TIMESONLINE: In male-dominated Afghanistan, women are treated like chattel. What's changed since the Taleban?
Let's take a walk,” I suggested to Aziza. Kabul was in full bloom. The sun's rays had burnt the barren earth, but didn't reach us in the basement apartment in a grey, dilapidated neighbourhood in the outskirts of the city. My back was aching after weeks hunched on the floor listening to women talk of life behind four walls.
“A walk?” She looked at me in bewilderment. “A walk to where?”
“Just around here,” I tried.
Impossible. A walk without a purpose was a forbidden walk. She would just never get permission. The only reasons to leave the house were to run important errands or visit relatives.
Aziza belonged to a well-off and relatively liberal family. Yet the male head of the family would decide her whereabouts as he did with all the female members of his family.
Years have passed since our talk. Western politicians focus on improving conditions for women and children - and the conservative Afghan culture keeps hitting back. Schools are built to educate girls - and then torched to the ground. Aid programmes aimed at helping women are set up - and Afghan female activists are murdered and silenced. A constitution that proclaims equal rights for men and women is approved - and is then broken daily by the judgments of local shuras and jirgas, traditional assemblies of elders. >>> Åsne Seierstad | Saturday, April 4, 2009
