AFGHAN WOMEN'S PROTEST

by MONITOR
IN the early days of the American presence in Afghanistan following 9/11 much was made of the benefits that the defeat of the Taliban regime would bring to Afghan women. Prominent American and European feminists arrived in Kabul to tell the local women what rights they were entitled to and how to achieve them. Some small progress towards those freedoms taken for granted in the West has been made by Afghan women - mainly by those living in Kabul. Yet the distance that they have still to travel has been underlined by the controversy over a new “personal status” law that will prohibit any woman from working or receiving education without her husband's permission and will give him the right of sex “every fourth day” - in effect, marital rape. President Karsai, who will be seeking re-election as president later this year, initially signed this law but subsequently said some of its provisions should be amended. This week 200 brave women who marched in protest in Kabul were stoned, spat at and abused by a crowd of men. Perhaps the significance of these events in a tribal and traditional society under pressure from external influences should not be over-emphasised. But they nonetheless show how difficult it will be for the US and its allies to make significant changes in Afghanistan regardless of how much military force they apply there.