A kinder, gentler Afghanistan

Politics International Politics
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Fighting over there so that little girls can go to school, right?

[quote=“Globe and Mail”]An effort by ministers from the United States, Canada and other members of the 42-nation coalition fighting in Afghanistan to put an optimistic face on the war’s progress came close to collapse on Tuesday when Afghan President Hamid Karzai was publicly accused of supporting a law that dramatically limits the rights of women.

[…] by day’s end the participants had been forced to confront the reality of a government riddled with corruption and committed to legislating sexual inequality.

According to United Nations organizations that have seen it, a law backed by the Karzai government would legalize rape within marriage and would forbid women from going to the doctor or leaving their home without their husband’s protection.

It also reportedly grants custody of children only to fathers or grandfathers.
[…]
“Things are going worse for us than they have during the past four or five years – the Taliban controls more of our territory than before, and we have made no progress at all on corruption,” a Canadian official said moments before Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon told the summit that he was “immediately able to see the results and impacts of our efforts” in Afghanistan.[/quote]

This from the hand-picked CIA stooge? Surely there’s better available.

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It’s about time the free world realized that no amount of wishful thinking is going to bring about an internationalization of Afghanistan’s domestic agenda. The Karzai government realizes that it has far more to gain for it’s own survival in trying to patronize the Wahabists than in importing some incompatible Western ideologies.

3

The Muslim idea of woman as property/slaves will implode eventually if we just sit here and do nothing. There is no way from ensuring that the female population there will never hear of Western countries with female leaders, see movies with females who have jobs and are happy, and in their own country, witness female military members who hold superior rank and give orders to men who take them without question.
Their culture cannot coexist on the planet with the rest of the world showing them that their way is not the only way things can be, and showing them that many cultures which do not treat women as slaves are more powerful, successful and rich than their own.
I wish it would happen sooner rather than later, but I take heart in knowing that it WILL happen. I have a lot of respect for the girls who attend school despite the threat of acid attacks and the like. Where do you think they got this idea? Certainly not from the Taliban.