President Karzai ‘Legalizes’ Rape
02 April 2009 9:00 am by Taylor Marsh
Since my post was published at Huffington Post on Monday, there’s been even more outrage about President Karzai’s caving to the fundamentalists. Out of Canada:
Defence Minister Peter MacKay said he will use this week’s NATO summit to put “direct” pressure on his Afghan counterparts to abandon the legislation.
“That’s unacceptable – period,” he said Wednesday. “We’re fighting for values that include equality and women’s rights. This sort of legislation won’t fly.”
After what happened in the Swat region, this was easily foreseen, especially with President Karzai’s popularity plummeting and an election on the horizon. The Independent’s recent article also throws a shadow, maybe even complications, across Obama’s Afghanistan strategy. From the article:
… Critics claim the president helped rush the bill through parliament in a bid to appease Islamic fundamentalists ahead of elections in August.
In a massive blow for women’s rights, the new Shia Family Law negates the need for sexual consent between married couples, tacitly approves child marriage and restricts a woman’s right to leave the home, according to UN papers seen by The Independent.
“It is one of the worst bills passed by the parliament this century,” fumed Shinkai Karokhail, a woman MP who campaigned against the legislation. “It is totally against women’s rights. This law makes women more vulnerable.” [...]
That extremism is hitting the Af-Pak region just as President Obama unveils his new strategy, with Secretary Clinton in the Hague making our case, should be a chilling signal to us all.
When Sharia law was agreed to in Swat, Ahmed Rashid, a leading voice in all things Taliban, wrote what it meant to the unraveling in Pakistan, which we saw take yet another lurch recently.
While the government insists the legal change will allow only a limited application of Islamic justice through the local courts, the Taliban interprets it as allowing the full application of Sharia, affecting all aspects of education, administration and law and order in the region.
However the deal may be interpreted, it is an unmistakable defeat in the country’s losing battle against Islamic extremism. Even though the military regime of former President Pervez Musharraf entered into several controversial, short-lived cease-fires with the Pakistani Taliban in the Pashtun tribal belt, Musharraf’s army never conceded major changes in the legal or political system.
We’ll have to see if any reporter on the trip with Clinton asks her about this latest development aimed at women, compliments of Pres. Karzai. Mrs. Clinton has shown her commitment to women’s rights as human rights as first lady, so it’s a perfect question to ask. As an independent journalist, unfortunately, right now I don’t have a seat at that table, because I don’t have a new media (or traditional) sponsor. But if I did it would be the first question I’d ask.
In all the arguments against Obama’s Afghan strategy, many coming from the left, what the President’s commitment means to Afghan women is rarely in the mix. That symbol, if supported, is something that would ricochet around the world.
How can any country be stable without women as part of the political mix? The answer is simple and sobering. It can’t.
Adding this to the further Talibinization of Pakistan and man oh man do we have a worsening situation. Where’s Team America when you need them.
Well, Obama, Clinton, Holbrooke and company are working as fast as they can. But they’re rescuing a situation that’s been brewing for a very long time. Bad all ’round.
This is one of the worst laws that has ever been signed into law regarding women. The only other one I can think of at this moment is Prima Notte, which gave the feudal lord the right to sleep with the bride on her wedding night. But that was back in the Medieval days. I’m sure there are others which escape my mind.
Please support the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan. I have supported RAWA since its inception in the ’90s and find it one of the most worthy organizations that we can support.
Here is their web site.
http://www.rawa.org/index.php
fyi, JA, I also linked to it in the post. But thanks for putting it in the comments, too.
Taylor – this is the one organization that I have consistently been committed to supporting for many years and I take every chance to publicize its work.
Its fairly inexplicable seeing this concern for women’s rights in Afghanistan, while ignoring what has happened to women’s rights in Irag since 1991. After all, Afghanistan has always been tribal, governed by local warlords primarily observing and enforcing archaic religious law. Its not so much that women’s right in Afghanistan have regressed, but rather that the situation for women in Afghanistan is just recieving more attention now that Afghanistan is in the spotlight.
Iraq, however, is another story. Our meddling in Iraq has set back women’s rights to a degree that women will never enjoy the freedoms and opportunities they once enjoyed prior to our feckless tampering in their society. Pre ‘91, women had employment and educational opportunities that are unheard of in the other middle eastern countries, with the possible exception of Jordan.
I imagine, this woman’s right thing is just one more tool of the propagandists. Its fashionable to demonize Afghanistan right now, while blathering a bunch of nonsense about the “success” in Iraq. Judging by the million or so dead Iraqi non-combatants and the millions displaced, and considering our hand-in-hand relationship with the Saudis, our expression of humanitarian concerns for issues such as “women’s rights” is purely a cosmetic one, at least at the level of our leadership.
Yes, its tragic how women are treated in Afghanistan. But we cannot pay heed to that tragedy honestly if we refuse to recognize our own hand in destroying women’s rights in Iraq. The women in Afghanistan are victims of the norms of Afghani society, the women in Iraq are victims of our meddling.
PissedOffAmerican says:
02 April 2009 at 11:05 am
Ah, yes, the glass is always empty contingent speaks, pretending to be a contrarian to an issue that should be joined not whined that somewhere over here something isn’t happening. Priceless, POA, but thanks for the chuckle.
I was on the air immediately before the Iraq war was voted upon and I was against it when it wasn’t exactly popular to say so. I railed against the Iraq war and continued to do so from the start. In that campaign was the issue of women, as I’ve been talking about the subject long before you turned up here.
Reality is that no leader has signed such a law as Karzai, which is the subject at hand. It would be nice if once you addressed this topic instead of choosing your own platform that belittles what’s being talked about.
POA – I don’t know where you get your history from re Afghanistan and women but prior to the Civil War and Taliban control, especially in Kabul, the capital, women in Afghanistan were educated and employed: 50% of the students and 60% of the teachers at Kabul University were women, and 70% of school teachers, 50% of civilian government workers, and 40% of doctors in Kabul were women. And they weren’t required to wear the burqua. This came after the Taliban took control. So I don’t see how your argument holds water.
As to Iraqi women it’s true what you claim – women have lost many of the rights that they had just like the women in Afghanistan. I am neither demonizing Afghanistan nor calling Iraq a success (actually I believe that Iraq is an extreme failure).
POA
Sounds like you are trying to attach this to an agenda of your own.
This is the “ism” that some don’t want to recognize or simply find acceptable.
Taylor, I think you internalized my comment needlessly. As I clearly stated, I see no real concern for human rights, ON A LEADERSHIP LEVEL. If you read my comment as being judgemental against YOU, you were mistaken.
And as far as Kabul goes, Jane, can’t it be assumed that most urban centers, globally, are more modernized socially than the outlying rural areas? I am not sure, so correct me if I’m wrong, but my limited knowledge tells me that the majority of the Afghani population does not reside in the urban areas. Isn’t it correct to assume that the vast majority of women in Afghanistan have always been subject to Sharia law, or, at the very least, under some sort of tribal code of conduct?
And, djjl, I really can’t imagine what that “agenda” might be that you have conjured up for me. It seems that I rarely see the situation in Iraq discussed as it applies to women’s rights. In fact, I seem to recall numerous instances of this monkey George Bush bragging about how wonderful things are for Iraqi women since we “liberated” them from that meanie monster, terrorist supporter, and fiendish hoarder of WMDs, Saddam Hussein.
So, whatever. Women’s rights pretty much suck in Saudio Arabia, Afghanistan, AND Iraq. But hey, if you all feel more comfortable limiting the conversation to Afghanistan, so be it. Uh, gee, is that an “agenda”?