[This is one kind of liberal response to the issue of "saving Afghan Women" that worries me. But Lawrence does at least comment on some of the complexity of the issue. — George Hartley]
10/17/09
Jill Lawrence
You don't hear much talk about women in Afghanistan as the Obama administration goes through its arduous and semi-public deliberations over how to proceed with our "good war." You do hear talk about the Taliban, who now wield control or influence in a substantial swath of the country. Will we "reintegrate" some of them into Afghan society? Will we accept some of them as participants in politics and governance? Are they in fact to be feared as they once were?
The prospect of a Taliban comeback (with its attendant burkas, beatings and widows begging in the street) is horrific enough to make a feminist root for the "all-in" option. How many tens of thousands of troops does Gen. Stanley McChrystal want? Whatever, just let him have them. Let's wipe out al-Qaida, let's crush the Taliban, let's guarantee once and for all that Afghanistan will never again harbor transnational terrorists or enslave its own women.
The arguments against a huge troop surge are also strong, however, and possibly more reality based. National Security Adviser James Jones says there are fewer than 100 al-Qaida left in Afghanistan. If al-Qaida has largely relocated to Pakistan, maybe we should refocus our resources there, too, as Vice President Joe Biden and others have suggested. That's especially tempting given the corruption that plagues the Karzai government, the fraud that has left the August presidential election unsettled, and the fact that a range of insurgent groups, not just hardcore Taliban, are vying for power.
As for Afghan women, a little context: The first piece I wrote for the first day of Politics Daily was about my hope that women would become more central to U.S. foreign policy under President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. But clearly our hard-pressed military is not in Afghanistan, and should not be in Afghanistan, for the purpose of saving Afghan women from misogynists, religious extremists or old-fashioned sexists. That's mission creep of the first order.
The Afghan government has a Ministry of Women's Affairs and has made fitful attempts at progress. Steps are being taken to reduce violence against women and prevent child marriage. International pressure provoked changes in a roundly condemned law that appeared to legalize marital rape. On the other hand, the law still allows men to limit their wives' movement outside the home and withhold money from wives who refuse them sex.
There are women in Parliament, most of them beneficiaries of a constitutional requirement that women hold at least a specified number of seats. Two women ran for president. But the Taliban have done their best to discourage women in public life, particularly in Kandahar. The group claimed responsibility for the murder last April of Sitara Achakzai, the country'sleading women's rights activist, and for the murder a year ago of Malalai Kakar, the country'stop female police officer.
The Taliban were also implicated in the acid attacks last year against schoolgirls in Kandahar. Rachel Reid, the Afghanistan researcher for Human Rights Watch, told me CARE will report in an upcoming study that 40 percent of school attacks are on girls' schools, compared to 20 percent on those attended by boys (the rest are on mixed schools).
Reid, who has been in Kabul since 2006, said the violence against women has "a multiplier effect" in reducing their participation in civic and professional life. After Achakzai's murder, she said, several women fled the province overnight. And women campaigning for local council seats in the wake of the murder "had to do it remotely, which of course is hopeless" in terms of winning, she said. In Taliban-held areas, Reid said, "we hear about customary justice taking place," such as "honor killings" of women and girls by their relatives.
There is a spectrum of views on how to deal with the Taliban. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is part of the "all in" camp. It is a mistake to say al-Qaida is a threat but the Taliban are not, he said recently on CNN, because "they will become inextricably tied."
Michigan Democrat Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, wants to reintegrate younger Taliban into Afghan society by giving them private or government jobs protecting their communities. "These for the most part are not those Taliban leaders who represent the extreme religious positions," he said Thursday at a Christian Science Monitorbreakfast. "These are people who need to have some money coming in and need to have food on the table. The people we're talking about would be the ones most likely to have the least extreme views."
A.J. Rossmiller, a former civilian intelligence officer for the Pentagon, writes in a New Republic article called "Stalemate" that the United States should learn to live with the Taliban. Taliban insurgents wield "substantial governing authority" in at least a third of Afghanistan's nearly 400 districts, and the United States should not try to evict them, he writes. Rather, U.S. authorities should give the group a chance to participate in government so "its actions can be evaluated by the people and observed by the global community." He adds that "the Taliban, of course, should not be allowed to take over."
Rossmiller says his approach is dictated by facts. "I have no love for the Taliban. It's not that I want to see them in power," he told me in an interview. But "they already have control over a substantial part of the country. They are part of the government structure. They are going to continue to be. It's better to try to manage them than to try to defeat them." Furthermore, he said, achieving political stability would free women to participate in society and free up money for women's health services, education and business loans.
The Taliban do not appear to terrify Rossmiller or some of the nation's policymakers. Jones says Afghanistan is not in "imminent danger of falling" to them. Levin downplays the risk of that ever happening, citing public opinion polls that show Afghans "hate the Taliban."
Richard Haass, a former State Department official in the Bush administration who is now president of the Council on Foreign Relations, says the Taliban may have changed. "Why do we assume that, even if the Taliban were to come back into Afghanistan, that the Taliban of 2009 and '10 would necessarily be exactly what they were a decade ago?" he asked last weekend on CNN. Maybe, he added, they'd think twice this time about letting al-Qaida set up shop.
But would they think twice about the way they treat women? So far the answer is no. The problem is, I'm not sure any number of U.S. troops could change that.
The prospect of a Taliban comeback (with its attendant burkas, beatings and widows begging in the street) is horrific enough to make a feminist root for the "all-in" option. How many tens of thousands of troops does Gen. Stanley McChrystal want? Whatever, just let him have them. Let's wipe out al-Qaida, let's crush the Taliban, let's guarantee once and for all that Afghanistan will never again harbor transnational terrorists or enslave its own women.
The arguments against a huge troop surge are also strong, however, and possibly more reality based. National Security Adviser James Jones says there are fewer than 100 al-Qaida left in Afghanistan. If al-Qaida has largely relocated to Pakistan, maybe we should refocus our resources there, too, as Vice President Joe Biden and others have suggested. That's especially tempting given the corruption that plagues the Karzai government, the fraud that has left the August presidential election unsettled, and the fact that a range of insurgent groups, not just hardcore Taliban, are vying for power.
As for Afghan women, a little context: The first piece I wrote for the first day of Politics Daily was about my hope that women would become more central to U.S. foreign policy under President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. But clearly our hard-pressed military is not in Afghanistan, and should not be in Afghanistan, for the purpose of saving Afghan women from misogynists, religious extremists or old-fashioned sexists. That's mission creep of the first order.
The Afghan government has a Ministry of Women's Affairs and has made fitful attempts at progress. Steps are being taken to reduce violence against women and prevent child marriage. International pressure provoked changes in a roundly condemned law that appeared to legalize marital rape. On the other hand, the law still allows men to limit their wives' movement outside the home and withhold money from wives who refuse them sex.
There are women in Parliament, most of them beneficiaries of a constitutional requirement that women hold at least a specified number of seats. Two women ran for president. But the Taliban have done their best to discourage women in public life, particularly in Kandahar. The group claimed responsibility for the murder last April of Sitara Achakzai, the country'sleading women's rights activist, and for the murder a year ago of Malalai Kakar, the country'stop female police officer.
The Taliban were also implicated in the acid attacks last year against schoolgirls in Kandahar. Rachel Reid, the Afghanistan researcher for Human Rights Watch, told me CARE will report in an upcoming study that 40 percent of school attacks are on girls' schools, compared to 20 percent on those attended by boys (the rest are on mixed schools).
Reid, who has been in Kabul since 2006, said the violence against women has "a multiplier effect" in reducing their participation in civic and professional life. After Achakzai's murder, she said, several women fled the province overnight. And women campaigning for local council seats in the wake of the murder "had to do it remotely, which of course is hopeless" in terms of winning, she said. In Taliban-held areas, Reid said, "we hear about customary justice taking place," such as "honor killings" of women and girls by their relatives.
There is a spectrum of views on how to deal with the Taliban. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is part of the "all in" camp. It is a mistake to say al-Qaida is a threat but the Taliban are not, he said recently on CNN, because "they will become inextricably tied."
Michigan Democrat Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, wants to reintegrate younger Taliban into Afghan society by giving them private or government jobs protecting their communities. "These for the most part are not those Taliban leaders who represent the extreme religious positions," he said Thursday at a Christian Science Monitorbreakfast. "These are people who need to have some money coming in and need to have food on the table. The people we're talking about would be the ones most likely to have the least extreme views."
A.J. Rossmiller, a former civilian intelligence officer for the Pentagon, writes in a New Republic article called "Stalemate" that the United States should learn to live with the Taliban. Taliban insurgents wield "substantial governing authority" in at least a third of Afghanistan's nearly 400 districts, and the United States should not try to evict them, he writes. Rather, U.S. authorities should give the group a chance to participate in government so "its actions can be evaluated by the people and observed by the global community." He adds that "the Taliban, of course, should not be allowed to take over."
Rossmiller says his approach is dictated by facts. "I have no love for the Taliban. It's not that I want to see them in power," he told me in an interview. But "they already have control over a substantial part of the country. They are part of the government structure. They are going to continue to be. It's better to try to manage them than to try to defeat them." Furthermore, he said, achieving political stability would free women to participate in society and free up money for women's health services, education and business loans.
The Taliban do not appear to terrify Rossmiller or some of the nation's policymakers. Jones says Afghanistan is not in "imminent danger of falling" to them. Levin downplays the risk of that ever happening, citing public opinion polls that show Afghans "hate the Taliban."
Richard Haass, a former State Department official in the Bush administration who is now president of the Council on Foreign Relations, says the Taliban may have changed. "Why do we assume that, even if the Taliban were to come back into Afghanistan, that the Taliban of 2009 and '10 would necessarily be exactly what they were a decade ago?" he asked last weekend on CNN. Maybe, he added, they'd think twice this time about letting al-Qaida set up shop.
But would they think twice about the way they treat women? So far the answer is no. The problem is, I'm not sure any number of U.S. troops could change that.
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