Liberation Eludes Afghan Women

[DaveSZ]

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0416-07.htm

Liberation Eludes Afghan Women
Forced Marriages, Beatings, Suicides Persist Despite Taliban's Fall

by Anna Badkhen

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Ghazal laughed as she clumsily knocked the soccer ball around the dusty, walled-in courtyard with her sandaled foot, passing it off to a small cluster of teenage girls. But even as she smiled, the corners of her mouth turned down delicately, a hint that she knows her joy will vanish soon.

For four months, the 21-year-old civil liberties activist has been teaching 120 local women and girls to read, write, take care of their health and not be afraid to stand up for their rights. But two months ago, her work at the Afghan Center, a humanitarian organization that provides general and vocational education for women in Kabul, was undercut by her own family.


Ghazal (front) hides her agony during a soccer game. The activist fights for women's rights but is being forced to marry her cousin. Chronicle photo by Chris Stewart

They made clear to her that because she is an Afghan woman, she has no rights.

In February, Ghazal's parents informed her that they had engaged her to marry her cousin, Rafi, 28, an unemployed carpenter in the tiny village of Reshkhor. They expect the striking young woman with an arresting Sandra Bullock-like smile to move from the cosmopolitan capital of Kabul and to be confined to a lifetime of cleaning Rafi's house, cooking his food, washing his clothes and bearing his children.

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[NMDemDist2]

1. geez with this great track record how can they doubt us in Iraq?

<sarcasm>

[seabeyond]

2. she can come live in my spare room

and we think we will change the whole world huh

[DeepModem Mom]

3. kick