the Nightmare of Afghan Women

[donsu]

http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=163092

Tomgram: Ann Jones on the Nightmare of Afghan Women

-snip-

"AFGHANISTAN: Girls and women traded for opium debts" ("On 4 November 2006, Nasima, 25, a member of a local women's council, grabbed the AK-47 from the policeman guarding the council meeting in the Grishk district of southern Helmand province and killed herself. She had had enough of the daily beatings by her husband. Like many other women in Helmand, Nasima was given away by her family in 2005. Her father owed a huge amount to an opium dealer…")

-snip-

Ever since the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001, George W. Bush has boasted of "liberating" Afghan women from the Taliban and the burqa. His wife Laura, after a publicity junket to Afghanistan in 2005, appeared on Jay Leno's show to say that she hadn't seen a single woman wearing a burqa.

But these are the sorts of wildly optimistic self-delusions that have made Bush notorious. His wife, whose visit to Afghanistan lasted almost six hours, spent much of that time at the American air base and none of it in the Afghan streets where most women, to this day, go about in big blue bags.

-snip-

For most Afghan women the burqa is the least of their problems.

Afghanistan is just about the poorest country in the world. Only Burkina Faso and Niger sometimes get worse ratings. After nearly three decades of warfare and another of drought, millions of Afghans are without safe water or sanitation or electricity, even in the capital city. Millions are without adequate food and nutrition. Millions have access only to the most rudimentary health care, or none at all.

Diseases such as TB and polio, long eradicated in most of the world, flourish here. They hit women and children hard. One in four children dies before the age of five, mostly from preventable illnesses such as cholera and diarrhea. Half of all women of childbearing age who die do so in childbirth, giving Afghanistan one of the highest maternal death rates in the world. Average life expectancy hovers around 42 years.

-long painful telling of life as a woman in Afghanistan-

It's winter in Afghanistan now. No time to make war. But come spring, the Taliban promise a new offensive to throw out Karzai and foreign invaders. The British commander of NATO forces has already warned: "We could actually fail here."

He also advised a British reporter that Westerners shouldn't even mention women's rights when more important things are at stake. As if security is not a woman's right. And peace.

Come spring, Afghan women could lose it all.
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Hillary, what will you do about this?

Pelosi? anybody in D.C.?

I guess we will just write them off as we do the women of Haiti

[MH1]

1. S.J. Res 34 doesn't speak directly to this, but would help

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x3096419

Resolved, That it is the sense of the Senate that--

(1) the United States must strengthen its commitment to establishing long-term stability and peace in Afghanistan;

(2) the President should not reduce the total number of United States troops serving in Afghanistan in order to increase the total number of United States troops serving in Iraq;

(3) the United States, in partnership with the International Security Assistance Force and the Government of Afghanistan, should immediately increase its efforts to eradicate the Taliban, terrorist organizations, and criminal networks currently operating in Afghanistan, including by increasing United States military personnel as requested by United States military commanders in Afghanistan;

(4) the United States, in support of the Government of Afghanistan, should significantly increase the amount of economic assistance available in Afghanistan for reconstruction, social and economic development, counternarcotics efforts, and democracy promotion activities; and

(5) the United States should work aggressively to encourage members of the international community to deliver on the financial pledges they have made to support development and reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan.

[MH1]

2. Sponsored by Kerry, cosponsors Feingold, Biden, Dodd

Where is Clinton? (and the rest) Waiting for the poll data?

[Captain Hilts]

3. If she got on at this point, she'd be accused of being a bandwagon jumper.

Did Laura Bush drop this issue?

[MH1]

4. Why would she be accused of being a bandwagon jumper?

Okay, maybe she would be, but who cares? Is what other people think more important than helping to get this bill passed?

[OKNancy]

5. Of all the things to jump on Sen Clinton about, this is NOT

one of them. Clinton, when she was First Lady spoke out about Afghan women before many of you even knew where Afghanistan was. She was ridiculed at the time as well.

article speaking out.. dated 1999
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3693/is_199904/ai_n8831792

Vital Voices started: http://www.capitalresearch.org/news/news.asp?ID=104 ( Clinton started to help Afghan women)