Women's Struggles

December 12, 2006 -- Courage, hope, determination, steadfastness, devotion, action ….all these radiate from the RAWA members and supporters I met during my stay in Pakistan in October 2006.

December 10, 2006 -- Five years ago, America and their allies attacked Afghanistan in the name of bringing "Human Rights", "Democracy", and "Freedom" to the war-torn country. The Taliban regime fell and Hamid Karzai's puppet regime, which included the world-known Northern Alliance criminals or as UN envoy Mahmoud Mestri said, "the bandit gangs", took over in the name of a fake democracy.

December 12, 2006 -- President Hamid Karzai should immediately enforce a program to provide truth, reconciliation and accountability for war crimes and major human rights abuses over the past 30 years in Afghanistan, Human Rights Watch said today. The Afghan government should establish a special court to try those responsible, some of whom hold high office, as soon as possible, Human Rights Watch said.

December 9, 2006 -- The Taliban gunmen who murdered two teachers in eastern Afghanistan early Saturday were only following their rules: Teachers receive a warning, then a beating, and if they continue to teach must be killed.

December 6, 2006 -- Afghanistan is the world's leading producer of opium and heroin, exporting drugs to Asia, the Middle East, Europe and the United States. But the scale of domestic drug abuse has only recently become apparent. The first nationwide survey on drug use, conducted last year by the Ministry of Counter Narcotics and U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, found nearly 1 million addicts in this nation of about 30 million people, including 60,000 children under age 15.

November 29, 2006 -- A local commander and his 11 men gang-rape a 22-year-old woman in Shahre Buzurg district of the northeastern Badakhshan province on Nov.28. The crime took place in the Shah Dasht village, by a local warlord called Mujtaba who belongs to Jamiat-e-Islami Afghanistan led by Burhanuddin Rabbani (now member of the parliament).

November 29, 2006 -- Some 100 women have attempted suicide by committing self-immolation or taking poison during the last eight months in the insurgency-hit southern province of Kandahar, an Afghan human rights watchdog said on Wednesday. "Our data show that at least 64 women have attempted suicide by setting fire to themselves and 36 others have resorted to taking poisons such as rat killers during the past eight months," Najeeba Hashimi, head of women's rights in the Kandahar office of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC), said.

November 27, 2006 -- More than half of Afghanistan's children are not going to school because of a shortage of places and teachers, the aid agency Oxfam says. Girls in particular are losing out, with just one in five girls in primary education and one in 20 going to secondary school.

November 24, 2006 -- Activist with Afghani organization for women’s rights RAWA tells Ynet women’s situation in Afghanistan even worse than before American invasion: Rape, kidnapping, murder go unpunished. ‘Without western interference, 9/11 could happen again,’ warns Sahar Saba

November 16, 2006 -- Sexual abuse, murder and other crimes of different types are increasing in the Northern provinces of Afghanistan and this situation has provoked the intense concerns of human rights and women affairs' activists.

November 13, 2006 -- Meena called the women of Afghanistan sleeping lions, pledging that one day they would awake and roar. In 1977, at the age of 20, she launched the country's first movement for women's rights, calling her group the Revolutionary Association for the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA). Its goals: the restoration of democracy, equality for men and women, social justice, and the separation of religion from the affairs of the state. But in a country mired in tradition and occupied by the Soviet Union, Meena's beliefs were threatening enough to get her assassinated. Ten years after founding RAWA, she was kidnapped and killed; many Afghans held agents of the local communist intelligence agency responsible.

November 2006 -- RAWA Photos from Kabul

November 24, 2006 -- Those who should be in the best position to help, women MPs, another supposed sign of the brave new Afghanistan, are themselves facing violence and intimidation. Malalai Joya, at 28 one of Afghanistan's youngest MPs, regularly changes addresses because of death threats. "When I speak in parliament male MPs throw water bottles at me. Some of them shout 'take and rape her'. "Many of the men in power have the same attitude as the Taliban. Women have not been liberated. You want to know how women feel in this country? Look at the rate of suicide," she said.

November 18, 2006 -- Blood dripped down the 16-year-old girl's face after another beating by her drug addict husband. Worn down by life's pain, she ran to the kitchen, doused herself with gas from a lamp and struck a match. Desperate to escape domestic violence, forced marriage and hardship, scores of women across Afghanistan each year are committing suicide by fire. While some gains have been made since the fall of the Taliban five years ago, life remains bleak for many Afghan women in the conservative and violence-plagued country, and suicide is a common escape.

November 16, 2006 -- About 400 residents of the northern Jawzjan province Thursday in a protest rally urged Juma Khan Hamdard to quit his position as governor. Mohammad Rasul, one of the protesters, told Pajhwok Afghan News: "We don't want the governor, he belongs to Hezb-i-Islami party and is also involved in drug-trafficking."

November 7, 2006 -- According to a report from the Northern Province of Takhar, tens of people staged a demonstration to protest rape of a girl by police in the Dasht-e-Qala district of this province. Also it is reported that selling of women has become very common in Faryab province in north of Afghanistan and each woman is sold up to 50,000 Afghanis (around US$1,000).

November 5, 2006 -- Sanobar, an 11-years-old daughter of Gulsha, an Afghan widow, has been abducted, raped and then exchanged with a dog by warlords in Aliabad district of Kondoz province in North of Afghanistan.

October 31, 2006 -- An international women's rights group says guarantees given to Afghan women after the fall of the Taleban in 2001 have not translated into real change. Womankind Worldwide says millions of Afghan women and girls continue to face systematic discrimination and violence in their households and communities.

October 23, 2006 -- According to Women Affairs Department ill-treatment, domestic disputes and economic problems are behind the increasing incidents of women committing suicide in the southern volatile Helmand province, also known as centre of poppy cultivation. The officials said about 18 to 20 women, most of them young girls, had committed suicide during this year in the province. Of the 20 only four girls took their lives in the last month.

October 18, 2006 -- Those living in caves near Buddha statue in the central Bamyan province have not enough stuff to offer to their honourable guests at this special day of the year, contrary to people serving their guests with dry fruit and sweets in other parts of the country. Of the total 3,000 caves at sides of Buddha statue, about 300 of the families are living in the caves.