Will Afghan women suffer in a Taliban deal?

[azara]

Will Afghan women suffer in a Taliban deal?
By Lindsey Hilsum
Updated on 18 July 2010

Ref, http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/world/asia_pacific/will+afghan+women+suffer+in+a+taliban+deal/3714777

As the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, moves to negotiate with the
Taliban, Lindsey Hilsum writes on the fears of Afghanistan's only
female governor that the women will be the ones "to have to make
sacrifices".

Afghanistan's only female provincial governor has a dilemma. Habiba
Sorabi knows that her poor but peaceful province of Bamiyan cannot
develop unless fighting stops elsewhere in the country.

But as President Hamid Karzai moves towards negotiations with the
Taliban, she fears that the rights of women and her minority Hazara
people will be surrendered for a peace deal. "It's always we women who
have to make sacrifices," she said.

This week's Kabul conference, to be attended by Hillary Clinton, the
US secretary of state, William Hague, the foreign secretary, and 40
other foreign ministers, is expected to grant approval for Karzai's
"re-integration and reconciliation" programme, an attempt to
accommodate the Taliban.

Many in Bamiyan are sceptical and scared. They live under the massive
empty rock niches where the 6th-century Bamiyan Buddhas stood until
they were dynamited by the Taliban in 2001 for being un-Islamic.

Under Taliban rule, hundreds of Hazaras - who make up about 70 per
cent of Bamiyan's population - were massacred and tens of thousands
fled. The Taliban, who are mainly Sunni Pashtuns from southern
Afghanistan, despise Hazaras, who are Shia Muslims.



"Safety and peace in the country is important, but what kind of price
do we want to pay?" said a former official. "Hazaras will be the first
to be sacrificed. It's not an issue of freedom but of survival."

For the moment, Sorabi can go out and talk to people in her province
whenever she wants, accompanied only by a handful of armed police. "I
am lucky," she says, "I can move freely."

Just over 100 New Zealand soldiers staff a provincial reconstruction
team, helping with development projects. But local people fear what
will happen if the team leaves as planned next September.

"If they leave us even for just one day, people will come and destroy
us. The Taliban will kill us," said "Baba" Muhsini, 60, who fought the
Russians in the 1980s. "To tell you the truth, we don't believe
Karzai," he said. "He's not trustworthy. He wants only Pashtuns to be
in power."

As a Karzai appointment, Sorabi is unwilling to criticise the
president but she is well aware of the creeping menace of the Taliban
just beyond Bamiyan's borders. Traffic is often attacked in Baghlan
province to the northeast. Foreigners are advised to fly, not drive,
to the province.

At a security meeting in her office last Thursday, the governor,
wearing her customary long skirt and jacket with a cream headscarf,
presided over a gathering of 25 men, ranging from an American
commander to local police chiefs.

Her greatest success, she said, after five years of lobbying, was
finally getting road construction under way. The province has fewer
than four miles of paved road, and what would be a three-hour journey
to Kabul on tarmac can take eight hours or more.

She dreams of a museum, and 1,000 hotel beds near the cave complex
where the Buddhas resided, but it is hard to see how Bamiyan can
attract tourists if it is almost impossible to get there.

There are glimmers of hope. Although the Taliban destroyed the rock
sculptures and defaced ancient cave paintings, a small group of
Japanese conservationists is carefully restoring some of the art.
Plans to reconstruct the giant Buddhas have not been agreed.

Sorabi complains that aid has been concentrated on conflict-ridden
provinces such as Helmand at the expense of Bamiyan, which still has
no mains electricity. In Bamiyan town centre, children strap plastic
jerry cans to donkeys to collect water from a spring. Bamiyan's
poverty reflects the lack of influence that Hazara politicians,
including Sorabi, have in Kabul - a problem that would be exacerbated
if the Taliban became part of central government.

Bamiyan is ahead of the rest of the country by one measure: girls'
education. In the last two years, school enrolment of girls has risen
by a third. In some provinces 90 per cent of rural girls are not in
school.

At Shirin Hazara school, just outside Bamiyan town, 52 young women
were studying last week to be teachers.

"Girls of 18 or 19 aren't allowed to study because the teachers are
all men, so that's why I want to be a teacher," said one. Families in
Bamiyan are reluctant to let their teenage girls study with male
teachers, hence the urgent need to train girls to teach.

"Men think women can't be teachers but we want to break this barrier;
we want to tell them we're human like them," said Aqila, 18.

Despite being a governor, Sorabi has not been invited to the Kabul
conference, but she knows what she would say to Hillary Clinton: "She
shouldn't forget Afghan women. When it comes to negotiations with the
Taliban, this is very important - the rights of women shouldn't be
neglected."