Slaying of Afghan activist sounds alarm for women
Thu Sep 28, 7:02 AM ET
Call her the Susan B. Anthony of
Afghanistan. Safia Ama Jan fought for women's rights in a chauvinistic society. After the fall of the repressive Taliban regime in late 2001, she pushed women to vote and take part in civic life.
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"This country has had two-and-a-half decades during which both males and females have been left uneducated," she said two years ago. "You cannot change their minds overnight. We need some time."
Tragically, Ama Jan didn't get that time.
On Monday, suspected Taliban assassins gunned her down as she went to work in a taxi. The southern Kandahar government, where she ran the women's department, had denied her requests for a bodyguard.
Ama Jan's death at age 65, like the proverbial canary in a coal mine, raises a larger, and very disturbing, question: Is she a symbol of where Afghanistan's fledgling democracy is heading? It's not just that she was a victim of a dangerously resurgent Taliban. She was also facing an uphill battle in her fight for women's rights in Afghan society more broadly.
Her courage, and that of many other Afghan women, was bolstered by the Bush administration after it ousted the Taliban. The United States pushed for democracy and insisted that women take full part. It helped get girls back into school (the Taliban had kept them illiterate and at home) and helped craft a constitution ensuring women one quarter of the seats in the new parliament.
But now, women's equality is moving in the wrong direction. "We do have rights on paper, but we don't have them in reality," Fatima Kazimyan, one women's representative, told The Philadelphia Inquirer.
The signs are everywhere. Female members of parliament say they are not taken seriously. Most have been dropped from high government positions.
The most obvious problem is one of declining security. The Taliban are attacking girls' schools.
NATO forces, which have taken over from U.S. troops in the south, are facing fierce battles. Warlords reign in many areas. The heroin trade, which fuels both the Taliban and the warlords, is at an all-time high.
But security concerns can't be an excuse to dim the spotlight on women's rights. On Tuesday, at a news conference with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Bush lamented Ama Jan's death - to illustrate the nature of the enemy in the war on terror.
Also disturbing, though, is the sidelining of women in the government and courts - hampering their struggle against the spread of harsh sharia law, which denies women most rights. This trend is replicating itself in
Iraq, which, under
Saddam Hussein's brutal yet secular regime, was one of the Middle East countries where women experienced the least discrimination.
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