The plight of Afghani women

November 16, 2006

Guest Post by Michael J.W. Stickings

What horror:

Increasing numbers of Afghan women are committing suicide by setting fire to themselves to escape difficult lives, according to NGOs based in the country.

They say women forced into marriage or suffering chronic abuse are killing themselves out of desperation.

Although estimates are difficult to make, one group says cases of self-immolation in the capital have doubled since last year.

Cases are said to be reported every day in the western city of Herat.

In Kabul, some 36 cases of self-immolation have been recorded this year.

If there’s another reason to hate the war in Iraq, this is it. No, I’m not blaming Bush. And no, I’m not saying that this wasn’t going on under the Taliban or other past regimes, or, more generally, that Afghani women have ever had it easy — they surely haven’t. But — and I know this is an old argument now, but it bears repeating — wouldn’t it have been better to rebuild one country before going off and invading and occupying another? Shouldn’t the job have been finished in Afghanistan? And by that I mean both building some sort of stable government for the sake of a lasting peace and continuing to fight the terrorists on their own turf.

Oh, I forgot, Saddam had those WMDs. And Iraq was where the war on terror was at. So forget Afghanistan. Ignore it. Bush has. (Yes, I just blamed him. Pardon me.) Once upon a time, I made the argument to some friends in Amnesty International that the war in Afghanistan would benefit the people of that desperate land, and particularly the women. Well, the Taliban is out but still there, Karzai is nothing more than the figurehead mayor of Kabul, the countryside is ruled by warlords and poppy growers, the drug trade is thriving, terrorists plotting America’s demise still roam freely, undermanned Canadians and others are dying on the battlefield of a war without end, as are local civilians, and women are setting themselves on fire to escape a life that evidently isn’t worth living anymore.

Oh, what a lovely war this has been.

Something somewhere really has gone out of the spirit of the women of Afghanistan.

When Kipling wrote that the British soldier wounded in the hills of Afghanistan should “roll to his rifle and go to his God like a soldier” he was advocating suicide because of what the Afghan women were going to do to him.

Now, when the women should be operating in gangs to hunt down and emasculate the Taliban who raped them for years, instead they are committing suicide themselves?

Fah!

We have really ruined that country starting with Ronald Reagan.

  • When is Laura Bush going back to Afghanistan to proclaim how well things are going for women there? :-p

  • While the plight of women in Afghanistan is certainly not what we in the west had hoped for, I don’t know how much to blame on America. From what I can tell, things were brutal under the Taliban and are generally oppressive under Islamic law.

    “It’s a world gone crazy
    Keeps Woman in Chains”
    — Tears for Fears

  • Retraction. Just reread Michael’s post after two telephone interruptions and a delivery the first time. Had America done what we said we were going to do, this wouldn’t be happening.

  • LOL #3 The Bush women are big in New Orleans, Bush’s wife, Laura and father, Barbara. *Borat

    It’s so sad about the Afghani women. I remember all the hopeful news items about their re-emergence. Afhgan is a really big Bush failure. Women’s rights would have been a better reason to invade than non-existent WMDs.

    And suicide by burning is so grisly. At least they didn’t strap on explosives. They turned their anger and despair inwards.

    Maybe we should repurpose the Self-Esteem movement and export it to the Middle East. Self-hatred for the Arabic Guy. The anti-Self-Esteem movement. Teach them to sing “Circumsized Lesbian Seagull” or “Kumbaya, My Ass. Kumbaya” Send them the Idiots Guide to Explosives-free Suicide.

    I guess the women don’t get 72 inexperienced boys in Heaven.

  • This administration has been the train-wreck that keeps on giving. I’m sure the whole Bush gang will not soil their “beautiful minds” contemplating the misery they unleashed on the world. As long as Afghani women remain celibate until marriage, don’t use condoms or have an abortion, the Republicans surely consider nothing wrong with their plight.

  • “I guess the women don’t get 72 inexperienced boys in Heaven.” – Dale

    Martyred Islamic women get to be the 72nd “virgin” the guy gets. By then he might actually know what he is doing 😉

  • One more reason to put the bastards on trial.

    Screw the politics of forgiveness. The planet is watching, and we have a choice. We either put Bush on trial or we become the world’s enemy.

  • I’ll withhold comment on whether or not “the bastards” should be on trial, but I will say that America’s priority should have been on rebuilding Afghanistan after the Taliban was booted from power. And not just because that would be better for the Afghani people. It also would have made sense for national security. Since the rebuilding hasn’t happened and the government in Kabul is weak, and since the war there has been eclipsed by the one in Iraq, the Taliban is back. And al Qaeda continues to operate there. And the drug trade is exploding. In the end, what was the point? Just a show of force after 9/11 before going after Saddam?

  • Freedom and democracy always come to women and children last. While America debates, people suffer.

    Bush & Co. should hang right along with Saddam and his trial-mates.

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