They’d rather die: brief lives of the Afghan slave wives

[rodeodance]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2437883,00.html

The Sunday Times November 05, 2006

They’d rather die: brief lives of the Afghan slave wives

Christina Lamb
THE first thing one notices about 16-year-old Gul Zam is her eyes, pretty and dark yet as watchful as a hunted animal’s. But then the scarf covering her head shifts slightly, exposing a livid red scar on her neck. The hands that play nervously in her lap are ridged with pink burns that reach up her arms, across her chest and down her legs.

Three months ago Gul Zam poured petrol over her body and set herself alight. To her it was the only way out of a marriage so abusive that her husband Abdul had beaten her until her clothes were soaked in blood.

“I felt all other ways were blocked,” she whispered. “My husband and his family treated me like a slave. But I could not go back to my family because of the shame that would bring. So I crawled into the yard, poured a can of petrol over me and lit a match.”

Five years after the Taliban were ousted from Kabul, the number of Afghan women setting fire to themselves because they cannot bear their lives has risen dramatically.

........
Those who try to escape often end up in prison like 13-year-old Shabano, jailed in Kandahar for running away from the 50-year-old man to whom her father had sold her. “We don’t have democracy in this country if someone wants a love marriage,” she said, nibbling at grimy nails in the dark, dirty cell. “My father exchanged me for a teenage bride for himself.”

[kdmorris]

1. Nothing's changed there

We only keep up the pretense that we do anything for the Afghan people so that our own population will think that we really did something in the "War on Terror". I'm constantly amazed at how ignorant people are. They truly believe that we liberated the Afghan people. They say things like "We did the right thing by going into Afghanistan! Look at how much better their lives are. But Iraq is a different thing". Of course, these are the same people who supported the Iraq war in 2003.

When I've tried to tell them that we only control a small part of Kabul and even that control is slipping, they don't believe me. They haven't heard it on the news, so it can't be true. And meanwhile, these people are suffering, women are still treated like a form of payment, like donkies or something, and the American people live with the knowledge that we "did something right". Even in Iraq, they don't know how bad it's getting. They don't know that we basically just created a new Iran, or that women, who were treated as equal under Sadaam Hussein, are now being forced out of universities and employment for not covering their head.

What a sad story that was! I have a 14 year old daughter and I cannot imagine giving her to a 50 year old man as a wife (I can't really imagine forcing her to marry a 15 year old, either, but I was using the age of the groom that the 13 year old in jail was married to). My daughter is intelligent and funny and beautiful, and she makes being a mother so happy for me. Her value to my husband and I is as a human being, as a smart girl who is turning rapidly into an intelligent, witty woman. I cannot imagine anyone treating her the way these women have been treated. I would kill the man with my bare hands (and any blunt objects I could find). I'm glad, in Gul Zam's case, her family actually took her back. But that's the exception rather than the rule.

[Spangle]

2. It will not help because....

We don't have a reason to encourage either the people or the governemnt to do anything to help the human problems over there. The #1 thing we want from them is OIL. We are sooo needy on it, we can't tell them to 'shape up or ship out." We will buy the oil, no matter what.

With all the other countrys, that is how we make 'deals' or encourage people to do things a different way. They have a 'stake' at thinking about it at least. Either think about it, or they loose 'us' as a consumer. But for the oil countrys.... They know we have to do business with them. If not us, there are other countrys willing to buy their oil.

[kdmorris]

4. Well, technically, we want a GAS PIPELINE

Afghanistan has relatively few natural resources and those that they do have are not extracted or exported (http://www.afghanistans.com/Information/NResources.htm), but the pipeline going through from the Caspian Sea region is worth a lot to our government. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/2608713.stm

Problem is, we've abandoned the security of the entire country to provide security for this pipe line. The Taliban kept blowing it up as it was being constructed.

[bleedingheart]

3. There is no incentive for a male dominated society to aid women

when I am sure some of the folks in power take advantage of their status.

I wonder how many young girls ole Karzai has bedded.

[struggle4progress]

5. Afghani "women are no longer imprisoned in their homes" -- Laura Bush 11/17/01

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/11/20011117.html

[acmavm]

7. Laura needs to ship the twins over there and see how they

like it.

Some people say don't pick on the kids, but everytime I hear the name Jenna bush** all I can see is that blond bimbette sticking her tongue out at photographers. Maybe seeing how the women in countries like Afganistan, and now Iraq live, she'd learn some damn manners.

[struggle4progress]

8. Lots of kids act poorly, perhaps worse if they're expected to behave

well regularly in public performances for adults. Ministers' kids are proverbially notorious; so are diplomats' kids.

Of course, it's disgusting that King Fratboy expects others to go die in a war that seems to have been launched purely for political purposes, when he was unwilling to put himself at risk and probably has never encouraged his own children to join the military -- but that's not his childrens' fault.

[Odin2005]

6. Every moral relativist asshole deserves to experience what that girl did.

They'll change thier beliefs really quick

[midnight]

9. Five years after the Taliban is ousted from Kabul-femal sucide

via setting themselves on fire risen? So was life under the Taliban better? Or is it clear to these women that we did not come to bring freedom/democracy but the same horror.

[libertarian2008]

10. dark world

Living in an advanced western country
you sometimes forget just how many of the worlds
people live under the darkness of backward and brutal
religions and cultures.

We have nothing to complain about...