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Afghanistan's ruling Taliban, after years of unconscionably
cruel treatment of women, persecution of Hindu "infidels" and
Christian foreign aid workers, destruction of ancient Buddhist
temples, and barbaric measures towards accused criminals, is
finally in the world's spotlight. Afghanistan was one of the key
battlegrounds of the Cold War but, sadly, what was once
unthinkable has now become quite clear: the U.S. was backing the
wrong side all along.
The Soviet army invaded Afghanistan in 1979
to save its allied government, led by the People's Democratic
Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), from falling to the Mujahedin
(Afghan rebels). In response, President Carter instituted draft
registration, sharply increased military spending, and decreed a
US boycott of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow. The Mujahedin,
Muslim fundamentalist extremists who were later dubbed "freedom
fighters" by President Reagan, were showered with billions in
aid.
Before the reform-minded PDPA took power in
the late 1970s, Afghan women were forced to wear the stifling
head to toe veil, and had no right to own property, go to
school, or divorce. They were considered non-persons in the eyes
of the law. The female literacy rate was one percent and
polygamy was common.
The
PDPA regime promoted education for girls, gave women the right
to divorce and own property, and reduced the bride price to a
nominal fee. It also distributed land to the impoverished
peasants and restrained the power of the mullahs, the Muslim
clergy.
In response, the mullahs told the peasants
that Allah would hang them upside down in the sky for all
eternity if they accepted the government land grants and allowed
women to be unveiled and to go to school. Soon rural
Afghanistan had exploded in a rebellion which threatened to
topple the PDPA--perhaps the only war in modern history begun
largely over women's rights.
While unpopular in the countryside, the Soviet-backed regime had
many supporters in Afghanistan's cities. Urban Afghans had seen
that in the adjoining Muslim regions of the USSR--regions as
backward as Afghanistan until the Soviet era-- tremendous
progress had been made in eliminating illiteracy, reducing
infant mortality, and improving living standards. Women,
previously among the most down-trodden creatures on earth, had
come to make up half or more of the doctors, engineers, and
teachers in Soviet Central Asia. Many urban Afghans saw the
USSR, for all its flaws, as a model for progress for their
country.
According to Professor Val Moghaddam,
director of Women's Studies at Illinois State University, "human
rights reports have had to concede that women had higher status
and more opportunities under the reformist, left-wing
government. For example, one says Under the Communist regime of
the 1980s, a growing number of women, particularly in urban
areas, worked outside the home in nontraditional roles. This
trend was reversed when the PDPA was ousted in 1992, and an
Islamic government was installed.' Indeed, in 1985, women
accounted for 65% of the 7,000 students at Kabul University, and
the government sponsored literacy classes for the 90% of Afghan
women who were illiterate." According to the Los Angeles
Times, "women in Afghan cities probably enjoyed their
greatest freedom during the Soviet-backed regime that ruled in
Kabul from 1979 to 1992." I
met several pro-PDPA Afghan women when I was in Eastern Europe
in the mid-1980s. These women, who were in Eastern Europe
studying to be engineers and doctors, spoke movingly to me about
the many positive changes the PDPA had made for Afghan women.
All of them wanted to learn as much as they could and then go
back to their horribly backward country and try to help lift it
up. It is painful to think of those young women now and realize
that the ones who aren't already dead are probably shivering in
fear under a veil somewhere in Kabul, a Taliban soldier
patrolling the street nearby, ready to suppress any attempt by
them to live a normal life.
When Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev pulled
Soviet troops out in early 1989, it was widely predicted in the
Western press that the Afghan regime would collapse within
months. It didn't happen. At key battles like the bloody siege
of Jalalabad, Afghan Army men as well as women in volunteer
militias fought side by side and defeated the Mujahedin. The
PDPA government held out until 1992, when rebel groups finally
seized the capital, Kabul. Many of these rebel soldiers, along
with Afghan refugees from Pakistan, later came to form the
Taliban, who took over most of the country in 1996. What has
followed has been a nightmare worse than anything the PDPA ever
could have brought to Afghanistan.
One picture taken shortly after the Taliban takeover says it
all: a trembling woman covered in a head to toe veil, her face
completely obscured, sobs as she speaks with a Western reporter.
Who is she? An impoverished peasant? A homeless woman? No,
she's the recently removed chief surgeon at the country's
largest hospital! The tragic depth
of ignorance of the average Taliban soldier can be captured in
the following story: recently a Western journalist spent time
with groups of Taliban soldiers and reported that their most
common question for him was "Are the sun and the moon the same
thing?" Many in the West now hope
that Afghanistan's fractious "Northern Alliance" opposition,
perhaps with U.S. assistance, can unseat the Taliban. However,
they too are Muslim fundamentalists and, while probably less
noxious than the Taliban, they leave little hope for Afghans,
particularly Afghan women.
The
Soviet/Afghan war was a brutal conflict with atrocities on all
sides, but the Soviet-backed regime, for all its faults, was the
best opportunity Afghans ever had to form a modern,
comparatively humane society. Arms in hand, courageous Afghan
men and women who believed in progress and female equality
fought to stop the darkness of Islamic fundamentalism from
falling over their country. They needed the West's help, but we
were helping the other side.
Glenn
Sacks' columns on men's and fathers' issues have appeared in dozens of America's
largest newspapers. Glenn can be reached via his website at
www.GlennSacks.com or
via email at Glenn@GlennSacks.com.
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