Women in Afganistan are better off than they were under the Taliban. However, women in Iraq are probably not better off than they were under Saddam.
The hope..........and the reality:
Free vote just illusion for millions of Afghans
Few women allowed to participate, says human rights group Men still rule their lives despite boasts of progress
CAROL HARRINGTON
SPECIAL TO THE STAR
KABUL—Farida's forlorn voice is muffled under her blue burqa, yet her message is clear.
"My husband and his family, they say I cannot vote," the 24-year old mother of three said in her native Afghan Dari tongue. "All I am allowed to do is work at home, cooking and cleaning for my children and my husband, who when he does not like me, he beats me with a stick."
Afghanistan goes to the polls tomorrow against a backdrop of threats by the ousted Taliban to disrupt the election. Today, a rocket exploded in the air above the U.S. military compound in Kabul, but there were no casualties, a spokesman for the international peacekeeping force said.
Even though U.S.-led forces toppled the oppressive Taliban regime almost three years ago, millions of Afghan women like Farida still face conservative social and cultural barriers. Some are forced into marriages to men two or three times their own age, they are jailed for running away from abusive homes, courts almost always give fathers custody rights in rare divorce cases and young girls are exchanged to settle feuds.
Yet U.S. President George W. Bush has repeatedly boasted that his country has liberated Afghan women. As he desperately seeks re-election, Bush frequently points to Afghanistan's first democratic vote as a foreign policy triumph. Several times, he has said that almost 42 per cent of Afghan women have registered to vote in tomorrow's presidential election.
But that number doesn't tell the whole picture. In fact, the number, according to various reports and election experts, is grossly inaccurate.
"Pronouncements by Afghan and international officials boasting that 40 per cent of registered voters are women ignores the likelihood that tens of thousands of women have been registered more than once," states a Human Rights Watch report. Some Afghans sold their voting cards to political factions aiming to rig the vote; others believed their cards would entitle them to money, prescription drugs or food rations.
Women had greater opportunity to receive multiple voting cards, because, unlike men, they were given the choice of opting out of having their photographs taken and instead using their thumbprints. Even if they did agree to photos, many did so under their cloaked burqas.
continued.................
thestar.com |
