Afghanistan: women's lives still in danger

Off Our Backs, May/Jun 2005 by Verma, Priya, Douglas, Carol Anne, Pleatman, Rachel, Chapman, Annsley, Et al

Asia

KABUL-Women's lives are still in danger in Afghanistan. At the end of April, three Afghan women were raped and strangled. The killers dumped the women's bodies near a road in the northern province of Baghlan.

A note pinned to one of the bodies said "This is a retribution for those women who are working in NGOs and those who are involved in whoredom." A group called the Afghan Youth Convention claimed responsibility for the killing.

One of the women had worked for a nongovernmental organization based in Bangladesh that provided small amounts of credit for craftwork projects, mostly to widows-of whom there are many in Afghanistan.

Men opposed to change often target aid workers, particularly women. Some foreign aid groups have taken their workers out of Afghanistan because of threats.

In May, three armed men abducted Clementina Cantoni, an Italian woman working for CARE International.

Also in late April, villagers in Badakshan province in northeastern Afghanistan stoned to death a 29-year-old woman named Amina for adultery. Eyewitnesses told Amnesty International that the woman's husband and local officials dragged her out of her parent's home to be stoned. The man she reportedly committed adultery with was lashed 100 strokes and then allowed to go free. Amina had recently asked her husband for a separation, and some police officials thought the adultery charges against her had been trumped up as an excuse to kill her.

Two hundred women from 26 women's groups held a protest in Kabul on May 5 demanding that the authorities punish the killers of Amina and the three women left by the road. The United Nations also is calling on the authorities to find the men who killed the three women.

Even when they are not targeted by murderers, "women in Afghanistan never grow old," says Dr. Massouda Jalal, minister of women's rights. Massouda, who also is a pediatrician, told a Non-Aligned Movement Ministerial Meeting on the Advancement of Women that the average lifespan of women in Afghanistan is 44 years. Afghanistan has the world's highest rate of women and infants dying during childbirth, she said. Massouda said that out of every million dollars pledged by foreign governments, only one dollar goes to women's health.

Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai is calling for an end to forced marriages and violence against women. In late April, he told Agence France Presse that government officials will be sent around the country to investigate women's rights and act on their findings.

But a recent report from Amnesty International, "Afghanistan: Women Under Attack," says many women are still abused, lack basic rights, and are disappointed that the removal of the Taliban government has not improved their lives. Men still rape, murder, and imprison women without facing any consequences.

-info from feminist.org, Agence France Presse, The New York Times, 5/17