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They were promised justice. They were told they would be free to get an education, free to marry for love, free to live without fear of being raped for simply walking down the street unaccompanied by a male family member.
Free to take off those dark burqas over their heads that had hidden years of humiliation and pain in their eyes.
Now, two years after the United States kicked out the fanatical, misogynistic Taliban regime in Afghanistan, it is the world that needs to take its blinders off. The women of war-torn Afghanistan still cry out for justice, but much of the industrialized world has forgotten them.
America's 24-7 society has moved on to worry about U.S. soldiers dying in Iraq, about the terrorist atrocities in Israel, about the escalating costs of this war on terror that changed us in ways we still grapple to understand.
Yet a new report by human-rights group Amnesty International paints a depressing picture for Afghan women who continue to live in terror. "Afghanistan: No one listens to us and no one treats us as human beings. Justice Denied to Women," outlines a number of steps that the Afghan government and the international community should take to ensure fairness for all.
The United Nations has a critical role to play. It cannot continue to decry the Bush administration's go-it-alone position in world crises and then look the other way when basic human rights are quashed in Afghanistan. Of course, the United Nations can't be taken seriously on the human-rights issue when its members vote for countries with atrocious human-rights records of their own to participate in the U.N. human-rights panel. Now headed by Libya, the panel's become a pathetic excuse for totalitarian regimes to grandstand on a world stage.
We all have to be held accountable for what is happening to women in Afghanistan. The United States, for boasting that women would be free and then forgetting about them. The United Nations, for blasting the United States for the death penalty and then doing little to nothing to call on despots who oppress their societies, including the new regime in Afghanistan, which conveniently turns a blind eye to the oppression of its women.
As it turns out, women in Afghanistan have little recourse to get justice. Even though the Taliban rules that kept women locked in their homes were lifted long ago, they still are treated as chattel, to be bought and sold and disposed of when a husband, brother, police chief or judge believes it's appropriate.
There aren't even legal or societal safeguards in place in Afghanistan to protect women from being raped while in police custody or detention. Women who try to report rape are dismissed -- but first, they are checked by police to see if they are virgins. Then they're raped again, by police, and accused of adultery!
If a girl, as young as 8 years old, is forced into an arranged marriage, as has happened, there is little recourse even though Afghanistan's Law of Marriage stipulates that the legal age is 16 for marriage and that it must be through choice and not by coercion. Some judges simply uphold the father's "right" to allow such child abuse. Violence against girls and women by their fathers or brothers or husbands is not defined as criminal. A man who kills his wife for alleged adultery gets off scot-free, even when the woman had sought a divorce because her husband was physically abusing her.
The plight of women in Afghanistan? Who has the time to worry about them?
We must make the time. If we learned anything from The Reckoning of Sept. 11, 2001, it's that there is a connection between them and us. The oppression of one person, one sex, one ethnicity can lead to the massacre of hundreds of thousands of innocents. The oppression of women gone unchallenged brings us full circle to 9-11.
And we should have learned, too, that our government's past policies carry a heavy burden with dire consequences if we do not follow through. We cannot make promises and then ignore them. We must commit, because it is by example that we can change hearts and minds. Big U.S. guns, as we have learned both in Afghanistan and Iraq, can only go so far -- they can get despots out of power, but they can't change the minds of those who view us with suspicion. Only our positive actions to improve the lives of those who have no hope can challenge twisted notions of America's democratic promise
Free to take off those dark burqas over their heads that had hidden years of humiliation and pain in their eyes.
Now, two years after the United States kicked out the fanatical, misogynistic Taliban regime in Afghanistan, it is the world that needs to take its blinders off. The women of war-torn Afghanistan still cry out for justice, but much of the industrialized world has forgotten them.
America's 24-7 society has moved on to worry about U.S. soldiers dying in Iraq, about the terrorist atrocities in Israel, about the escalating costs of this war on terror that changed us in ways we still grapple to understand.
Yet a new report by human-rights group Amnesty International paints a depressing picture for Afghan women who continue to live in terror. "Afghanistan: No one listens to us and no one treats us as human beings. Justice Denied to Women," outlines a number of steps that the Afghan government and the international community should take to ensure fairness for all.
The United Nations has a critical role to play. It cannot continue to decry the Bush administration's go-it-alone position in world crises and then look the other way when basic human rights are quashed in Afghanistan. Of course, the United Nations can't be taken seriously on the human-rights issue when its members vote for countries with atrocious human-rights records of their own to participate in the U.N. human-rights panel. Now headed by Libya, the panel's become a pathetic excuse for totalitarian regimes to grandstand on a world stage.
We all have to be held accountable for what is happening to women in Afghanistan. The United States, for boasting that women would be free and then forgetting about them. The United Nations, for blasting the United States for the death penalty and then doing little to nothing to call on despots who oppress their societies, including the new regime in Afghanistan, which conveniently turns a blind eye to the oppression of its women.
As it turns out, women in Afghanistan have little recourse to get justice. Even though the Taliban rules that kept women locked in their homes were lifted long ago, they still are treated as chattel, to be bought and sold and disposed of when a husband, brother, police chief or judge believes it's appropriate.
There aren't even legal or societal safeguards in place in Afghanistan to protect women from being raped while in police custody or detention. Women who try to report rape are dismissed -- but first, they are checked by police to see if they are virgins. Then they're raped again, by police, and accused of adultery!
If a girl, as young as 8 years old, is forced into an arranged marriage, as has happened, there is little recourse even though Afghanistan's Law of Marriage stipulates that the legal age is 16 for marriage and that it must be through choice and not by coercion. Some judges simply uphold the father's "right" to allow such child abuse. Violence against girls and women by their fathers or brothers or husbands is not defined as criminal. A man who kills his wife for alleged adultery gets off scot-free, even when the woman had sought a divorce because her husband was physically abusing her.
The plight of women in Afghanistan? Who has the time to worry about them?
We must make the time. If we learned anything from The Reckoning of Sept. 11, 2001, it's that there is a connection between them and us. The oppression of one person, one sex, one ethnicity can lead to the massacre of hundreds of thousands of innocents. The oppression of women gone unchallenged brings us full circle to 9-11.
And we should have learned, too, that our government's past policies carry a heavy burden with dire consequences if we do not follow through. We cannot make promises and then ignore them. We must commit, because it is by example that we can change hearts and minds. Big U.S. guns, as we have learned both in Afghanistan and Iraq, can only go so far -- they can get despots out of power, but they can't change the minds of those who view us with suspicion. Only our positive actions to improve the lives of those who have no hope can challenge twisted notions of America's democratic promise
