U.S. Pulls Back from Push for Women’s Rights in Afghanistan (bar private safe houses, etc)

[The Straight Story]

U.S. Pulls Back from Push for Women’s Rights in Afghanistan

Saying it’s time to be realistic about foreign policy goals, U.S. officials are downgrading the importance of achieving certain benchmarks for women’s rights in Afghanistan, as President Hamid Karzai’s government courts peace with insurgents.

J. Alexander Their, the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s office in Afghanistan, told The Washington Post: “The women’s issue is one where we need hardheaded realism. There are things we can do, and do well. But if we become unrealistic and overfocused . . . we get ourselves in trouble.”

Another U.S. official was more blunt, saying: “Gender issues are going to have to take a back seat to other priorities.”

In an effort to compromise with conservatives, the Karzai government has drafted rules that would bar private safe houses for women fleeing abuse. Women would be forced to seek refuge in public shelters, where they would be required to take medical examinations and they could be evicted if their families demand their return. The shelters also would come under direct control of the Afghan government for the first time.

http://www.allgov.com/US_and_the_World/ViewNews/US_Pulls_Back_from_Push_for_Womens_Rights_in_Afghanistan_110308

[Robb]

1. The ever-prescient Howard Dean. nt

[Bragi]

2. Turns out it wasn't all about women's rights! Shocker!

I am confident that eventually, in the not-distant future, the warlords, drug barons, tribal chieftains and religious medievilists who have run Afghanistan for hundreds of years will resume running the place.

America's dead, meanwhile, and the dead of its allies, will remain dead, and the wounded will remain wounded and crippled for life. So will far more Afghans.

To anyone who knew the region, there was seldom any doubt that this would roughly be the end result.

The outcome is tragic, but nothing in this particular chapter of history is more tragic that Barrack Obama soiling his presidency by escalating this illegal, immoral and unwinnable war.