Azeem, I agree with most of what you say. I have to take issue with your point that women under the Taliban may have felt safer than previously with the warlords. Every report I read that was smuggled out by women's groups conveyed a sense of deep and sustained shock at the way they were being treated, not only by the regime, but by ordinary men, including their husbands and friends - people they had previously trusted. Women were not allowed outdoors unaccompanied by a male relative, except without special permission, which was virtually never given. They had to keep their curtains drawn at all times at home in case a male passer-by saw their faces and was corrupted. Women with sick children who ventured out alone to seek medical help were executed. Sick women were only allowed to be treated, except for mental illness, by female doctors, but female doctors weren't allowed to work.
This kind of instutionalized hatred of women is unprecedented in the whole of human history. It led to huge levels of mental illness among women, especially among professional women, who had previously been allowed to be educated and to work as doctors, lawyers, teachers. One very brave psychiatrist threatened to take all his professional women patients and deposit them in front of Taliban headquarters to show what the regime was doing to over 50 per cent of the population. He reported that these highly educated patients would sit all day banging their heads against walls out of depression and frustration. Can you think of any other regime that has done this to any race or to either sex? Even in apartheid South Africa, black people were allowed to work, albeit with restrictions and often in terror, but it was not forbidden. And they were allowed to leave their homes. And they weren't lawfully killed because, for example, someone glimpsed a part of their flesh. To my mind, this was justification for war, and I'm only sorry it wasn't enough, and that America waited until after September 11th to get rid of them. As for the incidence of rape falling under the Taliban, women are now reporting that the Taliban were the biggest rapists of all. Remember: in Islamic countries practising Sharia law, there have to be two male witnesses to any rape before a complaint can proceed. A female witness doesn't count (especially not the raped woman) because women who may be menstruating are regarded as irrational and therefore unable to be witnesses in a court of law. As a result, hey presto, there is virtually no rape in Islamic countries. But I agree with you about realpolitik and I agree absolutely that the West created Saddam, the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. For a great book on this, read John Cooley's Unholy Wars. He explains how the relationship between America, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia on the one hand, and Islamic or Arab militants on the other, goes back to Carter in 1979. Cooley argues that the U.S., Pakistan and Saudi Arabia between them created and financed what has become the global Islamic fundamentalist movement. What to do now? We have to get rid of some of these monsters, and try not to create any more. Easy to say, I know. But we could start by trying to persuade Arab states to become democratic, and we could stop being so patronizing as to insist on democratic ideals for ourselves, while arguing that other cultures are used to different forms of life, and we shouldn't impose our values on them. Yes, we should, in my view. Sarah At 6:45 AM -0500 12/23/2002, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > >I agree that the Taliban's regime seems to have been particularly >misogynist. However, it wasn't exactly a picnic before: Afg was a >pretty lawless state, women lived in constant fear of being raped, >and women's rights were pretty low on the list of priorities of the >various warlords who were running the country. There were reports >from inide the country that in some ways (and only some, and this >does not excuse the anti-women measures that were brought in when >the Taliban assumed power), women felt safer during the Taliban >regime, in that the incidence of rape fell quite sigificantly, >because everybody knew that the Taliban had imposed some kind of >order on the country (the cities, at least), and that this kind of >crime would be punished. > A ghastly regime, yes. Justification for declaring war? No. >For me, the bigger question remains. What is The West going to do >to take responsibility for its actions, and when is it going to do >it? As with Saddam Hussein, who is still in power by the grace of >The West (as I'm sure I don't need to reiterate), so it was with the >Taliban: they were trained, funded and armed in part by The West, to >fight of the Soviet invasion of Afg. They were the heroes of the >Mujahideen, plucky locals defending themselves against the beastly >Soviet threat. When are we going to learn about the perils of >making monsters? > >Azeem in London
