Women's Struggles

ZNet, October 11, 2006 -- Transcript of a speech by RAWA member Zoya at a benefit for RAWA (Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan), called "Breaking the Propaganda of Silence," organized by the Afghan Women's Mission on October 7, 2006. (download the audio files from our web site)

Pajhwok Afghan News, October 2, 2006 -- Thousands of people on Monday staged a protest demonstration against the presence of armed commanders in the northern Takhar province. The protestors demanded of the government to reign in the commanders, who had recently distributed arms to their supporters in an effort to press the government for conceding them more perks and privileges.

HRW, September 27, 2006 -- Warlords with records of war crimes and serious abuses during Afghanistan's civil war in the 1990s, such as parliamentarians Abdul Rabb al Rasul Sayyaf and Burhanuddin Rabbani, General Abdul Rashid Dostum, and current Vice President Karim Khalili, have been allowed to hold and misuse positions of power, to the dismay of ordinary Afghans.

BBC NEWS, September 25, 2006 -- Unidentified gunmen have killed a top women's affairs official in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar, security officials say. Safia Amajan, head of the province's women's department, was leaving her home for work when a gunman on a motorcycle shot at her, police said.

RFE/RL, September 20, 2006 -- A UN-backed rights watchdog has expressed continuing concern over violence against women in Afghanistan. The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) released disturbing figures in mid-September on violence against women and girls, including dozens of cases of so-called honor killings.

The Financial Times, Sep.4, 2006: Afghanistan now produces 92 per cent (6,100 tons) of the world’s supply of opium used to make heroin. Afghanistan’s opium cultivation surged by 59 per cent this year largely as a result of a Taliban-led insurgency that is pushing the southern part of the country to the verge of collapse, the United Nations drugs agency chief said at the weekend.

RAWA, Aug.22, 2006: One of the criteria for selecting the children and taking them to the orphanage is their economical and social status; therefore, most of them are orphans, victims of child labor and street children forced to beg. They have been exposed to very hostile and painful environments, polluted by drug mafia, armed gangs and religious extremism.

Pajhwok Afghan News, Sep. 2, 2006: Taliban have publicly executed a man for his alleged involvement in a murder case in the Garmsir district of the southern Helmand province on Saturday.

NY Times, Aug. 10, 2006: Taliban militants killed a woman and her 13-year-old son after accusing them of spying for the government and for foreign troops in southern Afghanistan, the Afghan government said Wednesday. The woman was shot and her son was hanged by an electrical wire from a tree on Monday in Helmand Province, said a spokesman for the provincial governor, Hajji Mohaiuddin.

RAWA, July 30, 2006: Hundreds of people from the Paghman district of Kabul demonstrated against Rasul Sayyaf, a fundamentalist leader of the Itehad-e-Islami party and a current member of the Afghan parliament. The protesters accused Sayyaf and his armed militia of extorting their lands and imposing crimes against them.

Pajhwok Afghan News, July 29, 2006: Three staffers working with a private television channel were beaten by armed men while covering a demonstration against former Mujahideen leader and current Member of Parliament Abdul Rab Rasul Sayyaf in Paghman district of Kabul on Saturday.

HRW, July 18, 2006: A proposal to reestablish the Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice in Afghanistan raises serious concerns about potential abuse of the rights of women and vulnerable groups, Human Rights Watch said today. President Hamid Karzai's cabinet has approved the proposal to reestablish the department, and it will go to Afghanistan's parliament when it reconvenes later this summer. It is not clear what the department's enforcement power would be. Nematullah Shahrani, the minister of Haj and religious affairs, who would oversee the department, has stated that it would focus on alcohol, drugs, crime and corruption. Afghanistan's criminal laws already address these issues.

The Times of India (Calcutta), June 24, 2006: In an exclusive with Amrita Mukherjee, Mehmooda, a member of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), gets candid about the present situation of women in her country

June 13, 2006: As a cameraman in the Afghan parliament, Omid Yakmanish thought he had a routine job, until he was attacked and threatened with death. It began when he filmed a parliamentary brawl and an attempted attack on a female MP last month. His footage was an embarrassment to many politicians, and the reaction was swift and violent.

June 13, 2006: A controversial UN report that has been shelved for 18 months names and shames leading Afghan politicians and officials accused of orchestrating massacres, torture, mass rape and other war crimes. The 220-page report by the UN high commissioner for human rights details atrocities committed by communist, mujahidin, Soviet and Taliban fighters over 23 years of conflict. Originally scheduled for release in January last year, the report's publication has been delayed repeatedly due to sensitivities over identifying former warlords still in positions of power.

May 30, 2006: Violent anti-foreigner protests raged across Afghanistan's capital yesterday after a U.S. military truck crashed into traffic, touching off the worst rioting since the Taliban's ouster. At least eight people died and 107 were injured before Kabul's streets calmed.

Indo Asian News Service, Aug. 14, 2006: UNIFEM Survey revealed: "65 per cent of the 50,000 widows in Kabul see suicide the only option to get rid of their miseries and desolation."

June 6, 2006: Corruption is a growth industry for Afghanistan's police. They stand accused of extorting money from drug smugglers, gun runners, brothel owners and gamblers, in return for looking the other way. Those who refuse to pay can be arrested as part of an apparently virtuous clean-up campaign, and then released once they hand over the cash. The bribery and corruption surrounding the police force are just a fact of life for most Afghans. But it still came as something of a shock when the governor of the northern Balkh province took the region's law officers to task.

June 5, 2006: Tens of female students of Balk University have strike and closed the entry gate of dormitory to the faces of supervisors for their objection as what they have called the 'attack of policemen to girl's dormitory'. These girls who's number has been reported more than hundred, are saying that in the middle of last night (4th June), two policemen who had drunk alcoholic drink, by attacking to girl's dormitory in Mazar-e-Sharif, wanted to rape them. One of these girls who didn't disclose her name said: “last mid-night when we were all sleeping, two drunken men knocked the gate of the dormitory and when we woke up; they asked us to open the gate for them."

May 30, 2006: Seven aid workers lost their lives in Afghanistan on Tuesday in two separate incidents. At least four were killed in the northern Afghan province of Jawzjan when unidentified gunmen ambushed their vehicle, a government spokesman said in the capital Kabul.