Taliban-style edict for women spreads alarm in Afghan district http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/20/us-afghanistan-edict-idUSBRE96J02220130720
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[image: An Afghan woman is reflected in a mirror as she walks in Kabul
February 11, 2013. REUTERS/Mohammad Ismail]
By Rob Taylor and Folad Hamdard
KABUL/DEH SALAH,
Afghanistan<http://www.reuters.com/places/afghanistan?lc=int_mb_1001>
| Sat Jul 20, 2013 1:44am EDT
(Reuters) - One of Afghan President Hamid Karzai's main religious advisers
will not overturn a decree issued by clerics in the north reimposing
Taliban-style curbs on women, in another sign of returning conservatism as
NATO forces leave the country.
Just days after the United States launched a $200 million program to boost
the role of women in
Afghanistan<http://www.reuters.com/places/afghanistan?lc=int_mb_1001>,
a senior member of the country's top religious leaders' panel said he would
not intervene over a draconian edict issued by clerics in the Deh Salah
region of Baghlan province.
Deh Salah, near Panshir, was a bastion of anti-Taliban sentiment prior to
the ousting of the austere Islamist government by the U.S.-backed Northern
Alliance in 2001.
But the eight article decree, issued late in June, bars women from leaving
home without a male relative, while shutting cosmetic shops on the pretext
they were being used for prostitution - an accusation residents and police
reject.
"There is no way these shops could have stayed open. Shops are
forbusiness<http://www.reuters.com/finance?lc=int_mb_1001>,
not adultery," Enayatullah Baligh, a member of the top religious panel, the
Ulema Council, and an adviser to the president, told Reuters late on Friday.
Residents of Deh Salah described the order as a "fatwa", or religious
edict, although only senior clerics in Kabul should issue such a binding
religious order.
But underscoring opposition to the edict, a mayor was shot dead by a
teenaged shop owner while trying to enforce the order, which also barred
women from clinics without a male escort, threatening unspecified
"punishments" if they disobeyed.
Afghanistan has one of the world's highest infant mortality rates and more
than a decade after the U.S.-backed toppling of the Taliban, it still ranks
as one of the worst nations to be born a girl.
Under Taliban rule from 1996 until 2001, women were forced to wear the
head-to-toe covering burqa and sometimes had fingers cut off for wearing
nail varnish.
The decree, signed by a conservative cleric in the area named Zmarai,
contained a warning of holy war if authorities tried to block it: "If
officials do react to our demands, we will start a jihad."
There is growing fear among many people in Afghanistan that the withdrawal
of NATO-led forces and efforts to reach a political agreement with the
Taliban to end the 12-year-old war could undermine hard-won freedoms for
women.
"LIKE THE TALIBAN AGAIN"
In the deeply conservative, male-dominated country where religion often
holds more sway than legal authority, religious leaders have often been a
major barrier to women obtaining the rights granted to them under the
constitution.
In Deh Salah, home to about 80,000 people, most of them ethnic Tajiks
rather that the majority Pashtuns, the main community from which the
Taliban draw support, a cosmetic shop owner named Abdullah stood before his
business <http://www.reuters.com/finance?lc=int_mb_1001> - now hidden
behind plywood sheeting - and said clerics were increasingly flexing their
muscles.
"They want to bring back the Taliban days. If they have their way they will
take control in this district and make life impossible," said Abdullah.
"We are poor people and they have closed me down. I want the government to
take action or we are going to have mullahs running the place like the
Taliban again," he said.
Shah Agha Andarabi, a doctor, said the rumor of prostitution and adultery
in Deh Salah was without foundation and was being used as an excuse by
conservative clerics to crack down on women.
"There is nothing going on in these shops and I guarantee that. There was
no proof. They just wanted to close these shops to women," he said.
Deh Salah police commander Colonel Abdul Ahad Nabizada also rejected the
claims underpinning the decree, but said the mayor who was shot while
closing the shops had been frightened into action by the threat of jihad
against him if he was deemed to be blocking the edict.
"Everyone here is Muslim. We haven't seen any behavior like they claim in
this small city. There were women coming to get their needs in the market
and conservative people were against it," said Nabizada.
U.S. aid officials this week announced a $200 million assistance package
for Afghan women, to be matched by other international donors allied with
the NATO-led coalition in the country, due to end combat operations by the
end of next year.
Human rights and women's groups have accused Karzai's government of
backtracking on pledges to protect women's freedoms, highlighted by
parliamentary opposition to a presidential decree outlawing violence
against women.
The government also appointed a former Taliban official to the country's
new human rights body, while criminal laws under consideration in
parliament would prevent women and girls testifying against family members
accused of abusing them.
(Additional reporting by Mirwais Harooni; Editing by Robert Birsel)
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