Women’s rights are obviously not at the forefront of Pashtun or Afghan culture, and I disagree with how they treat women. But I think it will take some time for the culture to change. I don’t think it is some kind of failure on our part that we haven’t be able to do more to change their traditional way of doing things. It’s a tricky issue, too. Where is the line between universal rights for women and respect for indigenous culture? Forget about the U.S. as an occupying power for a moment and think about our obligations as a member of the United Nations.
Aren’t we supposed to support protections against child marriage, polygamy and violence against women? Why do the Pashtun think such protections are anti-Islamic? Polygamy I can understand, but child marriage?
It’s their country and we ought to leave, but all people should be concerned about how women are treated in Afghanistan.
The whole rationale of women’s rights, as floated by the Bush Administration to justify killing Muslims and taking their oil, was just one of many things that they threw against the wall. It was a transparent lie when it was first offered as a reason. If it had been a really big part of our foreign policy we’d be bombing Jeddah.
I don’t really care what the Bush administration said or meant.
The thing is, concern for women’s rights in that part of the world hasn’t really existed (except for some occasional rhetoric) either before or after Bush’s faux-concern in 2001 – including Obama’s watch. And outside some parts of Kabul, Karzai’s regime – which is no treat itself on the issue – has had no impact; in rural Afghanistan, it’s stayed pretty much how it always has been, before, during, and after the Taliban’s rule.
Frankly, there’s not a lot the US government can do – remember that the influence of Western culture was one of the beefs of bin Laden, a view that’s not unusual among Muslim fundamentalists, so any heavy-handed insistence from DC would be met with a lot of resistance and be impossible to enforce. It’s Hollywood, and, as the country eventually gets wired, exposure to the Internet that will do it.
The most radical step the US could provide Afghanistan for women’s rights would be universal access to computers and the Internet. Not that that’ll happen – hell, thanks to the magic of the free market we don’t even have universal cell phone coverage in this country yet for a technology that’s 25 years old.
As if the “culturally traditional” Afghan men would allow their mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters to get on-line. But they would likely appreciate that universal access for themselves; they may not be literate but they’ll have no problem figuring out how to access internet porn.
You need universal access to electricity in order to have universal access to computers and the internet. And in order for any of it to do any good you need universal access to clean water, food, at least minimal healthcare…
Oh, and you need not to have the crap bombed out of you, or to have the male members of your family disappeared into black holes like Bagram.
My greatest fear, is that with our American Taliban trying it’s best to emulate the way women are treated in the most misogynistic countries, and applying that here, that sometime in the near future, we’ll be meeting half-way with the Afghans.
And it’s not beyond the realm of possibility, that we might eventually end up worse.
In real time as the Taliban took over Afghanistan in 1996 (with significant support from the KSA and Pakistan) and stripped women of all rights, the only ones voicing concern for Afghan women in the US were feminists. Virtual silence in DC — because KSA and Pakistan were/are our BFFs? Legitimate concern in the US for the plight of those poor women has never exceeded what it was back in the late 1990s, but like US troops, they have been convenient to use as propaganda props.
Yes.
Of course, that didn’t stop National Review and the Weekly Standard from running pieces chastising American feminists for not caring about women in Afghanistan.
On this issue I just defer to RAWA:
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Association_of_the_Women_of_Afghanistan
What say RAWA? They say the US, USSR, Taliban, and NA can fuck off. Keep in mind that women in Afghanistan didn’t always have shit like this to deal with:
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/05/27/once_upon_a_time_in_afghanistan
The extreme misogyny in many of these countries isn’t as traditional as some think. The Taliban made things massively worse, very recently, and the Saudi situation is also something that has worsened for women in the last hundred years.
I read a while back that women wore miniskirts in what we call Kuwait as recently as 30 years ago. And don’t forget that under Sadaam, as bad as he was, women actually did far better than they do now.
What we’re seeing is the result of deliberate war on women across the globe, probably in reaction to the overall modernization of women’s rights in first world countries (as well as many developing countries, like in South America). A weak male culture in many of these countries is partly to blame; but poverty, imperialism, etc, have all played a role.
Same thing is happening right here in the USA, but to less of an extreme. Over time, the misogynist world view will fade, as it has in some European countries and a few other places. But they won’t go down without a fight, and will cause a hell of a lot of misery in the meantime.
That’s exactly right. When my brother lived in Afghanistan prior to the Soviet invasion, the treatment of women, and their role in community, was very much an individual family matter. He never saw his cook’s wife, even though his cook was also his best friend. But his cook’s brother’s wife was out and about all the time and my brother knew her fairly well. The Taliban changed all that.
And this is why the “oh it’s just their culture” arguments are utter bullshit. Cultures are constantly changing, as power shifts between different groups. The general idea that more people should share in human rights and power within their own communities is not inherently western.
.
Today I saw a BBC news coverage of Nada al-Ahdal in court, the judge ordered her to stay with her uncle in Sana’a and her parents will also move to the capital of Yemen.
There isn’t one. Your culture must change or your culture must be marginalized. This applies to my own culutre(s) as well.
Now how much should we spend to change it? Can it be changed at all? Those questions have more salience.
Why not leave a given culture alone to marginalize if one believes that it will do so? Because of so-called “human rights?” I believe that the institutionalized wartime murder of civilians that has been in place in the so-called civilized world since at least W. W. II is much, much worse than whatever foolishness various fundamentalist groups apply to their female or male members, as is the ongoing “caste by skin marker” culture in much of Europe, the U.S. and whatever other areas that are primarily ruled by the descendants of light-skinned Europeans. Let us clean up our own culture before it is us that get “marginalized.”
Always remember:
Always remember.
AG
I never said the culture will marginalize itself. Obviously many have failed to do so. Your point about civilian causalities is well taken, though I must caution you that I do think the situation is vastly improved since WWII and preceding eras.
I agree completely that we should clean up our own culture. But as I’ve said before, it is perfectly valid to point out the stick in someone’s eye when you have a log in yours rather than nobody pointing anything out. That someone is being hypocritical doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t have a point.
typical libertarian disregard for the rights of women. Ever wonder why your movement is 90% male?
I hold the rights of human beings over the rights of any segment of that humanity. Assemble a culture that truly considers human rights above all else and “women’s” rights…or gay rights or Jewish rights or Hispanic rights or any other group of people…would automatically be included in the whole. Create a state where that is the norm and freedom-loving people from around the world would flock to it. Not only that…they would bring with them the best of what is good about humanity and that state would flourish.
MNPundit wrote:
i agree wholeheartedly with that statement. Change this culture and the marginalization of cultures that are hostile to women, other races, religions and nationalities, etc. would be well on its way. A brain drain wold result as the best and the brightest headed our way.
In droves.
Bet on it.
AG
Guess why the US is rapidly becoming marginalized as a trendsetter.
Absolutely.
Though I should clarify that the regressive aspects of the culture should be marginalized. The other aspects don’t matter as much.
NYT should have said, “Because of US Efforts, Afghan Youths Cling to Traditional Ways”.
US GIs gave them more of a taste of Western culture than they could take, and that was with the suburbish elements visible only to those Afghans who were contractors.
The UN has standards under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The US can do more to support Afghan women’s rights by obeying the principles in that (US-driven) document than it can by directly focusing on specific countries.
After the disasters of the Bush administration, what worked for Carter as far as moral leadership looks plain hollow to the rest of the world. The huge loss of listening only to the military and the spooks.
Perhaps America should clean up its own act regarding women’s rights first. Too many state legislatures are emulating the Taliban and we can’t get the military to deal with the rape culture.
Good point. But it’s so much easier to point the finger at others and demand they change.
Frankly, there’s not a lot the US government can do – remember that the influence of Western culture was one of the beefs of bin Laden, a view that’s not unusual among Muslim fundamentalists, so any heavy-handed insistence from DC would be met with a lot of resistance and be impossible to enforce. It’s Hollywood, and, as the country eventually gets wired, exposure to the Internet that will do it.
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When one country invades another and attempts to force cultural, political, or social change the natural human reaction is to become more entrenched in the old ways, not more open.
If the United States government, including Obama’s administration, really gave a shit about women, they would not be so eager to use military violence to solve political problems.
Women, and children are ALWAYS the greatest victims of military violence.