Afghanistan's current constitution guarantees women's equal rights, but also allows a separate Shia family law based on religious traditions. A new law just recently passed by parliament and signed by President Hamid Karzai, legalizes minority Shi'ite family law and what was passed is shocking!
Please read the attached article(s) to learn more.
http://www.reuters.com/article/asiaCrisis/idUSL2330877
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,511860,00.html
Where is the OUTRAGE? Is this 2009 or 1999? Didn’t the United States invade Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban and stop the war on terror? When a woman is stripped of basic human rights – that is terror! If here in the United States, women had to receive permission from their husbands before leaving the house – there would be outrage. If girls as young as 9 years old were allowed to be married off – there would be outrage. If husbands had the RIGHT to have sex with their wives whenever they want (we call that rape here in the United States) – there would be outrage.
Where is the outrage?
Is the U.S. government going to back President Karzai? Is he really the right person to be leading Afghanistan? If he is going to sign laws to please the Shia JUST for votes – I say let’s get another candidate!
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About Me
- Susan
- MA, United States
- My husband, David, was killed on September 11th. At the time, we had two small children and I was pregnant with our third. Learning about the plight of widows in Afghanistan, I felt that I needed to reach out to them the way so many had reached out to me and my family. Decades of conflict and strife ravaged Afghanistan, leaving tens of thousands of women without husbands to provide for them, a cultural necessity in Afghanistan. In the fall of 2003, I co-founded Beyond the 11th. Our mission is to help provide financial and emotional support to Afghan widows and their children and to give them hope for a better future. Beyond the 11th’s grants are geared toward programs that help widows gain the skills necessary to generate their own income. We believe strongly that this is the best way to create lasting social change.
The Karzai government, while a significant improvement over the Taliban, falls short of what we had hoped to see. The question is, can we realistically expect anything much better in the short term?
ReplyDeleteWe must accept that misogyny is deeply rooted in the Afghan culture and tradition. This does not mean that it can't be changed; but cultural change is agonizingly slow to come.
The difficult reality is that any government capable of sustaining enough popular support to prevent itself from being toppled is probably going to be forced to pander somewhat to these evils, even while they feel significant opposing pressure from their western backers.
Karzai may or may not be "the right person to be leading Afghanistan," but it is the Afghan people who must make that decision. The U.S. has only limited power to affect a change--that is, unless we are prepared to once again overtly violate the sovereignty of Afghanistan (and we all know how well that works).
While we must apply maximum pressure to gain as many human rights concessions from the Afghan regime as possible, the only true long-term solution lies in the type of activism that you ladies are doing.
The hearts of the Afghan people can only be changed on an individual basis, one person at a time, as they are presented with a new vision of human dignity that can challenge their conception of what is possible. Lasting change can only come from within. Ultimately, it cannot be forced by outside powers.
Let us hope that these young girls who are the first generation to receive an education will grow up to do more for their country than we could ever do.
Be careful over there!