Afghanistan's relentless war on women

By MAGGIE O'KANE,
The Guardian

KABUL, Afghanistan (December 17, 1997 11:24 a.m. EST)

In its drive to restore 12thÄcentury Islamic purity and fundamentalism, Afghanistan's ruling Taliban
has launched the greatest assault on womanhood in nigh on a millennium.

And the women of Afghanistan have disappeared. It has been the "ethnic cleansing" of an entire
gender from a country: 10 million women denied education, work, hospital care.

U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has called its policies against women and children
"despicable."

On Sept. 6, the Taliban implemented its latest policy: closing hospitals to women. This meant that
sick and dying women were dumped into a derelict clinic without running water ÄÄ a place where the
evening meal arrives at 6 o'clock on a wheelbarrow.

This decision may prove a watershed. International condemnation has for the first time forced the
Taliban to back down. Last month it announced the reversal of the decision to withdraw health care
for women.

"The Taliban want the Afghan seat at the United Nations," says one international aid worker in
Kabul. "They still have an eye on international legitimacy, and even they realized that the women's
hospital business was going too far."

TwentyÄyearÄold Sultan, a student of English in Kandahar, the Taliban capital, says he misses the
girls and women. The few who are outside on this autumn day move under nylon tents shaped like
shuttlecocks.

Sultan used to be able to tell who the girls were by their eyes. Sometimes, Sultan says, a voice from
under the shuttlecock whispers to him: "Hey, Sultan, it's me, Fatima. Remember me from school?"

After the faces disappeared, women's voices were banned. In shops or in the market, a woman
must have her brother, her husband or her father to speak to the shopkeeper so that she will not
excite him with the sound of her voice.

By March there was only one thing left to silence ÄÄ their feet. Women were forbidden to wear
heeled shoes under their tents because it distracted men. Now they shuffle through the autumn mud
in the ordained slippers.

Taliban leader Mullah Omar lives with his two wives and children in a compound with high walls.
He's around 40 years old, walks with a battle limp and never leaves Kandahar. His dream of a
laboratory of Islamic virtue is directed from here. His enforcers are the Koranic Police for the
Prevention of Vice and the Propagation of Virtue.

Inside, the commander sits crossÄlegged with his 10 young mullahs. Abul Raman, an Islamic warrior
for 18 years, has lost his youth, a dozen relatives and ÄÄ here, in a bare room furnished with a
telephone and a spittoon ÄÄ any human joy he may once have known. He has been in charge of the
Holy War against women that was so easily won.

The war against sexual crime was another victory. His one and only adultery case happened a year
ago. If the couple had both been unmarried, the punishment for sex would have been 100 lashes.
Each was married, so they had to be killed.

"What do you prove by burying a man and woman in the ground up to their neck and then crushing
their skulls with stones?" he is asked.

"Nothing special," says Abdul Raman. "It is the law of God."

The men who lead the Taliban today were trained in religious schools in Pakistan that were funded
by the Saudis. (During Soviet rule, religious schools were banned in Afghanistan, so the mullahs
moved to Pakistan.)

Dr. Omer Gebreel, head of the World Health Organization in Afghanistan and himself a
gynecologist, described how he once appeared before the Taliban high command to make the case
for women gynecologists being allowed to continue work.

"I rolled up the sleeve of my right arm and explained that in my work I have to examine a woman
internally. I looked around the table, and they had all put their heads down and covered their faces
with their hands ÄÄ some were giggling with embarrassment."

Chaupira Sunic is a beautician. She had just put the curlers in her customer's hair, a bride, and was
about to apply black eyeliner when four men came into her beauty parlor. The bride, Zakia, was
marrying a German, who was taking her back home. Three of the men were young ÄÄ 16, maybe 17
ÄÄ the fourth was older. He was the one who spoke: "You have started the bride so you can finish
her, but she will be your last. This place is closed from today."

Chaupira finished the hair and closed the shop. The next day, she passed by and saw that the shop
sign had been covered with sheets of white paper. She decided to stay in Kabul, keep her face
covered and her head down and hope that the Taliban would be replaced by others ÄÄ as leaders
and factions had come and gone so many times before during 19 years of war in Afghanistan. Three
weeks later, she was visiting her mother's grave when she saw something that changed her mind.

It was early afternoon when she got to Kabul cemetery, and as she was walking up the hill to where
her mother is buried she saw a young couple on a bicycle. The husband was perhaps 20, his wife
younger.

A young Taliban raised his hand and stopped the bike. Why, he asked the woman, was she
breaking the rules and riding on the bike, showing her ankles. She replied: "I am with my husband. It
is not your wish for me but his wish for me, and if he does not mind, then who are you to say?"

Chaupira Sunic saw the argument begin and end. An older Taliban came from behind. "He said, 'I
will deal with this shameless woman.' Then he shot the husband in the foot and the woman straight in
the heart. He killed her, and everyone who saw it ran like crazy and the two of them were left lying
on the ground."

The next day, Chaupira took the refugee road across the Pakistan border to a U.N. camp, where
2,000 families have gathered ÄÄ some with tents supplied by the U.N., most living under sacks ÄÄ in a
valley where there is nothing: no crops, no water, no shade.

"I would stay here for the rest of my life rather than go back there while the Taliban are still in
Kabul," she says.