Author: Alexia Gilmore

Dr. Massouda Jalal’s quest to be Afghanistan’s president sounds even more improbable than Sean Connery’s in The Man Who Would Be King (a great movie). But her ideas are admirable, and she is an actual Afghani, not one remodeled in America. Imagine that: an Afghani who wants democracy and peace and who doesn’t need the US to guide her thinking along these lines; they are her own ideas. Sigh, her chances are clearly nil…but it’s a daring vision.

Recently, a reader, Bill Kelsey, sent me a nicely considered discussion of why Intervention for Good Reasons is still trouble. Here are his thoughts:

“Here in the States it is illegal for a political party or campaign to accept foreign money. When this happens it is also a scandal and very bad PR for the candidate. We don’t like to believe that we are manipulated by foreigners. A good idea can be poisoned when improperly introduced or imposed by foreigners. And in America we are only talking about money, not military force. Imagine a Chinese occupation enforcing abortion rights and the one child policy in a part of the United States. It is not far fetched to say that is what Islamic societies are perceiving when ideas are brought in and enforced by a foreign invasion. (Whether they are good ideas or bad ones is secondary – they are foreign and are introduced by foreign forces who are getting local folks killed).

“It is true that colonized people accepted and excelled at many things brought in by the foreign armies – soccer, cricket, and bagpipe bands come to mind. But deeper things of religion and gender relations are a lot more delicate. One thing to bear in mind is that whatever the debates are in our society about women’s issues, to many in the Third World their understanding of emancipation of women western style is what they see on the Jerry Springer show (yup they get this stuff over there) and our movies.

“One place where women’s rights got confused as a result of foreign militarism was in Algeria and its independence war in the late fifties and early sixties. Women’s rights French style and Islamic repression of the same were given by the French as a justification for their war and in turn the concept became associated with collaborationism in the minds of Algerian patriots.

“People who support the US invasion of Afghanistan usually don’t realize that just about all their justifications for it are the same as those offered by the Soviets – fighting Islamic fundamentalism and backward warlords, war against terrorism, and most significantly for this discussion – emancipation of women. When Americans of many political stripes were feeling all sorts of warm fuzzy romantic feelings about the ‘muj’ and their patriotic resistance against the Soviets, the women of Afghanistan in Soviet controlled cities had more freedoms than ever before. The muj beat the Soviets, had their own civil wars out of which came the Taliban and greater repression of women than ever before. Women’s freedoms were something associated with Soviet invasion. Now the US is in the position of fighting Afghan traditionalists and many women are somewhat emancipated in Kabul. Indeed they are grateful to George Bush – as their mothers had been to the Soviets.

“It’s not an easy dilemma for someone trying to take a truly principled ethical position. I do believe that if or when the US invasion fails – or the US ‘declares a victory and withdraws’ – the advances of women risk being brutally reversed by virtue of having been brought in by American invaders.”

And for some compelling pictures of and stories about women in Afghanistan, you can see the work of Peggy Kelsey, Bill’s spouse, who traveled around Afghanistan in the summer of ’03.

Yet more evidence makes it clearer still that the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan has had less than a desirable outcome to date for the inhabitants of that country, especially the women. In that benighted country, branding someone a communist is enough to invite a death sentence by the warlords. Especially if you’re an uppity woman, such as Malalai Joya, who continues to defy the Afghan warlords.

Nevertheless, the women of Afghanistan continue to amaze with their fortitude and guts: “I have seen too many sorrows and I have no fear in my soul anymore,” Joya is quoted. “…I’m sleeping in a different house every night and I have cars with blacked out windows following me everywhere.”

Another article spells out reasons for attacking women in a recent bus bombing attack:

Fawzia Mohamadi, 30, a victim of the bombing, said male passers-by shouted as the bus burned. “They were saying, ‘Let them die,'” she said from her hospital bed, where she is recovering from burns to her left leg. “They were shouting, ‘These are women begging for America’s dollars. Don’t help them.’ They were holding up our burning sandals and clothes and shouting.”

Or, succinctly, as the article title puts it: “Use your vote and you’ll die, Taliban tell Afghan women.”

When the beautiful Saudi news presenter was brutally beaten by her husband, this case first made news because the real story was that a Saudi male was being taken to task – by the law! – over bad behavior toward a woman. Now, as court cases seem inevitably (here in the U.S. as well) to twist and turn in strange and bizarre ways, we have the villain being pardoned by his victim. Admittedly, I can only believe this was part of the settlement, necessary to divorce and child custody issues.

So the three killed by the Taliban in last Monday’s attack on election workers were, as you probably correctly guessed, women, should come as no surprise. What’s distressing beyond the death and mayhem these “concrete blockheads” (as one reader aptly calls them!)inflict is the alarming fact that their strategy of harassment and terror may be putting Afghan elections off into 2005. And on top of this we learn that women are still wearing burgas in overwhelming numbers. While there apparently is some sense of safety in wearing a garment that renders one virtually invisible, a 1998 UN Human Rights report found that sexual harassment of women actually increased considerably after the Taliban mandated wearing the burqa – apparently some men find it provocative. Go figure.

Reports continue to come in of Taliban terror attacks designed to disrupt the upcoming fall elections in Afghanistan – no one is spared: men, women, children, reporters. However, voters also continue to register although the original end-of-July deadline has passed.

Very intriguing interview with Elinor Burkett, author of So Many Enemies, So Little Time, appears today in Frontpage.com. A self-identified long-time lefty, she opines – and it seems obvious – that the real danger to women is fundamentalism. And she’s been there and seen it in Afghanistan and Iran. She has been amazed, as have I also, at U.S. feminists’ (NOW for instance) overwhelmingly Americentric perspective. But, hey, that’s just us Americans, right?