadic tattoo between her waxed eyebrows, spent a year in prison, accused of 'zina', the crime of having sex outside marriage.
Her brothers sent her to prison, she said, after she had a religious wedding ceremony with the man she loved and refused to marry a man they had chosen for her.
Both she and her husband, an ethnic Hazara, were sentenced to two years in prison after her brothers convinced a court they were not legally married, she said.
When she was released after serving half the sentence, her brothers continued to insist that she marry the man they had chosen for her.
"They told me that if I did not marry that man, they would kill me," she said.