http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=375824&version=1&template_id=41&parent_id=23
Afghan women retreat behind veil in fear of Taliban
Publish Date: Thursday,22 July, 2010, at 11:20 PM Doha Time
AFP/Mazar-I-Sharif
Women living in Afghanistan's safest region are retreating behind the veil amid
fears they are being stalked by a resurgent Taliban determined to trample their
rights. Human rights groups are concerned that plans by the Afghan government
to make peace with the Taliban could lead to an erosion of women's liberties.
On Tuesday, about 80 international representatives, including US Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton, gathered in Kabul to endorse President Hamid Karzai's
programme of reconciliation and reintegration with the Taliban leadership. But
as attacks escalate across the previously peaceful north, and the insurgency's
footprint expands, women are losing confidence that their hard-won rights are
inviolable. Clinton used part of her speech to defend Afghan women. "If they
are silenced and pushed to the margins of Afghan society, the prospects for
peace and justice will be subverted," she warned.
In Mazar-I-Sharif, the largest city on Afghanistan's northern plain, fewer
women are venturing out in public with bared faces, and the burqa is making a
comeback, not as a fashion accessory but as protection, many said. "The
atmosphere is changing, women on the streets of Mazar are covering their faces,
they are retreating behind their burqas because they fear the Taliban are
getting closer," said Hamid Safwat, manager of an independent shelter for
distressed women. "Women are living in great fear of a peace deal with the
Taliban because of what it will mean for their rights," he told AFP. "If they
are not already here physically, their presence, their proximity is being felt.
"If the Taliban comes to the peace process and gets into parliament, they will
join up with the fundamentalists to form a bloc and they will erode what rights
Afghan women have fought for since 2001," he said. Women at the shelter, one
of only a handful in the country, said they worried that an already tough
existence could become worse. Gul Andaman spent a year in prison for refusing
to marry a man selected by her brothers, and came to the shelter after her
release because they threatened to kill her, she said.
Now, after three years at the safe house, she said her brothers were still
insisting she return to the family home and marry the man of their choice.
"What can a woman do?" she said. "Life for Afghan women is just so bad but if
President Karzai does talk to the Taliban, and they become more powerful, then
of course things will get even worse."
Karzai's plan for making peace with the Taliban has won broad support from the
international community as the war becomes increasingly unpopular with the
Western public, and leaders struggle to develop an exit strategy.
Reintegration focuses on the so-called "10-dollar Talibs", poor men who,
lacking employment alternatives, fight for the insurgency. The broader concept
of reconciliation involves talks with the Taliban leadership, based in
Pakistan, on power sharing, third-country exile and removal from a UN list of
terror suspects.
Rights activists fear the Islamists will demand reversals of liberties
guaranteed for women in the Afghan constitution, and New York-based Human
Rights Watch (HRW) suggests an accommodation has already begun. British and
Nato commanders and diplomats have said talks with the Taliban are the best
path to peace after nine years of insurgency, and the United States appears to
have softened earlier opposition.
HRW said women in Taliban-controlled areas experience similar conditions to
those imposed during the Islamists' 1996-2001 regime, when girls were not
allowed to go to school or women leave home without a male relative or wearing
a burqa.
Even now schoolgirls suffer attacks and their schools are destroyed by
extremists. Women who become politically active often face death threats and
some have been murdered or forced into exile.<<gulfLogo.jpg>>
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