a young woman in Akkora Khattak refugee camp: maternal mortality in Afghanistan is the highest in the world

RECENT NEWS ON WOMEN AND CHILDREN's RIGHTS IN AFGHANISTAN PAKISTAN IRAN

In this new section, we post articles of interest we would like to share with you

Voici des articles que nous estimons dignes d'intérêt sur des sujets qui nous réunissent

February 1st 2005: UNESCO website: Models and Realities of Afghan Womanhood, by Carol Mann, President of FemAid

http://portal.unesco.org/shs/en/ev.php-URL_ID=9190&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

Other articles, see below

These articles have been culled from many sources, but most of all from GSN (Global Sister Network), surely the world's best list for worldwide articles of interest for women: http://home.vicnet.net.au/~globalsn/

Amazing, indeed exceptional photos of Afghanistan by Luke Powell: he has taken hundreds of photos of Afghanistan scanning life from the 1970s to the present day. There are some particularly haunting photographs of women refugees. . 

http://cr.middlebury.edu/art/Powell/index.htm

a good general and informative site: http://www.peacewomen.org/wpsindex.html

"State of World Population 2005."

http://www.unfpa.org/swp/swpmain.htm

United Nations Population Fund releases the report, "State of
World Population 2005."

In many ways, this report details how the world is falling short of
ambitious and important targets--known as the millennium development
goals--for lifting women out of poverty, disease, illiteracy and other
hardships.
As part of this report, UNDP outline sconcrete examples of interventions that
have resulted in real improvements in the lives of individuals, families and
the countries in which they live.

The report can be found on the UNDP website http://www.unfpa.org/swp/swpmain.htm and it provides a complex picture of
the state of the world. There, we can also find clear-cut directives
including how to best help the women imperiled by this horrendous
earthquake.

October 24, 2005
AFGHAN WOMEN'S MAG EDITOR JAILED FOR ARTICLES AGAINST STONING TO DEATH AND
LASHING
The editor of a respected women's magazine in Afghanistan has been
sentenced to two years in jail for "blasphemy" after the judge in the case
was ordered to imprison the editor by the Ulama Council, the country's
leading religious body which is dominated by conservative clerics, according
to reports from the Associate Press and regional newspapers like the Pak
Times.

The editor of Haqooq-i-Zan (Women's Rights), Ali Mohaqiq Nasab (left) was
arrested on Oct. 1 after he published articles in two issues of the magazine
denouncing the law making stoning to death for leaving the Islamic religion
a crime, criticized the practice of punishing adultery with 100 lashes, and
argued that men and women should be considered by law to be equals. ("In
some cases, the testimony of a female witness is considered to have only
half the value of a male," the AP noted.) In other words, saying that men
and women should be equal under the law and that stoning to death is wrong
are "blasphemous" statements for which one can be sent to the slammer for
years.

Now, do you remember Laura Bush's "crusade" for women's rights in
Afghanistan, which was part of the Bush administration's propaganda campaign
to convince Americans the U.S. military invasion of the country was
justified? Remember how the CIA's puppet choice for president of
Afghanistan, the theatrically-dressed Hamid Karzai, was sent to sit next to
Laura during the State of the Union (left) and, once elected President, how
Karzai the "democrat" was applauded by both Houses of Congress (and both
parties) when he spoke to them?

Well, guess who ordered editor Nasab (who is also an Islamic scholar) to be
arrested? Why, the complaint was made by President Karzai's top adviser on
religion, Mohaiuddin Baluch, says the Committee to Protect Journalists,
citing a previous Baluch statement to the AP that, ""I took the two
magazines and spoke to the Supreme Court chief, who wrote to attorney
general to investigate." And the presiding judge of Kabul's primary court,
Ansarullah Malawizada, told the AP, "The Ulama Council sent us a letter
saying that he should be punished so I sentenced him to two years' jail."
So, here we have the spectacle, in what Bush & Co. insist on calling
Afghanistan's "democracy," of a top aide to the president ordering a
courageous editor put on trial for criticizing the barbaric policies of
stoning and lashing, and a judge acting on the orders of a group of
reactionary clerics and sending the editor to jail because such articles
were "blasphemous."

Remember all that Bush rejoicing when the Afghanis passed their new
constitution? It was drawn up with the help of then-US Ambassador to
Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad (right) -- now performing the same role in Iraq
as the architect of its new Constitution. Well, the Khalilzad-sponsored
Afghani Constitution's Article 31 makes it a crime to criticize Islam in any
form, and that includes criticizing Islamic Sharia law. And it is under that
dictatorial Article 31 that editor Nasab has been put behind bars.

Afghanistan's slow progress, by Rasheeda Bhagaat
Frontline Volume 22 - Issue 13 June 18 - July 01, 2005

The war-torn country is slowly coming out of the dark days of Taliban rule,
but its reconstruction and the emancipation of its women will take a long
time despite international efforts.

All smiles, in the face of adversity. The Taliban legacy of gender-based
discrimination still has a strong influence on Afghan society.

THE Baghe Zanana (Women's Garden) in Kabul is about the only place in
war-ravaged Afghanistan today where women can walk in freely, throw away
their burqas, chat with friends and partake of a picnic lunch as their
children play in the park. Every Friday a few hundred women and children
assemble here to let down their hair, and remind themselves that it has been
over three years since their worst tormentors, the Taliban, have gone. The
regime that had devastated the lives of women and deprived them of any human
dignity whatsoever - forcing them to don the burqa (known as chadri in
Afghanistan), quit their jobs and take their daughters out of schools and
colleges, and making it haram (forbidden) for a woman to step out of her
house without being accompanied by a man - is history. Many educated and
qualified women, who had braved nearly 15 years of conflict and violence
under Soviet occupation and the mujahideen regime, fled the country during
the six-year Taliban rule which began in 1995.

This May, the Baghe Zanana got special visitors - three Afghan women doctors
who have been living and working in Germany for almost a decade. They had
come to their home country to check out for themselves the ground situation.
Prior to the visit to the garden, the doctors had taken a tour of Kabul's
dilapidated and ill-equipped hospitals that are struggling to offer even
minimal health care to the sick. They saw the pathetic state of the
buildings, the inadequate infrastructure, outdated medical equipment and
inadequate medicines, and above all, doctors from foreign countries,
including Indian doctors, working against all the odds to save lives.

"When they saw so many women assembled in the women's garden - women and
children chattering, laughing, spreading their picnic lunch under the trees,
and even singing - they made an important decision," said a woman
administrator at the Baghe Zanana. "They took out their German passports and
tore them to bits, saying we are not going to leave Afghanistan. It needs us."

But the challenges they, or anybody else involved in the rebuilding of the
war-ravaged country, face are daunting, to say the least. Afghanistan today
presents the picture of a bruised, broken and brutalised country that seems
to be administered more by international aid organisations - mainly United
Nations' agencies - than the Hamid Karzai government. With the road network
a pale shadow of what it once was, almost all non-governmental organisations
(NGO) depend on landcruisers for travel; in fact, the landmark white vehicle
has become the symbol of the NGOs here. Countless landcruisers crisscross
Kabul's roads and the miserable, almost unmotorable, tracks in interior
Afghanistan. Afghanistan is still "unstable", says Carol Martin, Programme
Director of the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan (SCA), which was
established in 1980 as a humanitarian solidarity agency to support the
Afghan people against Soviet occupation.

[]

The Taliban has destroyed Afghan women's confidence to such an extent that
it is almost impossible to find a woman on Kabul's streets who is willing to
talk to a stranger.

The SCA is the biggest international aid organisation working in
Afghanistan's 21 provinces. It has an annual budget of $22 million, a
portion of which is raised by the 3,400 members of the committee, with the
rest coming from Sida (the Swedish government aid agency), the European
Union and the U.N. According to Carol Martin, there have been times in the
last 20 years, when the SCA has virtually taken over the role of the
government in administering the country."

When asked if she would call today's Afghanistan a democracy or an occupied
country, she said: "Well, there is going to be a big conference in Stockholm
in November 2005 to debate this question. But I can tell you one thing: SCA
does not accept funding from the United States government because many of
our members think that Afghanistan is under U.S. occupation."

She herself thinks that the reconstruction of the country will "take a long
time, because this is a totally devastated country and there is no real
law-making government in Afghanistan. This is what causes a lot of
frustration among the Afghan people."

The World Bank's country chief in Afghanistan, Jean Mazurelle, was more
forthright when asked about the prospects of the fragile peace in
Afghanistan holding. Mazurelle, who has been in Afghanistan for a year,
feels that unless the Afghan government and the international community
speed up reconstruction efforts and make the change "visible", the people's
patience will run out. He "cannot understand why the international community
did not take care of this country much earlier. Why did we wait till the
situation came to the point of the Taliban and the Soviet occupation before
that? I can understand the resentment of the Afghans that they had to wait
till 9/11 before the international community took notice of Afghanistan. An
Afghan told me that 9/11 was a lottery ticket for them, and they would not
give away this lottery ticket. I felt very sad to hear this but can
understand their resentment against the entire world and why they want to be
compensated."

Mazurelle admitted that international organisations like his were perverting
the labour market and wages because "there is so much competition among us
to get the competent and educated people".

OVER the past 25 years, educated Afghans fled the country, and three years
after the ouster of the Taliban regime, a small segment of them, such as the
Afghan-German doctors mentioned above, have begun to return. But they have
to accept the reality of earning a fraction of the money they used to make
in the U.S. or Europe. Majid Nabizada is one of them. He has returned from
France, where he earned 2,200 euro (Rs.1,23,000) a month, to work at the
Lycee Esteqlal High School in the heart of Kabul. This was battered by
decades of war but has now been rebuilt and is run by the French. His
present salary is a meagre $60 (Rs.2,600) and to pay his monthly rent of
$250 (Rs. 10,700) - as well as a year's advance - he had to fall back upon
his savings from his 22-year stay in France.

But other teachers do not have this luxury and so have to take on two jobs -
they work as taxi drivers or with NGOs - to make ends meet. The plight of
students is much worse. Most of the country's schools were destroyed by long
years of violence and in interior Afghanistan classes are being held in
dilapidated buildings without doors and windows, and sometimes not even a
roof. What this would mean in a country with extreme winters and summers can
be imagined.

Wali Mohammed, director of the Lycee Esteqlal High School, explains how the
"Taliban destroyed our education system", forcing qualified teachers to flee
the country. It warms your heart to see neatly dressed, bright-eyed young
girls in the school library. But in this Islamic country co-education is
rare and girls will have to leave this school, where 5,000 children receive
free education, after Class III to go to an exclusive girls' school.

Girls' education is another dismal story. During its six-year rule, the
Taliban banned girls' education and closed all girls' schools. While the
younger girls have returned to school, those in their teens are reluctant to
come back because they will now have classmates at least six years younger.
The Afghan administration will have to figure out a way of getting these
young women back into mainstream education through special classes.

ON the gender front, any visitor to Afghanistan cannot but come away with a
heavy heart. The Taliban left the scene in November 2001, but they destroyed
the Afghan women's confidence so totally that it is almost impossible to
find a woman on Kabul's streets - whether dressed in the burqa or without it
- who is willing to talk to a stranger. Even if a woman knows English, she
will pretend not to understand what you are saying and walk on, dampening
your initial feel-good feeling at seeing quite a few women sans the burqa in
Kabul's bazaars.

Parveen, an activist of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of
Afghanistan (RAWA), which had put up a valiant fight for the rights of women
during the worst of times and particularly during the Taliban era, points
out that "even though the situation on the gender front has improved in
comparison to the Taliban era, much more needs to be done". The young woman,
who left the country during the Taliban years and worked for RAWA from
Peshawar in Pakistan, is sceptical about the "liberal stance" taken by the
Karzai government on the gender front and feels this is more out of pressure
from the U.S. "We find most people in the administration, including some of
the top Ministers in the government, fundamentalist at heart. Right now they
are just paying lip service to women's emancipation to please the Americans."

She adds that the Afghan woman is most persecuted within her own home. "The
father, the husband, the brother... these are the people who torture her the
most; in many homes there is a lot of domestic violence, the women are
forced to wear the burqa and girls are not allowed to go to school or
college or to work." RAWA has also charged that the country's top judiciary
is packed with male chauvinists who have gone on record as saying that a
woman can never be equal to a man.

Commenting on the gender situation and the role the international community
can play in improving the women's lot, Mazurelle says this is an area where
the Western aid organisations would have to tread cautiously. "It's going to
take a lot of time, particularly because we could be perceived as Westerners
imposing Western values. We have to be very careful not to create any
backlash from people who say the Westerners are trying to unveil our women."
But, adds the Frenchman, India is much better placed to make a difference on
this front.

He is all praise for the role India is playing in the reconstruction of
Afghanistan, particularly in putting the administration back on its feet. "I
have a lot of colleagues coming here from the World Bank in Delhi. In their
interaction with the Afghans, they are respectful of the environment here,
but at the same time they're able to convince the Afghans that things can be
changed in relation to gender issues. My Indian female colleagues are very
good at dealing with the Afghans. In the future, we'd like to see the
Afghans looking at India's development path rather than that of Iran or
Pakistan. Indian society is a tolerant society, unlike the countries
surrounding Afghanistan," Mazurelle notes.

[]

At the Lycee Esteqlal High School in Kabul, which has co-education up to
Class III.

All Indians visiting Afghanistan are in for a pleasant surprise. Afghans
just love India and Indians; not only Indian films and actors Shah Rukh Khan
and Aishwarya Rai, but also the country's record in economic development,
education, health care and promotion of a liberal ethos.

Indian Ambassador to Afghanistan Rakesh Sood pointed out that the Government
of India had put in $600 million from its aid budget to help the
reconstruction effort in Afghanistan. The Indian effort is visible all over
Afghanistan. "We were one of the first to get involved in infrastructure
building across the country when many donors were hesitant to go out of
Kabul owing to the security situation," he says. So whether it is the
rebuilding of the $90 million Salma Hydel Project; the laying of hundreds of
kilometres of roads and power transmission lines; the setting up of
Afghanistan's first cold storage plant in Kandahar so that this fruit bowl
can process and export its produce; the reconstruction of the famous Habibia
School in Kabul where Karzai was once a student; the setting up of CDMA
telephone lines at a cost of $10 million; the reconstruction of the 250-bed
Indira Gandhi Institute of Child Health, the only paediatric hospital in
Kabul, at a cost of $3 million; or the training of teachers and Afghan
government staff, India is there.

While neighbours like Iran and Pakistan are looked upon with suspicion, if
not hatred, India is admired for a host of reasons. "Look at your education
system; you turn out such fine students from your institutions," says Haji
Abdul Hakeem, who owns two carpet shops in Chicken Street, Kabul's famous
shopping area. "And unlike other countries, India has never done anything to
hurt Afghanistan's interests. You're already helping us, but the best help
India can give Afghanistan is to pick up our boys - from Kabul, Mazar,
Kandahar, Bamiyan and so on - and give them education in India."

If Indian education is held at a premium, Indian doctors and medicines are
considered priceless. On our flight from Delhi to Kabul, there were at least
two medical teams bound for Afghanistan. While the private players,
particularly from the heart care institutions, are scouting for business,
the Government of India posts doctors from the Central Government Health
Services to put in a stint in Afghanistan.

Sood said that five Indian medical teams were working in hot spots such as
Kandahar and Mazar-e-Sharif. When asked if security was not a concern, he
said: "People just love Indian doctors and trust them and their judgment
implicitly. We find that there is great faith in both Indian diagnostic
skills and Indian medicine, because there is a lot of adulterated medicine
in the markets here. The general perception is that to get well one must go
to an Indian doctor and take medicines from him. Sometimes when medical
supplies run out, people will wait for a day or two for medicines from India
rather than buy from the local market."

January 15, 2005 VOLUME 8
E-ZAN VOICE OF WOMEN AGAINST FUNDAMENTALISM IN IRAN
---------------------------------------------
To our readers,

The tsunami tragedy in Asia occurred on the first anniversary of the
devastating earthquake in Bam, Iran. While the shock and sorrow of this loss
is still incomprehensible, the world community can not lose focus on the
aftermath and rise of human trafficking in those areas. Let us hope the
current post-disaster situation in Asia will take the lessons from Bam in to
account.

The Iranian women and girls from Bam can only offer their painful stories
and the promised aid that never reached them due to corruption within the
fundamentalist regime. According to the U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan,
the $1 billion aid pledged to the ancient Silk Road city of Bam, where some
31,000 people died, never arrived.

The misogynous characteristic of the fundamentalist regime in Iran displayed
itself in post-disaster human trafficking, government corruptions and the
institutionalized socio-political and economic discriminations against
women. Unfortunately, the world community has chosen not to see the Iranian
regime for what it is. The women and girls in Iran will never be safe and
secure under this tyrannical regime and that is why they are taking matters
in to their own hands to end this regime. Women’s rights and human rights
should be recognized as one of primary pillar of world policy towards
Iran.The world community should recognize the just cause that Iranian women
are fighting for and support their struggle to achieve democracy and
equality in their homeland.
----------------------------------------
E-Zan Featured Headlines
Amnesty International – December 17, 2004

According to reports, Hajieh Esmailvand was sentenced to five years
imprisonment, to be followed by execution by stoning, for adultery with an
unnamed man who at the time was a 17 year old minor. Although the exact date
of her arrest and trial are not known, it is reported that she has been
imprisoned in the town of Jolfa, in the north west of Iran, since January
2000.The Iranian Penal Code is very specific about the manner of execution
and types of stones which should be used. Article 102 states that men will
be buried up to their waists and women up to their breasts for the purpose
of execution by stoning. Article 104 states, with reference to the penalty
for adultery, that the stones used should “not be large enough to kill the
person by one or two strikes, nor should they be so small that they could
not be defined as stones”. [WFAFI update December 24: Due to international
pressure and outcry, the Iranian regime has temporarily stayed the execution
by stoning of Hajieh while her case is studied by the “judiciary pardons
commission”. Her partner, identified only as Ruhollah G, has been sentenced
to hang and is still awaiting execution.]

Peyk-e-Iran Website – December 18, 2004
Fereshteh Ghazi, an Iranian woman arrested for her opposition to the Iranian
regime, was released on bail due to deteroriating health conditions. Ms.
Ghazi was arrested in September and faced serious torture and beatings by
the Revolutionary Gaurds. She has suffered a broken nose and ribs. Ms. Ghazi
refused to sign a letter of regret denouncing her ciritcism of the regime
and has been deemed as a “threat to the Islamic Republic of Iran”. Her
temporary release has been limited to medical treatment and she is no
allowed to speak to media or any reporter.

Aftenposten Norway – December 20, 2004
Iran's ambassador to Norway refused to meet the local head of Amnesty
International on Monday. Amnesty is among those taking up the case of a
young, retarded Iranian who's been sentenced to death. The 19-year-old,
known only as "Leyla M," was forced into prostitution by her own mother at
the age of eight. By age nine, she already was pregnant, and she's been
repeatedly abused, raped and even sold as a sex slave throughout her young
life. An Iranian court has since convicted her of immoral behaviour and
sentenced her to death by stoning and hanging. Both Amnesty International
and Norway's own embassy in Teheran are among those mounting protests.
Petter Eide, secretary general for Amnesty in Norway, had an appointment to
meet Iran's ambassador in Oslo at 11am Monday. Eide planed to deliver a
petition with thousands of signatures protesting the pending execution of
Leyla M. The ambassador refused to open the embassy's doors to Eide,
complaining that reporters were present. When reporters moved down the
street, Iran's embassy remained closed. "We were told that the police could
come and deliver the petition on our behalf, but we can't use the police as
messenger in a situation like this," Eide said. Around 100 people
demonstrated outside the embassy in Oslo earlier on Monday, protesting the
planned execution.

Reuters News Agency– December 21, 2004
The U.N. General Assembly has criticised Iran for public executions,
torture, arbitrary sentencing, flogging, stoning and systematic
discrimination against women. Sponsored by Canada, the human rights
resolution was adopted on Monday by a vote of 71 in favour, 54 against with
55 abstentions in the 191-member assembly. The resolution also said there
was a "worsening situation with regard to freedom of opinion and
__expression and freedom of the media and noted the "targeted
disqualification" of reformists in Iran's parliamentary elections. Iran made
no comment on Monday. But in November when an assembly committee passed the
draft resolution, Iranian envoy Paimaneh Hasteh called the charges baseless.
She accused Canada of introducing the measure in response to a domestic
outcry over the death of Kazemi.

Zanan-e Iran Website– December 23, 2004

A female reporter working with Iranian state-run media committed suicide.
The reporter worked in the news department of the Iranian state-run was only
21 years old and is said to be under a lot of pressure both at work and at
home. Her half-dead body was discovered 15 minutes after her suicide
attempt. She was taken to the hospital and was rescued.


State-run ISNA news agency– January 2, 2005

Head of the Women's Assembly of the Islamic City Councils expressed profound
concern over the rise in the number of women inmates giving birth to
children in prisons, ISNA reported.Sediqeh Qannadi warned that the society
would witness a growth in social disorders and the number of street
children, unless prompt action was taken to rein in the dilemma."Preliminary
studies reveal that wanted and unwanted pregnancies are on the rise even
among inmates with life imprisonment. Reports suggest that most women
sentenced to life imprisonment in Mashhad, Yazd, Kerman and
Sistan-Baluchestan become pregnant," she explained. "Assertions by judiciary
officials that the birth rate in prisons has declined are far from reality."

The Washington Times – January 5, 2005

Iran's increasing meddling in Iraq and its defiance in its nuclear weapons
program pose the greatest challenge to peace and security in Iraq and the
whole Middle East, as we enter 2005. The Iranian clerics have never been so
close to realizing their decades-old dream of erecting a sister Islamic
Republic in Iraq. The deterioration of human rights in Iran has revealed new
depths of barbarity, where pregnant women and children are routinely
executed and floggings and amputations are an almost daily public spectacle.
Appeasement is not the way to contain or change this evil regime. Nor is it
the path to avoid another war. A nuclear-armed fundamentalist regime will
not spare the EU, either. Iran's missiles already can reach southern Europe.
The mullahs are now rushing to develop a third-generation missile system
able to reach Paris, London and Brussels. For once, we should side with the
millions in Iran whose cry is for freedom and regime change. A modern,
secular and democratic Iran would not only be the key to regional peace and
security, but also a long-term ally as we try to spread democracy across the
Middle East and the world.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty – January 10, 2004

Iranian deputies are considering designs for a national dress. The idea was
first proposed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as a way of
countering the influence of Western fashion. Supporters -- including
Khamenei -- point out other countries have a national dress and that it
reinforces pride. Detractors say the ideaa is not likely to catch on among
young people -- and may simply be a way for officials to tighten enforcement
of existing Islamic dress codes for women.
------------------------------------

E-Zan Featured Reports
Violence Against Women in Iran: The Toleration of Routine Aggression

WFAFI Research Committee
December 20, 2004

In addition to institutionalized violence against women in Iran, majority of
women and young girls face domestic violence at home at the time that they
still live with their parents. The father and other elder male members in
the family are among the first who commit the aggression against the women
and young girls. According to the latest statistics, two out of every
three Iranian women have experienced discrimination and domestic violence
from the father or other male members of the family. For the vast majority
of Iraninan women, married life is the beginning of horror, pain, and
humiliation; she is the victim of her husband and his family members. 81
out of 100 married women have experienced domestic violence in their first
year of marriage. Even women with an ouststanding job and prestigious
social standing are subject to the violation. In most of the cases, this
abuse leaves permanent physical and psychological damage upon them for the
rest of their lives. Without saying a word and with much pain yet no
support, cimes against women in the private sphere has gone unnoticed. 90
out of 100 women suffer from a severe case of depression, from which they
ultimately commit suicide and 71% of those women experience nervous
breakdowns. Their methods of suicide include setting themselves ablaze.
This is the only way of escaping from segregation and humiliation. Each
month, only in Ilam, 15 girls set themselves ablaze, fighting against
oppression or depression. It is our responsibility to fight the oppression
against women. Female victims need to believe that they should not be
blamed. Our active participation in the organization to defend women's
rights and opposition to Islamic fundamentalism is the least we can do to
end the pain and suffering of victims of violence in both private and public
spheres in Iran. Violence against women, inhuman and brutal punishments
such as stoning as well as complete elimination of women from the political
and social arenas represent some aspects of the modus operandi of
fundamentalists leading to institutionalized violence. We believe that the
struggle for equality, safty and security cannot be separated from the fight
against fundamentalism in Iran.

Tank girls: the frontline feminists
The Independent
Christine Aziz
December 28, 2004

As the coalition bombs hit the flat salt plains on the north-eastern border
of Iraq, members of a little known, female-led Iranian army huddled in a
bunker. While the earth shook, showering dust on their neatly pressed khaki
headscarves, 25-year old Laleh Tarighi and her fellow combatants tried to
protect themselves.Eighteen months later, recalling the terror of being
attacked by British and US bombers during the invasion of Iraq last year,
Tarighi, a former pupil of Parkside and Hill Road School in Cambridge, says:
"We were puzzled more than afraid. We knew our officers had sent messages to
the Pentagon insisting that we were neutral and shouldn't be attacked. We
were only in Iraq to overthrow the Islamic fundamentalist regime across the
border in Iran." It is hard to imagine that Tarighi was once a typical
British teenager who loved going to the cinema and socialising in cafés. Few
of her friends knew that when she was a child in Iran, her father had been
executed for being a member of the Iranian resistance, and that her mother
was a high-ranking commander in the National Liberation Army of Iran (NLA).
After A-levels, Tarighi had planned to study media at university, but then,
aged 18, she decided to leave the comfort of the home she shared with her
aunt to join her mother in the NLA in a military camp on the Iran-Iraq
border. The NLA is the military wing of the National Council of the
Resistance of Iran (NCRI), a female-dominated, Iranian parliament-in-exile
whose aim is to topple the Islamic fundamentalist regime and replace it with
a secular, democratic government. The NCRI is led by a charismatic Iranian,
Maryam Rajavi, 53. Security around her is tight for fear of assassination
attempts, and she very rarely appears in public. Her organisation has kept a
low profile until it recently started sharing intelligence reports on Iran's
nuclear programme with America and Europe. But, in spite of this
co-operation, the NLA is still considered a terrorist organisation by the
West. The coalition forces in Iraq have restricted its 3,800 combatants to
their camps, and their weapons have been confiscated. Women make up 30 per
cent of the NLA, but 70 per cent of the officers are female. The British
Army has just one female brigadier, while in the Navy there are four female
captains. Rajavi has long encouraged female participation in the army. She
argues that, as misogyny is the mainstay of the Iranian government, who
better to strike at it than women? Her female recruits, many of whom had
been tortured and imprisoned in Iran, train alongside men in all aspects of
frontline battle, including hand-to-hand combat and armoured vehicle
operation. With the backing of wealthy Iranian exiles, they are preparing
for the day when the order comes to march east over the frontier to liberate
their land from the mullahs. Tarighi is one of hundreds of sons and
daughters of Iranian exiles in Europe, America and Canada who have
volunteered to join the army since its inception in 1987, when Saddam
Hussein allowed the NLA to build its camps along the Iranian border. Until
Saddam's fall in March last year, the NLA had been able to build up its
military force under the watchful eye of its host. When Tarighi arrived in
Iraq in 1997, she was still sporting a stud in her tongue and wearing
trainers - very different to the army's uniform for women of khaki
headscarves, combat trouser-suits and boots. It was not her first visit to
the NLA camp at Ashraf; when her mother fled with her daughter in 1987, they
escaped to this camp, where they lived for four years. The Gulf War in 1991
meant that all the camp's children were evacuated to foster-carers in the
West. "I grew up in Cambridge from the age of 10. My life was pretty much
there," Tarighi says. "After I passed my A-levels, I decided to spend a gap
year in France before going off to university. "But I got news that my
mother had sent me a letter, care of the NCRI headquarters in Paris. It was
the first letter I'd received in a long time, and it was very affectionate.
I talked to NCRI members and decided to go and join my mother. We hadn't
seen each other for eight years. I knew her immediately I saw her, but she
didn't recognise me. I looked like any other British girl, and she wasn't
too pleased about my tongue stud. "At first it was difficult living back in
the camp, and I missed a lot of things, especially, believe it or not, the
English weather. I love rain, and there wasn't a lot of it in Iraq. But it
was the friends I made in the camp, and the support and encouragement I
received, that carried me through. I did marching drills and learnt to fire
a Kalashnikov. I had never seen a gun in England. I didn't join the NLA for
my mother, but for Iran. The regime murdered my father, and my grandmother
had been in prison there many times. Resistance is in my blood." Ashraf is
14 square miles of impeccable tidiness. The first impression is of a holiday
camp rather than a military base. Eucalyptus trees line long driveways, men
and women tend gardens, and there's the smell of bread from the bakery.
Since Tarighi arrived at the camp in 1997, a swimming pool and an exhibition
room have been built. But in that time the cemetery, decorated with plastic
flowers, has expanded. In the past 18 months, 40 soldiers have been killed
in coalition attacks and, after these assaults, by Iran's Revolutionary
Guards, who then found it easier to slip across into Iraq. The NLA tanks and
artillery that once patrolled and guarded the base have disappeared; in
their place, American military police guard the entry checkpoint with tanks
and patrol the base in armoured Humvees. The growing danger meant that
Tarighi left the camp soon after the bombing. Now she works in NCRI offices
around Europe, still hankering for her army life. But another British girl,
Sharobeh Barooti, 19, stayed on. She is one of several hundred combatants
with European passports or residency rights who remain at Ashraf. Born in
France, Barooti is an only child whose parents are in the Iranian
resistance. She doesn't know where they are, although she receives
occasional letters. Barooti moved to the UK in 1991 to live with an aunt and
uncle, but by the time she was 15, at Edgware High School in north London,
she knew she wanted to join the NLA. "I had heard a lot about the Iranian
regime from my aunt and uncle, and I began to feel I should do something. I
went to the NCRI office in London and told them I wanted to join. They gave
me information and arranged for my travel to Baghdad." She dropped out of
her GCSE studies and travelled to Iraq, where she was met by officials of
the People's Mojahideen of Iran (PMoI) - the most significant group within
the NCRI - and escorted to Ashraf camp. Sitting in the camp's library, she
recalls that her friends thought she was mad. "After all, families are not
torn apart in Britain, people aren't tortured, and women can achieve
anything," she says. "In Iran, women's lives are limited and they are
punished for the smallest things. "When I arrived here, it was the hardest
thing to obey different rules. It was so different from my life in London.
For a year, I thought about the future I could have had in Britain and
compared it to my future here. I had thought about travelling the world and
opening an art gallery." Several weeks after the fall of Saddam, the US
General Ray Odierno of the 4th Infantry division entered Ashraf camp to
negotiate the disarming of the NLA. He found himself in a room lined with
cream Regency furniture and Persian rugs, drinking coffee from white and
gold china cups and eating homemade sweetmeats with a group of female army
commanders considered to be terrorists by his government. In 1997, President
Bill Clinton had declared the PMoI and NLA to be terrorist organisations, as
a goodwill gesture towards Iran's newly elected President Mohammed Khatami.
Recently, the NLA's potential to be used as a bargaining chip by Washington
has been noted as tensions rise over Tehran's meddling in Iraq. But on his
visit the US general, clearly impressed, said that he thought the terrorist
status of the NLA combatants should be reviewed. The disarmed NLA keeps up
its training on computers, and the US military police in the camp are their
sole protection against attacks by the Tehran-backed groups now moving
freely around Iraq. "If the Americans don't protect them, there will be a
bloodbath," says Capt Ismael Ibrahim of the Iraqi National Gathering party.
Only in July, when the NLA came under the protection of the Fourth Geneva
Convention (relating to the protection of civilians in wartime), did its
members feel safer. They no longer face the possibility of being handed over
to Tehran by America in exchange for high-ranking al-Qa'ida members. As
Captain Ibrahim says: "I think in a few years the US may think of doing to
Iran what they have done to Afghanistan and Iraq, and will try to use the
PMoI and NLA." This is not what the resistance likes to hear, but in the
long term this thinking could help the NLA and PMoI lose their terrorist
tags. In May 2000, Britain included the PMoI in a list of 21 terrorist
organisations under the Terrorism Act. A year later, the European Union
added the PMoI to its list. Mojgan Parsai, the secretary general of the
PMoI, said in October: "From the outset, the terror label on the PMoI lacked
a legal basis. We are blacklisted in the framework of commercial and
political deals with Tehran." Her comments came as France, Germany and
Britain were reported to have promised Iran that if steps were taken to halt
work on completing its nuclear fuel cycle, the European side would continue
to regard the PMoI as a terrorist organisation. At a conference of
human-rights lawyers in Paris last month, Bill Bowring, professor of human
rights and international law at London Metropolitan University, said: "Under
the definition of the Terrorism Act, Greenpeace and Amnesty International
should be on the terrorist list. It was a completely arbitrary decision to
include the PMoI on the list." Also at the conference was the Danish
human-rights lawyer, Anne Land. Earlier this year, she visited Ashraf camp.
She is aware that the NCRI is accused by its critics of being a cult, and
that some consider both the NCRI and the NLA to be militarily and
politically ineffective. "The real importance of this army has been
overlooked," she says. "In Iraq, many women were able to go to school and
university, to work and to wear what they wanted. Now, they are being
intimidated in the streets for not covering their bodies, or for just being
outside their homes. Groups of men strongly influenced by Iranian
fundamentalists, who are apparently supporting some political and religious
groups in Iraq, are making their lives miserable. "The presence of a
female-dominated army prepared to fight the mullahs and Iran's Revolutionary
Guards is a powerful symbol to all women in the region. Its effectiveness is
not in its military might. The fact that the army exists at all is a huge
threat to all male-dominated fundamentalist regimes. It shows what women can
do. "The women in Ashraf say they don't want to leave until they have
overthrown the regime in Iran. Unfortunately, they don't see their courage
as having a wider, inspiring influence beyond Iran," Land says. It was the
treatment of women in Iran that moved Barooti and Tarighi to join the NLA.
"My aunt used to tell me how Revolutionary Guards would stop women in the
streets and wipe off their lipstick with the blade of a knife," Barooti
says. Tarighi says she cannot forget the harrowing pictures of a young woman
her own age buried to her neck and stoned to death by a crowd. She asks:
"Why am I a terrorist because I fight for my sisters' rights?"

European Parliament resolution censures Iran rights violations
Iran Focus
January 13, 2005

Strasbourg, Jan. 13 - The European Parliament adopted a resolution by
majority vote today condemning human rights violations in Iran in the second
such move over the past six months. The toughly-worded resolution denounced
practices such as execution of juveniles and stoning carried out by the
Iranian regime. Parts of the resolution read, "the European Parliament …
strongly condemns death sentences against and/or the execution of juvenile
offenders, pregnant women and mentally handicapped persons”. The EP
resolution also expressed deep concern over "the worsening situation with
regard to freedom of opinion and _expression and freedom of the media,
especially the increased persecution for the peaceful _expression of
political views, including arbitrary arrests and detention without charge or
trial". The European Parliament censured “the campaign by the Judiciary
against journalists, cyber journalists and webloggers leading to the closure
of publications, imprisonment and according to reports widespread torture
and forced false confessions.” The resolution also pointed to the fact that
“Iran is still not a party to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms
of Discrimination against Women and its Parliament recently rejected draft
legislation on gender equality,” and called on Iranian authorities to “give
evidence that they do implement their declared moratorium on stoning” and
demanded “the immediate implementation of the ban on torture.” The
resolution also noted with concern the finding by the United Nations Special
Rapporteur Ambeyi Ligabo that “the Iranian Press and Penal Code do not
conform to the permissible restrictions listed in the Article 19(3) of the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.”
--------------------------------------------------

To send us your comments or op-ed on relevant topics for future issues,
email editor@wfafi.org

For past volumes of E-Zan visit www.wfafi.org

Volume 8, January 15, 2005

The E-Zan © 2005

The Hindu -- Monday July 12 2004
Honour killing rife in Pakistan
By B. Muralidhar Reddy

ISLAMABAD: Over 4,000 men and women have been killed in Pakistan in the last
six years in the name of karo-kari or honour killing, a feudal tradition
under which women are punished for bringing so-called bad name to the clan.
The figure of 4,000 is official and the actual number is believed to be much
higher as several cases never come to light. Research by non-government
organisations has shown that in a number of cases `karo-kari' is an excuse
to target women with an eye on their economic assets. The Pakistan Interior
Minister, Faisal Saleh Hayat, told the upper House that the Government was
working on a draft law to curb the crime. The statistics placed before the
Senate showed that from January 1998 to December 2003, the number of women
killed in the name of honour was more than double the number of men
murdered. However, NGOs and civil society in Pakistan wonder if legislation
would help curb the menace. Senators from the treasury benches described the
`karo-kari' custom as anything but honourable. The information placed before
the House showed that Punjab had the highest number of `karo-kari' incidents
followed by Sindh, the North West Frontier Province and Balochistan.

November 16 2004

THE WAR AGAINST WOMEN: IN MEMORy OF MARGARET HASSAN:
By CAROL MANN, PRESIDENT OF FEMAID

On November 16th late at night, like so many of us, I read the news about aid worker Margaret Hassan’s assassination. Born in Ireland, she had spent the past 32 years in Iraq, running major humanitarian programmes for the benefit of Baghdad’s civilian population for CARE, the only organization that had remained in Iraq throughout the embargo. Married to an Iraqi whom she had met in a Palestinian refugee camp and a convert to Islam, she held dual nationality. There could not have been the slightest doubt as to her steadfast commitment to the Arab world, all the more remarkable as she had chosen to stay right through the present war. Some humanitarian programmes are run from afar, in plush offices, others operate on the street and this was the option she had chosen.

I did not know Margaret personally, though by now I feel I do. I know she did not want to see aid simply as the tool of Western power, as so many critics are apt to point out these days, in the now fashionable descontruction of the humanitarian institution. Whilst partially agreeing with Michael Ignatieff that “humanitarian projects cannot be kept distinct from imperial projects”, I know that this only part of the story which appears glibly coherent in articles or lectures in the West and more to the East, in the conference rooms of Al- Zarkawi Bin Laden et al. In July, a Taliban group justified gunning down five members of MSF (Doctors without Borders) in Afghanistan by claiming they were working for American interests. In theory, such links may be conjectured in view of the way logistics of aid are conceptualized in Geneva or New York, but on the field it’s a wholly different story.
The reality of refugee camps, of bombed-out cities, of a devastated landscape is a very particular one. The main victims are women, children and the aged as has been demonstrated time and time again. They suffer from the daily violence of war and especially its consequences, that is increased repression a their men attempt to make up for lost power in battle by oppressing the women in their household. This is where aid comes in and goes well beyond the random distribution of food parcels (which is often left to soldiers, thereby confusing the issue).
Humanitarian health programmes are far more complex and built on the long term. Establishing, in conjunction with local professionals, dispensaries, birthing units, mass vaccination that approximate the kind of basic health care we deem minimal in the West does not make aid the cynical agent of fiendish Imperial powers . Aid workers have left their homes and families to work, often in a voluntary unpaid capacity, in very difficult conditions . Nor are they latter -day patronizing colonialists or would-be missionaries for capitalism of any kind. Possibly these are the last representatives of my own generation, the starry eyed hippies brought up on the ashes on World War II who believe in working for a better world.

However volatile most countries living under Islamic governments may be, women as aid workers have, up till now, been respected – even in patriarchal societies where women’s rights as the West envisages them are non existent. Humanitarian aid is perceived as a professional kind of mothering, about nurturing and caring. Indeed older women in the field are seen as generic mothers which is why Margaret was referred to as ‘Mama Margaret’ and yours truly is affectionately called Khala (Auntie- mother’s sister) by young Pakistani and Afghan people.

Nevertheless, the assassination of 59 year old Margaret Hassan marks the breaking of the last taboo. The cold, premeditated killing a mother figure is a major crime in any religion and certainly in Islam. Al Jazeera coyly declined to show this execution, just as the world press generally has been remaining discreet about the discovery of the other horrendously mutilated female corpse, probably that of Polish born Teresa Borcz, aged 54, who has also been a Iraqi citizen for the past 30 years. Hell has been let loose. On women of every age, in every capacity at present.

I cannot compare myself to Margaret Hassan, though by now she has become some kind of elder sister. She was a true professional, I at best, an inspired idealist, active for the past eleven years in two war zones, first Bosnia and more recently at the Afghan frontier. In both cases, whilst working full-time as a lecturer and writer, I started my own NGOs, Enfants de Bosnie, then FemAid, based in Paris where I live. This prompted me to try and understand what was going on a deeper level and go back to college to prepare a PhD on refugee women at the EHESS in Paris. So I have been striving to combine the theoretical with the practical, a definite ‘no-no’ with French academia.
For the past few years, I have been travelling to Pakistan, mainly on the Afghan border, in the refugee camps, working with RAWA, the only Afghan secular women’s organization : we look after an orphanage, two schools, including one in a refugee camp, we have set up various projects, including hygiene education for midwives in Quetta and vocational training for orphans. But I also wanted to include Pakistani children and women, once I realized that they were nearly as badly off as the refugees themselves: books, school supplies, medical aid, baby clothes have been sent to Peshawar, the Hunza Valley, Rawalpindi and Kabul alike. In conjunction with a militant Pakistani women’s group, we are hoping to help set up a burns unit for Pakistani and Afghan women who are routinely doused in petrol or vitriol. Tiny organizations like ourselves on both sides have to fight our way through rampant local inertia and corruption. Our money comes from dedicated private donors (many teachers like myself) from all over the world who have found out about us on Internet- we do not enjoy any funding or media coverage at all. We therefore cannot be accused, by pundits or extremists, of laundering Western guilt-money or cornering the media with prime-time sob stories. Does this nevertheless turn us automatically into emissaries of evil and/or puppets of the CIA? If not, are we less credible? There are countless other little NGOs like FemAid, working relentlessly on aid projects with local agents, balancing ideals with a family and a job and actually making things happen. What ever is being claimed by (male) academics and Islamic fundamentalist terrorists, humanitarian aid has empowered women in tribal, war-torn zones like nothing else ever has. A woman who discovers that she, as an individual, has a natural right to health is energized for life. A woman who realizes that it is not natural for her or her sisters, to die in labour, or to have her jaw broken by a husband or brother, or to be killed for having been raped, will help construct a better life for herself and her children. Once she has staked a minimum of ownership on her own body and her destiny, she will slowly claim dignity, if not quite for herself, for her daughters whom she will send to school. This does not mean that she will instantly drop her religious or tribal values – no honest aid worker could possibly want or demand that- but that she will learn to renegotiate them in a workable framework.
It may well be for this reason that that the fanatics of Falludja needed to kill Margaret, just as Taliban zealots have kidnapped in Afghanistan Annetta Flanigan of Northern Ireland, and Shqipe Hebibi, a traditionally veiled Muslim woman from Kosovo, along with Angelito Nayan of the Philippines. These aid workers were offering possibilities of empowerment of women that are simply incompatible with Fundamentalist totalitarian principles.

Twenty-five years ago, the US, in the most suicidal policy ever, set out to spawn an army of Bin Ladens hatched in what amounts to laboratory conditions in Afghan refugee camps on the Pakistani border; now Bush’s invasion of Irak has unearthed a seemingly infinite nest of scorpions. The world is indeed threatened, not by a clash of civilizations, contrary to Samuel Huntington’s expectations, but by a Janus-faced monster, Alien 2004 if you will, which combines the new- fangled Fundamentalism reeking of religious pretence and appears to sprawl from Texas to Mesopotamia and back again. There is little room for women’s rights in this agenda, other than a cosmetic version, be it as a caricature of male brutality in the form of Private Lynddie England at Abu Ghraib or the simulated freedom of women briefly shedding their burqas in front of Western cameras in Kabul.

Thus the continuing dialogue between female health workers and the aid recipients in war zones has been brutally halted. CARE has pulled out, just as MSF has left Afghanistan after 24 years when five members of their team (including one woman, Helène de Beir from Belgium) were shot dead in July 2004 by a pro-Taliban group.

I was meant to return to the border area of Pakistan (NWFP) in the coming month, with a small convoy of medical equipment, but I have cancelled my trip. I have to say that I have never experienced fear in Pakistan: the bazar of Peshawar feels safer than the Paris subway in the rush-hour and it is perfectly possible to travel across the country in public transport, as long as one respects local dress codes. Likewise, I have enjoyed meals and discussions with one-time “freedom” fighters as well as fundamentalist patriarchs in refugee camps, without being troubled in the least.
But this is now over. Kidnapping, certainly an Iraqi speciality, is spreading in the region and anyone is game. The foreign aid worker or journalist, male or female, young or older has become a prime target because it’s so much more newsworthy than say, the simultaneously escalating “honour” killings, maternal mortality and rising drug consumption that make up the daily lives of women in Afghanistan, Irak and many areas between and around.
I am sad and angry to be disappointing the friends who are waiting for me over there. I am sad and angry because I have grown to love the star-filled sky that fits like a lid on top of “my” refugee camp, the sound of children running after me clamouring for candy, the literacy classes filled with women slowly and proudly writing words on the black board- even the howling hyenas at night. I will miss my ever-courageous RAWA family, Yasmin and Haroon and Leila and Sahar and Jahan, so amazingly articulate in the expression of their thoughts and feelings, even though they be practically children themselves, I will long for those wide-eyed infants, so much better brought up than our own, and their mothers re-inventing the future over endless cups of teas and mounds of pistachios. I have learnt so much from them, I crave their wisdom in these troubled times.. Not forgetting our friend and firm supporter, Pakistani journalist Khaled who was looking forward to having me meet his family in a village near Peshawar.
The work will go on, even from a distance, because half of the world’s population cannot be held to ransom by Fundamentalists of every ilk. Margaret Hassan and others like her have dedicated, indeed sacrificed their lives to keep the best aspects of humanity going in an increasingly desperate world. And today, the prime victims still are women and yet true resistance to war can only be effective if these self-same victims continue to be empowered by a continuous exchange between women East and West, North and South. And that is why groups like FemAid cannot and must not disarm, even though it is increasingly hard to retain even a shred of optimism these days….

Carol Mann
President of FemAid www.femaid.org
November 19th 2004

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contact:

The following paper, by Ed Girardet provides a good over-view of the present difficulties of humanitarian aid

Christian Science Monitor
December 20, 2004, Monday
Security for aid workers - a missing link
By Edward Girardet

The release last month of three kidnapped United Nations election monitors
in Afghanistan does not mean that all is well for the international aid
community operating in conflict and recovery situations worldwide. Nothing
has really changed on the security front for aid workers.

Particularly in Kabul, many feared that the hostages would suffer the same
gruesome fate as those executed by extremists in Iraq. This, in turn, might
have prompted more aid agencies to leave Afghanistan just when the recovery
is beginning to make headway.

Once again, the incident underlines how both the international aid
community and governments are failing to grapple with the real issues at
hand in "security" zones ranging from Afghanistan to Chechnya and Burma. Aid
agencies need to begin providing appropriate security training for their
representatives, but also better awareness of the situations in which they
will operate.

And governments must recognize the urgency of establishing broadly
recognized - neutral - "humanitarian spheres" without the involvement of the
military in areas where where aid agencies can operate without fear of their
workers being kidnapped or killed.

Key to protecting aid workers is the clear demarcation of the roles of the
military and the aid organizations. Guns and humanitarian assistance simply
do not go together. There is a dangerous blurring of the lines placing aid
workers, private consultants - as well as journalists - in the same caldron
as the security forces. For resistance or insurgent groups, there is
increasingly little difference between the military, including
government-employed mercenary groups, and the highly vulnerable relief
volunteers or reporters operating in the same crisis zones. All are seen as
legitimate targets.

The failure, too, of the UN to recognize the dangers of disregarding the
Geneva Conventions or due process under international law - such as the
illegal detention, treatment, torture, and deaths of alleged Taliban and Al
Qaeda prisoners held at Guantanamo and Bagram - has set a disastrous
precedent not only for soldiers captured by insurgents, but for civilians
too. Militants have cited such abuse as reason for capturing or killing aid
workers.

While the military may obtain good public relations by building bridges or
schools, such initiatives double as intelligence-gathering operations. This
makes the waters even murkier for those seeking to provide straightforward
humanitarian assistance. For the taxpayer, too, military involvement in
humanitarian aid makes little financial sense. The cost of deploying
so-called Provincial Reconstruction Teams is dramatically higher than having
qualified aid agencies or contractors perform the same task.

At the same time, aid organizations, notably those run by the UN, urgently
need to assume responsibility for improving workers' safety in the field.
Frontline aid has become far more hazardous to operate in crisis zones today
than during the '80s or '90s.

Whether in Africa, the Middle East, or Asia, aid groups are indeed
stepping up security measures to protect workers. Employees are urged not to
frequent exposed locations such as restaurants and markets, and to stay in
well-protected compounds. Some, too, have had their vehicles repainted to
look less obviously foreign.

Such measures remain deceptively cosmetic. They threaten to dangerously
isolate aid workers from the very populations they aim to assist. Keeping in
touch with one's surroundings is crucial for security. The US aid missions
in Afghanistan and Iraq, for example, have almost completely cut themselves
off, blockading themselves within compounds. Many leave only with heavily
armed escorts.

The disturbing reality is that few humanitarian agencies have bothered to
initiate even the most basic security awareness programs for staff prior to
missions. Some deliberately subcontract dangerous jobs to consultants to
avoid liability. Instead, aid organizations increasingly rely on security
companies for employee protection.

Some risk specialists have long maintained that physical protection isn't
enough. Aid groups, they argue, should refuse to send anyone into the field
until they have received proper security training, including background
political and cultural briefings enabling them to better understand their
environments.

Too often, aid workers are sent out shockingly ignorant. Most get little
more than 30-minute security briefings on arrival. Even though regularly
updated by security advisers, few are taught how to cope with the
hijackings, armed assaults, and abductions that they face in crisis zones.
Sometimes the organizations concerned have covered up the lives lost as a
direct result of negligence. Donors, too, have yet to make security
awareness a funding prerequisite.

One of the few major agencies to take such matters seriously is the
International Committee of the Red Cross. The Swiss humanitarian
organization is well known for its mandatory two-week awareness courses.
Disguised Swiss soldiers put candidates through highly realistic simulated
guerrilla attacks. ICRC officials maintain that such training has probably
saved the lives of numerous workers, despite horrendous attacks against its
personnel in recent years. Also, as part of their insurance coverage,
international journalists are having to undergo similar training prior to
leaving for war zones.

The face of international aid is changing rapidly for the worse. Not only
are security risks greater, but some governments are deliberately coercing
aid groups by requiring them to come under military command in return for
funding. If agencies are to perform their humanitarian duties properly, they
must remove themselves from the political or military fray. In turn, donors
need to accept that agencies aren't there to replace failed policies, but to
provide humanitarian or recovery assistance where it's needed most.

* Edward Girardet is a writer on humanitarian, conflict, and recovery
issues. He is also editor of the Crosslines Essential Field Guide to
Afghanistan.

Afghanistan: a nation abandoned to drugs

By Nick Meo in Jalalabad and Leonard Doyle

The Independent -- London - Friday November 19 2004

Country produces 87% of global opium. One in ten Afghans works in opium
trade. UN: state is world's second worst to live in
Three years after the fall of the Taliban, the United Nations issued a
dramatic plea for help yesterday, saying that Afghanistan's opium crop is
flourishing as never before and the country is well on the way to becoming a
corrupt narco-state.

The UN's annual opium survey reveals that poppy cultivation increased by
two-thirds this year, a finding that will come as a deep embarrassment to
Tony Blair, who pledged in 2001 to eradicate the scourge of opium along with
the Taliban.

So alarmed is the UN that it is suggesting a remedy more radical than any
that has been put forward before - bringing in US and British forces to
fight a drugs war similar to the war on terror. It wants them to destroy
farmers' crops on a massive scale before they can be harvested.

The report from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODOC) says the narcotics
trade is far bigger than anybody had realised. Most experts in Afghanistan
believe it is a more significant factor in the continuing violence and
instability than the Taliban insurgency.

On the eve of the Afghan war Mr Blair informed the Labour Party conference
that "90 per cent of the heroin on British streets originates in
Afghanistan". Despite evidence from the UN that the Taliban was suppressing
the drugs trade, Mr Blair said: "The arms the Taliban are buying today are
paid for by the lives of young British people buying their drugs on British
streets. That is another part of their regime we should seek to destroy."

There is growing evidence, however, that despite some improvements,
Afghanistan has become a failed state. It is now ranked by the UN as the
second worst country in the world to live in - after Sierra Leone.

British officials point out that the Afghan economy is booming, that three
million refugees have returned home and that four million children are in
schools. But yesterday's report reveals that the engine of economic growth
is opium production. Last year Afghanistan exported 87 per cent of the
world's supplies. Opium is now the "main engine of economic growth and the
strongest bond among previously quarrelsome peoples", according to the UN.
Most of the opium is smuggled across the Pakistan border, where the Taliban
and al- Qa'ida charge drug traffickers transit and protection fees.

The UN report for 2003 found that one in 10 Afghans - many of them
unemployed returned refugees - is involved in the drugs trade which last
year employed 2.3 million people, and made up 60 per cent of gross national
product.

In just one year the area under cultivation increased by 64 per cent. Output
was estimated at 4,200 tons, a 17 per cent increase on last year with only
disease and bad weather acting as drag factors. The only year with bigger
output was 1999, before a Taliban edict completely stopped production.

Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of UNODC, urged Nato and the US-led
alliance to fight the drugs trade and gave a warning in words usually
reserved for war. "In Afghanistan drugs are now a clear and present danger,"
he said.

The US, worried about narcotics funding terrorism, is promising to spend
$780m (£420m) next year on a war against drugs. Some money will be spent on
alternative livelihoods for farmers, but most will probably go on measures
such as spraying poppy fields, currently being discussed in Washington, and
transporting drugs barons to US courts to stand trial.

Before going to war on the Taliban, Mr Blair promised Afghans: "This time we
will not walk away from you." Last week he vowed that a fresh assault on
Afghanistan's opium poppy trade is to be launched. Britain is leading the
international effort to stem production and has provided £70m over three
years to fight the trade.

The Independent -- London -- Wednesday June 23 2004
Murder cases under review to identify 'honour killings'
By Jason Bennetto and Terri Judd
Scotland Yard has identified at least 13 suspected cases of "honour
killings" in which young women who are often fleeing forced marriages have
been murdered.

The suspected killings were identified as part of a national review of
nearly 120 murders. Scotland Yard detectives are examining murder files
going back 10 years ? 52 in the London area and 65 in other parts of England
and Wales. Police and campaign groups believe that only a tiny proportion of
the killings are reported or detected.

A Metropolitan Police spokeswoman said that, so far, 13 suspected "honour
killings" between 1993 and 2003 had been identified. Among the cases being
examined were deaths involving women who were burnt to death or run over by
cars. In some instances, they were previously thought to have been
accidents. Many of the female victims were from south Asian communities.

Detectives are not reopening the cases but hope to learn more about the
scale and nature of the problem and develop future investigative techniques.

Motives for the murders often included relationships which the families felt
brought them dishonour. Police say some of the murders were carried out by
contract killers hired by the families. They also believe that so-called
"bounty hunters" were involved ? people, including women, who make a
business out of tracking down victims.

Commander Andy Baker, head of the Metropolitan Police's Serious Crime
Directorate and the chairman of a new strategic taskforce, hopes the review
will help future investigations. He said: "We are not reopening these cases
? many of them have been through the courts with convictions. It is a matter
of looking at these cases and learning how we can prevent killings in the
future."

Last September British police released research into the culture surrounding
honour killings. The undertaking followed the conviction of Abdalla Yones, a
Kurdish Muslim, for the murder of his 16-year-old daughter Heshu after she
formed a relationship with a man of whom the father disapproved.

Europol, the European police agency, held a conference on the issue in the
Hague yesterday. Experts say "honour killings" are increasing in Europe. The
conference heard of the case of a young woman called Fadime. The 26-year-old
Kurd was shot dead two years ago near Stockholm, allegedly by her father
because of her relationship with a Swedish man.

The murder prompted calls for urgent action to protect young immigrants who
fall out with their families. Diana Nammi, the director of the International
Campaign Against Honour Killing, said: "I believe these killings are more
widespread than official figures suggest. We need to stop these murders and
this move by the police is very positive."

Ram Gidoomal, of the South Asian Development Partnership, called for police
to work alongside social services to prevent these killings. He said: "I
would like to see what
action has been taken already ? it is not as if we have just
been made aware of this issue. Everyone needs to be educated to look out for
early warning signals. All agencies need to share information."

Dr Aisha Gill, a lecturer in criminology and expert in the subject, agreed,
adding that honour crime in this country is a "growing phenomenon".

It is the culturally sensitive aspect of honour killings which, some say,
made it such a hidden crime for so long. The Muslim community, in
particular, feels it could be stigmatised by a crime that most members abhor
as much as anyone else.

Most cases involve families from Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, but other
regions, including the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Kenya, Yemen, South
Africa and Somalia have reported incidents.

In a related problem, each year, a specialist Foreign Office unit deals with
about 250 cases of predominantly girls, a third of which are minors, taken
abroad to be married against their will. "We usually get a call from a third
party to say a girl has been taken overseas on the pretext of a holiday or
the death of a relative. When she gets there, she finds she is actually
going to be forced into a marriage," said Fawzia Samad, of the community
liaison unit.

Often they are threatened with death if they fail to comply.

Embassy or consulate officials will now liaise with local police, often
travelling to remote villages to seek girls and bring them home if it is
found they are being held against their will. In some countries, such as
Pakistan, they turn to the courts for help.

The Muslim community makes a distinction between arranged marriages, where
compatibility is the key motivator, and forced marriages, where a university
student from Britain may be compelled to wed a man with little education
with whom she has little in common.

Father jailed for stabbing teenage 'jewel' to death
Heshu Yones barricaded herself in the bathroom, but her killer broke the
door down. As the16-year-old fought for her life, he stabbed her 11 times,
then slit her throat. The bent and broken knife police found in her neck
bore testament to the savagery of her death.

Her killer was her father, Abdalla, now serving life after being convicted
of her murder in September last year.

Days before Heshu died, Yones, a devout Kurdish Muslim who had fled Saddam
Hussein's regime a decade earlier, was sent an anonymous letter describing
his daughter as a slut who was sleeping with an
18-year-old Lebanese Christian boyfriend.

To the 48-year-old Yones, his bubbly daughter was his jewel but, as a "fish
out of water" in UK society, he disapproved of her increasingly Western ways
and beat her repeatedly.

In October 2002, he walked into the family's flat in Acton, west London, and
murdered the child he loved. Then he cut his own throat and threw himself
out of a window. At first, he told police members of
al-Qa'ida had broken in, knocked him out and killed Heshu. Days before the
Old Bailey trial he admitting he had murdered her, saying she had brought
dishonour on the family.

Heshu had planned to run away and had written a goodbye letter to her
father, saying: "Me and you will probably never understand each other, but
I'm sorry I wasn't what you wanted, but there's some things you can't change."

After Yones was sentenced, he said he had been forced to kill Heshu because
he had been put in an untenable position.

www.womensenews.org
In Pakistan, Those Who Cry Rape Face Jail May 16th 2004

By Juliette Terzieff - WeNews correspondent

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (WOMENSENEWS)--Flies circle around hungrily as Zafran Bibi struggles to cook a simple lunch of roti (flat round bread) and lentils on a small open fire using the only utensils she has; a stained pan and a cracked wooden spoon.

As Bibi moves around the sun-baked courtyard of the day care center where she and her husband work as caretakers, her youngest daughter Zabnam (which means "morning dew" in Urdu) clings to her dress.

"We have nothing, but I am amazed we have even this," Bibi says cradling the two-and-half-year-old Zabnam.

Ensconced in a dusty slum on the outskirts of the Pakistani capital Islamabad, where the only buildings are rickety mud and straw huts that are home to Afghan refugees, her home might not be idyllic. But for the illiterate 30 year old, it is a lifesaving refuge from her family, her tribe and a society inclined to shun her.

In 2002, Bibi catapulted onto the world stage when a court in her native Northwest Frontier Province sentenced her to stoning by death under Pakistan's controversial Hudood Ordinances, which effectively equate rape with adultery. Despite Bibi's repeated charges that her brother-in-law had raped her on multiple occasions, the presiding judge convicted her of zina (adultery).

As is common in such cases, nothing happened to the man involved.

Promulgated through presidential decree by former military dictator General Zia-ul-Haq in 1979 as part of his Islamization program to deal with a spectrum of sins ranging from theft, to false accusations, to adultery, the Hudood Ordinances are a volatile mix of Islamic decrees and Pakistan's secular laws and are part of almost every court's legal arsenal.

At Heart of Struggle for Justice

They are also at the heart of women's struggle for justice in this troubled South Asian nation.

"These laws have been a disgrace since they were introduced," says Majida Rizvi, a former Supreme Court judge and head of the National Commission on the Status of Women. The commission is a Islamabad-based council of religious scholars, government officials and legal experts set up by Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf in 2000 to examine laws pertaining to women's rights.

The National Commission on the Status of Women voted overwhelmingly to repeal the Hudood in a mid-2003 report.

Since then, Musharraf has appeared reluctant to repeal the Hudood for fear of further antagonizing his important but tenuous political ties to religious clerics and their supporters. Musharraf angered clerics by siding fully with the U.S. war on terror, banning militant groups and seeking to reform Pakistan's 13,000 religious seminaries.

Those aligned with the clerics argue that the Hudood are God's law and term any tampering of them un-Islamic. "If there are any problems, it is with poor work by judges, lawyers or the police, not with the word of God," says Khurshid Ahmed, member of the six-party religious alliance United Action Forum.

Up to 80 percent of the 2,000 women now in Pakistani jails are facing charges related to the Hudood Ordinances, according to Rizvi. Many of the cases involve women being charged with adultery after they have allegedly been raped. Another case involves a woman seeking a divorce who has then been accused of adultery. While few are ever tried and convicted, the stigma and the ordeal can color the rest of their lives.

"These laws promote injustice and are un-Islamic, denying women the rights given to them in the Koran, and discriminating against the weakest sections of society; women and minorities," Rizvi says. "It is a flawed legislation that can't be fixed. Its drafting is flawed. Its motive is flawed."

Four Males Needed to Verify Rape

Under the Hudood, punishment of a man for rape must be preceded by his own confession or the testimony of four males of upstanding character who witnessed the act of penetration. Women and non-Muslim witnesses are considered worthless.

"Hudood cases involving rape can not be registered under the law without production of four witnesses" says Faqir Hussain, secretary of the Karachi-based Law and Justice Commission of Pakistan, which monitors Pakistani law.

However, according to Hussein, the police often register cases in which no witnesses were produced setting the victim up for possible prosecution. "At their best the Hudood are discriminatory and confusing, at their worst they are systematic tools for abuse."

Anti-Hudood activists say that Pakistan's secular laws served rape victims far better.

Before the imposition of Hudood, a case could be registered with police on suspicion alone, prompting an investigation that might or might not have resulted in formal charges. Such was the case with rape before the Hudood altered the crime from a private offense to an offense against the State.

The Hudood's discouraging effects on rape allegations were made conspicuous in the 1983 case of 15-year-old Jehan Mina, who became pregnant and alleged that she had being raped by her uncle and his son. After filing a complaint with police, she was charged and sentenced for illegal fornication on the grounds of her pregnancy. Because of her young age, the judge reduced her original sentence of 100 lashes to 10.

Punishments under the Hudood are severe; amputation for theft, whipping for drinking alcohol, hanging for rape and stoning for adultery. If the court rules there was no rape, the accuser is often sent to jail either convicted of adultery or qasf (false accusation).

Devastated Lives

The infant Zabnam was taken away to a state-run orphanage when Bibi was placed onto death row in a squalid Northwest Frontier Province prison. Months later--in mid 2002--she was acquitted by a higher court after an international outcry by the domestic and foreign press and nongovernmental organizations like the Women's Action Forum and the Aurat Foundation.

"My innocence was my protection, my savior, but this case destroyed our lives," she says as her husband, Zabnam, and two sons look on and the family sits down to eat their meager meal.

The family sold their home and possessions to pay for legal costs, but they still couldn't cover the bill. They still owe 200,000 rupees (about $3,500). After her release from jail, life in the village was uncomfortable under the watchful eyes of Zafran's in-laws. Nobody wanted to give the couple work as day laborers, nobody wanted to help them with a place to live and tongues wagged with incessant cruelty.

With the help of a sympathetic Islamabad-based lawyer, Zafran and her husband Naimat Khan secured work here earning them 4,000 rupees (about $70) a month and a place to live.

"What happened to me should not happen to any other living being," she says tearfully. "I am not an educated person, but if innocent people like me are being punished then obviously there is something wrong with the laws."

Juliette Terzieff is a freelance journalist currently based in Pakistan who has worked for the San Francisco Chronicle, Newsweek, CNN International, and the London Sunday Times.

For more information:

Asian Human Rights Commission-- - "Pakistan: The Women's Commission and the Hudood Ordinances": - http://www.ahrchk.net/hrsolid/mainfile.php/2003vol13no04-05/2292/

Human Rights Watch-- - "Discrimination under the Hudood Ordinances": - http://www.hrw.org/about/projects/womrep/General-90.htm

Inter Press Service News Agency-- - "Despite Sound and Fury, 'Hudood' Laws Still Stay": - http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews= 333



War Returns with a Vengeance as Allies Fail the Afghan People

George Bush and Tony Blair made grand promises when they took on the Taliban. They sound hollow now. What does it all mean for Iraq?

The Independent/UK, May 25, 2004
by Kim Sengupta


The road from the village of Ozbin Khol is safe no longer. The eight aid workers packed into a Toyota LandCruiser were keen to get to their destination, Sarobi, before nightfall. But a punctured tire stopped them. Two young men, carrying Kalashnikovs, their faces covered by keffayahs, came out of the darkness, lined up the passengers and opened fire, killing five.

The killings, in Paktika province, south-east of Kabul, were at the end of February. The next month, gunmen burst into a guesthouse near the southern city of Kandahar, killing three more aid workers. Two weeks ago, two Europeans, one with a Swiss passport, were stoned and stabbed to death at Bagh Chilsthan, just 15 minutes' drive from the center of Kabul.

Reports of the murders appeared in the international media, briefly, because the victims were either from the West, or had links with international relief agencies. There have been other deaths - 15 children killed by United States warplanes in raids while attempting to eliminate a warlord in December. Another dozen Afghans were killed in the next few weeks, either enemy combatants, said the Americans, or the result of collateral damage among civilians.

In Herat, internecine fighting between forces of the warlord, Ismail Khan, and the governor sent by Hamid Karzai's government in Kabul led to the deaths of 100 people, including Mr Khan's son.

These are snapshots of a continuing conflict in Afghanistan, a war of attrition taking place largely in the shadows with the focus of the world's media firmly fixed on Iraq.

The Afghan war was, of course, the first chapter of the War on Terror launched after 11 September. After a relatively quick and casualty-free campaign - for the American military, if not Afghan civilians - George Bush declared victory. Tony Blair pledged: "This time we will not walk away", as had happened following the war the mujahedin fought against the Russians with Western money and arms.

But that, say many Afghans, is exactly what the United States and Britain have done. And just as the official end to hostilities in Iraq has been followed by unremitting violence, so the war has returned with a vengeance in Afghanistan. With international interest concentrating on Iraq, aid money has dried up for the Afghans. The military bill for the Pentagon, so far, is $50bn (£27bn). The money for humanitarian work, on the other hand, has been $4.5bn. Out of that, much of the $2.2bn earmarked for this year has been diverted to military projects and emergency relief from long-term development.

Even where aid money is available, the security situation is preventing distribution. The five men killed in Paktika worked for the National Solidarity Program (SDF), which is now pulling out of 72 areas in the country.

Ihsanullah Dileri, the organization's head of co-ordination said in his Kabul office: "This is a very bad, very desperate situation. We had $60,000 to spend on each of those 72 areas, now this cannot be done.

"All these areas are badly deprived, with poor people lacking basic facilities. But I am afraid the security simply is not there for us to continue with our work. It is too dangerous."

Barbara Stapleton, of the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief (ACBAR) an umbrella body representing 90 national and international aid agencies, added: "We are very concerned about security and the deterioration of the situation. Impunity rules in the country. It's not just the NGO [non-governmental organizations] community, but the Afghan people at large who are exposed to these levels of insecurity."

There is also evidence that the American military is using aid as a means of acquiring intelligence. Delivering blankets and food to refugees at Dwamanda in the south, Lieutenant Reid Finn had no hesitation in telling journalists: "It's simple. The more they help us find the bad guys, the more good stuff they get." Teena Roberts, the head of Christian Aid's mission in the country, said: "The result of this is aid workers have become targets. I have not come across the use of aid in this way before."

After the fall of the Taliban, the streets of Kabul used to be busy until the 10pm curfew. Now they are deserted by eight in the evening, with the headlights of a few solitary cars hurtling through the darkness. Foreigners travel in convoys, with armed guards. Amanullah Haidar runs a stall 100 yards from the Mustafa Hotel in the city center, one of the few places deemed to be safe for the expatriate community to meet in the evening, where the two brothers who run it carry pistols in shoulder holsters, and guards with semi-automatic rifles man the main door.

"We are disappointed by lack of progress, lack of money, lack of jobs," said Mr Haidar, a Tajik former Northern Alliance soldier. "I remember all these people who came here from Europe and America and told us how they are going to help us. But where are the factories and the offices we thought we would get? What about the elections we were promised?"

President Hamid Karzai was forced to put back to the autumn elections because of the instability. Only 1.6 million out of 10.5 million eligible to vote have registered. In the Pashtun belt, where Taliban influence is still strong, the number of women registered is below 20 per cent.

The emancipation of women, subjugated by the fundamentalist Taliban, was one of the stated objectives of the West. Even before the war ended America's First Lady, Laura Bush, declared: "Because of our recent military gains in much of Afghanistan, women are no longer imprisoned in their homes. The fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women."

According to an Amnesty International report, however: "Two years after the ending of the Taliban regime, the international community and the Afghan transitional administration, led by President Karzai, have proved unable to protect women. The risk of rape and sexual violence by members of armed factions and former combatants is still high. Forced marriages, particularly of girl children, and violence against women in the family are widespread in many areas."

After the war, dozens of girls' schools reopened throughout the country. But an Islamist resurgence has seen many of them closed down through intimidation. Families who still dare to send their female children for education can pay a terrible price. Earlier this month, three young girls, aged eight to 10, were poisoned in eastern Afghanistan, apparently as punishment for attending lessons.

The government points out, however, that four million pupils are enrolled in schools this year - including one third of the country's female children.

Twenty-five years of war have destroyed what there was of Afghan infrastructure. In a number of regions, such as the Shomali Plain, the Taliban and their Pakistani allies destroyed centuries-old irrigation systems in a scorched-earth policy against the Northern Alliance.

Following the last war, attempts were made to restore water and power. But systematic strikes by the Taliban on power lines and irrigation projects, and murders of foreign engineers, has ground much of it to a halt. At present, just 9 per cent of the population have access to electricity. Safe drinking water is estimated to be restricted to 6 per cent. The World Bank has authorized a $40m loan for water projects, but while work can begin with the funds in the north and west, it is deemed to be too dangerous in the Pashtun belt of the south and east.

The UN has stressed irrigation is essential for agriculture in a country where the overwhelming majority of the population live in rural areas. However there is no shortage of one particular crop - opium. Poppy cultivation reached a new high last year. According to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, the area of cultivation has grown from 1,685 hectares in 2001 to 61,000 hectares in 2003. The country has the dubious distinction of accounting for 75 per cent of the world's output.

FACTS AND FIGURES THAT TELL THE STORY

HEALTH

Pregnancy: One woman dies every 20 minutes in pregnancy/childbirth
2002: Pregnancy and childbirth the leading cause of death in women
500 trained midwives for female population of 11 million


Life expectancy:

2001: 46
2004: 43


Under-five mortality rank:

2001: 4
2004: 4
Measles: 2000: 1,400 cases of measles per month
2003: 40 cases per month


Polio:

1999: 27 reported cases
2003: 7 reported cases
2004: 3 reported cases


CHILD SOLDIERS

8,000 child soldiers in official army
Feb 2004: Government starts to demobilize 2,000 child soldiers
400 children killed each month from landmines


EDUCATION

Four million children in education
1.2 million girls in education; aim to get a million more girls into education


Net primary school enrolment ratio:

1995-99: M:F 53:5
2004: M:F 42:15


Total adult literacy:

1995-99: 32
2004: 36


OPIUM PRODUCTION

2001: 185 tons of opium (reduction of 96 per cent from 1999)
2003: Second-largest opium harvest (after 1999) with yield of 3,600 tons
Poppy cultivated in 28 of 32 provinces, involving 1.7 million Afghans. Drug trade income is $2.3bn, more than 50 per cent of Afghanistan's legal GDP
69 per cent of farmers surveyed intend to increase cultivation in 2004
Nearly 30 per cent of farmers plan to more than double production
43 per cent of non-poppy farmers intend to start cultivating in 2004



Sources: UNICEF SOWC (State of the World's Children) annual report); CARE International; Afghanistan Annual Opium Poppy Survey 2001); Afghanistan Farmers' Intentions survey 2003-04); Amnesty International




Bad treatment spurs women to suicide
By James Astill THE WASHINGTON TIMES May 8, 2004

KABUL, Afghanistan - White-bearded Nazir Shah sifts through a pile of magazines for teenage girls. "Look at what our sweet girls are suffering," said Mr. Shah, a retired Afghan army colonel, poring over the letters pages. "These are real stories about girls who are suffering so much. Look - 'My family's choice of husband is driving me to suicide.' "

Mr. Shah has a special interest in the trials of Afghanistan's young women. Six months ago, after being bullied by her in-laws too often, his 26-year-old daughter, Mallali Nurzi, soaked herself with gasoline and struck a match. Alerted by her screams, Mallali's baby daughter discovered her mother writhing in a ball of flame.
By the time the fire was extinguished, Mallali was burned black all over. It took her 24 hours to die. In a suicide note to her parents, Mallali explained why she had chosen such a horrific end. "Her husband's family were treating her like an animal," said Mr. Shah, tears trickling down his sunburned cheeks. "Every minute of every day, she was fetching water, growing crops, looking after animals and children, cleaning the house. She was patient, but it was too much for her: She was educated and sensitive. She found it hard to live like a slave." Mallali was not alone in her suffering, nor in the agonizing way she chose to die.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that several hundred young women burn themselves fatally in western Afghanistan every year. A government mission sent to investigate the problem in Herat, the main city of western Afghanistan, reported that at least 52 young, married or soon-to-be-married women had burned themselves fatally in the city in recent months. The youngest was a 13-year-old bride-to-be.

Mr. Shah says he knows of more than 80 cases of self-immolation in western Farah province - where Mallali took her life - in the past two years. A niece of his was among the victims. "There is not a village in Farah where a young woman has not burned herself to death," he said. Self-immolation is a traditional form of female suicide in several Asian countries. It is an _expression of despair, and its occurrence in Afghanistan seems to be rising dramatically. "In our culture, women have always burned themselves, because they have always been so badly treated," said Amina Safi Afzali of the Afghan Human Rights Commission. "But, this phenomenon was never as prevalent as it is today."

Behind the increase, said Mrs. Afzali, is disillusionment among many educated Afghan women that the two years since the Taliban's fall have brought little freedom. This is felt most keenly among former refugees in Iran, who had a freer life there. Most of the female suicides recorded in Herat, near the border with Iran, were of educated women, including several nurses and teachers. "There are many more pressures on young Afghan women today, because they have learned what freedom is from radio and television, but that is not what they have," said Mrs. Afzali. "In the past, every girl knew she belonged to the family, she existed only for her father or her husband. She knew she wasn't free. Now, girls know they should have rights and they are prepared to burn themselves to show society that they do not have them yet."

In Mallali's case, she had attended high school in Kabul and completed secondary school in Iran before being married off to live in a remote village. For 10 years, she suffered abuse from her in-laws, too loyal to complain but ultimately too sensitive to endure it. "Mallali knew what her rights were because she was from an educated family in Kabul," said her father. "But in the village she had no rights at all. She must have been suffering terribly, because she wasn't worried about the pain. She just wanted to die and be free."

Afghanistan's new constitution stipulates equal rights for men and women. But despite an increase in the number of girls attending school, most Afghan women have no more rights now than they did under the Taliban regime. Most of the country is not, in fact, controlled by the government, but by warlords as misogynist as the previous regime. "Women in this country are in a very bad situation, with forced marriages, families selling their daughters to pay drug debts, women being beaten all the time," said Suraya Sobah Rang, the country's deputy minister of women's affairs. "We have to change these things in our society. But what society wants and what women want are two different things," she added.

Herat's warlord-governor, Ismail Khan, recently tried to face up to the fiery suicides in his city. In a televised visit to the burn ward of Herat's main hospital, he met Shakiba, a 19-year-old bride burned over 90 percent of her body. Roused for a whisper to the cameras, she said she had tried to kill herself after her family forced her to marry a man who was still living with his first wife, for a $7,000 dowry. "My family was selling me and I didn't know what else to do," she said. Not long after Gen. Khan's visit, Shakiba died.

IWPR'S AFGHAN RECOVERY REPORT, No. 117, April 29, 2004
ABUSED WOMEN DRIVEN TO SUICIDE

Self-immolation is seen as the only way out for some who suffer physical violence and sexual abuse at their hands of their families.

By Lailuma Sadid in Kabul

On a chilly day in Kabul early last month, Gulmora, a 22-year-old mother of two, locked herself in the bathroom of her house, doused herself with fuel and set herself on fire.

By the time her husband noticed the smoke and broke open the door, Gulmora had burns over 98 percent of her body. He wrapped her in a blanket to put out the flames and took her to the local hospital. She died six days later.

Her case is hardly unique. Over the past 12 months, nearly 90 women in Afghanistan have reportedly attempted to take their lives this way, according to human-right officials. In most cases, they were the victims of physical or sexual abuse.

Karima Karimi, assistant director of women's rights development at the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, said forced marriages are a leading cause of such suicide attempts.

Since March, 2003, most of these attempted suicides have taken place in the western city of Herat. "Figures from the criminology register of the hospital show 56 incidents of burning, of which four were men, and 52 were women," Karimi said. "Of all these incidents, 32 women died and the rest survived."

A hospital in Kabul reported it had treated 30 similar cases; 3 other cases have been reported in the eastern city of Jalalabad, according to human-rights officials.

Many of these burn victims end up in a special surgical hospital in Kabul's Kart-e-Say district because it has the best surgery facilities in the country. "Most incidents occur because of violence [in] the families," said Dr. Hasan Kamal, assistant chief of surgery at the hospital in central Kabul.

Before her death, Gulmora, who had been married for seven years, talked to IWPR about what drove her to set herself on fire. Lying in a hospital bed with her skin blacked, her hands and arms were badly swollen. Her face was so swollen that she was unable to open her eyes. From time to time, she let out a low moan. At other times she would begin to ramble but she was also able to speak coherently.

"I would always be beaten by my husband," she said. "I could no longer put up with him, and had no way out other than suicide, so I set fire to myself."

She said that she had also been beaten by other members of her husband's family. "My brother-in-law beat me with a cable." She said that her husband threatened desert her and their children - a boy 18 months old and a girl 3 months old - and go to Iran.

Gulmora's husband, Najibuallah, acknowledged that he frequently fought with his wife and admitted that his brother slapped her because she was always complaining.

But he insisted that he was not responsible for his wife's actions.

"It is due to her stupidity that she had committed this action," he said.

Benafsha, Gulmora's mother-in-law, said she loved her like a daughter and insisted that the family did not have domestic problems. She said Gulmora was free to go to her parents' home at any time.

She agreed that often young brides in forced marriages can suffer, but said this was not the case with Gulmora. "There [is] much oppression of brides in some families, but no one [did] anything to cause her to destroy herself and her family."

But Gulmora's sister, Sheerpera, tells a different story. "She was even beaten with scissors on the head once, and she would always be ruthlessly beaten by her husband's family members, so she had no choice but to commit this," she said.

Sheerpera also said that, before her death, Gulmora had come to her parents' house and said she wanted a divorce. But her father, Wali Ahmad, refused to allow it, telling his daughter that no one in their tribe had ever been divorced and that would bring dishonour on the family. He advised her to simply tolerate whatever was going on in her marriage.

Ahmad told IWPR that he had already lost his wife and four of his seven children. While his daughter was still in the hospital, he said he would be relieved if she died. "I want God to give her death because they were committing cruelty to my daughter," he said.

A women who attempts suicide is considered to have brought shame upon the whole family. If she should survive, she would be scorned.

Rona, 27, has been married for ten years and has four children. She said she twice attempted suicide by walking into lit wood stove. During a third attempt, she said she was stopped and attacked by her husband.

"I was beaten by my husband until I fainted and then he threw boiling water over me and he tried to kill me," she said. "I was admitted to this hospital six months ago and throughout this whole time, my husband has not come to visit me nor has he let my children see me."

Tamana, 15, said sexual abuse drove her to attempt suicide. She said her father would kiss and fondle her while she slept and that when she complained, no one would believe her.

"At last when he wanted to rape me, I burned myself," she said.

Fariba is a member of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, RAWA, a group that is trying to deter women from resorting to suicides.

"We think that one of the reasons for self-burning is illiteracy and backwardness," she said. Her organization provides literacy training and handicraft centers to educate women and give them skills that will allow them to support themselves.

"RAWA strongly believes that it is only with the weapon of education that the women of Afghanistan can be empowered and triumph in their struggle against fundamentalism, which is the main cause of all miseries to women," she said. "We educate them [to understand] that suicide and self-burning brings nothing positive to them."

Because many regions of the country are still under the control of conservative leaders and have a weak legal system, many women have few ways to escape abusive relationships, she said.

"So [since] women actually have no other way to raise their voice against the crimes committed against them, they find the easiest way [is] to commit suicide," Fariba said.

"If justice is done in only a few cases, no one will then dare to brutalise women and deprive them of their very basic rights," she said.

Lailuma Sadid is a journalist with IWPR.

contact:

Plight of Pakistani Women
Thursday March 04, 2004 (0145 PST) Pak Tribune

Anwaar Hussain


THERE IS a species of Homo sapiens found in large numbers in Pakistan whose plight is worse than animals. Amazingly, the male of the species hunts its own female counterpart in a deadly blood sport. The females are killed, maimed and their spirits broken by their males in a variety of ways.

They are burnt, electrocuted, tortured till death, doused with acid, starved, sentenced to life confinement, humiliated privately, paraded and dragged naked in town squares publicly. They are punched, kicked and slapped into submission. Once broken in body and spirit, some are sold like cattle and some exchanged like property items to settle old disputes.

Last year 631 of this species was killed in the first eight months as reported by an independent Rights Commission. No statistics were available from remote areas in Pakistan where this blood sport is a favorite pastime. Like in the past, some of the favorite methods of killing remained stabbing, shooting, burning, hacking to pieces, strangulating and slitting open their throats with sharp weapons. Indications are that the customary figure of 1000 honor killings a year must have been beaten by a comfortable margin in the year 2003.

This species is none other than the hapless Pakistani woman. The proud recipients of last year's badge of honor were 247 husbands, 112 brothers, 54 fathers, 25 sons and two uncles. In other cases, as there is no mention of who carried out the killing, the badge of honor can safely be awarded to the whole family. Ironically, all this while these women continued to be called as mothers, sisters, wives and daughters.

In 1998 alone, 54 cases of women being stripped and dragged through the streets of Punjab in 'revenge' attacks were recorded. Between 1994 and 1999, almost 4,000 cases of women being badly burned were documented in the tiny twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi alone. An abysmally low percentage survives. The rest go on to a permanently disfigured existence. It is believed to be only the tip of the iceberg.
After General Zia's Hudood Ordinance, women have routinely become convicts in their own rapes for lack of evidence. Unable to produce four 'pious' male witnesses who have observed the act from close quarters, scores are now languishing in Pakistani jails with no hope of escape from their captors. Others have been publicly lashed and fined for their own rapes.

The judges alone are not having the fun. In one instance, even the village elders joined the spree. They condemned a woman on frivolous charges to be gang-raped by beastly men with the whole village in attendance. The ghastly sentence was carried out in letter and spirit. Incredibly, last year two six years old children too were found fit to be killed by their relations in the name of honor in the southern Pakistani province of Sindh. The disaster was averted only by timely intervention of local influential persons.


To escape death by hanging, four men from Mianwali district agreed to pay $130,000 and give eight of their daughters away in marriage to the victims' families. One angel-faced child named Iqra was only 5 years old. Fourteen years old Tasleem Khan was betrothed to a 55-year-old farmer.

The Pakistani male has two expedient modes to validate all this horror. Islam and/or prevalent culture in parts of Pakistan. He conveniently switches between these modes to justify all the suffering heaped upon the luckless women. When attention is drawn to the plight of women in Pakistan, ideologues are quick to refute such charges by painting a lofty picture of the high status of women in Islam. When Quranic Ayahs dealing with the subject of women are quoted exactly to women's benefit, the culturists are quick to come up with Pathan, Sindhi, Punjabi or Balochi culture as their second line of defense.

Every law, from God's to man's, grants men and women equal rights. Woman is recognized by Islam as a full and equal partner of man in the procreation of humankind. By this partnership she has an equal contribution in every facet of this process. She undertakes equal responsibilities and is, therefore, entitled to equal rights. In her are as many qualities and as much humanity as there are in her partner. God says:

And their Lord has accepted (their prayers) and answered them (saying): 'Never will I cause to be lost the work of any of you, be he male or female; you are members, one of another...(3:195)
The status of woman is clearly given in the following Quranic injunction;
..And women shall have rights similar to the rights against them, according to what is equitable; but men have a degree (of advantage as in some cases of inheritance) over them (2:228).
This degree is not a license of superiority or an authorization of brutal governance over her. It is to match with the extra responsibilities of man and give him some compensation for his many responsibilities. It is these extra responsibilities that give man a degree over woman in some economic aspects. It is not a higher degree in humanity or in character. Nor is it a dominance of one over the other or suppression of one by the other.
Consider the following momentous verse, addressing men and women equally - as believers, as members of the community, with equal access to God's "Forgiveness and great reward":
"For Muslim men and women, For believing men and women, For devout men and women, For men and women who are patient and constant, For men and women who humble themselves, For men and women who give in charity, For men and women who fast (and deny themselves), For men and women who guard their chastity, and For men and women who engage much in God's praise, For them has God prepared forgiveness and great reward." (33:35)

Remarkably, all verses pertaining to Hijaab, Zina and Talaaq are almost memorized by heart by the Pakistani Muslim males. While this one, so profoundly dealing with the equality of Muslim males and females is perhaps one of the lesser known. Therefore, most Muslim men, and even women, grow up believing that their religious laws place women below men and more importantly, that this is an indisputable and absolute fact.

Well, it is not. From the Quran, it is abundantly clear that both men and women are promised the same reward for good deeds and the same punishment for misconduct. The Prophet (PBUH) necessitated the pursuit of knowledge for both Muslim men and women equally. To sum it up, in Islam there is indeed absolutely no difference between men and women as far as their relationship to Allah is concerned.
Man made laws too guarantee equality of both sexes. Both the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, and the Pakistani constitution clearly, emphatically and unambiguously guarantee equality on grounds of sex.
On the governmental level, no whole hearted attempt has ever been made to translate these into honest legislation and ensure its strict enforcement, legally and socially, to eradicate the evil root and branch. As a people, we conveniently switch between the divine and the man made laws, throwing in culture for good measures, allowing no escape to these unfortunate creatures. Vis-à-vis Pakistani male, it's a heads-you-lose-tails-I-win situation for the Pakistani female.
To give just two examples of this convenient, but contradictory, arrangement consider the following:
There are clear injunctions in the Quran regarding women's share in their parent's property. A huge majority of Pathans, Sindhis, Balochis and even Punjabis in rural areas distribute their properties only among their male off-springs. The women inherit nothing. Reason given: Culture.

Yet, when Islam enjoins Hijaab on women, these very males are more than willing to even exceed the manner prescribed by God. They wrap them up in thick suffocating bolts of cloth with just two slits left open to peep out from. In parts of Muslim world, even a horse-like contraption is enforced on these women in public. Reason given: Islam.
Ironically, even while employing culture as the standard excuse, the Pakistani males are unabashedly selective. If killing has to carried out, why is there honor killing of women only? Why can't men be killed to vindicate the same honor? Is it because the men can retaliate and the women are weak and defenseless? Some men, some honor, some sense of fairness, some double bloody standards.

Perhaps time has come to call a spade a spade. Violence against the women of Pakistan has to be addressed forcefully and finally. The Government of Pakistan must actually honor its obligations under International law to protect women. All reports of honor killings and domestic abuse should be doggedly investigated and persistently prosecuted. Wide-ranging and sustained public awareness programs should be carried out on the state-run media to inform all Pakistanis of women's equal rights.
The people of Pakistan too need to carry out an honest hypocrisy check. The bigots must be effectively discouraged from negative portrayals of women and prejudices against them. In the name of God and in the name of honor the Pakistani women have been harried long enough. It is time they are restored to the venerated place they actually have in Islam.

Afghanistan: Self-Immolation Of Women On The Rise In Western Provinces
By Golnaz Esfandiari 1 March 2004
(RFE/RL)


The Afghan government is expressing concern over the growing number
of women in Herat Province who have killed themselves through self-
immolation. Suraya Sobah Rang, Afghanistan's deputy women's affairs
minister, says forced marriages and a continued lack of access to
education is contributing to the growing despair among Herat's women.

Prague, 1 March 2004 (RFE/RL) -- Gurcharan Virdee is no stranger to
the hardships facing women around the world.

Virdee works with Medica Mondiale, a German-based international
organization supporting women in war and crisis situations.

"Before she committed suicide, my sister always said she hoped she
would never return to Afghanistan and experience the closed
atmosphere of Herat."The group is currently working on a program to
provide shelter to women living in the western Afghan province of
Herat -- an area where Taliban-era repressions are still very much in
place.

There, Virdee met several women who had attempted to kill themselves
through self-immolation. The most tragic case, Virdee says, involved
a young pregnant woman who survived despite suffering severe burns
over 60 percent of her body.

"One of the women that I met, she was about 29. She already had four
children, [and] she was seven months pregnant when she burned
herself. She was experiencing problems with her husband and family;
they wouldn't allow her to go and visit her own family. She set fire
to herself. She then gave birth to a baby with no painkillers,
nothing. The baby girl was taken by her aunt to look after her, and
[the mother] died three weeks after giving birth," Virdee said.

A government delegation that traveled to Herat last week said at
least 52 women in the province have killed themselves in recent
months through self-immolation.

A Herat regional hospital last year recorded 160 cases of attempted
suicide among girls and women between the ages of 12 and 50. But
Virdee says the real number is probably much higher.

"The official statistics which the hospitals have are for the women
who have actually come to the hospital, who can receive treatment.
There are many other cases of women burning themselves in the
villages, in the city, in some of the provinces. But these are women
we can't give any estimates on, partly because they never reach the
hospital or because they die in their villages or city. These are the
cases that never come to the attention of any public authorities,"
Virdee said.

Afghan officials say poverty, forced marriages, and lack of access to
education are the main reasons for suicide among women in Herat.
Domestic violence is also widespread.