Women's Rights In Afghanistan

Women's Rights:

Women's Rights in Afghanistan have been an issue for many decades. After the Soviet occupied government diminished and the Taliban came into power, women's rights also diminished. Women in Afghanistan are looked at as nothing but homemakers and a means of reproduction. The horrific beatings of women have become a very common thing within Afghanistan and the Taliban. Even after the Taliban was removed Women's rights became insignificant. The women of Afghanistan have had to endure decades of torture, while new governments are being put in with the same type of Taliban-like laws.

There never has been any reliable government in Afghanistan for the past two decades. Of the 16 million Afghans at the end of the 70s, over two million have been killed in wars of resistance against Soviet occupation and in the civil war by fundamentalist groups. Another one and half million have been maimed by the war fallout, while nearly five million have been forced into refugee camps in Iran and Pakistan. The majority of the population left inside the country have been displaced as a result of the never-ending war of the past two decades and in particular of the fundamentalist in-fighting from 1992-1996. The overall literacy rate was less than 20% for males and less than 5% for females. The country slid into the hands of Islamic fundamentalists in 1992 which was a tragedy for women's rights.

Islamic fundamentalism of any kind in essence looks upon women as nothing, that they are there only for household jobs and for reproduction. Such a view has been elevated to official policy with the coming to power of the Taliban. Not only the Jehadis (Northern Alliance) and Taliban but all Islamists target women's rights as a first priority. With the coming to power of Islamic fundamentalists in 1992, women's right to full participation in social, economic, cultural and political life of the country was changed and later on denied by the Taliban. Women were deprived of the right to education , of the right to work, of the right to, of the right to health care, of the right to legal recourse , of the right to recreation, and of the right to being a human being.

Beating up of women for disciplinary reasons was routine in Afghanistan under the Taliban. With the fundamentalists' war mentality, and ethnic hatred and religious bigotry, all areas that come under Taliban control are seen as occupied land and the inhabitants are treated however they felt necessary. Sexual crimes against women, gang raping, lust murders, abductions of young females, and blackmail of families with eligible daughters were common during the rule of the pre-Taliban fundamentalists, who now have high positions in the government of Hamid Karzai and are free to brutalize Afghan women in areas under their rule. The Taliban and Al-Qaida are again in power and generously supported by the US government. It has completely shattered the dream